Is Lemmy.world centralization worth fighting against?

Probably a very polarizing question.

On the one hand, having most of the users and communities on LW causes technical issues (see this post), and also gives the LW staff too much power over Lemmy as a whole.

On the other hand, with 18k MAU on LW out of 47k (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/), every community listed there has a much higher chance of visibility compared to an alternative hosted on another instance

simple ,
@simple@lemm.ee avatar

Hot take: No.

Lemmy.world being the "main" instance is natural, and Lemmy makes it difficult to discover new communities so it's also natural that lots of discussion would be in lemmy.world, too.

There was also still an unresolved issue where some instances can disappear and take out all their communities. Remember lemmy.film? I believe the Lemmy devs once said they want to make a system to migrate communities in case something like this happens but nobody knows when it'll get added.

I think it's a platform problem, I understand that connecting to all sorts of instances is the point of the fediverse but until it becomes more intuitive and less dangerous, I'm going to just stick with the most popular communities. Attempting to move people out of lemmy.world and into other duplicate communities will only split people more.

small44 ,

The issue is that a tool to migrate all contents, likes and followers doesn't exist so people are afraid to build on small instances

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

True, but after all this time I wouldn't trust Lemm.ee or SJW less than LW

Mr_Mofu ,
@Mr_Mofu@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Yknow that's one of the main reasons why I exclusively create communitys and smallerish instances. Especially blahaj zone my beloved

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

@otter, I wanted to ask you about something: I posted to !til in the past, but it seems that now the community isn't actively moderated, and on the other side !todayilearned is getting a resurgence.

Do you think it is worth it trying to post to the lemmy.ca one, or should we go with the flow and post on the LW one to make it grow?

otter ,
@otter@lemmy.ca avatar

We were actually checking into this recently! While the mods look inactive from the post history, there is an active mod keeping an eye on the community.

I'm planning to make more posts to !til, and while I'm not sure which one will be best in the long run, I want to try and see if we can grow this one.

As for the other communities, I'm planning to go through and clean up moderation sometime in the next little while :)

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Alright, good to know! I see if I can find stuff to post there, but usually I post to !interestingasfuck as there is some overlap, and the community got some traction a few days ago

can ,

Regarding your last point, tools like Lemmy Federate make this less of an issue.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Indeed, I use it from time to time, but from my experience, it seems like LW users tend to stay on their local feed, increasing the visibility of their local communities compared to ones from other instance

can ,

Can't help those who won't help themselves 🤷‍♂️

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Indeed, but the issue is when one third of the population is there

ALostInquirer ,

Is Lemmy World's default when signed in local? Or is this a consequence of many more active communities being there?

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Not sure, might be, I'm too lazy to setup another LW account to find out ha ha.

Might also just be that it's their way of avoiding political content from lemmygrad, hexbear and lemmy.ml

shortwavesurfer ,

Communities on big instances have a chance to grow. So once it gets big enough on something like world, they could put up a movement post and switch the community onto a smaller server. I have a lemmy ml community but it only has 227 subs so its currently not worth moving. There are enough subscribers that some posts get upvoted and end up like with 25 upvotes in a hurry so they appear on the tops lists. Obviously, the more the community hits the top lists, the more people will see it and maybe subscribe to it.

threelonmusketeers Mod ,

I have a lemmy ml community but it only has 227 subs so its currently not worth moving.

I would have thought that a smaller community would be easier to move, as there would be less inertia and inconvenience. I've deliberately created some communities on smaller servers and cross-posted to more general communities on larger servers to help with visibilty.

GenderNeutralBro ,

It's a big problem all across the fediverse. New users have no idea which instance to join. In the absence of any way to differentiate between instances, they go with the most popular one, or the one they've heard of the most, or the one that sounds vaguely official or "vanilla". Lemmy.world is the obvious choice for these users.

This leads to the biggest server becoming a runaway train, which is bad for diversity and also bad for the admins because it makes it harder to manage the load. It's the same thing with mastodon.social.

I would encourage users to avoid the biggest instance as a rule, no matter which service they are signing up for. Ideally, avoid the top three or five. That will naturally lead to a healthier balance.

The problem is, there aren't a lot of "general purpose" Lemmy instances. Someone following my advice, who doesn't know better, might find themselves on hexbear, dbzer0, or lemmygrad. These are bad choices for a new user who expects something more or less equivalent to major centralized sites.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Indeed.

Ideally, avoid the top three or five. That will naturally lead to a healthier balance.

That's probably good for Mastodon, but for Lemmy there isn't so much choice. My rule of thumb, in order is

  • lemm.ee
  • sh.itjust.works if you are ok with the name
  • discuss.tchncs.de or lemmy.ca depending if you are located in Europe or North America
  • lemmy.zip as they are good contenders, but a bit smaller than the others
threelonmusketeers Mod ,

Any reasons for choosing discuss.tchncs.de over feddit.de?

Edit: Oh wait, is feddit.de down? Have they been having issues recently?

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Now you understand 😄

They have a strange issue with their frontend, the instance is still running, and can be accessed using other front ends, but as you can see, not the best experience for a new joiner

TexMexBazooka ,

Shamelessly plugging lemm.ee- it is exactly what you’re looking for when you say general purpose instance

ALostInquirer ,

New users have no idea which instance to join. In the absence of any way to differentiate between instances, they go with the most popular one, or the one they’ve heard of the most, or the one that sounds vaguely official or “vanilla”. Lemmy.world is the obvious choice for these users.

It's a little less the case with Lemmy and other less popular fediverse stuff, but isn't a large number of vague/general purpose instances a contributor to this? In other words, wouldn't more focused instances help reduce this problem?

A big benefit of federation shines with topic-focused instances in that it ensures an already curated local feed to your main interest (or interests), meanwhile remaining able to connect with and discuss more general interest stuff via home and federated feeds.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Definitely, but I guess the amount of sysadmins wanting to operate a lemmy instance is limited. Add to that the CSAM and other nasty stuff that happened at the beginning, and only a few people would be okay to manage their own instance.

Also, even a topic-focused instance would suffer from the lack of population. How many interesting topic can you find for a population of 50k? That can't be too precise, because you are talking to a very small population. Well, I guess that's why db0 and slrpnk are doing well, piracy and solarpunk are popular among Lemmy users (as well as whatever the political stance of lemmy.ml is)

GenderNeutralBro ,

Something to that, for sure. The only problem is if the choices are overwhelming. People like choice when it's immediately comprehensible and meaningful, and hate it with a vengeance when it's not. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

Mastodon is already pretty good about this with the official app and nevertheless, the most common complaint I heard during the Twitter exodus was that signing up for Mastodon was too complicated. Lemmy is far worse in this regard. The closest thing to an "official" Lemmy app doesn't even have "Lemmy" in the name, and doesn't pop up on the first screen of results in Google Play.

Emperor ,
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

The problem is, there aren’t a lot of “general purpose” Lemmy instances.

Or there aren't enough specific ones. If you go to Join Lemmy and you are presented with a number of general purpose instances, you are likely to pick the largest and only later realise the problems that entails and switch to another instance.

If you are a Trekkie or read books or game or program then it is easy to pick one. Ditto if there is an instance specific to your country (I should know).

If you look at Mastodon (which is more developed and has a wider and deeper selection of instances) you can see that these niches instances do well and I think we need to encourage more here.

spujb ,

lemmy.world has middling to bad moderation.

lemmy.world also has at least a few divisive mods who are close friends of the lemmy.world admins and are known to retain their positions for that reason.

lemmy.world is by far the largest instance.

taken alone, none of these are a problem. together i find that concerning and exactly the kind of reason the fediverse was built to avoid.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I keep hearing about bad moderation, so I guess it's indeed an issue.

It is really a compromise, there is no ideal situation. Should we initiate something and ask people to leave LW due to bad moderation? That would probably be seen as unnecessary drama.

spujb , (edited )

i don’t think compounding problems imply a single compound solution.

instead, tackle each problem directly.

  • encourage account migration to combat overcentralization
  • encourage installment of more mods to combat ineffectual moderation
  • call for transparency in moderator selection to combat cronyism
Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I see

encourage account migration to combat overcentralization

My gut feeling is that most of the people on LW are comfortable there, and wouldn't see the point in decentralization. That happened in the past with the removal of privacy communities, or the fact that LW is still federated with Threads, still they have 18k MAU

spujb ,

and that’s absolutely fair. i think another group though are uncomfortable and are simply unaware that they can move.

for example, i saw a conversation where some folks were expressing uncomfortability that .world is federated with .ml. someone else brought up switching to an instance that was defederated with .ml (happened to be mine, shoutout .cafe) and they were all like “yo! dope let me do that”

so it’s almost a matter of education/spreading awareness for some at least

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Definitely. I feel like every other week I stumble upon someone who doesn't know they can switch instances in literally 3 clicks.

Lemmeenym ,

I guess I'm your person this week. I thought you had to create a new account to switch instances. The only time I've moved so far was from kbin.social to lemm.ee so I definitely had to but it's nice to know that if I want to move again I can keep the same account.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

To be completely correct you will have to create a new account, but you can export and import your subscriptions and block lists from the new account to the new one in a few clicks

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Are there bad moderators on LW? Do you have examples? I feel like they're maybe a little stretched thin on trying to keep up with things, and so sometimes make snap decisions, but lemmy.ml is the only place I've actually seen moderation that I would describe as deliberately bad.

spujb ,

they are certainly stretched thin, which i would categorize more as an attackable problem than an excuse for poor performance.

i do have a few examples off the top of my head tho

  • !unpopularopinion was left uterly unmoderated for months. rage bait and even some downright nazi shit was almost constant on there. any community in that situation should have been immediately shut down by admins but was not.
  • !world mods have a nasty habit of butting in with mod flared comments on user reports without taking action. they defend this as “adding context” when the “context” involved is highly subjective, partisan, and verging on defense of harrassment, and not at all fitting the diversity of content that constitutes a “world news” community.
  • this might be more of a general lemmy problem but there doesn’t seem to be auto-flagging going on for common sense harrasment language? like i see slurs against races, ethnicities, and the mentally disabled almost daily and they don’t get removed for hours until a user reports it sometimes.
Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

this might be more of a general lemmy problem but there doesn’t seem to be auto-flagging going on for common sense harrasment language

Indeed, a general Lemmy problem.

spujb ,

good to know

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Every time I want to post a politics article, I have to decide whether to post @lemmy.world (and exclude the Beehaw people and include the trolls and reach more people) or @beehaw.org (and exclude the World people and help the growth of a community that seems better, but reach a lot less people).

IDK what the answer is

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Hello, good to see you here!

I completely get what you mean. Beehaw creates its own kind of situation. For a long time I was hoping they would refederate with SJW and LW, especially after 0.19.X where users could block instances on their own, but I guess that's never going to happen.

It's really a shame, because people and communities on Beehaw are really valuable

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Heyo! Hello to you.

I mean, I get it. I saw the announcement that bad-faith posts from lemmy.world were creating so much moderation load that it was simply impossible for them to federate with LW and have the kind of community they wanted to have. And I thought, well that's kind of surprising to me, IDK what that's about. And then I started participating more heavily on lemmy.world and then I thought, oooooohh, that's what they were talking about. It all makes sense now.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I see where they come from. Hopefully Sublinks will have better moderation tools, and potentially allow them to refederate.

In the meantime, we are kind of stuck in the middle.

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Is sublinks what they're switching to? I was curious about that. I'm not real aware of a good substitute for Lemmy / kbin / mbin as of right now; it doesn't seem like there's a fully perfect solution available.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Beehaw is at least considering it. They'll probably poll their community once Sublinks is released, but if the mod tools are better there and the features are the same, I don't see why they wouldn't switch

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

I thought they had posted that they'd already made the decision of what platform to switch to, but weren't announcing it yet (which seemed weird to me). Sublinks honestly would make some sense given the Lemmy-compatibility and emphasis on mod tools, which I know was a constant pain point for them... but IDK if it's mature enough. But yeah if you told me they were waiting for it to mature so they could switch over, that would make sense.

I'm also very curious to see how (if at all) you migrate an existing server with all its existing ActivityPub keys and subscriptions to a new piece of software, on the same domain, without unfixably breaking its federation with every other instance. My guess is that they will switch to a different beehaw.(whatever) domain but I'm curious if there's a good solution I'm not aware of.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’m also very curious to see how (if at all) you migrate an existing server with all its existing ActivityPub keys and subscriptions to a new piece of software, on the same domain, without unfixably breaking its federation with every other instance. My guess is that they will switch to a different beehaw.(whatever) domain but I’m curious if there’s a good solution I’m not aware of.

Tha'ts probably how it's going to happen.

ShittyKopper , (edited )
@ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’m also very curious to see how (if at all) you migrate an existing server with all its existing ActivityPub keys and subscriptions to a new piece of software, on the same domain, without unfixably breaking its federation with every other instance. My guess is that they will switch to a different beehaw.(whatever) domain but I’m curious if there’s a good solution I’m not aware of.

If the software you're migrating to is built to allow that to happen, it's absolutely possible. In the microblogging side of the fedi migrating between software isn't uncommon, though in nearly all cases they're forks from the same "family tree" so things work out mostly due to that, (Misskey is infamous for having a LOT of forks with most being capable of migrating to most, Mastodon can migrate to/from it's forks Glitch-soc/Chuckya/Hometown, and Pleroma and Akkoma can migrate between each other...).

There are software being built from-scratch to be migratable from other software (aside from Sublinks, Iceshrimp.NET comes to mind as a total rewrite of Iceshrimp, which started out as a fork of Firefish and therefore is in the Misskey family tree, but found the existing codebase to be un-salvagable) but it's definitely a rare case.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Misskey is infamous for having a LOT of forks

Seems like at some point they wanted a fork for every letter of the alphabet ha ha

ShittyKopper ,
@ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I mean, there's only so much you can do when your upstream is developed exclusively in Japanese (to the point the code comments are also in Japanese) with a focus on adding Reversi and a Suika Game clone into the software instead of refactoring so the same piece of code isn't duplicated in 10 different files split across the frontend and the backend and refuses to implement editing because they find it too hard when both major fork families (Firefish/Iceshrimp and Sharkey) have it and it works fine enough (alt text edits don't federate, but that's comparatively rare)

Ashyr ,

I think until there’s some tool or system that helps collate all the information out here, fragmentation is detrimental to growth.

If the same story is posted in multiple communities, I’m only posting the first one I come across. Sometimes that becomes the next big discussion and other times it’s lost and another community takes over.

I’m not going to copy and paste the same comment with every mirrored post.

So sometimes commenting feels like a waste of time.

Centralizing helps ensure that there’s vibrant, consistent discussion which is what Lemmy should be about.

In my mind, the fix is that all posts to the same link should just collect the discussion all in one place, regardless of which community spawned it.

There may be a ton of good reasons that isn’t happening, but until there’s some sort of fix, centralization ensures you find a discussion and can contribute meaningfully.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Hello,

Thank you for your comment.

I agree with the fact that a story of post should only exist once, as you said. I guess the remaining question is what to do where there are two communities for the same topic.

I have a good example that I just stumbled upon: !map_enthusiasts is the most active community about maps, has usually one post per day every day for the last few months. Once in a while, someone posts on !mapporn, and they instantly get a lot more comments than the first community.

!games is also quite active, despite not being on LW.

Should we just give up with federation, and just aggregate all communities on LW?

Ashyr ,

I would prefer we didn’t give up on federation, but until the tools are in place to mechanically support it, I don’t see it as strictly beneficial.

A post a day in a community is a bot, more often than not, and trying to create discussion on bot posts often just falls on deaf ears.

I don’t see a reason to push for fragmentation at this time, but rather organically support active communities wherever they’re found.

I’d love for there to be a mechanical solution to fragmentation, so you don’t see so many duplicate posts in your feed and all those individual discussions are instead in one place.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

A post a day in a community is a bot, more often than not, and trying to create discussion on bot posts often just falls on deaf ears.

In this case, I'm pretty sure it's not, it's a mix between @The_Picard_Maneuver, @garfaagel, myself and a few others.

We had a nice discussion a few weeks ago about metal bands (https://dormi.zone/post/1721444)

organically support active communities wherever they’re found.

Makes sense

so you don’t see so many duplicate posts in your feed and all those individual discussions are instead in one place.

I guess at some points moderators of communities around a same topic will have to agree on where to host the community. The split between !android and !android still doesn't make sense to me today.

Ashyr ,

Sorry I didn’t mean to imply your specific example was a bot, rather my experience when I find a community with high post rates and low engagements it tends to be a bot.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

No worries, I get what you mean.

ALostInquirer ,

Should we just give up with federation, and just aggregate all communities on LW?

Might it not be more beneficial for related communities to, in the way of the old web, highlight each other in pinned/featured posts and sidebars? The idea being that there's still some benefit to different moderation styles and community cultures/vibes.

Maybe also encouraging community moderators to communicate with each other more to figure out how they want their communities to be, how they might want to differ to create more distinct identities?

threelonmusketeers Mod ,

Might it not be more beneficial for related communities to, in the way of the old web, highlight each other in pinned/featured posts and sidebars?

I think this is an excellent idea, and I have tried to do this with subs like !spaceflight. It would be great if this became standard practice, or a sort of reciprocal courtesy between communities.

Any ideas for how to encourage mod communication?

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Any ideas for how to encourage mod communication?

I would just DM the other mods. Worked quite well for me

veniasilente ,

Should we just give up with federation, and just aggregate all communities on LW?

No. Half the point of federation is that not only communities (instances) can carry their own content but also their own culture. Posting or commenting about a soccer personality in, say, !spain is vastly different from doing it in, say, !soccerdrugs, even if the originating link to the discussion is the same.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I know, but this question is asked in the specific context where posters are mostly alone on a community for several weeks / months, where the LW equivalent has much more potential.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I am usually trying to encourage people to host communities on other instances (recently moved !casualconversation to !casualconversation, but sometimes it feels like fighting against the current.

What do you think?

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