this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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The fediverse is the way. I’m not smart enough to say if it’s the best option, but it’s a hell of a lot better than a profit driven monolith run by out of touch investors. Reddit won’t implode but it won’t be the same as it was even a week ago. This decentralized structure is what the internet wants to be.
The fediverse has one thing going for it that any other alternative lacks: a credible approach to dealing with the network effect. In isolation, it is very difficult to start an independent social media website. This becomes much, much easier when you have neighboring sites that you can interact with. Federation serves as a catalyst. I've been longing for the proliferation of open source social media for over 15 years. Nothing has changed the state of affairs more thoroughly than the introduction of federation.
this comment strikes home so much.
the depression I have felt watching the internet devolve into a swamp of corporate silos and ads has been physically tangible. a mass exodus to federated social is the revolution I hoped would happen 10 years ago.
its late, but the wound has been opened on the giant and its bleeding.
One way I'm looking at this opportunity is like email, anyone can set up an email server thanks to how it got established. So if this pans out and eventually we get funded hosts in the vein of Gmail and Hotmail, who spend money writing fancy UIs and on marketing, we still have a fundamental base where we can shuffle away from the big players and go set up our own servers.
I do hope to see some funded options come into this space, they can control/own their interface into the data, but they can't control/own the data.
as long as we are vigilant for the microsoft method of embrace, extend, extingush/enshittify we will be good.
I look forward to the day of Lemmy IE6 with custom activex features.
This comment triggered war flashbacks in me
How would that realistically happen on Lemmy?
Server costs, lawyers, management will add up eventually. Ads or other financial incentives will take part in this at some point. The biggest instance, which will have the most funding, could monopolize by defederating others. Though with future account portability it could be made impossible. As in if reddit was the instance, most communities and users would seamlessly move over to others. But right now the risk is real.
Beehaw just defederated lemmy.world and users have to either move with the bigger fediverse of lemmy.world or stay confined to their isolated instance.
Why did beehaw defederate?
Too few moderators, poor modding tools, no backchannel to original instance, overwhelming amount of users from big instance.
New to the fediverse, I notice I can still access my beehaw.org subs. Does defederating mean that users on that instance can't see out? Or does it just delist everything, but you can access other communities if you know the address?
if you are in an instance that was not defederated by beehaw, then nothing changes for you or them.
if you are on an instance that was defederated, then you see a snapshot of old behaw content, possibly updated content from beewaw, but beehaw wont get updates from your defederated instance. local interactions and other instances still federated with your instance are unaffected.
important to note that beehaw will likely refederate once the current wave dies down and more admin and mod tools are in place.
beehaw admins have the right to manage their instance as they see fit and beehaw users have the right to disagree and move to another instance if they choose (while still remaining on the lemmy network).
edit: words - they be hard sometimes.
Got it. Is there a way to move your account from instance to instance, or do you have to make a new account?
Unfortunately as of now you have to make a new one :(
Do you happen to know if that's something the devs are working towards? I assume it's possible bc Mastodon can and they're both based on AP. I think the ability to switch instances and preserve your history would be a big draw to people.
I particularly don't know about developments in this feature, but it's definitely a welcome one. Maybe having a local (or maybe on a registered email) periodic backup of your comments, upvotes, joined communities and saved topics, and being able to export and import it would be the most viable solution for instance hopping.
Damn... beehaw seem kinda "trigger happy" in defederating. Shame because I subscribed to a few communities there.
If they refederate, do we still keep the subscriptions? Or do we have to subscribe again to the communities?
I’m brand new to the fediverse concept so funded hosting hadn’t occurred to me. Yeah, let the big boys throw some money at it and we reap the benefits!
It's certainly the best option that currently exists at least.
It's either fediverse or nostr. But nostr is more twitter-like than reddit-like and is filled with cryptobros so no thanks no
Ah, so it’s terrible.
??? It's just a euphemism
What?
It's a fairly common name, like mailman. No need to pull out the sexism card
There's also a non-zero chance this is astroturfing by Reddit itself as part of Damage Control SOP.
(For that matter, this instance would seem more along the lines of a weaponized "backdraft", IMHO. A rather simple way to turn the subs against their mods to crank up the heat, eh?)