What safeguards does Lemmy have that allow it to maintain integrity if it sees a sudden rise in popularity?
What safeguards does Lemmy have that allow it to maintain integrity if it sees a sudden rise in popularity?
It appears to me that the current state of Lemmy is similar to other platforms when they were smaller and more insular, and that insularity is somewhat protecting it.
I browse Lemmy, and it feels a bit like other platforms did back in 2009, before they became overwhelmed and enshitified.
If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar "landed gentry" moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.
If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own "eternal September", what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?
What you're worried about is basically what federation was built to stop.
If you don't like the moderation of a community or other aspects, you or anyone else can make a new one on the same or a different instance, if you want.
You can even make it "private" (not federate) to keep others from coming in and recreating the problem you just fled.
To be optimistic, I'd hope the federation would be able to guard against deeper centralization like a more extreme .world or .ml, a la meta or whoever. There's always space for grassroots instances, and I'm pretty sure there will always be someone out there running something or with enough interest to learn.
I agree with everything you said.
I'm thinking/hoping that this new wave of Europeans going to European instances will help spread out the centralization of .world and .ml, now and it'll hold into the future, but we'll see.
Hearing that several people have started country specific instances also gives me hope in this. With country/geographicly specific, topic specific, and just general instances, I think/hope it will lead to a more balanced user base.
You can even make it "private" (not federate) to keep others from coming in and recreating the problem you just fled.
So assuming you don't like to only talk to yourself, how do you decide who to let into a private instance?
And if you stay public, let's say for argument's sake, that the same thing that made you leave this first community immediately happens in the new instance, then what?
I would suggest starting the invite process with the people who were in the community before it went awry. You can also make a post about how you're starting a new community in the old community and explain what will be different in the new community. I belive this happened recently with the "196" community becoming the "oneninetysix" community when the mods made decisions the users didn’t like.
Being mod of the new community would allow for removal of unwanted users. Additionally, if you were admin of the instance, you could block other instances that had users that tended to not match your stance on issues.
Hopefully, that helps.
On Reddit, before it went full goose step, you'd have the problem where the top mod of r/linux would be this weird open source zealot who would delete any thread that had any practicality in it. So actual discussion of using Linux would happen in r/linuxmasterrace, which was nominally a meme sub but it's where the actual community landed. You could use Reddit's vast namespace to steer around an individual top mod.
You couldn't steer around Reddit's admin though, they have root access to the servers, they can, have and increasingly do shut things down they don't like. It's double plus ungood.
Lemmy, and indeed the entire Fediverse, offers every user the Bender gambit. You can make your own instance with blackjack and hookers. There is no mechanism to shut it down everywhere. Instances are hosted by multiple people on multiple hardware platforms on multiple power grids in multiple countries under multiple jurisdictions.
The top mod of !linux@example.lol is being a shithead? You could make !actual_linux@example.lol, or you could start !linux@lemmy.world, or you could start your own instance and then YOU are in control of who gets to be a mod on at least one instance. No one person has the power to shut down everything everywhere; you start talking about severing undersea cables at that point.
Lol. We need to advertise "The Bender Gambit" more aggressively in our welcome materials. It really is part of what makes this place(s) great.
I'll be sure to do that when I make my own instance, with blackjack and hookers.
And you know what?! Forget the instance .
Lemmy, and indeed the entire Fediverse, offers every user the Bender gambit. You can make your own instance …
It really is that easy. I wasn't sure it would be, but I started up my own instance on a Saturday because I was procrastinating on some work.
I used the Docker method, but apparently Ansible is even easier.
I feel like there is a real possibility of a federation schism where a bunch of server admins get together and defederate with the rest of the servers. In that case you either need two accounts on both side of the schism or just be blind to whatever is happening over there.
Isn’t this still true of Reddit though? You could just make a new subreddit if you don’t like another.
How is it different?
Because at the end of the day, they're all on Reddit. So when reddit says "you'll get banned for upvoting content that promotes violence [against the oligarchs]," you can't just make another subreddit because they'll shut that one down too.
If the admin of lemmy.world says "you'll get banned for upvoting content that promotes violence [against the oligarchs]," then you can say okay and make luigimangione@otherlemmyinstance.com. People on Lemmy.world can still access the new site, or even leave Lemmy.world entirely if they decide they're not down with the admin. But they can still access all of the other federated communities they were subscribed to rather than having to quit Lemmy overall.
Federation.
There's a reason why worldnews@lemmy.world and worldnews@lemmy.ml are not federated with eachother, yet lots of users are subscribed to both.
If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar "landed gentry" moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.
For lemmy, it's again a federation thing. You just don't see many multiple defederated examples due to the small user count.
It's not the most optimal solution, but it's still miles better than dealing with single instance or single community issues.
lemmy is part of a horizontally scaling network of instances (servers). if a popular community on an instance goes sideways... say because of a new terrible mod or rule change, the entire population of that community can up and move to a new community in another instance without having to create new accounts anywhere.
this has already happened a few times.
I think the primary defense is the decentralized nature of the application..
Moderators/admins can block and remove content on the instace(s) they control, but this does not impact the content of any other instance.
Effective censorship of the entire ecosystem would require control of many instances and defederation from those that are not deemed appropriate.
There is not really a way for the operator of one instance to control the moderation decisions of the operator(s) of any other instance.
This one of tbe reasons I created !dullsters@dullsters.net I do not have to worry about one instances modderation policy or splitting of users. Sure I could go crazy one day, but I have a robust ruleset in place that the comminity has followed without issue.
the enshitification happens at a smaller location level.
look at some of the shunned/pariah instances. lots of people just end up blocking it or joining the instance to participate... what ever
imo it will continue to be a rollercoaster of ups and downs that only a core group of users will notice but there's going to be drama
because drama is how humans behave
There could be some maximum threshold or critical number where people's discussions goes downhill, regardless of the infrastructure. So while the idea of splintering into new communities that share names and topics was initially a big concern with the Reddit migration, calling for a way to imitate a Reddit sole source, perhaps it's better to allow diversification even if some things aren't directly and timely shared.
What federation protects from is the singular owner of the platform sweeping in and setting/enforcing new rules for some or all communities. This could still happen on one instance, but new instances can mitigate the effects. Single communities can still turn bad, but it will be up to the users to decide whether to stick around or move to other communities.
Nobody should trust a website that they don't own to meet their standards.
Use it while it's convenient, then move on. it's just lights on a rock. Same for any other website.
It depends which instance you are on. Some instances are full of mods that censor everything that doesn't fit their ideology. Other instances are more relaxed with their moderation approaches. It definitely pays to shop around a bit before you settle on an instance that is a good fit for you.
On dbzero we have a governance community and instance users have the right to vote out mods/admins if they are unpopular. But most instances are run in a much more top-down BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) fashion.
I think the difference here is there is not some weird, ephemeral person deciding. For example, at the bad place, it could have been a shitty admin, a good admin or actually spez deciding the rules for everyone.
Here we have instances that make up their own rules on who to federate with (who you see), and whether or not you're banned (who sees you). Also, the admins of your instance can redo moderation order anyway they see fit. It really will be an instance controlled vibe.
The real thing to be worried about is that if certain instances get too big. They have the most users and can control who sees what across the fediverse. For example, if a super large instance doesn't want any posts on any volatile or controversial topic to be seen (immigration, Nazi salutes, transgender, etc.), they could just have it not show up on their instance and the biggest part of the fediverse would never see it and have no way of knowing they didn't see it.
If people get fed up, they just create another community under the same name somewhere else. This happened with 196 recently.
So every lemmy instance is separate?
For instance, I'm on lemmy.world now, reading nba community. If those mods go nuclear and someone creates another nba community elsewhere, will I see those posts on lemmy.world?
edit: i get it now ... it's a different server with different community, but they can be "linked" and you can subscribe to communities from different servers from your own server and you can also comment on different servers too from your own little world
i have more questions though ... how do all these decentralized servers find each other and share information between instances? is it blockchain based? or is there a central server somewhere orchestrating it all ?
...they can be "linked"
What do you mean with that?
...is it blockchain based? or is there a central server somewhere orchestrating it all ?
It does not use blockchain or a central server, but instead uses the ActivityPub protocol, just like Mastodon. That's why Mastodon users can see some Lemmy posts and the other way around.
None. Someone is going to say federation helps here, but the effect is the same as creating an alternative to a popular subreddit under another name.
Not when it's about sitewide policies. (Like reddit banning "Luigi" etc)
None. Someone is going to say federation helps here, but the effect is the same as creating an alternative to a popular subreddit under another name.
Which mechanism in Lemmy allows one person in power to decide a single word is a reason to ban a person from every instance in the Fediverse? Since there isn't one, that is a way that Lemmy is more insulated from institutional abuse.
I agree, but the server owner imposing unpopular rules is not one of the two problems the OP asks about. Those are:
- The first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.
- If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?
Decentralization with federated servers does not address those problems.
Yep. People around here love to attribute some magic powers to decentralization it definitely does not have. The assumption that crappy behavior is somehow localized to a specific instance is bizarre, nothing is keeping people from spamming accounts on instances with free signups. If anything, the decentralization makes it significantly harder to scale up moderation, on top of all the added costs of hosting volunteer social media servers.
That said, I'm not concerned at this point. There is nowhere near enough growth happening to make this be a problem for a long time. Masto worried about it legitimately for like twenty minutes back in some of the first few exodus incidents, before all the normies got alienated and landed on Bluesky.
Don't get me wrong, I like it here, it feels all retro and kinda like 90s forums, but "what if it gets so popular it's swamped with bad actors" is VERY low in my list of priorities. We have like two spammers and they've become local mascots. Mass malicious engagement is NOT the concern at the moment.
The assumption that crappy behavior is somehow localized to a specific instance is bizarre, nothing is keeping people from spamming accounts on instances with free signups.
I disagree. If that is your primary concern, look at what Beehaw (another Lemmy instance) did. They closed their signups to prevent the bad actor spam accounts on their own instances, and they defederate from instance that allow the easy signups.
Its extreme, yes. It limits conversation from the wider fediverse, yes. However it does mitigate the exact problem you're citing. I personally prefer to deal with the spammers for the wider audience, but I don't fault Beehaw for their actions and choices.
Decentralization provides a lot of important benefits, such as protection against worsening the whole system for profit, or imposing unpopular network-wide rules. I like it here; it's fun in the way the old web was and the corporate web isn't.
I think we're in agreement that preventing moderators of popular communities from being assholes and handling large-scale abuse as OP asked about are not among those benefits.
Having read some (but not all) the comments, I do agree with the idea that decentralization (federation) somehow is what helps to alleviate this problem, although it's such a complex matter that you will have to see how it plays out. For my part, with some exceptions I was more or less satisfied with how Reddit used to be, and part of that was because Reddit was centralized. Reddit not being federated or decentralized is to its benefit because social platforms benefit from having everything all in one place, but what really seems to have done Reddit in was commercialization. It went from being similar to some kind of basic software tool to this corporate nightmare of tracking and ads, algorithmically shaping content, etc. It's like Facebook now but with a red icon. Lemmy wasn't designed to do that, and it will never do that. Federation does help with that.
As long as there's centralization and data brokering, there will always be a capitalization. It's basically the only logical path forward for a service that isn't decentralized or running as a charity.
I don't know how it'd work but I'd be interested in something to deal with spam/scams. That annoying "Fediverse chick" thing, sure i blocked her, as can other individuals. And I guess the account could be flagged to whatever instance the account is registered to? But if it became a frequent problem, with bot account spamming people, it would be handy to have a way a tracking what accounts are getting blocked by lots of people.
Even if I wouldn't want to autoblock accounts just because they're unpopular, I might want to stop or mark as 'caution' private messages from "problem" accounts.
That annoying “Fediverse chick” thing
I got a DM on Mastodon from that account; I didn't realize it was spam. It was on an account that gets a modest amount of interaction from strangers, so I didn't pay much attention to it.
Server admins can set up moderation filters to deal with stuff like that, and should be coordinating with each other on detected spam patterns, etc.
oh yeah, I also got her dm, I wondered what was that about
