domination is inevitable
EDIT: we just crossed 30K ๐ฅณ
We are now at 28.5K users (see https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list). The top 10 instances also got a decent boost in user count. With the exception of beehaw.org which defederated, the Fediverse is thriving ๐ฅ
Funny thing for me, is that Beehaw was the first bit of the Fediverse I ever came across. Tried to sign up, twice, didn't work. So that's how I ended up on .world, the first group I found that didn't want an essay to sign up.
Same. I don't mind a few words to try and convince someone I'm not a bot but it should still be a semiautomatic system (e.g. auto-approve after a few hours if you don't get explicitly denied). I think approvals simply got backed up because 1 or 2 ppl were approving these and it suddenly turned into thousands of applications per hour.
But they do want your email address. Even Reddit didn't require that.
Even if they don't require it, it's always a good idea to setup your email, it's necessary to recover your password in case of problems.
I don't think so. I've signed up on beehaw without an email address.
Only if you sign up through old.Reddit. And thatโs because old Reddit is still using legacy code that didnโt require it. The default new Reddit sign up requires an email or signing up through Apple/google accounts.
@AlmightySnoo
I'd rather not see one instance become overly dominant, it just acts to centralize content and puts undue strain on that instance.
Thing is, as long as it's not possible to merge similar communities from different instances, large instances are actually preferable from a User uxperience point of view.
@hardypart
Agreed; I was more concerned with the possibility of the vast bulk of communities ending up on a couple instances rather than having major communities spread out. Having some way to keep similar communities connected and effectively moderated would be a great boon for us. How we best go about that, I'm not sure.
I like lemmy.world because it seems to be neutral and doesn't have heavy handed moderators. Communities are allowed to bloom and grow. It's scalable.
I respect what Beehaw wants to do, but their goals are not realistic if they want to be a platform of any significant size.
So far I also like the communities I've seen on Lemmy.ml, but there have been a lot of technical/server issues.
seemed like a genuine nice guy
He indeed is, on top of truly knowing what he's doing.
My reason for being here is, while checking other instances, I saw a post by lemmy.ml admins saying they were overloaded by the influx of new people.
Since they had 1k people, I thought max 500 could be a good number (lemmy.world was a bit less than 500 when I joined).
I checked small instances and this one gave me really good vibes, more than the others, so here I am and I couldn't be happier about it :)
Same thing for me. I have my own biases, but I kinda expect to be exposed to things I don't agree sometimes: knowledge is good and trying to understand other viewpoints is useful (even if to know how someone could get something so wrong).
lemmy.world provides me that, I can engage with content I clearly enjoy, and debate (in a civil way) about things I disagree. And if something is really egregious I can block it myself.
Is there a way I can view which instances are defederated?
I don't mind/am glad not seeing self harm stuff and CSAM content, but if this instance is disconnecting from piracy and hacking related content I'd like to be aware of that.
Here here!
but their goals are not realistic if they want to be a platform of any significant size.
As I understand it, they don't care about being big, they care about having a community of people that align to their principles.
Problem is, if you don't pay too much attention to their server description, you might not realize what their principles are.
I think they got so big because many people were just trying to join any instance under the massive influx, without thinking much about it, and beehaw became much bigger than they intended to be (or expected).
Now that they have defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, people "not intended" to be there are leaving, that should bring them "more down" than they currently are, I think that's what they actually want.
Beehaw controls their sign-ups. What they don't like are people they have not vetted commenting on posts in their communities. They don't like it because some people were 'trolling and spamming' and they can't keep up with the moderation.
They have 4 admin ls trying to do everything and they are not going to open up until they get moderation tools that make it possible to run a large site with just those 4 people.
Basically, they don't have a philosophy of running a server that is compatible with being in a federated environment.
I enjoy everything being in one place but it seems defeats the purpose of the fediverse.
Itโs gotta start somewhere though. It makes sense that as refugees flock over theyโll gravitate towards the largest instance, because the expectation is thatโs where the usage is and they donโt yet grok how the Fediverse works. As they settle in, Iโd expect a number of them to spread out a bit. Once we can migrate accounts Iโd expect the load to be distributed even better.
Load would not be distributed though right? Because all the user data / activity would just be copied to every federating instance. Fediverse is more about redundancy & lack of centralized control, rather than load balancing.
When I signed up to lemmy.world, I thought I was choosing one instance to use. I didn't intially realize they were ALL available from RVERY instance.
Since then I've joined Lemmy.ca, lemmynsfw, and beehaw.
And to think I made this account because it was a nice small instance with only 100 active users. That worked out well.
Where's the Dodge!? That was the best part about this meme.
Hats off to the creator of LW, it canโt be easy running a server this big. I do hope we donโt just dominate the fediverse though, would kinda defeat the purpose of it.
Kbin.social user chiming in here! I haven't checked out Lemmy but I'm content with what kbin offers me so far.
If I browsed mostly on a laptop or desktop then kbin is great. On mobile I think it's just barely passable and I was quite annoyed not having a dedicated app.
I use both so far, but prefer Kbin (the UI/design is much better IMO). It's especially nice that it's compatible enough that we're posting this on lemmy.world :-)
I like the small instance I belong to. It's represented by one or two of those buildings in that picture and that's okay.
We are all in this together.
Yeah, I also like my small instance (BTW: donate to your instances!) I really hope that each instance ends up with like, one dominant community, so the traffic gets spread out and doesn't accidentally crush anything
check https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse instead, we have MUCH more users than you think.
Edit: also note that beehaw isn't completely defederated. They only defederated from sh.itjust.works and Lemmy.world.
Obviously censorship of any variety is a slippery slope, but holy hell some of what's listed there is problematic. If I joined Beehaw in the hopes of enjoying a safe community for various minority groups like they are trying to promote, I'd feel decidedly un-safe seeing posts from skinhead instances and others with outright racial slurs in the names.
Holy cow! It would probably be easier do just allow those they want to see lol (whitelist instead of blacklist)
This is so exciting, each day I feel more and more at home in the fediverse
Yeah, Ruud seems like a cool dude, and lemmy.world has been rock stable for me.
I've ended up making accounts all over the place since I started over a week ago, just recently found an instance for my country so that's my new home! I freaking love this fediverse, feels good man
@AlmightySnoo fediverse is supposed to scale with more servers, not bigger servers
Rather, more instances, not servers. An instance can scale out using as many servers as the owner can tolerate.
I certainly wouldnโt want to be the one managing a horizontally scaled fediverse instance on a cloud platform though, that shit adds up fast, and no way in hell is anyone going to donate here.
I honestly donโt get how thatโs supposed to work indefinitely, thatโs usually where ad money comes in andโฆ god dammit weโre back to square one lol. Iโm here for a good time, not a long time ๐
People actually do donate here! Check it out :) https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin
@corytheboyd By "more servers" I mean "more instances".
There is nothing wrong with having ads on a server. A server / instance should monetize itself like crazy if they want to. If users don't like it, they now have options! They're not stuck in a place like reddit.
That's why I'm so excited by federation.
I'm new here but if I stick around long enough I'll probably get up my own server/instance(s) for the various parts of the fediverse I participle in. Mostly because it sounds neat and partially because it would allow other people I know to have a fediverse "home" operated by a familiar face (if the fediverse gets popular among the mainstream).
Right now it's just Lemmy, but I may eventually participate in Mastodon, Matrix, Peertube, Owncast and.
I'm going to wait first though to see if the Lemmy userbase (and platform) remains healthy and/or grows. Then would come the hard part of setup, I'm familiar with technology, but nowhere near a professional or a hobbyist (unless you count gaming).
I definitely think that ads will start appearing on the bigger instances especially since the overhead will most likely outpace donations. I could also see a lot of super small instances pop up just for people to host for their friends. I'm thinking about creating an instance just for me and a few friends but I'll definitely have to deviate from my standard Reddiy username, can't let that cat out of the bag.
We need a charity running this, like Wikipedia or Internet archive.
I'm betting that is going to occur with growing out communities. They will probably have disagreement with admin then move or just want a more focused community that people can click local & get what they want.
We have to see people show up, learn, and start to enjoy it. A big instance has some perks for the time being and everyone might want to see its sticking power before dealing with headache of running their own instance.
We are also the biggest lemmy instance that still accepts signups ATM
Iโve been unable to get the sign up process to finish on Lenny.world. Fill out the fields and the submit button just spins forever.
There is already a user named Teh in lemmy.world so maybe that's why You are unable to create an account
I signed up for both kbin.social and Lemmy.world as I'm figuring things out. So I'm sure there's plenty of cross over between the members of each community. I just wonder how much.
I firstly signed at lemmy.ml, then kbin and then lemmy.world.
I found kbin more convenient personally for pc use, but both are beautiful and evolving.
i'd rather have a mesh of small-ish instances instead of several huge ones, that aside the more people the better.
I think that will be a lot more feasible if the capability to migrate user accounts between instances is added.
Right now for a new user joining the fediverse, the largest instances are the best option since they are the most likely to remain up and federated with most other instances. Why would you join some random smaller instance when thereโs a clearly established one already there?
Making it possible to change instances would remove some of this friction - then your choice of initial instance isnโt important.
Right. There are a bunch of instances being created by people leaving reddit. A lot of them are not likely to survive. And if that's where I created my account, it's just gone. I can't even access it from elsewhere in the fediverse.
recent events with beehaw have shown that being on a large instance does not guarantee federation.
i'm all for roaming profiles even though i think the best option is hosting a personal or a friends-only instance - unless you're a colossal asshole nobody will defederate you, you're are not depending on anyone but yourself for your profile and subscriptions, etc etc. this obviously isn't for everyone but the barrier of entry is sufficiently low for people interested in tech and fediverse to do just that.
email has started as a fully distributed system but - for reasons too many to count here - ended up centralized over several huge providers, openly dictating rules to everyone else. i'd rather fediverse not followed this road.
I think federation wars will cause that end point. If I wanted to start a community- or group of communities- Iโd put them on their own instance and not have user signups. That minimizes exposure to conflict - either you like sports communities / Pathfinder communities / whatever or you donโt. If beehaw wants to lock themselves down it doesnโt affect my community. If Lemmy.world gets blocked by a bunch of instances it doesnโt affect my community. I donโt have to deal with the consequences on other instances of users coming from my instance.
Iโd go a step further and say that identity management should exist separately from content, but that would probably break brains already struggling with the concept of federation.
100% this, itโs kind of weird that itโs not.
Just like you thought of having your own instance for a custom set of content with independence, I made my own instance for pretty much an identity base I can maybe control well.
Weโll try to make a good community or two, but I donโt know if Iโm good enough or have enough time to grow and moderate one well.
Other instances shall just be mere vassal-instances in YOUR federated empire.
Time to divide methinks
What does it mean that beehaw.ord is defederated?
It stopped receiving posts or comments from other instances like lemmy.world. Their reasoning is that they want a highly moderated "safe" instance, but since moderation tools are still very primitive, they decided to defederate, it was easier than trying to moderate posts from the big instances. They said they will re-federate once mod tools improve.
They only defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works (don't remember where the dots were in that). If you look at their blocklist they're also defederated from a shitload of other instances, but most of those are some combination of spam, illegal content, and/or Nazis, which is fair.
They split off to be their own little island
Imagine we could build a sub for annual fediverse competition and everyone is participating under the flag of their instance.
That could be so cool and it would match the vibe of this whole community.
2nd place!!
What does it mean that beehaw.ord is defederated?
Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world. So anything that a lemmy.world user posts on any instance in the fediverse will be invisible to beehaw users. Any posts made on the beehaw instance wonโt be updated to lemmy.world users after defederation. The local โcachedโ version of various beehaw communities still exists on the lemmy.world instance, so we can view that and comment/post/vote there. However all that activity stays on our instance and is invisible to any users from all other instances.
In practical terms, it means we canโt participate in any beehaw communities. We can see posts made by beehaw users on other instances (say a comment by a beehaw user in a lemmy.ml community), but the beehaw user wonโt see any posts made by a lemmy.world user.
Everything on Kbin and Lemmy is "federated"
This is basically just a fancy word to say "no matter what server you're on, we can all talk to each other".
It's kind of like E-Mail where no matter if you use GMail or Outlook, you can talk to your friends and colleagues.
When a server defederates from another server, It's like a two-way block.
People on (in this case) beehaw won't see threads, magazines and replies from Lemmy.world and sh.it just.works and people from Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works won't see threads, magazines and replies from beehaw.org
Server/Instance admins usually do this when there are instances which spread unwished for content.
This is also why on my profile, there's a link (forum.fail). It's part of my identifier here on the Fediverse (@TGRush@forum.fail).
It means we can't see/talk to them, and vice versa. You may still see old beehaw posts and comments, that were already cached on our side, and can even interact with them, but none of that data will make it to them
itโs weird to see that picture without the doge face in the sandstorm lol
LOL letโs hope it is one of the big servers. Need to spread users around.
Wish I could actually log into my lemmy.world account on desktop. Works in Jervoa, but neither Chrome, nor FF let me get past the spinning wheel of the login button.
Oh that's very interesting. I'm having an identical issue with an account I made on another Lemmy instance (feddit.uk). I'm still trying to work out where I'll settle long-term (including whether that is on Kbin or Lemmy) but for the time being the inability to access my feddit.uk account is making the decision for me...
Only because its one of the very few you can actually create an account on because of the mass migrations.
also because it seems sustainable with the donations and Ruud is a gigachad
@Ruud@lemmy.world and his team need to get some applause. It is not easy to scale with how quickly lemmy.world is growing.
Don't forget to donate if you can. I think the links are in his account bio.