Most accounts on a self-hosted PDS are 'throttled' by the relay, blocking AppView indexing and video upload

[xxgoldxxgold]

Most accounts on our self-hosted PDS are reported as throttled by the relay, and as a side effect those accounts cannot upload video. I'd like to confirm whether this is the documented per-host account limit, and what the correct way to request an increase is.

Setup

• PDS hostname: pds.skyphone.social
• Client: an iOS / Android app published on the App Store and Google Play

What we observe

com.atproto.sync.getHostStatus on relay1.us-west.bsky.network reports the host as active:

{"accountCount": 183, "hostname": "pds.skyphone.social", "seq": 6261, "status": "active"}

But checking com.atproto.sync.getRepoStatus for every repo on the PDS (849 total):

• active: 152
• throttled: 697

Two examples from the same PDS:

{"active": true,  "did": "did:plc:ta347pa3wlmmyymoz56mfmfw", "rev": "3mrhhfntazs2y"}
{"active": false, "did": "did:plc:feusu6ca5lrpffqxc4jwqovn", "status": "throttled"}

Throttled accounts are never picked up by the AppView. app.bsky.actor.getProfile returns a stub with no createdAt and postsCount: 0, and app.bsky.feed.getAuthorFeed returns Profile not found, even though the records exist on the PDS and the repo rev advances normally. Writing a new record and calling com.atproto.sync.requestCrawl did not change this.

Impact on video

For a throttled account, app.bsky.video.getUploadLimits returns:

401 {"canUpload": false, "error": "upload_forbidden", "message": "User is not allowed to upload videos"}

For an active account on the same PDS:

{"canUpload": true, "remainingDailyVideos": 100, "remainingDailyBytes": 40000000000}

Neither account has a confirmed email on our PDS, so email confirmation does not appear to be the differentiator here — relay activation does.

Questions

1. Is this the documented default of 100 accounts per host from the rate limits page? We currently have 152 active, so it does not look like a hard cut at exactly 100 — is the limit applied to newly created accounts once the host is over its allowance?
2. The docs say to reach out if the defaults become a problem for a growing PDS. Is the PDS-admin Discord the only channel for that, or is there a form / email? What information do you need beyond hostname and contact email?
3. Is video upload eligibility for third-party PDS accounts derived from relay activation / AppView indexing, or is it a separate allowlist? I could not find this documented anywhere, and upload_forbidden is not described in the video tutorial.

Happy to provide any further diagnostics. Thanks!