Ok please humor me then here. Can you walk me through a situation where an instance would untether itself. One day lemmy becomes super popular. People notice it as a platform to get information on. Millions of views an hour. Peter Thiel is paying chinese click farms to post manosphere content in popular lemmy communities. Musk is linking “no kings 5.0” lemmy posts to his followers on X who are brigading the comments. The moderators of the most popular lemmy.world communities are Marvel executives and Billionare Pedophiles.
So now we abandon it and leave. What does that mean as far as protecting that instance from that same thing happening?
We’ve cut the hyrda’s head clean off. Now what? Do users all move to the new instance? Is all the bad from the first instance just going to contain itself to that instance? What protection is in place?
Ok please humor me then here. Can you walk me through a situation where an instance would untether itself. One day lemmy becomes super popular. People notice it as a platform to get information on. Millions of views an hour. Peter Thiel is paying chinese click farms to post manosphere content in popular lemmy communities. Musk is linking “no kings 5.0” lemmy posts to his followers on X who are brigading the comments. The moderators of the most popular lemmy.world communities are Marvel executives and Billionare Pedophiles.
I think this is so ridiculous as to essentially constitute fantasy. Lemmy.world, the largest Lemmy instance has about 40% of the active userbase (and declining slowly as a share of overall users) out of a pool of about 40k users. I don’t think that’s sufficient if Lemmy.world tried to cut itself off from every other network, they’d shed a lot of users who have people and communities they interact with outside of the main instance.
If Lemmy became popular, it across the instances would become popular. Not just one instance.
If for some reason a single instance did become hyperpopular and obnoxious to interact on, the lemmy software would still be accessible to rebuild another ecosphere elsewhere.
So now we abandon it and leave. What does that mean as far as protecting that instance from that same thing happening?
I’m not sure you know what an “instance” is. Can you tell me what you think an instance is?
they’d shed a lot of users who have people and communities they interact with outside of the main instance.
I don’t think they would…
There’s a weird idea that people need one fediverse account that federated with everyone they want…
If someone like .world, but likes an instance that doesn’t federate…
The absolute worst thing is they have multiple interfaces to flip thru. And especially since so many people use an app that lets them flip in an instance.
Maybe I’m just old, but I remember having like 20 different forum memberships and having to visit completely different websites.
It wasn’t a huge deal.
Defederation isn’t a deathblow, and having a couple distinct circles makes sense.
There has been instances already where instances have disappeared, been defereated, and or just failed to keep up with the new changes in the protocols we all call home.
People have migrated pretty quick to other instances, other communities, etc…etc…
For example I was on lemmy.world for a good year or so before piefed. And they are both excellent platforms! Jumping instances is actually really easy and you dont lose much.
Jumping instances, making your own, etc…etc… are things you cant really do outside the fediverse. You cant just spin up a twitter clone an expect it to interop with twitter outside giving massive $$ to API costs (and thats if THEY allow it). Here I have spun up my own lemmy/piefed/mastodon/gotosocial/peertube instances and communicated with people on the respective platforms.
In a nutshell we have more control to do what we want. If I dont like what piefed and rimu/others are doing, I can fork and make a mesa-piefed with flapjacks and other things. And it will work with lemmy.world day 1.
reddit was radically different in 2007 than it is in 2017, vs 2027. so is the entire internet at large. the majority of internet traffic is now mobile devices and it will probably even be a starker majority by 2037.
paying chinese click farms to post manosphere content
I block people, I block instances, I block communities. Problem solved. It looks like you’re stirring shit like an annoying russian agent that would love to stir shit.
You know what I’ll do after reading all the comments in this thread? I’ll block you because you’re annoying, and then the problem will be solved.
I think you should take a more constructivist approach - what we have now, rather than what we might have in the future. Currently we have a network of like 20 major servers, mostly federated with each other. If one of those servers becomes insanely popular and overrun with bots and garbage, the rest will simply defederate from it. From the perspective of users on those other servers, they’ve only lost 5% of the network they liked. From the perspective of users who were on the popular server before it went to shit, they now have to move servers but still have 95% of the old network as they remember it.
Do users all move to the new instance?
What incentive is there for them to move? By the very nature of hype explosions, they are exponential, and as such most users will have joined when it was already quite popular. They won’t remember the “good old days” of their server being federated, so for them it’s fine to be isolated on a garbage server, at least initially. I suspect if something like this were to happen, most other servers will also limit signups for some time, to keep the spirit of the network alive and growing organically.
Ok please humor me then here. Can you walk me through a situation where an instance would untether itself. One day lemmy becomes super popular. People notice it as a platform to get information on. Millions of views an hour. Peter Thiel is paying chinese click farms to post manosphere content in popular lemmy communities. Musk is linking “no kings 5.0” lemmy posts to his followers on X who are brigading the comments. The moderators of the most popular lemmy.world communities are Marvel executives and Billionare Pedophiles.
So now we abandon it and leave. What does that mean as far as protecting that instance from that same thing happening?
We’ve cut the hyrda’s head clean off. Now what? Do users all move to the new instance? Is all the bad from the first instance just going to contain itself to that instance? What protection is in place?
I think this is so ridiculous as to essentially constitute fantasy. Lemmy.world, the largest Lemmy instance has about 40% of the active userbase (and declining slowly as a share of overall users) out of a pool of about 40k users. I don’t think that’s sufficient if Lemmy.world tried to cut itself off from every other network, they’d shed a lot of users who have people and communities they interact with outside of the main instance.
If Lemmy became popular, it across the instances would become popular. Not just one instance.
If for some reason a single instance did become hyperpopular and obnoxious to interact on, the lemmy software would still be accessible to rebuild another ecosphere elsewhere.
I’m not sure you know what an “instance” is. Can you tell me what you think an instance is?
I don’t think they would…
There’s a weird idea that people need one fediverse account that federated with everyone they want…
If someone like .world, but likes an instance that doesn’t federate…
The absolute worst thing is they have multiple interfaces to flip thru. And especially since so many people use an app that lets them flip in an instance.
Maybe I’m just old, but I remember having like 20 different forum memberships and having to visit completely different websites.
It wasn’t a huge deal.
Defederation isn’t a deathblow, and having a couple distinct circles makes sense.
There has been instances already where instances have disappeared, been defereated, and or just failed to keep up with the new changes in the protocols we all call home.
People have migrated pretty quick to other instances, other communities, etc…etc…
For example I was on lemmy.world for a good year or so before piefed. And they are both excellent platforms! Jumping instances is actually really easy and you dont lose much.
Jumping instances, making your own, etc…etc… are things you cant really do outside the fediverse. You cant just spin up a twitter clone an expect it to interop with twitter outside giving massive $$ to API costs (and thats if THEY allow it). Here I have spun up my own lemmy/piefed/mastodon/gotosocial/peertube instances and communicated with people on the respective platforms.
In a nutshell we have more control to do what we want. If I dont like what piefed and rimu/others are doing, I can fork and make a mesa-piefed with flapjacks and other things. And it will work with lemmy.world day 1.
We have the power. Thats what makes us different.
for now.
in 5 to 10 years? who knows.
reddit was radically different in 2007 than it is in 2017, vs 2027. so is the entire internet at large. the majority of internet traffic is now mobile devices and it will probably even be a starker majority by 2037.
I block people, I block instances, I block communities. Problem solved. It looks like you’re stirring shit like an annoying russian agent that would love to stir shit.
You know what I’ll do after reading all the comments in this thread? I’ll block you because you’re annoying, and then the problem will be solved.
I think you should take a more constructivist approach - what we have now, rather than what we might have in the future. Currently we have a network of like 20 major servers, mostly federated with each other. If one of those servers becomes insanely popular and overrun with bots and garbage, the rest will simply defederate from it. From the perspective of users on those other servers, they’ve only lost 5% of the network they liked. From the perspective of users who were on the popular server before it went to shit, they now have to move servers but still have 95% of the old network as they remember it.
What incentive is there for them to move? By the very nature of hype explosions, they are exponential, and as such most users will have joined when it was already quite popular. They won’t remember the “good old days” of their server being federated, so for them it’s fine to be isolated on a garbage server, at least initially. I suspect if something like this were to happen, most other servers will also limit signups for some time, to keep the spirit of the network alive and growing organically.