I'm one of the people who has very recently tried Lemmy and decided to drop Reddit. Initially because I will no longer be able to use SyncForReddit, but now also because I just like the vibe a lot more here than Reddit.

I'm not a massively technical person, but I understood the broad concept of federation - different instances/servers that sync to form a big conversation/forum of sorts.

I heard a lot of people joining and saying positive things about lemmy.world, so I signed up there.....and that's it.

But, am I using it right? Is the idea to sign up in one place and use it to participate across the LemmyVerse/FediVerse? Or should I be seeking out lots of niche instances of interest?

I hear lemmy.world is the biggest instance. What if most people end up here, does that defeat the purpose? Is this inevitable?

You need a critical mass of users, so a quiet instance with few posts is not attractive. If I search for Xbox, there are lots of empty places or places with 3 posts. If there's one big one (often ends up being in lemmy.world) that's where I'm subscribing.

How are you using Lemmy, are you participating in a bunch of instances or just one?

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[–] Risk 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Sure, but I don't think beehaw's philosophy suits the fediverse very well. They want to create a safer space where discussion and disagreement is encouraged, but more closely policed. Which makes sense for a closed system - not one where "unpoliced" users can interact with your community. Otherwise you end up playing server whack-a-mole... exactly like beehaw has done.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think beehaw doesn't fit the fediverse, I do believe it doesn't fit every user.

As I understand it, they want to be a safe place for a very specific audience, that is, people afraid to be harassed for who they are, that could also include people with extreme social anxiety, that's why it's so heavily policed and they defederate from a lot of other instances.

It's like having a heavily moderated subreddit, you wouldn't say it doesn't fit reddit just because they don't accept contribution from everyone.

The purpose of the fediverse is to have things spread out so one or few nodes dying doesn't affect the entire system, it's also about avoiding corporate control, the same principles on which the internet was founded.

I don't think it means having to trust everyone or accepting everyone into your local group.

[–] Risk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The purpose of the fediverse is to have things that are spread out and can talk to each other, right?

My point was only beehaw trying to cultivate a safe space that is closely policed isn't easily compatible with that baked-in interaction with other spaces which they can't police. Unless they play server whack-a-mole.

And then once large instances are cut off because they contain too many users to police when they interact on beehaw.org - what's the point in being part of the fediverse? Why not just be any other type of link aggregating forum?

It would make a little more sense if you could defederate unilaterally (i.e. non beehaw members cannot post on beehaw, but beehaw members can go interact on other instances). But as far as I understand that's not how it works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

(i.e. non beehaw members cannot post on beehaw, but beehaw members can go interact on other instances). But as far as I understand that’s not how it works.

It depends, you believe that's not how it works because you're thinking of both sides defederating each other, but defederation is one-side.

For example, beehaw defederated from lemmy.world but lemmy.world didn't defederate from beehaw, so lemmy.world people cannot participate on beehaw but beehaw can participate on lemmy.world.

It's actually a bit more complicated than that, since lemmy.world people can still participate in beehaw discussions but only lemmy.world people would see those comment, I think also other instances that are not defederated can but I'm not sure about this.

[–] Risk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You sure about that? I'm pretty certain that unilateral defederation is not possible yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know about kbin but it's certainly possible on lemmy:

[–] Risk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah - what I meant by 'unilateral' is that beehaw defederating from .world is that .world users can't interact with beehaw communities, PLUS beehaw.org users can't interact with .world communities.

Unilateral defederation to me would mean the first case, but not the second.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But beehaw users can interact with .world communities if they want, it's .world users that wouldn't see it.

There's probably no purpose in doing that, but it is possible.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Otherwise you end up playing server whack-a-mole

That's always been a thing in the fediverse. Most instances have a rather large blacklist to block out stuff such as nazi subs and racist subs and worse.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Sure, but I don't think beehaw's philosophy suits the fediverse very well.

And what exactly is "fediverse philosophy" according to you? You should probably define that first before saying something like this and see if other people actually agree with it.

I think beehaw's policy is frankly the only one that makes sense for a fediverse - after all, the more freedom there is on the platform, the more work there has to be put in to maintain the high quality of content and users without getting overrun by trolls, extremists and bad faith actors. I wish other instances were as rigorous when it comes to moderation and user curation otherwise it's just a matter of time before this becomes more like 4chan than what it is rn.