Well, bugs and UI aside, it seems like Lemmy can work but there's not a lot of substantive discussion right now. The most upvoted stuff are memes and other low effort content. I'm not sure how long a bean meme can sustain serious activity.
Decentralization was a thing back in the 1990s and 2000s with all of the little message board communities out there. I think people desire centralization without the drawbacks of control going to a small group of people so that's why we have the fediverse.
Like all this is more of a move back to how the Internet once worked. It's nothing new (at least to those of us who grew up with the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s).
I'm going to be a bit meta here, but Lemmy is very circle-jerky right now. Lots of fediverse worship (despite potential flaws regarding governance and centralization of activity on Lemmy.world) and daily beatdowns on Twitter, Reddit, and big tech. The whole Reddit API fiasco happened two weeks ago but people are still bringing in that Internet janitor stuff over here.
I would add that the risk of joining a small server is that the owner can suddenly delete them at any time and you would have to start all over again elsewhere. Best thing to do is to make an account on the large instances only.
Isn't it called BitTorrent?
How do you think that Lemmy won't be any different as it scales and grows? I've already seen plenty of trolling and snark around here.
Exactly. Which is why I believe that all this fearmongering is because of Meta's reputation (rightfully so) rather than because Meta actually has a plan to destroy the fediverse. And it's not the like the fediverse can be actually destroyed, people can always start new instances at any time.
The reality is that normies don't want to spend that extra little effort to figure out something like Mastodon. They want it fed to them. And Mastodon isn't even hard to figure out - it just lacks a lot of the features that Twitter has but if Twitter is borked, what's the point of those features?
Thanks. Somehow people are basking in the glow of potentially having found a solution to centralized social media. But here's the thing: someone has to pay for it, and someone has to moderate it.
Many Mastodon instances couldn't handle the increased load of sign-ups when Twitter crashed or malfunctioned. I see a lot of smaller Lemmy instances begging for money already even though those places aren't host to as much content as Lemmy.world does.
We need to be aware of the limitations of the fediverse too. No, it will not solve hate on the Internet because the people who self-select to be here are somehow virtuous and above the "average Redditor". You still need money and good moderation.
Yeah I agree. Lemmy is rapidly mirroring Reddit from its early days. And without good mod tools, it's going to be tough to police such behavior as time goes on. Platforms are rarely the problem, it's the people posting.
It's because normies want that "centralized" experience. They don't want to figure out which servers are federated with which server - but they always know that they will have the least issues with the server that has the most active users.
I disagree. The large Mastodon instances have managed to survive for a while on donations. I haven't seen a large Mastodon instance go kaput (though you can correct me if I'm wrong).
Yeah hopefully we get past the shitpost/meme stage which seems to be taking over here right now.
That's because Mastodon is a federated Twitter clone. If you never used Twitter to begin with (which is really for professionals/celebrities/famous people to put out public messages to people), then you won't get it. Most people don't need to use Twitter or anything like it.
Ever heard of Mastodon blocklists? I mean defederation has been happening for a while.
But I think that's fine. Instances should have every right to block instances that they disagree with.
If only we could crowdfund billions per month for a video site run by the community for the community!
Lol people have had debates about that on Mastodon for ages. The consensus is that most people are unwilling to donate anything or see ads on the instances they use. They expect hosts to keep the instance up out of the goodness of their own hearts, and many instances have shut down over the years because hosting was no longer economically sustainable for their owners even as those owners begged for donations.
Most users (especially those who just consume free software/fediverse services and contribute little else) want something to be both free and good. That means subsidized by the owner because they believe in the cause and good because of the lack of monetization.
I don't use Twitter, so no. But normies will finally have a potentially credible Twitter replacement that's open to the public, so good for them.
Yeah but Reddit has 18 years of history and content behind it. So you will always find something worth reading. Here, I'm losing interest quickly. Memes are boring, I want to see some substantive discussion about something I don't know anything about - something which Reddit and its userbase still excels at.
I agree. But it feels a lot more acute here. Perhaps it's because people have that fediverse/anti-Big Tech boner going on. I'm on some other centralized Reddit alternatives and there's a lot more engagement with other content besides anything related to Twitter/Reddit.
I use Bing for Microsoft Rewards. You can get the equivalent of $10 a month in gift cards for your searches.
Centralization reduces friction. Normies who sign up on Mastodon are going to want to be able to talk to all of the other Twitter refugees too. By making mastodon.social the default, it encourages centralization of the mainstream portion of Mastodon's userbase, such as journalists, official company accounts, public figures, etc.
But most of them are probably going to use BlueSky. I heard journalists have been mostly gravitating towards that option.
I mean, how is a bot not already crawling through public sites like Lemmy and Mastodon for the purposes of AI training? Federated or unfederated, if you are providing social media services that data you have is already out there.
Just because something's not corporate owned doesn't mean bad actors can come onto this platform. I've seen some unsavory people here already.
You can already donate to the people operating this instance. No subscriptions needed, just donate away.
And that's within your right too. It goes both ways.
Yeah but then you run into the risk of federation/defederation politics. We've already have had a major instance defederate.
I mean wouldn't that be not a bad thing? The people who don't want to federate will be left in their own community with their posts/content intact.
I fail to see how that would generally impact people who interact from the fediverse side of it rather than Meta's own instance. Like if Meta decides to no longer federate with the rest of the fediverse, that would be like all the normies signing up for Threads.net and not interacting with Mastodon at all right?
I think you are reaching.
Why would their existing communities and friends leave for threads.net if they are on Mastodon to begin with? Most fediverse users I find seem to be pretty passionate about the platform, I doubt they will leave just because their friends are on Threads.
Unfortunately, Mastodon's lack of features makes it hard for normies to use and it will not see mainstream adoption. I hope normies get a decent Twitter replacement.
People have a tendency to flock to centralized services. Even on here the majority of activity takes place on Lemmy.world, the fediverse already has a potential centralization problem.
With your point on YouTube, a fediverse version of YouTube that has a similar level and amount of content is impossible due to hosting costs. I have yet to see anyone willing to subsidize a fediverse version of YouTube.
Well that's because Mastodon has many shortcomings. Like the search sucks. It's hard to find people to follow without asking people for recommendations. Mastodon is scarcely a Twitter replacement; it feels like it was built to create extremely insular communities. Like Gab and Truth Social run on Mastodon's software.
I think that article is mostly fearmongering.
Most people using Mastodon right now are not following mainstream people on their feeds - they are mostly following like-minded people who have made the switch from Twitter. If their server decides to federate with Meta, it will actually improve their experience because they can start following mainstream people from the comfort of their Mastodon feed. And if Meta decides to break ActivityPub (which I doubt), it will be back to the original status quo for most users.
And most mainstream people will not be signing up for Mastodon anyways, they will be signing up for Threads/Blue Sky.
Also FYI, be careful posting on Lemmy.ml communities - the people who run it are tankies and will brook no criticism of China or Russia, whether in the context of the war in Ukraine or not.
Federation is a double-edged sword. Right now, anyone can spin up a Lemmy instance and federate with most other instances by default. Moderation is very important, especially in a federated environment. Otherwise Nazis and tankies will troll and spam and destroy the community we are trying to build. Conservatism is ok, but extremism is not.
I don't think so. How would they kill the fediverse? Like there will still many communities that will not federate with Meta and still continue to operate as usual.
Umm... and most of the Lemmy instances are nearly as open? For example, Lemmy.ml bans:
I've seen the mods over there lay a heavy hand at anyone who tries to talk about or discuss these topics.
Also, for good reasons, most of the mainstream Lemmy instances do not have any of the "rauchy" communities that Reddit has.
Also, I want to add something: Beware of people fetishizing the fediverse as a cure-all to all or most of Big Tech and social media's problems. Remember, the technology is rarely ever the problem, the humans are. So long as humans remain really clever apes, you are not going to solve hate speech, spam, or outrage.
In fact, it seems like outrage about Reddit is currently driving the majority of engagement on Lemmy so far, even though it's been three weeks since the API protests. Just look at all of the most upvoted posts here. Discussions about how bad Reddit is currently and how Lemmy/fediverse will save everything and make everything good. On social media, moderation is still extremely important, and from the snark and trolling I've seen here and there, I hope the mod team doesn't fall behind and I hope that the Lemmy developers create better mod tools, because if Lemmy does blow up, expect bots to show up. Expect propaganda. Expect automated trolling. All this shit hit Reddit as it got more popular.