Most people access the Fediverse through one of the large instances: lemmy.world, kbin, or beehaw. New or small instances of Lemmy have no content by default, and can most easily get content by linking to larger Lemmy instances. This is done manually one “Community” at a time (I spent 15 minutes doing this yesterday). Meanwhile, on larger instances, content naturally aggregates as a result of the sheer number of users. Because people generally want a user experience similar to Reddit, I think it’s inevitable that most user activity will be concentrated in one or two instances. It is probable that these instances follow in the footsteps of Reddit- the cycle repeats.
I actually think the Fediverse is in the beginning the process of fragmenting into siloed smaller, centralized instances. Beehaw, which is on the list of top instances, just blacklisted everyone from lemmy.world. Each of the three largest instances now are working to be a standalone replacement for Reddit and are in direct competition with each other. It is possible that this fragmentation and instability? of Lemmy instances will kill the viability of Federated Reddit altogether, but hopefully not.
These are my main takeaways from my three days on the Fediverse. I will stick around to see if the Fediverse can sustain itself after the end of the Reddit blackouts.
There seems to be a lot of FUD going around with the defederation news. The problem, as most problems seem to currently be, is the population is exploding and the tooling isn’t there to support the real growth in numbers. Beehaw has been a community for quite a while, and they were just here first so have more established communities, you can’t blame them for that. They have every right to defederate instances, especially when their main concern is being able to moderate content for their users. Each instance serves their users first, other instances lack of user moderation shouldn’t be their problem. They said they’ll open back up once they can manage the moderation work load.
As for the fragmentation, this is really how lemmy was designed to be. There is talks of adding federated community listings and community browsers to lemmy itself to support discovery. Really, these features just weren’t needed a couple weeks ago and now they are. In my opinion, the larger communities should have communities on multiple instances. You can cross-post across instance communities as well. Hopefully in the future the fragmentation can be fixed via the use of tags and other possible organizational tools that help federation but keeps things decentralized.
The established instances have dominance due to the first-mover advantage, which is causing the centralization at present. Overall, the experience is going to be different to a lot of reddit users due to the very nature of decentralizing things. I feel confident solutions will be found for most of these issues, and make the federated experience easier to navigate while still supporting the decentralized nature. But the fact is, this isn’t and never will be "reddit’ as it was, which was a centralized system with a single authority (the ToS and admins).
Absolutely. I don’t think it’s really sunk in generally that the Fediverse is intended to operate fundamentally differently from a centralized system. An instance selectively (de)federating is how it’s supposed to work.
If the platform running as intended kills it, then there are big problems. I don’t think it will, but the user culture does have to change and incorporate knowledge of how the system works. We need to not have threads saying the Fediverse, a platform built on decentralization, needs to centralize as much as possible to survive.
Yep. Threads like this boil down to “Lemmy isn’t the perfect Reddit replacement I want. We need to change things so it will be as close to Reddit as possible.”
Look, I migrated to Reddit from Digg. Reddit wasn’t exactly like Digg. I actually found it nicer. A new user on Reddit a month ago would not have had the same experience I had a decade ago. The default subreddits are different. The types of posts are different. The popular posts are different. The comment sections are very different.
I’ve stayed on Reddit until the kerfuffle, but I doubt I’d ever decide to join if I first found it as a new user today.
The de-federation that beehaw just put in place listed, in part, the desire to keep the comment sections from devolving into current Reddit comment sections. And, as many others have pointed out, it was a reluctant move because of a limit of moderation resources and tools.
I joined the fediverse last week as one of many Reddit refugees. I joined sh.itjust.works because at the time it was a smaller instance and the large ones were overloaded. The de-federation didn’t make me happy, largely for the selfish reason that the more interesting communities I was subscribed to were on beehaw.
The goal of the de-federation did make me happy. I want quality content and engaged and engaging comments. I subscribed here, but also kept my sh.itjust.works account.
I’m not particularly concerned about a split acccount history. I have hopes that Lemmy and the fediverse will make it successfully through the growing pains this unexpected influx of new users will cause. I’m certain this isn’t going to be the only growing pain event, nor do I think it will be the most painful.
I think the way Lemmy federation works is kinda perfect and I feel like things will mostly sort themselves out after a while. Like, I can foresee large and small islands of federated servers, and while that might not seem good at first, I think it can work.
For example, I might have two Fediverse users, one I use in the “mainstream” island, and another I use in not-mainstream servers that has more controversial topics. A kid might have a user in a kids appropriate island where there is no federation with servers containing adult content.
Maybe a Lemmy client can then combine content from my two users, so I can view content from the mainstream and my alt servers together.
Because people generally want a user experience similar to Reddit
The power Reddit has over these users is they believe that to be what they want. But have you ever run into a longtime Redditor who says it’s perfect the way it is? Not just recently, either.
Been a Reddit user for well over a decade… If you asked me a decade ago I would have said it was near perfect… Now? Fuck no, it’s terrible. They’ve jumped off the rooftop long ago… just been waiting for the splat and the alternative. I found the alternative… Just waiting for the splat since that will be fun to watch.
I’d sum it up thus: When’s the last time you enjoyed a new bot?
I think instances need to be more focused. For example monero.town, very focused on Monero. If people are interested in other technology, sub to an instance focused on that, etc. but there is no reason to have all the communities on all the instances. I don’t see how mega instances that try to replace reddit are viable in the long term, especially if they start to defederate.
Removed by mod
Completely agree. Would be great having one instance for hobbies and then communities for each different hobby within it. An instance for sports and sub communities for each sport and memes, and so on. The opportunity to make something nice is in front of us. Maybe the collective mind will figure it out eventually, while creating and discarding lots of crap along the way. Growing pains.
So if I’m interested in many topics I have to create an account on every singles instance?
That’s not how Lemmy works. You just need an account on ONE instance. And then subscribe to all the communities that interest you, some may be local to your instance and some may be hosted on other instances.
Why would I join an instance about music for example to end up subscribing to communities that have nothing to do with music?
Why would I join an instance about music
Maybe the user feels music is an important part of their identity and likes the idea to call a music instance their home. Or any other reason, doesn’t have to have any reason, especially not a reason which is compelling to others.
to end up subscribing to communities that have nothing to do with music?
Maybe the same user still has other interests besides music and likes to follow those.
Or in summary: Why not? It’s possible.
For different people, different criteria will influence their choice of home instance. Some may even choose to have several home instances. Other factors might be uptime, latency, defederation status, size, local communities, rules, …
For most people, it does not matter much what their home instance is, which is just another possible explanation for registering on a music instance and subscribing to remote, non-music communities. Like how you can register to Microsoft services with a Gmail address.
Of the themed instances that exist now, I’d be willing to bet that in addition to their local communities they host that they also subscribe to other communities that aren’t strictly related to whatever theme they are going with.
For example, I’m sure the Star Trek instance also subscribes to the lemmy@lemmy.ml community so the admin can stay abreast of Lemmy news. And probably also follows other technology related communities as well.
I think most people would just want to gravitate to whatever they want to be identified with. There’s nothing stopping you from joining a music themed instance and then adding some non-music subscriptions to your list. It doesn’t force those subs on anyone else on the instance.
And if you don’t want to be identified with any specific topic or community, you can always join a general Lemmy instance like Beehaw or Lemmy.world and subscribe to whatever you like piecemeal.
The problem with that is users need to make a separate account for each instance. Imagine if you had to re-login every time you wanted to view a different subreddit. It’s a major pain.
That problem could be mitigated if you had an app that could seamlessly log in to multiple instances and display the content in one place. Credentials would be stored locally on your phone for security. Do you know if that exists, or if anyone’s working on something similar?
If the instances are federated with each other you don’t need to do that. You can access other instance’s content even while logged into your own.
From what I understand, and someone correct me if I’m wrong, you don’t need multiple accounts (unless one instance has blacklisted another). You can subscribe to a community on a different instance and be able to comment and post without creating an account on the second instance.
For example, on kbin’s search page you can search for programming@programming.dev and subscribe. programming.dev is a completely separate instance running Lemmy with its own communities. Then you can see content from there on your subscribed page.
That’s actually not true if the instances are federated with each other. I post/subscribe to a few lemmy.nz communities despite having a beehaw account!
I agree fully with this. Centralizing all of the major communities with Beeyah is silly. And I wish the moderation rules were at the community level instead of instance level, but I understand that’s a limitation of the ActivityPub protocol (as far as I can tell).
Communities have moderators too.
Sure, but they still have to abide by that instance’s guidelines. And as far as I can tell, it’s easy to subscribe to an external community without ever seeing those guidelines.
Currently, the issue is people signing up to an instance with unvetted and unrestricted signups to troll/harass people on other instances rather than anything to do with communities.
I don’t want an experience similar to Reddit though. I want a small active community with shared values and a variety of subjects.
Idk. I’m conflicted on this. While I agree… For bigger/broader topics, I can definitely see that the quality of discussion and the repetition of topic is already really bad for smaller/niche communities.
When the subreddit had maybe 2k subs worldwide, and now is comprised of 50 subs spread across 3 instances… It’s rough. That community is just dead and that sucks.
I guess I’d rather have one centralized community on one big (yet open source) instance where I know we can leave and move again, than have the community just die entirely
Each of the three largest instances now are working to be a standalone replacement for Reddit and are in direct competition with each other.
I think it’s clear Beehaw isn’t working to be, or wanting to be, a replacement for Reddit at all.
There seems to be quite a few folks here that basically want the Lemmyverse to be Reddit with new management
That’s fine, they can try? Just as anyone else can have different goals and pursue them.
I really like this openness of the fediverse in arguments like these. We don’t have to agree, it’s alright.
This commentary wasn’t particularly targeted at beehaw. I was just saying that I don’t see the appeal of generalized mega-instances going away.
Fair. Discovery is easier on a big instance, but you get a lot more control on a smaller one.
You did post this on the biggest community on Beehaw after all, haha. It’s to be expected that some people will think you’re talking about us.
If big instances are already defederating from each other then I don’t see how Lemmy can grow like many of us want it to. I mean, now any new user who randomly chooses Lemmy.World as their server is going to get a much worse Lemmy experience and they won’t even be aware of it. (Come to think of it, maybe I’m getting a lesser experience right now because maybe my server defederated from another big server that I’m not aware of.) This seems like a flawed system, or at least it seems like a system that isn’t intended to have much user growth.
Maybe it should be a common practice to list larger servers that you’ve chosen to defederate from? Beehaw is being forthcoming about it, so at least people know what they’re missing out on. And I don’t think they’d have a bunch more hidden away from us. Now, if a community does this and tells no-one, that could be a genuine problem.Making an account on another instance is a little annoying, but it’s not that bad if you’re old and accustomed to classical forums.Edit: I didn’t even notice the /instances URL on Lemmy. GG, it’s already openly out there.
All servers running lemmy are open about it… Check the very bottom of your instance page and click “Instances”. In their case it’s
And for you it’s
Thanks for pointing that out, I didn’t notice the instances link down there. I’ve edited my comment.
No problem! Lots of exploring to do… it’s a whole new world for a huge amount of us.
You can view exactly who your instance federates with. If the instance is public, the instances that are blocked/allowed are publicly visible. New users probably won’t know what this means… but certainly could after some time/understanding. No reason you shouldn’t know! So let’s fix that.
Your instance chose to block the following instances:
lemmygrad.ml asbestos.cafe eientei.orgBut that only helps in knowing which communities I can see, I still don’t know how much I’m missing out in the comments on other communities because some of them might be from people my instance has defederated.
I noticed this today when I had a comment chain on lemmy.world that I accessed with my lemm.ee instance. That chain was >10 posts long with several different users from different instances.
When I looked into that community with my feddit.de account, I could only see the first two comments of that chain, not even my own lemm.ee comments were visible despite not being blocked by feddit.de.
It was because the third post of that chain was made by a user on an instance that is blocked by feddit.de and that lead to all following posts also missing.
So now I’m feeling like I’m possibly missing big parts of all those comment sections just because they happen to include a comment from a user somewhere early in the chain that is on an instance which is blocked by my instance.That’s the reason despite me being german I probalby won’t use feddit.de anymore because, at least for the time being, lemm.ee doesn’t have anyone blocked so in this specific example I can at least see everything posted on lemmy.world that isn’t already blocked by lemmy.world itself(in which case I don’t miss out because no one could see these posts).
While with feddit.de, browsing on lemmy.world I won’t see things blocked by lemmy.world aswell as things blocked by feddit.de that other users browing lemmy.world could see.I don’t think this is necessarily a defederation issue. I’m running a private instance and should not really have been defederated as nothing comes from my instance except 2 users (of which I’m the more vocal of the 2 of us). I run into the problem you outline all the same. My version will show 2 comments, the origin server will show 11. Sometimes even completely different comments and none of the instances show to be blocking me on their /instance page.
I’m not on either feddit.de, lemm.ee, or lemmy.world’s lists. I still run into this.
What I think is going on is simply hiccups in federation. Instances where one of the instances misses sending an ActivityPub message to all parties and that’s it.
But let’s even say that I am currently defederated. From my understanding this is a temporary measure until stuff settles down a bit.
I don’t think so. I am on a smaller instance and I never use the Local tab. Just subscribe to the communities you want to see
this is the way its supposed to work, reddit is a bunch of fragmented communities too, the only thing you share is a domain.
And a single place to find communities.
What, don’t you use browse.feddit.de?
Beehive blacklisted Lemmy.world? Mhm and that’s why we need decentralised instances. I don’t care about how beehive views Lemmy world as I can access still both as I am from an entirely different instance :)
I don’t care about how beehive views Lemmy world as I can access still both as I am from an entirely different instance :)
It impacts you still if you subscribe to beehaw.org communities. Their defederation means lots of other users cannot participate in these communities anymore. So there is less activity for you, even if you belong to neither the defederating nor the defederated instance.
Okay yeah, that’s a facet I haven’t looked at.
Is it difficult to find a small instance that has access to the larger instances? Are you able to post to both Beehaw and lemmy.world from the server you mention?
I’m thinking about self-hosting an instance, but I’m not clear if these bigger instances would block me because I’m some little unknown server. Would they have to manually give me access to interact (federate?) with them if I self-host?
They don’t automatically block you. Beehaw seems on the lookout of troublesome users more than other instances. When they notice a lot of those users are coming from the same instance, they just defederate it until better tools become available to moderate.
I’m still federated with both instances. I’m also the only user on my instance.
There’s still one issue that bothers me about Beehaw blacklisting lemmy.world though.
For example, if someone from lemmy.world posts to c/gaming@beehaw.org, then only other people on lemmy.world will see that post because Beehaw will not sync it for any other instances to see.
But that’s caused by the centralization of users and communities the few big instances that allow anyone to create communities. If communities were more spread out between smaller, more specialized instances, an issue with any one instance wouldn’t affect communities on other instances.
Totally disagree, the more tech savvy can spin up their own single user instances if they want, be fully in control of their own content and participate just like anyone on any large instance bar being defederated. All for basically free
Beehaw only defederated from Lemmy.world because of the currently limited moderation tools in the software. This is not going to be a problem forever.
I hope people can find communities both on large instances (Beehaw, Lemmy.world) as well on as very small niche instances. Discoverability is a bit a problem but I think over time we will find communities we like, and participate in them. What instance they are hosted on is not all that important.
I’m on kbin and I have to say I like what they are doing better than Lemmy as far as ease of use and UI. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
I agree. I have both lemmy and kbin accounts, and so far I think the new user experience on kbin is just a little bit easier. But I’ll keep my eye on lemmy in the meantime. You’re right, it will be very interesting to see how this thing develops.
The best chance of succeeding is federation across both. The user base on both is already small, there’s no need for this us-vs-them mentality.
It would be more beneficial if ppl registered in small instances, right? Since it has better traffic than instances that are overloaded and also enjoy the same content
I think that the Lemmy equivalents to big subreddits will be centralized around a few larger instances and they’ll come to dominate the all timeline, but more niche things seem like they can crop up anywhere. My favorite subreddits were always the smaller ones anyway, so federation will be important for me.
Also, it matters that there are a few big instances instead of just one. If one goes full spez the others can take up the slack until a smaller general purpose instance can take its place. For example, if beehaw does go nuts and just keep defederating until it’s completely siloed instead of this being a temporary measure until moderation is more under control, then I can just make another account somewhere else and these communities will become less important. I don’t think that’s likely, but it’s a problem that solves itself in a federated system.
Gross blech gross yuck. No, please god no. I’m subscribed to communities from loads of instances. The whole point of federated applications is that no one really has control over the whole.
People who have been engaged in an authoritarian system for so long that they “can’t see the forest for the trees” are lost when they experience anything else. They are driven to recreate the centralized authority, because it is life as they know it.
I’ll toggle from local to all if things are a bit slow, but I generally regret it. The chatter “over there” was that Beehaw is the place to go, and it just happens to run on Lemmy software.
