[Discussion] I don't think this format makes a lot of sense for the fediverse
A lot of us come from reddit, so we're naturally inclined to want a reddit-like platform. However, it occurred to me that the reddit format makes little sense for the fediverse.
Centralized, reddit-like communities where users seek out communities and post directly to them made sense for a centralized service like reddit. But when we apply that model to lemmy or kbin, we end up with an unnecessary number of competing communities. (ex: fediverse@lemmy.world vs fediverse@lemmy.ml) Aside from the issues of federation (what happens when one instance defederates and the community has to start over?) this means that if one wants to post across communities on instances, they have to crosspost multiple times.
The ideal format for a fediverse reddit-like would be a cross between twitter and reddit: a website where if you want to post about a cat, you make your post and tag it with the appropriate tags. This could include "cats," "aww," and "cute." This post is automatically aggregated into instantly-generated "cats," "aww," and "cute" communities. Edit: And if you want to participate in a small community you can use smaller, less popular tags such as "toebeans" or something like that. This wouldn't lead to any more or less small communities than the current system. /EndEdit. But, unlike twitter, you can interact with each post just like reddit: upvotes, downvotes, nested comments - and appointed community moderators can untag a post if it's off-topic or doesn't follow the rules of the tag-communities.
The reason this would work better is that instead of relying on users to create centralized communities that they then have to post into, working against the federated format, this works with it. It aggregates every instance into one community automatically. Also, when an instance decides to defederate, the tag-community remains. The existing posts simply disappear while the others remain.
Thoughts? Does this already exist? lol
Edit: Seeing a lot of comments about how having multiple communities for one topic isn't necessarily bad, and I agree, it's not. But, the real issue is not that, it's that the current format is working against the medium. We're formatting this part of the fediverse like reddit, which is centralized, when we shouldn't. And the goal of this federation (in my understanding) is to 1. decentralize, and 2. aggregate. The current format will eventually work against #1, and it's relying on users to do #2.
Ok, suppose there is a unified magazine. I post to it, now which instance hosts my post? Then my instance defederates from that of one of the two magazines, but not the other. Do I now see only half the posts? If I engage in a comment chain, will users on the instances that defederated from mine see a weird half-conversation?
I think there is a fundamental difference between centralized formats like Reddit and federated formats like this one. Trying to simulate one with the other will always be unsatisfactory. So if Melpomene and Facedeer really want to join forces, the best way is simply to close one community and let them comoderate the remaining one.
When an instance defederates, it means they stop pulling in posts from the instance they defederated from. It doesn’t mean that older posts go away, and it doesn’t mean that other instances don’t see their posts anymore (unless those instances defederate back).
But this already works for magazines hosted on one instance. My understanding is that if we defederate, a copy of those posts would still be hosted on my instance, but further updates would be solely "my" instance's version. The posts from the other magazine would remain as local copies, they would not be removed... they'd just be standalone copies for the defederated instance.
It also means that anything you post on here is also 100% out of your control, and even harder to scrub than it would be had it been posted on Reddit.
Data longevity is baked into the system. Keep this in mind when posting here.
Absolutely right. People should be aware of that and they should be careful posting PII both here and anywhere online. Maybe we need a guide to being semi-private on the fediverse and the internet generally?
I mean it’s true that people need more guidance, but here especially; how can you GDPR A thousand instances? How does a small server maintainer deal with privacy laws in international jurisdiction? Especially when their server is only caching posts?
This gets even more dangerous sounding when you get into revenge porn, CP, etc territory. Can you go to jail for caching a post that you’ve never seen or intended to capture because someone on your instance was subscribed to a community that got image-bombed by trolls? Is there some kind of audit trail or emergency fediverse-wide delete command for when mods clean out garbage like that?