this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Fediverse
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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
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I think you've misunderstood. Lemmy/Kbin absolutely DOES allow for one big forum to exists for a subject, across the whole fediverse.
It's just that people are creating communities on their own instances, because they don't know or care that one already exists on another somehwere, which they could be joining.
They are two separate communities. They are like if you had two subbreddits called r/startrek and r/alsostartrek.
They could be about the exact same thing, but they were started by different people. The second of which, either didn't check if one already existed, or wanted to make their own for one reason or another.
In the future, it might be possible to combine communities in some way (like multireddits), but for now, all they have in common is the subject matter.
And, while communities have a "home" instance they are not solely accessible by people on that instance. They are accessible by any user on any other federated instance. Making more communities for the same thing on other instances, is not how federation works. You're just making more "subbreddits" with similar names.
Basically, both communities exist on both instances. Only one is needed, on one instance, for there to be a community for a given subject on the entire fediverse.
You can view the Kbin magazine, of course: kbin.social/m/startrek
But you can also view the lemmy.ml community, still in Kbin: kbin.social/m/[email protected]
And the same works in reverse, the Kbin magazine, in lemmy: lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]
Basically, someone made a second one, even though only one is needed. They both exist for the entire fediverse, not just their respective instances.
The redundancy that is being complained about is a problem, but it's also one of the fediverse's greatest assets. What happens when a group of discussion is forced or becomes more dominant in just one place and something happens to that place (whether it be corruption, data loss, just cut off from other places)? I think rather than creating a desire or necessity to congregate in one place, having tools for similar groups to distribute topics among themselves is a much better solution for everyone.
If we can decentralize users, we can surely decentralize content, can't we? I don't want content to be restricted to one instance, and that's my problem. I was looking to have the same community and its content to be on all instances at the same time, removing the power of one instance to shut out the Fediverse and control all access to the content. If [email protected] decides to shut down all traffic to/from kbin, for example, then that would leave kbin users in the dark as it currently stands, right?
The old content would not disappear. Federated content is in fact stored on every server, and is not fetched from the "main" server every time someone wants to interact with it. Only changes are transmitted to and fro. Defederation entails the ceasing of this synchronization.
If startrek.website had genuine reasons for shutting your instance out, you probably don't want to stick around on it either.
If it didn't, that will mean people likely wont want to stick around on it.
The third option is something like what happened with beehaw, where an instance was unable to deal with the moderation load of large outside instances. In these cases, the defederation is likely to be temporary.
Either way, the content moves around a little... Establishes new homes on new instances... And you're back to business as usual after a bit of turmoil. A lot less of it than with a commercial centralized services going down though.
Oooh, okay. So if I subscribe to [email protected], then kbin would store that data, and I would be able to point everyone to [email protected] and we'd all be able to pick up where we left off? Still an issue of getting users to change where they're posting to, but that's better than I thought, at least.
Also, I imagine the problem with how difficult it is to migrate away from commercial centralized services is that it's hard to spin up a new version of that site with the code and database. Being quick to spin up a new kbin instance or Lemmy instance helps immensely, though the issue of directing the users to those new instances would be just as difficult.
In a federated system, once up and running, "jumping ship" is much, much easier. Changing entire sites goes from new accounts, apps, and people, to just seeing where the users go, and following.
A community is its users, and in the fediverse, when a site goes bad, the users don't have to go with it.
I would argue that a community is the content and its users. People don't use a new site/instance unless it's active with content to their quality standards (it's why so many people refuse to use new options that the far-right creates). The only exception is when there are major events like Musk purchasing Twitter to get Mastodon going, or the API changes leading to kbin/lemmy getting more popular. As an example: I'm still using https://reddit.com/r/worldnews because they have the daily update thread on Ukraine, but !worldnews doesn't.
You are very right with the apps, though. Creating a new account is easy, but having to install new apps and set them up is a royal pain. Another pain point is having to learn an entirely new interface, whereas I can spin up my own instance of kbin after using it for a couple of years and feel comfortable with the interface of the new instance, as opposed to going from Twitter to Mastodon which is quite the adjustment.
There's one more benefit.
In a federation, you can join the new less shitty version, AND stay in the old one going downhill.
You can vote for the new thing, without giving up on the old. You simply switch which one you post to.
Imagine if you could have Reddit and Lemmy, in the same app, seamlessly intermingling, but actively reduce how much you contribute to reddit, while actively increasing how much you contribute to lemmy.
You could contribute to that change and improvement, with ZERO trade-offs. How many more people would support the next thing, if they could adopt the new without discarding the old?
That is an entirely valid point, and one I do like. The worst part of that is having to wade through duplicate posts, which isn't the end of the world, I suppose.
Well said.
Much like people making copycat subreddits. As apps become more popular, the larger communities with better content and engagement will naturally consolidate into the more ‘dominant’ ones.
Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the Fediverse in the first place, though? Consolidation of users/power? If we're going to use a single instance for every topic, then why not just stick with Reddit?
Because there's multiple instances, and new ones can be spun up if the existing ones "go bad." It's completely different from Reddit, I don't see how you're considering them the same.
I can make a new website with a forum if Reddit goes "bad," too, but that doesn't change anything. All of the content and the users would be on that one specific instance. That's what people care about: content and a critical mass of users. There's a reason people are still using Reddit, and it's not because Reddit has wonderful ownership that cares about the users; it's because that's where the most people currently are. Migrating people from one site to another isn't easy, and that would be the exact same situation if a super popular instance were to go "bad," whether or not it's part of the Fediverse.
It doesn't change anything on Reddit, because Reddit doesn't federate with anything and nothing can federate with Reddit. People on Reddit would have to create a new account to interact with your forum.
Here on the Threadiverse, if you start a new community on a new instance then the users who were using the community on the old instance can seamlessly move over to start using the new community instead. The content would remain available to both, the users would remain available to both.
On the Fediverse migrating people isn't necessary, since users on other instances can interact with each other.
This is ultimately the point of Federation. There isn't a "critical mass" for each instance because they all share the same userbase in aggregate. As soon as a new instance comes online they instantly have as many users that can post there as an instance that's been around for years.
My problem was that I have to subscribe to an instance in order to see its posts. If I'm subscribed to [email protected], and they decide to shut off access to the Fediverse for whatever reason, all the content would be gone to me here on kbin, right? Also: I would need to subscribe to a new Star Trek community, because I could no longer connect with the old community? What do you mean by, "the content would remain available to both"? If they shut off the Fediverse, or blacklist my instance, wouldn't that mean I no longer have access to their content, even old content that I posted?
And yeah, when I say, "migrate," I mean, "getting people to subscribe to a different instance, because the one they were using turned evil/shut down/disconnected from the Fediverse, etc." Wouldn't those scenarios still mandate action by the users in order to find a new community, and thus equate to migration? Just because a new instance has the same number of users that can post there, doesn't mean there will be the same number of users actively posting there. They will still be using the old instance, and it will take work to get them to start posting to the new instance. That's my point. From my understanding, the Fediverse decentralizes user accounts, but it doesn't decentralize content, and that's where I'm running into my expectations/wishlist issues.
No, only new content would be gone. My understanding is that when you subscribe the content starts being mirrored to your instance, so that's why you don't see anything from before the first person on your instance subscribed to it. Presumably that means you would continue seeing the old content, just not new stuff.
This would be annoying, yes. But startrek.website would have absolutely no way to prevent everyone from switching over to [email protected], or [email protected], or whatever other one ends up being the next-most-popular. The admins on startrek.website only have control over startrek.website. So it's not at all like Reddit, where the admins make decisions and everyone just has to take it.
Sure, but that's no different from switching to a different subreddit, in the current case of Reddit.
The difference is that there are no admins with power over the fediverse as a whole.
Not really. No more work than posting on a different community on the same instance. Subscribing to communities on other instances from your "home" instance is pretty seamless (aside from the occasional bugs and rough patches, which are simply a result of the current newness of this stuff rather than inherent in the design).
Which doesn't really happen. The mods of r/news are idiots, but only a tiny number of users actually care about that. Most people either just stop using r/news, or deal with it. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of how things should be. Hell, the only time I've seen people switch subreddits is when everyone went from r/antiwork to r/workreform after that disaster of a TV interview; even then, the former currently has 2.6 million subscribers, the latter has 700k, so it appears even that migration was a failure. I can't imagine this is seen as a good solution.
People don't want to post in two communities that cover the same topic. Duplicating work like that leads people to seek out a single solution, even if it's the worse solution. Reddit is so popular because it has a giant number of people posting content to subreddits all the time, meaning even niche topics have a healthy amount of fresh content. If you fragment users into multiple instances (even if they don't have to worry about creating new user accounts for each one), then it just leads to problems. Eventually they will move towards a single mega-instance, but then you run into the problems above: people won't leave that instance for a new one until they absolutely cannot stand to be there anymore, and some people are going to have lower tolerances for bullshit than others, which means most people are still going to be using the old instance for a very very long time, splitting content between multiple instances. In other words: why go to [email protected] when there's so many more users, and so much more fresh content on https://reddit.com/r/worldnews?
There are plenty of news subreddits. I greatly preferred /r/anime_titties, for example.
On Reddit, since there's only one "instance" and can never be any others, there can only be a single community named "news." If the name is really so important then the ability to "reuse" the name on other instances gives an advantage to the Fediverse.
Then don't. I really don't understand what you think is going on here. If there's one community you prefer, stick with that.
They are not fragmented. In what way are they fragmented? Everyone can participate in communities on every instance, no matter where they are.
People don't need to leave that instance.
Because Reddit's admins suck? Why else are you here?
r/news has 26.34 million users. r/anime_titties has 0.47 (even you even somehow stumble upon r/anime_titties being a news/politics subreddit, as I didn't even know it existed until just now, and even then I didn't think "news" when I saw the name of it). Those are two drastically different experiences. Do you at least agree on that?
I feel like you're not following the train of logic, here... we're discussing what happens when you can't/won't "stick with that".
They are fragmented. Just because they can post somewhere doesn't mean they will. It's why [email protected] has 4,870 subscribers, 190 threads, and 3,180 comments, and yet [email protected] only has 810 subscribers, 10 threads, and 17 comments. If having the ability to post in multiple places meant people actually did post in multiple places, then [email protected] would be a whole log more active, wouldn't it?
You're right, but they would need to start posting to whatever community/magazine I'm subscribed to, or else the community/magazine I'm subscribed to wouldn't have any content, and then why would I bother being subscribed to it?
If your only reason was because Reddit admins suck, you could have just quit the internet all together, but you came to kbin for a specific reason. You moved away from Reddit because of the admins, but you moved to kbin because of the content. Now imagine if there were no places with any content; you'd have nowhere to move to, and quitting the internet would be a more appealing option than posting in a magazine with 10 threads over 2 weeks.
The suckiness of Reddit's admins is adversely affecting the content. It's preventing me from browsing it with my chosen tools, it's crippling the ability of mods to keep their big giant communities running, and so forth.
I've come to the Fediverse to see content that's free of those restrictions. Unlike you, I don't see inherent value in having millions and millions of people subscribed to a given community. Small communities can still have plenty of interesting content. And these small communities are growing, if there's not enough content to your tastes right now then you can either contribute some or come back in a while to see if there's more.
The earlier suggestion about multireddit-like functionality helps, too, by splicing together the content of multiple smaller communities. At the user's discretion.
Oh, the irony.
Then you go to a different community. On the Fediverse it's super easy. As I've been saying.
I don’t really get why the size of a community even matters beyond a certain point. As we’ve seen with default subs, vs more niche alternatives, communities generally go to shit once they get too big.
It's because below a certain threshold the amount of content posted is low. I don't think you can argue that a news sub is worse off for having more people posting news as it happens.
Except on the fediverse all the old content would still be accessible, and your new site would be connected to the existing network.
Most users would just have to sub to a new community, and thats that. Only users on the instance that went down would have to make entirely new accounts.
Wait, how? I thought the content stayed with the old instance?
If people migrate to [email protected], and use it for 10 years, then they go bad, I can start a new instance and pull in all 10 years of content from the other instance?
No. But all the instances on which users were subbed, would retain archival data.
Moving communities between instances may become possible, though.
It’s because nothing’s gonna centralize into one instance. There’s gonna be communities that thrive on one instance, and communities that thrive on others. So, if one instance goes to shit, it doesn’t bring down ALL of the Fediverse; just those communities.
It’s almost like diversifying you investments.
But if all instances connected to a distributed set of content, then an individual instance can go to shit but people will still have the content and users, instead of having to start over with a new community entirely, hoping that everyone jumps to the same instance you jumped to, or else you would have no content to view/interact with.