I have a domain name that I own but am not making use of and was thinking of setting up my own personal Lemmy instance, partly so I can have a Lemmy id and instance that I can completely control, partly so that I can contribute directly to my hosting cost, and partly because it might be fun to tinker with (or it might just end up being a pain; I’m still trying to figure out which is the case).
However, from this comment it sounds like, rather than contributing to horizontal scaling and easing the load on other servers, I might actually end up increasing the load on other servers by adding yet another server that the other servers have to talk to in order to keep my server updated on the latest comments and posts to which I am subscribed.
So given this, would self-hosting a personal instance actually make things worse for everyone else and thus be an irresponsible action at this time and/or for the foreseeable future? Because the last thing that I want to do is to inadvertently add a burden to the fediverse!
Having all the servers you want content from pushing duplicate data out just for you would increase load. You as a single user on an instance that already receives that data is a significantly smaller footprint. Only people truly interested in running a public instance and all the associated work that comes with it should really spin up instances. Contributing monetarily to your favorite instance would be much more sustainable.