Like does content get mirrored to my instance and then mine distributes it ala BitTorrent or is my instance it’s own thing?
There is certainly an inflection point. I am not sure where it falls. If you rarely use Lemmy the other servers are expending effort federating to you for no reason, so for a heavy single user it is probably a positive. I imagine it also varies based on how you browse as “new” is probably “lighter” than “hot” or “active”.
Sure, but the server calculates the hot/active every 15 minutes regardless of whether or not you browse it. It’s calculated on a timed job so it’s always fresh and ready for everyone.
I was unaware that was the case, that’s pretty expensive and inefficient to do it for every user (because each user’s “Subscribed” feed is likely different) every 15 minutes regardless of how recently they’ve visited. The inflection point is probably lower for the benefits of even single-user instances in that case.
