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How did Lemmy World become the default instance? (mander.xyz)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Masimatutu@mander.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it's just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there.

I really can't see any specific virtue that it has; uptime is not the best (or so I've heard), the moderation is quite lacking (which is demonstrated by the fact that Beehaw defederated them), they make some unpopular moderation choices (like blocking !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com), and overall the atmosphere is a lot less... nice than those of smaller instances.

I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform. Especially on Lemmy, where communities mean that building community within an instance makes so much more sense than elsewhere, and upvotes are federated near perfectly regardless the size of your instance, decentralisation makes a lot of sense. It really just doesn't make sense to me that Lemmy World is where people are going.

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[–] qaz@lemmy.world 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I first joined lemmy.ml in 2020 but left because of its association with lemmygrad. Lemmy.world had good uptime, decent moderation (I never saw spam until last week), was largely uncontroversial (before blocking piracy at dbzer0), and was open when others closed their signups (that's why Beehaw defederated).

However, things have mostly settled now, and we have multiple instances with capable staff, so you might wonder why the majority is still on Lemmy.world. I think the answer is simple, it's still one of the standard recommendations, there is no large disadvantage to using lemmy.world over anything else and most importantly people can't migrate their account to another instance after joining. I personally plan on continuing to use lemmy.world for the time being.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

people can’t migrate their account to another instance after joining

Just for reference, the recommended workaround to export the subs and block lists is https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm aware of the workaround, but this is far from perfect. It does not redirect replies or comments as far as I'm aware.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I had a look at how Mastodon does it, it's not that much fancier to be honest, just a "The account has moved", and following the new account needs to be done manually by followers.

Anyone viewing your profile can see this notice and will know to follow you at your new account. Following redirected accounts is not possible.

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration

Edit: even the moving feature does not move the posts

Your posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.

I'm not aware of any federated service where complete migration is possible, do you have any in mind?

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Your posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.

I was not aware Mastodon didn't actually move the posts, that is quite disappointing.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 11 months ago

To be fair, it has a lot of implications. Would your posts be reposted included the likes, reposts, replies, etc? The dependencies among this things can quickly get out of hand, especially in a federated context

[–] TeaHands@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Honestly it's fine. I've moved a few times and the first time it was a bit sad, but once you realise it's like five minutes later and you're continuing the conversation you were having on your old account with all the same people on your new account the actual historical record suddenly seems a lot less important than the inherent coolness of what just happened :D

[–] nix@merv.news 2 points 11 months ago

Your followers actually move automatically to the new account

[–] inverted_deflector@startrek.website 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah before the reddit migration the top instances were lemmygrad and a far more stalinist friendly lemmy.ml . Beehaw was also there but beehaw didnt have open registration and the process also became bugged out around the time the expansion happened so people would write their application to join and get no notifications or anything that they were in. Also beehaw manually reviewed the accounts at the time so it was a slow process.

Other large instances also didnt want to become the largest one while .world wanted to grow at all costs. With open registration and didnt even require emails at first(which honestly reddit didnt either for a while, but reddit had better mod tools for its time)