@freakazoid The problem is that an instance that is "small" in user count is not automatically "small" in media size (and indeed often is not), because the amount of users on your instance barely affects whether posts get federated to you (which is where the disk use comes from, AIUI).

In other words: as the network grows, small instances are disproportionately affected by the media storage cost, and I think it's actually very important to find a solution to that, to make small instances easier to run.

It's kind of a similar problem to how the resources needed for a Matrix server have little to do with how many users you are hosting, and more with how big the rooms are that you are in. It incentivizes running fewer instances that are larger in user count.