GreenFediverse: Difference between revisions

[https://chaos.social/@greenfediverse GreenFediverse] is an open project to empower the [[Fediverse]] to run on servers with renewable energy and creating awareness for a sustainable development of it. GreenFediverse provides a critical list about servers and their renewable energy consumption status in a [https://greenfediverse.frama.io/green-instances/ Green Instances List]

The project emerged from discussions in Fediverse in 2019. The conversations were about digitization, environmental sustainability of social networks, data centers and energy consumption. It all started in March 2019 with the mastodon-account [https://chaos.social/@greenfediverse GreenFediverse]. In the beginning the community around the project created some manually edited lists: [https://lite.framacalc.org/greenfediverse-instances old instances list] and a [https://lite.framacalc.org/green-webhosting green webhoster list]. In 2020 [https://mastodon.social/@attac_hl @attac_hl] worked on the technical realization of a [https://greenfediverse.frama.io/green-instances/ new green instances list] and combined the databases from [https://sp3r4z.fr/mastodon/ Mastostats] and the [https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-feed/ GreenWebFoundation]. In 2021 [https://digitalcourage.social/@aligyie @aligyie], created a [https://lite.framacalc.org/green-webhost-ranking green webhost ranking].

We, as users of the federated universe called "[[Fediverse]]" are aware that our self-hosted instances run on servers with different types of energy consumption. The global energy demand for our data centers will continue to increase despite the fact that they will be more efficient. One of the core questions are: what kind of energy will we use in the future? Should we favor certain data centers and services? Green web hosting will be one of the important key factors in addressing the climate crisis and environmental degradation on our planet. We face huge challenges on our way there. On the one hand, there is a great lack of transparency, including increasing greenwashing tendencies. We also face the complexity of the energy market and its unpredictable dynamics. Are there again bad players on the market? How can we find out which energy suppliers offer us real green energy without greenwashing?  

With our research we try to get a first but not complete overview about webhosting provider. This data set include Fediverse instances which are using renewable energy for their servers. We want to take a closer look at our digital infrastructure to make the ecological footprint we leave in the digital space more visible. With this step we try to combine ecology and technical aspects, to make them visible and more aware for everyone - our main goal is to create awareness for an ecologically sustainable development of our digital space including the Fediverse, to transport this topic to public. We are aware that it is not possible to obtain or produce green energy everywhere on our planet. We do not want to blame anyone for not using green energy. We are aware that the production of the hardware that our server uses takes place in conditions that involve the exploitation of humans and nature. Therefore, the questions are not only limited to ecology and technology, but must also be extended to the dimensions of social and human rights aspects. Unfortunately, these dimensions are always disregarded, which is why we would like to strongly advocate that this topic should be viewed from a multi-perspective lens. Naming poor conditions and inequalities is only a small step. Building open knowledge can lead to more conscious choices in our actions.

So, let's build a data base! Let's see how it works!

You can help programming and assembling the open databases and APIs, or help building the database. Building the database means critically researching and building open knowledge about the energy usage of server operators. in both cases you should always check the repository first to see what tasks are currently available and where we are in the process.

Then we let these two databases collide with each other. The script we wrote, which you can find on [https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances framagit] and [https://codeberg.org/GreenFediverse/green-instances codeberg] then executes the command to green check all instances and provide the information we want to get in our list. The result is our [https://greenfediverse.frama.io/green-instances Green Instances List].

"[https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/tree/master/additional-info additional infos]" means we make our research transparent in a structured way. For every webhoster we create a separate .md file. You should use this [https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/blob/master/additional-info/stylesheet.md stylesheet] and take a look at the entries we already filled. Inside the file it looks like this:<syntaxhighlight>

**Green energy certificate:**

</syntaxhighlight>For example, if we did an investigation for Hetzner's data center, then the .md file: "[https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/blob/master/additional-info/hetzner.md hetzner.md]" will refer to all of Hetzner's servers. But not just the file is enough, we have to connect the file to the database. We can do this in the [https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/blob/master/table.js table.js] where we put the name we get from the [https://greenfediverse.frama.io/green-instances/ instances list] for Hetzner, (the exact name is very important, otherwise it will not work), so correctly: "Hetzner Online AG". Then the complete entry in the table.js looks like this:<syntaxhighlight>

</syntaxhighlight>"[https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/tree/master/rejectlist rejectlist]" means that a downgrade of a "green" status comes into play here. Servers marked as "rejected" are those that, according to our research, contradict the status of the GreenWebFoundation. Here we also work with seperate .md files. Same as above, we have to set the entry we want to reject in the [https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/blob/master/table.js table.js]. Currently it looks like this:<syntaxhighlight>

Server operators who claim to use renewable energies, but at the same time and by other means invest in fossil energies, cannot in our view make an ecologically sustainable contribution and are destroying their acquired status themselves - we do this in order to bring more reality, transparency and quality into play. In simpler terms, we unfortunately have to remain suspicious of all the greenwashing and marketing promises. Finally, we refrain from an exact and hardly realizable rating, because a lot of factors have to be considered and cannot be read out technically yet.

"[https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/tree/master/whitelist acceptlist]" means that we set a gray status to a green status by ourself. We just need to put our wished entry (instances adress like "chaos.social") to the [https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/blob/master/acceptlist/instances.md instances.md]. Currently it looks like this:<syntaxhighlight>

</syntaxhighlight>But don't forget to add your infos to the [https://framagit.org/greenfediverse/green-instances/-/tree/master/additional-info additional-info] section, otherwise someone will set your green status back to gray, because there is no transparent research and proof. If a instance (server/data center) is marked as gray, this means that there were no result from TheGreenWebFoundation API, technically it is a "0". When a instance is green, technically a "+1" was coming from the GWF. Btw, there is no -1 for a not green status, just "+1" and "0". At the moment only single instances (not whole webhoster) can set to green. If you can't find your instance, you should visit https://the-federation.info/info and register your instance here, because we use their API to get all the instances for our database. If you are registered there, but the GWF won't give you a result for your instance, then the accept-list is the way.

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