Recently, Altbot has been targeted by DDoS attacks. While the motive is unclear, it seems tied to a misguided belief that the bot’s alt-text generation is harmful to the environment. Let me set the record straight.

Altbot uses Gemini-1.5-flash, a specifically low-power AI model. Processing a single alt-text request consumes around 0.0005 kWh, meaning that in the 4 months since I created Altbot—and tens of thousands of alt-text entries generated—it has consumed roughly 10 kWh in total. That’s about the same energy as running a single LED light bulb nonstop for 41 days or driving an electric car just 40 miles.

These DDoS attacks, however, have already consumed more electricity and computing power than Altbot has across its entire existence... in a matter of hours. This means the attacks have caused more environmental harm than the very thing they seem to be protesting.

Altbot exists to improve accessibility on Mastodon, not to harm the environment. Accessibility and sustainability can coexist, and I’m committed to keeping Altbot energy-efficient and purposeful.

If there are concerns, I encourage constructive dialogue—not destructive actions that undermine both inclusivity and sustainability.

Thank you to everyone supporting Altbot’s mission of making the Fediverse more accessible for all.

@micr0

Can someone tell me how some people, like MicObyte here, is able to post far more characters than the rest of us?

TL;DR:
Altbot, an opt-in accessibility tool using a low-power AI model, has consumed only 10 kWh of energy in its 4 months of operation—equivalent to running an LED light for 41 days. Recent DDoS attacks against Altbot, ironically, caused far more environmental harm in just a few hours than the bot has in its entire existence. Let’s prioritize constructive dialogue over destructive actions to support both accessibility and sustainability.

I keep forgetting that it looks like arcane magic to baseline Mastodon users that people on other software can write thousands of characters per post lmao

@Mor696@mastodon.social @micr0@fuzzies.wtf mastodon is open source software so people can host their own mastodons and make them have bigger character limits! neat, huh?
i dont use mastodon though i use sharkey

@Mor696 different servers can have different character limits set. For example, the server I'm on has a 1000 character limit.

@Mor696 @micr0

It's a Mastodon fork, see the about page of his server. Being in the fediverse you meet all kind of things. Some servers also support markdown, which means some formatting, for example. The beautiful thing is that we can anyway communicate 😊

https://fuzzies.wtf/about

@Mor696 @micr0 it is the server they are on. Different servers give you different character limits. Kolektiva, the server I'm on, has a 10,000 character limit

@Mor696 @micr0 instance owner can set character limit for the instance. So you at mastodon.social, me at f.cz and Micr0 at fuzzies.wtf can all have different character limit.

@Mor696 @micr0 In short (in advance sorry for kinda dumbing this down but I don’t rly know what you know): Mastodon/Fedi is made up of different servers that talk to eachother, those can use different softwares, and some of those allow custom character limits. You are on an instance that has specific char limit, while others can be on different instances with different limits.
Hope this explains it somewhat

@Mor696 hi! I run my own instance of mastodon that has the character limit practically removed, so that I (and other people on my instance) can post longer thoughts without the limitations. a lot of instances that are not mastodon. social have longer limits and differences like that

some other differences include:
emoji reactions
a more modern UI
more posting options
more customizability
etc.

the protocol that makes mastodon (and other fediverse platforms) doesn't really have limits for this, it's just a matter of what your software or instance, chooses to implement/limit.

I hope that answers your question!

Some instances have up to 50,000 character limits. Mastodon social has 500 character limit and that hasn't changed since it started. There is a Github issue where people are trying to convince Mastodon developer to make this far easier to change. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12265 @Mor696 @micr0

@stepan @micr0

Thanks

@micr0 @Mor696 damn U explained it way better than I did
I need to up my game

@Mor696 @micr0 servers running different mastodon versions and different fediverse software have higher character limits, I think it’s like 40 thousand here or something? Mastodon’s default 500 is super low for fedi standards

@desea your last name is pretty cool desea!!

@micr0 Just looking at the impact of the bot itself might be a little shortsighted when talking the enviromental impact of an AI. There is the required training as well. But since you don't know how many clients there will be for any given its hard to split the energy used for training.

I am though pretty impressed how energy efficient the thing is. At that point I might use more energy when thinking and writing down an alt-text myself