I’m sort of aware of Mastodon and occasionally click a link to it. Otherwise just Lemmy and even that doesn’t gain much from federation afaict. I can’t exactly say the fediverse vision is falling since I don’t really understand what it was supposed to be in the first place. But I don’t see much to get excited about.
The fact that you’re not even noticing the federation shows how effective it is ;)
You’re probably browsing communities that aren’t on Lemmy.world often without realising, I’m here replying to you from wetdry.world (a mastodon instance), and the OP also doesn’t come from Lemmy.world
The cool thing about this is that no single server, company, or entity in general gets to decide over the wider fediverse, because everything is spread out and shared between thousands of independent servers. This is completely opposite to what traditional social media services have built.
I’m aware of other Lemmy servers (I’m also on .ml) but as we saw with hexbear and other defederations, instead of having just one gatekeeper to satisfy, you now have to satisfy N of them simultaneously. I hate Spez and Reddit these days but it still feels less constrained there than it does here. I miss Usenet.
Well, let me go by example: The strength of E-Mail lies in the fact that its a robust standard that, instead of siloing users into their platforms, brings people together into one single userbase.
Similarly with federation in social media, this makes userbases not compete but collaborate. If I created an ActivityPub-Powered project right now, I’d have to convince nobody to use it and still be part of a community.
One difference however is that social media is public. As the person that runs the server, you do have to put in some measures to make sure that your users are actually feeling safe. The most extreme of these measures is defederation, where you just completely cut off another server, but there’s also other ways to limit other servers, like for example, hiding their accounts by default in say the “federated” feed in Mastodon and co.
I didn’t feel unsafe on Reddit. I know there were jerks there but I mostly stayed in my niche technical communities and the jerks stayed in theirs. If on Lemmy you need the admins to keep them out of your feed, that is a problem with the software. You should be able to manage your feed better.
It was generally enough to moderate at the level of subreddits or Lemmy communities, rather than blocking whole servers.
I’m happy to have my server block misinformation and hate. I can do it myself just as easily, but it’s great to be able to say my community doesn’t put up with or tolerate it. Their hateful message doesn’t deserve any weight. It’s disingenuous or based on false premises that are unshakeable via social media aggregator or whatever this is. There are just some communities that are toxic hate factories. Maybe some people need that in their lives? I personally don’t think it’s healthy, but they’ll just take that as having my head in the sand or whatever.
Meanwhile, new communities are born, and I’m happy to join with them and see new ideas and content.
An old fashioned single hosted forum is a lot simpler.
Yes but also good luck trying to get everyone to sign up for the same forum website, especially since most forums are for some specific interest. The point is that it’d be really nifty if there was a way to connect all these forums together so you wouldn’t have to sign up for 1000 different websites to talk to everyone - and that’s what the Fediverse does :)
This also makes it much better for users, as they can choose an instance (forum) that fits what they want without being in a closed garden. They can choose based on their interests, their desired rules, their desired mods/admins. The Fediverse is about choice! :)
I’m sort of aware of Mastodon and occasionally click a link to it. Otherwise just Lemmy and even that doesn’t gain much from federation afaict. I can’t exactly say the fediverse vision is falling since I don’t really understand what it was supposed to be in the first place. But I don’t see much to get excited about.
@solrize
The fact that you’re not even noticing the federation shows how effective it is ;)
You’re probably browsing communities that aren’t on Lemmy.world often without realising, I’m here replying to you from wetdry.world (a mastodon instance), and the OP also doesn’t come from Lemmy.world
The cool thing about this is that no single server, company, or entity in general gets to decide over the wider fediverse, because everything is spread out and shared between thousands of independent servers. This is completely opposite to what traditional social media services have built.
I’m aware of other Lemmy servers (I’m also on .ml) but as we saw with hexbear and other defederations, instead of having just one gatekeeper to satisfy, you now have to satisfy N of them simultaneously. I hate Spez and Reddit these days but it still feels less constrained there than it does here. I miss Usenet.
@solrize
There’s no gatekeeper to satisfy because even when one server defederates from you, you are still able to curate and protect your own community.
Personally, who cares if there’s some Nazis and trolls less in my feed? 🥴
What is the point of federation then? An old fashioned single hosted forum is a lot simpler. I’d rather that any filtering be done on the client side.
@solrize
Well, let me go by example: The strength of E-Mail lies in the fact that its a robust standard that, instead of siloing users into their platforms, brings people together into one single userbase.
Similarly with federation in social media, this makes userbases not compete but collaborate. If I created an ActivityPub-Powered project right now, I’d have to convince nobody to use it and still be part of a community.
One difference however is that social media is public. As the person that runs the server, you do have to put in some measures to make sure that your users are actually feeling safe. The most extreme of these measures is defederation, where you just completely cut off another server, but there’s also other ways to limit other servers, like for example, hiding their accounts by default in say the “federated” feed in Mastodon and co.
I didn’t feel unsafe on Reddit. I know there were jerks there but I mostly stayed in my niche technical communities and the jerks stayed in theirs. If on Lemmy you need the admins to keep them out of your feed, that is a problem with the software. You should be able to manage your feed better.
It was generally enough to moderate at the level of subreddits or Lemmy communities, rather than blocking whole servers.
I’m happy to have my server block misinformation and hate. I can do it myself just as easily, but it’s great to be able to say my community doesn’t put up with or tolerate it. Their hateful message doesn’t deserve any weight. It’s disingenuous or based on false premises that are unshakeable via social media aggregator or whatever this is. There are just some communities that are toxic hate factories. Maybe some people need that in their lives? I personally don’t think it’s healthy, but they’ll just take that as having my head in the sand or whatever.
Meanwhile, new communities are born, and I’m happy to join with them and see new ideas and content.
Yes but also good luck trying to get everyone to sign up for the same forum website, especially since most forums are for some specific interest. The point is that it’d be really nifty if there was a way to connect all these forums together so you wouldn’t have to sign up for 1000 different websites to talk to everyone - and that’s what the Fediverse does :)
This also makes it much better for users, as they can choose an instance (forum) that fits what they want without being in a closed garden. They can choose based on their interests, their desired rules, their desired mods/admins. The Fediverse is about choice! :)