The more users spread out into smaller, more easily censored instances, the more the remaining fragmented bits of the Lemmy ecosystem still talking to each other will turn into echo chambers full of groupthink. This low threshold for defederation is the Fediverse’s greatest weakness. Sure, it’s possible to work around it—but how many separate Lemmy accounts are users expected to create? Even if you have accounts on every instance of note you’d need to manually cross-post messages to each balkanized server and their comment sections wouldn’t be shared—exactly the sort of thing federation was meant to avoid.
Email, another federated system, has this same weakness. It’s why it’s increasingly difficult to run your own (outgoing) email server which other systems will accept messages from without going through a well-known third party like Google. Especially when trying to push content to a large audience (e.g. mailing lists), which happens to be Lemmy’s core function.
Bluesky is using content addressing to deal with this, although currently it is only built around feeds and not forums. Your profile is truly portable and posts can optionally be retrieved from “mirrors” (one of the CDN-like servers called BGS) so you don’t need to rely on your current hosting server (the account hosts called PDS) to federate with everybody.
You raise a point very similar to something I’ve considered a lot. If Mastodon is going to reach critical mass, it will happen on the backs of a few mega-instances.
The average internet user simply doesn’t understand the Fediverse. And why should they? All they know is that they want to sign up for a service and receive said services. They don’t want to figure out which instance to join any more than they want to figure out which email provider to use. The default choice (ex: the account that comes with their ISP or their phone like iCloud or GMail) is usually good enough. Remember the days of vanity email domains and tons of smaller email providers? You just don’t see that very much any more.
Mastodon will be the same. People are learning the name Mastodon, but they don’t know the difference between Mastodon the app and Mastodon.social the instance. They don’t see Twitter as being similar to email where they can pick their own server, so they won’t apply that thinking to Mastodon. They’re going to naturally coalesce around defaults - either servers that specifically say Mastodon in the name that look “official” or the instance that their friends use.
This is one of the reasons that I’m against federating with mega corporations should they choose to implement Activity Pub. It will eventually become very challenging to defederate from a service of that size without cutting off 90% of your content, and what many users might come to expect.
I would argue that it’s easier and less disruptive for Lemmy instances to defederate since the focus is on communities. I wouldn’t care much if my server defederate from another because I’ve joined similar communities on 3 other instances. But with Mastodon, following individuals is a key focus. There’s no replacement or alternative for an individual. People will notice when their friends disappear.
The more users spread out into smaller, more easily censored instances, the more the remaining fragmented bits of the Lemmy ecosystem still talking to each other will turn into echo chambers full of groupthink. This low threshold for defederation is the Fediverse’s greatest weakness. Sure, it’s possible to work around it—but how many separate Lemmy accounts are users expected to create? Even if you have accounts on every instance of note you’d need to manually cross-post messages to each balkanized server and their comment sections wouldn’t be shared—exactly the sort of thing federation was meant to avoid.
Email, another federated system, has this same weakness. It’s why it’s increasingly difficult to run your own (outgoing) email server which other systems will accept messages from without going through a well-known third party like Google. Especially when trying to push content to a large audience (e.g. mailing lists), which happens to be Lemmy’s core function.
Bluesky is using content addressing to deal with this, although currently it is only built around feeds and not forums. Your profile is truly portable and posts can optionally be retrieved from “mirrors” (one of the CDN-like servers called BGS) so you don’t need to rely on your current hosting server (the account hosts called PDS) to federate with everybody.
You raise a point very similar to something I’ve considered a lot. If Mastodon is going to reach critical mass, it will happen on the backs of a few mega-instances.
The average internet user simply doesn’t understand the Fediverse. And why should they? All they know is that they want to sign up for a service and receive said services. They don’t want to figure out which instance to join any more than they want to figure out which email provider to use. The default choice (ex: the account that comes with their ISP or their phone like iCloud or GMail) is usually good enough. Remember the days of vanity email domains and tons of smaller email providers? You just don’t see that very much any more.
Mastodon will be the same. People are learning the name Mastodon, but they don’t know the difference between Mastodon the app and Mastodon.social the instance. They don’t see Twitter as being similar to email where they can pick their own server, so they won’t apply that thinking to Mastodon. They’re going to naturally coalesce around defaults - either servers that specifically say Mastodon in the name that look “official” or the instance that their friends use.
This is one of the reasons that I’m against federating with mega corporations should they choose to implement Activity Pub. It will eventually become very challenging to defederate from a service of that size without cutting off 90% of your content, and what many users might come to expect.
I would argue that it’s easier and less disruptive for Lemmy instances to defederate since the focus is on communities. I wouldn’t care much if my server defederate from another because I’ve joined similar communities on 3 other instances. But with Mastodon, following individuals is a key focus. There’s no replacement or alternative for an individual. People will notice when their friends disappear.