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219

Dispelling the myth of a universal "Lemmy" community, and discussion of what the fediverse really is (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Cipher@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Like many, when the recent defederation went down, I decided to create a couple other logins and see what the wider fediverse has had to say about it.

I've been, honestly, a bit surprised by the response. A huge portion of people seem to be misidentifying communities as belonging to "lemmy" as opposed to the instances that host them. I think a big portion of this seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this software is, and how it works.

For example, lemmy.world users are pissed at being de-federated because it excludes them from Beehaw communities. This outrage seems wholly placed in the concept that Beehaw's communities are "owned" by the wider fediverse. This is blatantly not how lemmy works. Each instance hosts a copy of federated instances' content for their users to peruse. The host (Beehaw in this example) remains being the source of truth for these communities. As the source of truth, Beehaw "owns" the affected communities, and it seems people have not realized that.

This also has wider implications for why one might want to de-federate with a wider array of instances. Lets say I have a server in a location that legally prohibits a certain type of pornography. If my users subscribe to other instances/communities that allow that illegal pornography, I (the server admin) may find myself in legal jeopardy because my instance now holds a copy of that content for my users.

Please keep this in mind as you enjoy your time using Lemmy. The decisions that you make affect the wider instance. As you travel the fediverse, please do so with the understanding that your interactions reflect this instance. More than anything, how can we spread this knowledge to a wider audience? How can we make the fediverse and how it works less confusing to people who aren't going to read technical documentation?

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[–] Packopus@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@Cipher I think of it more of an instructional issue specifically rather than learning issue. People explain "it's like email" but fail to deliver the fact that it should be more like "It's how the internet should work". Where people think Lemmy is THE SITE and can communicate with kbin THE SITE.

It should be mentioned that if anyone has built a website, that Lemmy is the software. You install Google Chrome on your computer, you install lemmy on your computer. You are now able to ACCESS all the other websites like you would in Chrome.

People think "oh it's like email, well I know Gmail is pretty good so I'll make an account there. Whatever decisions Google makes is by extension my decision." The average user doesn't know what email actually is. They don't know that you can make your own email service. They don't know you can even just buy a domain and have your own email address.

The only thing that bugs me about the fediverse as a whole is that these threadiverse concepts shouldn't have communities. If it was implemented as intended, you'd have to make a community by making a new instance. The community should be federated, and then duplicate communities would get individually federated or defederated.

I think the ambiguity of the fediverse is muddied by how each software is trying to implement it. And it's almost hard to incentivize making your own instance.

@trachemys

[–] hazelnot 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem with the idea that each community should be its own instance basically comes down to cost, both financial and time. If I want to make a community about something I'm passionate about I'd have to shell out money I don't have on hosting, buy a domain, learn how to actually host and administrate a Lemmy instance, and then spend like half of my time and energy maintaining it.

Not everyone is a programmer with programmer knowledge making programmer money.

[–] Packopus@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

@hazelnot

Not everyone is a programmer with programmer knowledge making programmer money.

That's true, but then we run back in to the problem of what I saw in early kbin days (before Reddit influx) thinking that there should be many instances all having unlimited communities. But this is basically duplicating communities that are now visible thousands of times. There should at least be a theme/community to each instance and have micro-communities in that.

My example would be current-day forums. There are "instances" for just about everything. Most of the time when I buy a new car/motorcycle I join whatever forum site made for that specific vehicle. So that's what I was thinking when I think it's feasible to make fediverse instances of current sites. Mainly just make federation features the de-facto standard so people can subscribe to their conversations.

I've already seen how Wordpress can federate with a plugin, and every blog post is like any other post. Forums can be similar depending on their backend software the site is running.

@Cipher @trachemys

[–] Bardak@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

People think "oh it's like email, well I know Gmail is pretty good so I'll make an account there. Whatever decisions Google makes is by extension my decision

This is why I think email analogy is very useful to get the basics of how Lemmy/kbin work on a technical level but falls flat on a practical and social level

You have what I would call federation idealists that feel that is should be just like email you should be able to contact anyone. This ignores the fact that email is private communication tool vs a public facing forum.

The argument that instances should be utilities with no "politics" or "culture" just ignores the reality.