Why can't magazines/communities aggregate content from other instances?
Fediverse@kbin.social – 34 points – When I look at https://lemmy.ml/c/startrek vs https://kbin.social/m/startrek I see two entirely different lists of posts. Why? It's the same topic, just on different instances. How can we have communities about topics without having them siloed into their own instance-based communities? Is this just related to that 0.18 issue with Lemmy/kbin not talking nicely, or is this how the Fediverse is?
Is it (at least theoretically) possible for me to post an article on https://kbin.social/m/startrek and have it automatically show up on https://lemmy.ml/c/startrek, or are they always going to be two separate communities?
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Isn't that still a consolidation of content/users, though? I thought the Fediverse was about decentralization, whereas I keep hearing that it's okay to centralize content/users on individual instances if it happens naturally. Wouldn't that just lead to situations where the mega instance could control the contents/users? Migrating users to an entirely new instance is hard, I mean just look at how hard it is to get people to leave Reddit. It just feels like either I'm missing something, or the Fediverse is just a new technical way to recreate a system that we already have and complain about. If a single instance has total control over the content and users (not the user accounts, just the fact that a huge number of users would be following that specific instance), then how is it decentralized?
No, it would not, I and others in this thread keep telling you that. There's no need for users to have an account on that "mega instance" in order to interact with the community there, and if that community or instance goes sour it's no effort at all for the users to switch to interacting with a different community on a different instance.
Yes, I think so. It feels like the same things are being said back and forth repeatedly, so we're probably talking past each other.
You may have an idiosyncratic definition of "decentralization", perhaps. There are multiple ways of decentralizing stuff. In the case of the Fediverse, you still have communities "centralized" in that their content is located on a particular instance, but the users can interact with that community from any instance. This is hugely different from Reddit, which has only one instance that's completely and forever under their control, where users can never interact with anything outside of it.
Migrating a user to a new instance is hard, yes, but you don't have to.
How does an instance have "total control" over users from other instances? It has no control at all. At worst it can defederate, which would just hurry along their migration to a new community that's on some other instance.
Look at Reddit: it's gone bad, and yet millions still use the site. So much so, in fact, that content on many subreddits is posted every few minutes, whereas the same communities here on kbin see hours or days between posts. That's what I mean: people are used to the solution they like, so if a community becomes "bad" enough to make me move to a different instance, it might not be bad enough for everyone else, and so I'd be stuck moving to a smaller instance while the majority of users continue using the "bad" instance. Just because I don't need to create a new account doesn't change that fact.
If I don't want to use Reddit, all of the content and users that I benefit from are still over on Reddit. No matter how much I'd like everyone to switch over to kbin, they don't think Reddit is as big of an issue as I do. Clearly. So what am I supposed to do if that happens with !startrek@startrek.website in a few years? Do I have to put up with a bad site as long as everyone else puts up with it, too? Or do I have to move to a smaller community on a different instance just so I don't have to deal with the problems of the original instance?
Because they are trapped there. A user account on Reddit remains on Reddit, it can't access communities outside of Reddit.
If Reddit were magically part of the Fediverse then I, FaceDeer@kbin.social, could have been posting on startrek@reddit.com. Then when Reddit goes bad and startrek@reddit.com starts sucking, I can just start posting on startrek@startrek.website instead. No need to create a new account or "migrate" anywhere. The friction is minimal.
Since Reddit is not part of the Fediverse, then the only way I could be posting to startrek@reddit.com would be if I was using the account FaceDeer@reddit.com and if Reddit goes bad then FaceDeer@reddit.com cannot interact with startrek@startrek.website. FaceDeer@reddit.com is "trapped" there, and I would have to create a whole new account to get off it (as I did).
You don't need to move to a different instance. I'm not sure where this miscommunication is coming from. You can continue using timbervale@kbin.social if startrek@startrek.website "goes bad" and instead go hang out on some other startrek community without having to create a new account.
Move to the smaller instance. Everyone else can move too. It's just as easy for them as for you. Then it becomes the bigger instance.
If it's "bad enough" for you to move but not for them to move, perhaps you're being more sensitive to the badness than everyone else is. Maybe it's not so bad. If it is that bad, then why aren't they moving?