Disclaimer: I wrote this article and made this website.
There was some talk of this issue in the recent fediverse inefficiencies thread. I’m hopeful that in the future we’ll have a decentralized solution for file hosting but for now I deeply believe that users should pay for their own file hosting.
Is a p2p system for media with the instances just hosting magnet links too slow for fediverse purposes? To me this seems like the most resilient way to handle media in a decentralized system
If a social network is to take off, it must be accessible from mobile devices behind CGNAT (carrier grade network address translation).
p2p from behind a CGNAT works just fine as long as a single server is accessible and can mediate connections between other peers. Most non-servers are behind some sort of NAT these days.
Why?
Because that’s where all the users are. The “social” aspect of a “social” network. Anyone can host a forum but it’s useless without users.