Oof, that’s never fun. When I’m typing a long comment, I always spam copy it so that I can paste it back if I end up losing it. On PC, you can even use Windows+V to pull up a clipboard history, which has come in handy more than once.
Anywho, glad my reply was helpful! There are a lot of ways to interact with the content on the fediverse, and it seems like you’re well on your way to finding one that works best for you. Hope you enjoy it here!
I think there are a few culprits here.
Not everything wants to be an everything app. While everything in the fediverse uses ActivityPub, that doesn’t mean everything has to aim to be interoperable. I wrote a lengthy rant about this here, but essentially, it’s important to have things with a more specific, restricted purpose if we want the fediverse to be accessible. If someone just wants a thread aggreegator (i.e., just Reddit’s style of media), they shouldn’t be forced to grapple with microblogging features more fit for a Twitter-like. There are some platforms that aim to combine different media types—Kbin/Mbin has both thread aggregation and microblogging, and I’ve heard that Friendica tries to work well with everything. Even so, if someone wants federated Reddit, they should be able to have federated Reddit, and Lemmy aims to provide that. The same way that Pixelfed (an image-sharing platform like Instagram) doesn’t need to incorporate Reddit-style threads or Twitter-style microblogs, Lemmy doesn’t have to do it all.
Federation is still in the works. Something to keep in mind is that most of these platforms are early in development and still working out a lot of bugs. Kbin (the platform I use) is an obvious example due to its currently incredibly spotty microblog federation (tho I’ve heard that Mbin has implemented fixes to fare better in this regard). We have to be patient while all the kinks are worked out. As much as we all wish it didn’t, software development takes time—a lot of it.
Admins can sometimes be a bit trigger-happy with defederation. I don’t think the fediverse has quite grasped that defederation is essentially the nuclear bomb of instance moderation tools, cutting off interaction with all users of an instance. While there are times where this is justified (even preemptively, such with Threads imo), there are times where the nuke has been threatened over a quarrel between admins or disagreements about other defederations. Hopefully, this will cool down as the fediverse matures, but we’ll have to see how that pans out (especially with Threads federation growing ever nearer).
They’ve been mostly resolved in my experience. Kbin.social has been working great.
@interstellar is being developed for Android, and Lunar is working on Kbin support for iOS. Still a good ways to go tmk, but we’re getting there!
If I’m not free to join the Fediverse from the server of my choice, whether that’s mastodon.social or threads.net, is the Fediverse truly free?
Joining the fediverse is just a matter of using a platform that implements ActivityPub (the protocol that lets servers communicate with each other. If Threads implements ActivityPub, it’s part of the fediverse, and the people on Threads can interact without any instance that chooses to federate.
However, instances don’t have to federate with Threads. That’s part of the freedom of the fediverse. If an instance admin decides that they don’t want to deal with an influx of hate, don’t want most of the content their uses see to be from Meta, or just don’t want to federate with a for-profit company that has an awful track record, they should be able to defederate. If a user of that instance really wants to see Threads content, they should be able to move to an instance that lets them, but defederation doesn’t make the fediverse or ActivityPub less free.
You forgot Rule 1 of the fediverse: Kbin does not exist.
Let me try to explain a bit better.
Let’s take an instance called Instance A. Instance A is currently on the fediverse, which we’ll say is pretty evenly distributed. No instance has a large enough portion of users whereby others would have problems with activity loss if they defederated, which is good. If any instance starts doing things that Instance A doesn’t agree with, they can defederate, and less activity won’t be much of a concern with defederating from that single instance.
But now, let’s take Instance B. Instance B is planning to implement ActivityPub and join the fediverse, and when it does so, it will control 80% of the activity. In other words, it has as much activity as the rest of the fediverse combined.
However, Instance B isn’t particularly trustworthy. They don’t value the open web like the rest of the fediverse does, their moderation is extremely poor, and they haven’t cared for general well being in the past if it meant raising profits.
Here, Instance A and instances like it have two options: defederate immediately, or wait and see.
However, let’s say Instance B starts having moderation issues (e.g., widespread hate speech and more-than-usual spam) as everyone reasonably predicted. Instance A now wants to defederate.
In other words, if people on Instance A come to rely on Instance B for the activity they’re used to, way more people will join the camp of “I’m leaving if you defederate with Instance B” then if Instance A just defederated from the get-go.
Let’s take another example. Instance B wants to try to grab a bunch of users, so after some time, they stop federating at all.
In short, defederating immediately has much smaller consequences than trying to defederate when whoever you want to defederate from controls most of the activity that your users see.
That’s because I’m not fully sure on how people should act in respect to this Threads situation (which is what got me thinking about all of this in the first place). In the recent past, I was all “defederate defederate defederate defederate,” but now considering that multiple large platforms (like Flipboard) will be joining in, it’s less likely that one company will control a majority of activity. Of course, you don’t need a majority for there to be a problem — just a large enough portion for other instances to have issues defederating due to the amount of content they’d lose — but a mere large portion and not a supermajority may not be reason to defederate. Of course, there are other things to consider as well, and I’ll probably make yet another wall of text with my new thoughts on how instances should handle this in the near future. For now, this thread is for me to share the ideals that I think people on the fediverse should prioritize and for others to discuss what they think on the matter.
Of course, these platforms have only federated a handful of accounts, so the “chaos” right now is in the reaction and discourse. However, I don’t think it’s unjustified.
I’ve outlined my main issues with Threads federation here, and while I’m not as sold on preemptive defederation as I was when I made the post, I still find it reasonable to be concerned about about for-profit companies controlling a vast majority of the content, especially when (A) the users making that content may be unaware that they’re on the fediverse to begin with and (B) companies like Meta have a terrible track record and would have incentive to grab a ton of users by defederating if they’re able (though with so many other parties joining in, whether they’ll be able to pull something off like that is becoming more questionable, hence me being less sure of the need to defederate).
Nah, just some teen making very inefficient use of his time
Bad bad bad bad bad bad.
I firmly believe that no instance should harbor a large portion of activity on the fediverse, as it makes it difficult for other instances to defederate from them (as users there would lose a massive portion of the content that they see) and easy for them to take users from other instances by just ceasing to federate (as users on other instances would have to go to the large instance to keep the level of activity their used to). And that’s in regards to microblogs like on Mastodon.
With communities, it’d be so much worse.
If Reddit federates, and Lemmy/Kbin instances don’t defederate en masse, almost every active community will be on reddit.com. No reason to post on minecraft@lemmy.world with its 5 posts a week when Minecraft@reddit.com has millions of subscribers and thousands upon thousands of active users. Nearly all activity will go to subreddits, the exceptions being from people who have blocked Reddit or on communities pertaining to non-Reddit platforms/instances (e.g., kbinMeta@kbin.social). And if Reddit defederates after that, the threadiverse will be a ghost town. People are already (and justifiably) concerned that too many people and big communities are on lemmy.world. Just imagine Reddit coming in with all of its users.
If Reddit federates, it’s just gonna straight up be embrace and extinguish — no extend required.
Why the fuck do people even follow the site any more.
Unfortunately, that’s where all the content is. Things like this don’t bother a lot of people — for example, discussion about YT videos wasn’t something I ever used Reddit for — and as long as Reddit is the only platform providing what they’re interested in, they’re going to stay.
the comments on the satirical tiktok are absolutely hilarious
Do you plan to do this with Firefox?
Yes and it will be named Poopenfartenfox.
Breaking news: Fossil fuel company CEO who was somehow allowed to run an international climate change summit says that fossil fuels aren’t bad. Everyone is befuddled as to how such a thing could have happened.
Yeah, they made a complete 3D Snoo. You can see it here. I think it’s fine for the most part. It’s just that the open smile that they used for the logo just doesn’t work that well imo.
I think if most people genuinely liked these features, you’d see people say that more when they’re being discussed. What’s more likely (and what I see way more often) is the second thing you mentioned: that most people don’t really care and just go on with life. But if most users don’t care, it again begs the question of why waste time making these changes at all. It seems like it’s just to keep the UI design team busy more than anything.
No, Reddit, I think you also know why.
I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world, but who exactly did they think would prefer this? The logo it had was great — no need to change it.
At this point, I’m certain that platforms like Reddit and Discord just undergo random UI changes to keep the UI designers actually doing something.
You can’t help but appreciate the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance you gotta have to say, “God is perfect,” and “…for some reason He allows … bad things [to] happen.” How delusional can you be to say that raped children giving birth is part of some perfect, divine plan?
Social conservatism is a complete joke.