As a new reddit exile, I may be misunderstanding this.
In theory something like a !gaming community could crop up on multiple large instances, especially during the mass exodus while instances are getting hammered with spikes in volume.
If that’s the case, we’ll have fragmented communities across instances. Is there any way besides subscribing to each of them to combine them into a sort of multi-reddit type aggregation? Or is this considered a temporary (albeit important to adoption) problem during the crazy stages?
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This is that part where people trying to bail on Reddit need to remember that this is NOT Reddit. Lemmy is similar to Reddit but is not designed to replace Reddit as a SINGULAR centralized entity ^hence, yknow, all the decentralized talk.^
If you only want one server, with one set of communities, there are alternatives in the works. If you want to use Lemmy, you need to shift your expectations. The entire point here is that while one c/aww may “win,” you can still have your own c/aww on your instance as a completely separate entity that can be ran and moderated differently by different people, and person C can have their own c/aww again independent of the others.
You can follow one, you can follow all, but they remain separate communities on separate instances.
🥈 take my free award. It’s yours
“wholesome”
I understand the idea of keeping them separate and not forcing them to a single instance since that defeats the purpose of decentralization. But from a UI standpoint it would be nice if you could a user could create multi-communities or groups where the content from all the similar subs you put in them show up in a feed. So if say I want to see c/aww I can have a group I created with content from aww@lemmy.ml and aww@lemmy.world and awwwwww@sh.itjustworks etc.
If an instance dissappear or goes rogue and gets defederated that content just dissappear. I don’t think that breaks the decentralization idea but solves the user problem.
Agreed. Federation is really, really nice for people who can grasp the concept quickly and bend the systems to their will, but its feeling like we may need some sort of intermediary step that allows power users to also help with outside discovery a bit.
Everyone seems to be getting the grasp of local communities easily enough, but being able to participate/pull down content from other sites and discovering them seems to be a big pain point. Lemmy has a better discoverability than most, but whichever sites can figure out how to do good UX for discoverability is gonna get a big leg up.
I’m not opposed to some sort of client side conglomeration, but almost every person I’m seeing isn’t looking for a tool to use on their own to customize their feed - they want every iteration of a community name automatically congealed into a single community for them to sub to a la Reddit…
Which can’t be done without a central authority. Some people argue makinf a new community which scrapes every iteration of a community name automatically, but that’s just content theft at that point.
I like to think of it as a bunch of Discord servers (in a way). Each server is run by the owner / their moderation and can have different channels and rules in said server.
The idea of a “super community” doesnt seem like a bad one, but I’d rather have it be an aggregation of said communities then making it all one thing.
… Like maybe super list of c/aww communities that you can subscribe to at once.
I just want to say thanks for this discord analogy. It is way more accurate and effective than that “email” analogy I’ve been seeing
The “discord” analogy cannot explain well the accounts on different servers part. I’ll agree that the “email” one can’t really explain communities on lemmy etc.
I’m certainly not opposed to a way to make personal aggregate…things, but the problem is these people want it to be done by the service/devs/whatever. They aren’t asking for an ability to pick and choose communities to build a personal “super community” for themselves client side, they want all the c/aww’s to be automatically pulled together by a central authority - the thing they’re fleeing and came here for the lack of.
I’ve heard people are working on 1 for 1 Reddit clones, and I’d really like to see those people just go support those projects instead of getting mad that the thing advertising a lack of central authority has no central authority and demanding devs “LiStEn To ThEiR uSeRs” and institute one.
but the problem is these people want it to be done by the service/devs/whatever.
I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt. Coming from a centralized service means people are used to things working in a certain way, and they may just not have considered all the advantages of not being forced into a single, centralized service.
I can get that, and have been overall understanding. I’ve been trying to do my part to explain this isn’t that - it’s the uptick in hostility over it that has me irate. “I don’t get it,” “not for me,” all fine. “Devs need to make it work like Reddit or else” can fuck off.
Honestly i thought the point of decentralization was purely from a resoures perspective, the idea of it being a bunch of seperate semi isolated communities seems pointless. The strength of link aggregation is in having a breadth of content while allowing content people want to see to rise to the top for ease of access. I’ve mainly been trying to just see top for the day for all and it seems a bit inconsistent in what it displayed.
It’s not pointless, it’s just…not Reddit. Decentralization offers a different approach than they do. All the Reddit exiles come seeking a central authority but lemmy exists explicitly to remove that from the equation, that’s the entire point of the project. There are people working on single server Reddit clone-ish alternatives that may be more your speed, and that’s perfectly fine. Also, for the record, if you want ALL of the c/aww (or whatever) you can just follow every c/aww you come across from 6 different instances, you don’t have to pick one and forsake all others.
In regards to your other point, It’s also important to remember that the developers of Lemmy consider it to be in alpha IIRC, and the system is currently facing loads they wouldn’t have dreamed of a few weeks ago. It’s a learning curve for literally everyone involved but the smart techy people behind it all are working hard to flesh out a stable system for everybody to enjoy as they see fit with no central authority.
I’m not talking about a central authority, im talking about an accumulation of content and voting
you can just follow every c/aww you come across from 6 different instances, you don’t have to pick one and forsake all others.
That’s one of the cons of decentralization. You take the good and the bad.
One of the pros, on that exact same hand, is if you don’t like a particular c/aww on a particular instance, you can create your own c/aww on a separate instance and give it the rules you’d like to see in a community where people post cute pictures.
I think the mistake a lot of other newbies are making is believing that this is going to be exactly like Reddit and nothing needs changing ever if we merely build it. No, it’s like Reddit, but there are key differences. And you either live with those differences and stick it out until you figure out how it works, you go find another alternative, or you go back to Reddit.
No choice is wrong. Do what works for you.
Coming back to this to say one of the major pros of federation/decentralization is the redundancy will mean you can still get content on Lemmy, even if a particular server goes down. If Reddit goes down, you have to go outside and touch grass. If a Lemmy server goes down, the grass can remain untouched. You’ll get content from other instances.
I think one point they’re trying to make is that it would be nice to have “supercommunities”, for example a kind of community that is the aggregated sum of all the individual communities it subscribes to, so for example super/aww that contains c/aww@1, c/aww@2, etc.
I can’t reply to the other comment,(my first block maybe?) but I wouldn’t hold out hope that Reddit exiles will force the devs to say fuck it and make Lemmy a Reddit clone.
Those are in the works if you want to support those, that’s not what Lemmy is for. Don’t go to a decentralized platform and demand a central authority. 🤷
EDIT: Downvote harder Reddit stans lmao
It’s not a reddit clone just because you can aggregate content, that seems like a rather narrow view. The instances could still host their own communities and the supercommunities could exist alongside one another and choose which communities would be part of them, it would just be a functionality that perhaps some users would find helpful. Wouldn’t even have to be on Lemmy but for example on kbin or another alternative.
Why is that necessarily a bad thing? Wouldn’t it increase the usefulness of federation since it distributes the data but allows for the communities to remain connected to each other? Couldn’t you just not partake of that feature if you’re opposed to it?
Did you not read my comment at all? I’m saying it is NOT a Reddit clone, and shouldn’t give into pressure to become one. The entire point of federation is that instances and communities exist independently of each other, but half of the comments and posts I’ve seen are just bitching there’s no central authority running the show on the system that explicitly touts it’s lack of central authority. It’s going to KFC and throwing a bitch fit they won’t serve you lasagna.
Why is that necessarily a bad thing? Wouldn’t it increase the usefulness of federation?
It’s a bad thing (and also not really possible) because it would require a central authority to organize that through. If you want to follow three communities…Just follow three communities. It’s not that hard.
You left Reddit because of the actions of a central authority, went to an alternative that advertises the lack thereof, then cried that there’s no central authority. It’s fine if you want that, but GO TO ONE OF THOSE OPTIONS instead of demanding devs toss their vision out the window for your comfort.
A possible better solution might be to allow the user to create their own group (or super community if you prefer that name) where they can group multiple communities together in a way they see fit (not just necessarily clones of the same community. Examples could be a sports group that allows you to group together communities for all the teams you follow).
This would be beneficial I feel for most users, doesn’t affect decentralization, doesn’t require a central authority and would be only relevant to each individual user and not applied to anyone else
Nah, it’s more than that. It’s a way of decentralizing power and becoming resistant to control.
It doesn’t start or end with Lemmy - you could build Remmy, join it to the network, and somehow group up these communities and present them to the users as a single group. You could build Kenny because you’re suspicious of the Lemmy devs, and help users migrate away from them (taking their content with them). You could make the server ad supported, make one for your students to speak amongst themselves semi privately, you could make one dedicated to LLMs
Hell, Reddit could decide to join the network and try to take it over, and each server owner could decide if they want to let them try or limit communication with them.
At the end of the day, you can only get so much control. Because while there are benefits to being on a specific server, ultimately anyone can spin up a new one and their users get access to a social network that includes all its members, and if instead of one animemes most users sub to 4 smaller ones, you again have less power in any one place
There’s also the moderation aspect - no matter how good your tools, mods can only manage so much. Push past a certain point, and even with large teams you’re going to get inconsistent moderation and a lot of resentment from it. But with smaller groups, mods can be closer to their members, and groups who don’t want any moderation can have it their way - they just might be blocked from a server if the admin thinks they’re going to ruin things
I mean, there’s also already instances being blacklisted from the bigger Lemmy servers - they’re not cut off from the network, but the instances don’t talk directly to each other anymore.
And while we’re very likely to see some consolidation, I think a lot of us would resist if the groups grew to rival front page subreddits.
I’d like to see science and technology go in that direction because I’ll deal with flat earthers if it means I can see all the best takes from subject matter experts (and it’s easy to tell the difference), but current events? Already I was on r/animetitties instead of the main news subs, because they have a very strong tendency towards polarization
tl;dr I’ll make my own c/aww with blackjack and hookers
You can even create an instance with a domain blackjackandhookers.xxx/c/aww !
/c/instancesifellfor
I would love for instances focused on their own topics. mandra.xyz is all about science and exploration. The only reason we dont have a gaming focused instance is that we simply havent done it
This will probably take care of itself with time. Not having any “official” ones dictated by some central authority is kind of the whole idea of the fediverse.
Agreed - this was my initial concern as well but now that I’ve gotten used to the structure here it doesn’t seem like an issue. The whole Digg > Reddit > “New Monolith” wasn’t ever going to solve the problem of enshittification, it would just buy us some time, and probably not much at that. This feels a necessary paradigm shift, and the multiple overlapping communities really turns into a failsafe more than an inconvenience.
They all still populate the same on a feed if you’re subbed anyway.
They don’t though, my feed of the same community looks different on each instance due to the vote counts being different
That’s a fair point - I guess all I’m saying is that they all can show up within your feed if subbed to the same communities.
Admittedly, I didn’t know there was a difference in vote counts when viewing across instances. I had assumed the votes would be synced to those accrued on the specific post’s instance but it sounds like that may not be how it is done.
I’d say it’s a problem that will solve itself. Beehaw’s gaming communities seem to be doing better than Lemmy’s, and I’d highly encourage giving them a look. Part of the greatness of the federation system is that we don’t have to host EVERYTHING locally (and it’s probably not desirable to).
After all, if Lemmy does some stuff really well, and Beehaw does some stuff really well, both of us can thrive together without both sides having to eat hosting costs for double hosting all the content.
My proposed solution to this issue is a way to group subscribed channels. Like if I sub to x number of Games communities I wish I could drop them all in a folder labeled Games so I could browse all of those posts in one spot.
UI would be like Communities -> Subscribed (All) -> “Individual” folder hierarchy containing w/e you want.
I just sub to both if I run into a sublemmy collision where both are sizable. It is a little weird and I’d like to see some clean way to merge them in the future (i.e. with content migration and redirects), but for now it is what it is.
in b4 the meta “redundant posts about redundant communities across the fediverse” post 🙃
This is a nothing burger. Who cares if there’s a hundred different cat instances. That’s already what it was.
There can only be one orange cat instance? Give it a fucking break
I largely agree with you, there’s already redundant subreddits and such.
But I think when we’re trying to capture a ton of Reddit users, anything that represents a hurdle to new user adoption is a concern. That goes double for things that are intrinsic to the Fediverse that aren’t intuitive to new users like myself.
Yeah I this is my biggest problem, and there’s always like 30 people saying “it’s not a problem, it’s a feature!”
Either they are in denial or I’m just completely incompatible with federation.
Why would I want 100 fragmented communities for the exact same thing? If I wanted to consume content from all of them sure, I could follow all 100 but that is so tedious. Plus what if I wanted to interact with them? I’d have to ask the same question 100 times!
I think it’s just a problem that will work itself out over time with more users. There are redundant subreddits as well, but as the overall userbase grew only one or two subs maintained the subscriber growth to continue showing up on r/all. And in cases where redundant subs both grew together, they evolved to be very different atmospheres. For example, r/games vs r/gaming; one is focused on news and discussion while the other is mostly memes. Both great subs, but started out nearly identical until they found their identity.
The reason you want a 100 communities over one is what is happening over on Reddit. Make one big thing, and greed will take over. Make many smaller ones? Is significantly less likely to happen.
The communities are also significantly less likely to grow. It’s a double edged sword.
I think both sides have a point here, there are clear positives to federation and clear negatives. I hope a lot of the negatives can be overcome by streamlining the user interface and better apps.
I don’t think this is a problem. It’s the same on reddit where you can have multiple gaming subreddits or multiple news subreddits. Eventually the communities will consolidate.
But it is a problem even with Reddit.
At least for me many topics that I follow have several related subs and I often end up going through all of them individually to get a good overview and see different takes on news etc. With Reddit having the Other discussions tab helps a lot, but I guess that would be technically more difficult to implement in Lemmy.
IMHO both would benefit from having a way to combine different feeds under user defined categories. How things actually work under the hood wouldn’t need to be changed, it would just be an UI feature that effects how the communities are presented to the user.
Doesn’t Reddit have multireddits? Lemmy can implement the same feature.
OP mentioned this.
I’m on Fediverse for few years and reading all the replies here I find it … sad? Funny? I really don’t know what to think of this. It looks like for many people the biggest disadvantage of federation is federation itself … It feels like people want the centralization and don’t want to have options (or rather think about the options)
Or is it an age thing? I’m kind of used to lurk the internet and find what I want. But I can imagine that people raised on f.e. Netflix, Amazon where it’s like “BAM! Here you have everything” aren’t used to this
I keep having this image of the owner of a small cottage who has gradually been making his cottage lovely, repairing bits, adding cozy furniture, hanging out with his friends playing his ukulele on the porch.
The huge apartment building down the road burns down, and he invites the huge crowd of refugees into his cottage for shelter. They immediately start complaining that his cottage is too small, it doesn’t have an elevator, how come there’s no exercise room, ewww there’s cat hair on this rocking chair, that color of paint sucks, how could you be so stupid as to have a slow cooker in your kitchen, we need to add on so tell your friends to get off the porch so we can turn it into a sexy new studio……
And then they build their own cottages, and mcmansions, and apartment blocks, along with all the noise and detritus… and now your cozy little cottage is just a house in bustling village
Reddit had similar issues. There were quite often multiple subreddits that were essentially the same thing. Sometimes it was just that multiple people made similar subreddits, sometimes there was one original subreddit that had some sort of schism.
It’s just that Reddit had a large enough userbase that two near-identical subreddits could do well enough that one didn’t supplant the other.
Yeah, but not really. You couldn’t create r/Doug twice. You could create r/Dougs or r/Dougie, but not two r/Doug. Here, you can create a “Doug” for every server that exists.
I have hope for solutions though. There’s only about 8,000 active subreddits in total. The cream will rise to the top quickly and we’ll all get used to subscribing to the ‘top 3 or 4’ “Doug” communities and I’m sure the apps developed for Lemmy will ‘combine’ those behind the scenes for a smoother user experience.
I’m sure the apps developed for Lemmy will ‘combine’ those behind the scenes for a smoother user experience.
I don’t think that’s a good idea, it would give the impression of something that is not there. Imagine talking to someone about a post that you just read but that someone else literally can’t see because they aren’t using the app, so they can’t see that instance. Plus, how do you handle communities on instances that have been blocked by some other instances?
A better way would be to have a way to officially merge these communities within ActivityPub. Effectively, have a protocol for cross instance communities, and then the mods of the disparate communities would just have to actively choose to join their communities. It’d be like the reddit sub splitting, but in reverse!
I agree
Look, as long as I don’t have to remember both a community AND a server name, I’m good. I just don’t want to hav to remember and / or subscribe to multiple things with the exact same name.
I can understand that desire, but think about this from a practical perspective. You are on lemmy.world, but someone else is on lemmy.ml. If you both use the same app that does this behind the scenes aggregation for you, you won’t be able to tell which instance is holding which post. Let’s say someone on sh.itjust.works posts on their instance of a community, but the app just makes it appear like it’s in the community.
Now, if lemmy.world blocks sh.itjust.works and lemmy.ml does not, then you can’t see that post, since it’s blocked for you. But the person on lemmy.ml and on sh.itjust.works would be able to see it. This is a good example of solving a problem by create a dozen new ones.
Lemmy developers have been discussing how to address this: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818
There isn’t a clear solution, since some communities have different names, so how would an app know to join them? Or would you join communities that had deliberately been split for various reasons?
Clearly coordination and agreement between leaders is needed. I suggested something like that with a pseudo-instance of “@global”, for example. However, it seems there is some resistance to the mere idea of globalizing certain popular communities, which I can understand.
Federation comes with its own set of problems, like replication, data volume, storage requirements, and massive overlap.
That last one affects user experience directly, and needs to be addressed. Maybe it will sort itself out, maybe not. If we have 10,000 servers, even 100 almost the same communities means quite a bit of work on the part of users just to decide which ones to join.
We are looking at the human equivalent of a system with an extremely fragmented disk, or database tables with indexes that end up doing table scans.
Periodic re-organization will be necessary to to maintain usability.
