this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

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An evidence-based and critical analysis of the Fediverse decentralization promises (arxiv.org)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper examines the potential of the Fediverse, a federated network of social media and content platforms, to counter the centralization and dominance of commercial platforms on the social Web. We gather evidence from the technology powering the Fediverse (especially the ActivityPub protocol), current statistical data regarding Fediverse user distribution over instances, and the status of two older, similar, decentralized technologies: e-mail and the Web. Our findings suggest that Fediverse will face significant challenges in fulfilling its decentralization promises, potentially hindering its ability to positively impact the social Web on a large scale.

Some challenges mentioned in the paper:

  • Discoverability as there is no central or unified index
  • Complicated moderation efforts due to its decentralized nature
  • Interoperability between instances of different types (e.g., Lemmy and Funkwhale)
  • Concentration on a small number of large instances
  • The risk of commercial capture by Big Tech

What are your thoughts on this? And how could we make the Fediverse a better place for all to stay?

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I‘d say I‘ve fully embraced the fediverse for over a year, running half a dozen instances for many fediverse services.

The discoverability is indeed an issue for many services but the worst on peertube. It actually has great content but nobody sees it due to it not being properly suggested.

On lemmy vs reddit I can proudly say a lot of topics have great content and its not easy to run out of it if you subscribe to varied communities. One big problem is how spoiled the users of commercial socials are. The amount of people there is of course insane compared to here so someone used to heroine (x, facebook and reddit) will always feel withdrawal on lemmy, mastodon and such.

Imo, we need to keep making strong, compelling cases for the fediverse, against the corpoverse and increase our technical arsenal. Peertube needs clients for every platform and a central discovery (for example instances.joinpeertube.org).

We also need more straightforward installation procedures so more people can host their own. Of course non tech folks will have a hard time either way but a „fire and forget“ compose file or ansible playbook, ideally next to one another like with awesome selfhosted on github.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

heroine

Heroin :)

[–] mke 1 points 1 month ago

We also need more straightforward installation procedures so more people can host their own.

Hosting your own instance is not a fire and forget operation. The closest thing is single-user instances, but even then there are matters the admin must handle. Plus, there's little incentive for doing all this work.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

Discoverability is an issue that I identified quickly. One reason why artists mostly stick to X may very well be the small user base, as well the fractured nature of the fediverse making it hard to gain reach

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

Be great to get actual instance operators and admins to chime in on this. I already feel like a single aspect of that (Lemmy) is fantastic and I'd be satisfied if it was at its zenith already in terms of what it brought to the table

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's a reasonable MVP, but still needs major progress around discoverability.

I've tried dragging some friends in, and they're not opposed to leaving reddit, but the refrain is always 'topic x isn't there' or 'nobody is posting anything'.

You can easily pick the "wrong" community on a topic, and see zero content when there's another one full of posts but... how do you know which community on what server is the "right" one without finding a 3rd party tool that can provide metrics and you've lost most of the people who were interested at that point.

And, since Lemmy is quite a lot slower, it's also hard to tell if you're in the right place but nobody is posting or if you're in the wrong one and nobody is ever going to post anything, which kinda makes this require a lot more time than just picking the single subreddit that looks like what you're after.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Discovery should not be a function of the Fediverse itself. It should be a tool, app, or otherwise layer on top of a baseline. Discovery is an opinionated service offering—if it’s baked in, it’s not a good thing IMO.

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

I think that depends on your goals and concerns more than anything.

I was merely relating my anecdotal experience with about 10 people who would be Lemmy users, but bounced off so hard they're not even interested in considering it ever again because finding anything interesting was more effort than it was worth, so they've literally written off the whole Fediverse as a dumb idea for nerds.

I can't say I blame them because finding anything worth interacting with on Lemmy or the microblog platforms or whatever is worse than the commercial platforms, usually by design and, mostly, I don't disagree that killing the algorithmic feed is a good thing.

But, for something like Lemmy? It should be trivial to find out where people are talking about a topic you're interested in, and not require knowing someone who knows what tools are updated and current and accurate and how to use the tool and THEN how to take what the tool tells you and subscribe to a community since even that is obtuse and complex.

I think piefed's community grouping thing is a step in the right direction, but probably could go further with being able to find and share groups between instances.

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

I don't disagree that killing the algorithmic feed is a good thing.

I'm so torn on this. I've tried looking at Mastodon but the chronological feed is just not giving me what I want. Maybe I'm permanently ruined by algorithms. Firefish with its antennas sounded like an interesting compromise but that project turned messy and I don't really know where to go from there. Wait for the Iceshrimp.net code rewrite?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I actually have a Firefish instance I also admin, and with enough relays and antennas, I've stuffed together a feed of people that mostly post interesting stuff, with the occasional derail into politics.

It's not quite perfect, but I'm also fine with it being interesting but having an end and having to quit and go do something else over endless scrolling.

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

I don't know, getting off TikTok was probably good for me so maybe I shouldn't pursue this algorithmic feed diversion desire I have. I just have an itch sometimes.

Are you happy with Firefish in its current state or are you looking at any of the forks or rewrites?

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

It works perfectly fine for what I'm after, it's stable, my instance has been around for over a year with no issues, and Firefish still has a dev team that's stayed on top of fixes and security issues.

Right now I can't see ANY reason that could possibly make me nuke and re-do everything on different software since migrating accounts and data isn't exactly straightforward and breaks follows/followers still. Feels like it would be a huge waste of time given I can already scroll people posting about retro games and computers and shit.

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

That's fair. I remember Firefish had a bunch of drama a while back and the main Firefish.social instance died, but I'm glad it has a stable and active dev team now. Someone else I was talking about this with recommended the upcoming Iceshrimp .NET rewrite, but I don't know enough about these things to know the distinct advantages. Makes sense not to bother if migrating still breaks followers.

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

Yeah the developer and firefish.social admin team had some sort of breakdown and basically fell off the internet and shit died.

The Iceshrimp rewrite is theoretically great, but I've been in IT long enough that someone says "rewrite" I hear "might be useful in 3 or 4 years".

And yeah, migrating between platforms still basically doesn't happen with activitypub stuff and I'd be surprised if that ever really gets fixed in a timeline that matters.

(If you're interested, you're welcome to see if Firefish does the needful for you as my instance is open signups.)

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

I think if you're hosting your own instance you could theoretically migrate the whole instance and keep your followers, right? Though again, not relevant until a stable release and even then, if it works why change it.

Even though my "main" account would have died with firefish.social I think I actually still have a Calckey.world account kicking around somewhere from when I looked at Firefish last, but thanks for the offer!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

There's a server signature that's unique to the install.

You can kinda fake your way around it, but it still screws up federation and there's not an Approved(TM) way to migrate stuff around that.

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

I’ve tried dragging some friends in, and they’re not opposed to leaving reddit, but the refrain is always ‘topic x isn’t there’ or ‘nobody is posting anything’.

You can easily pick the “wrong” community on a topic, and see zero content when there’s another one full of posts but… how do you know which community on what server is the “right” one without finding a 3rd party tool that can provide metrics and you’ve lost most of the people who were interested at that point.

@[email protected] , our discussion earlier today 😄

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think its been interesting to watch. What has happened is that there is now a super large instance in Lemmy.world, and a handful of smaller ones with above a thousand users.

The promise of proper decentralization didn't really happen. There are hundreds of small instances but they are not self contained and completely depend on the larger ones to get content.

Defederation seems to be common since admins don't want to deal with moderating hostile conversations, which makes a lot of sense. But it also makes it a echo chamber to some degree. We see mostly memes and jokes instead of meaningful discussions. So it's great for a fun time but not so much more than that.

Still, I'm happy it's an alternative to reddit and those shitty services. I love that it's run by ordinary people and not tech companies. And no ads or tracking. All good stuff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I started on beehaw and moved here because they got too defederation-happy. I don't want to post on an antisocial network, if I want to be alone with my thoughts I won't go online at all. It's a valid choice for them to make but I believe in Lemmy because I want a non-corporate non-evasive Reddit, which kinda needs lots of different communities.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

We see mostly memes and jokes instead of meaningful discussions.

I blocked meme, some interesting conversations emerged.

can have those

Also the [email protected] threads bring more visibility to smaller active communities

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Re Concentration I'm not concerned that it is as of yet a problem. However I do think it is also a larger problem for Mastodon and other user-centric platforms than it is to Lemmy and other community-cetric platforms.

If a Mastodon user wants to leave their server there are migration pains. If your server makes a controversial change, you may have to migrate. As a follower if something goes wrong I have to remember that I was following Ada & Bob, but maybe Bob now goes by Bobby.

However as a Lemmy user I can just abandon my server and be done with it. If my server makes a controversial change, I can just leave. As a community follower can watch as Star Trek Memes becomes Risa, or Risa becomes Ten Forward. The names changed completely but it's easy to find my community again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If the server goes bust, the community is gone.

Remember lemmy.film 😔

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So the community (users) can move, but I just realized that when an instance shuts down the community (posts) limps on, preventing the community (posts) from actually dying and the community (users) from moving on.

For instance, if you asked me, a lemmy.world user about [email protected] I would see, https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

But if you ask a sh.itjust.works user they see, https://sh.itjust.works/c/[email protected]

And lemmy.ml users see, https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]

We all see different versions of the same community (posts).

I think https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4619 would fix this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

So the community (users) can move, but I just realized that when an instance shuts down the community (posts) limps on, preventing the community (posts) from actually dying and the community (users) from moving on.

Indeed. And it becomes a pain to contact the members of the now dead community as federation is broken. I've been there, it's really a pain.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Good to have a reality check, but this is still better than what we had before

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

While the researcher is someone with some really solid knowledge and experience I don't think he was fair in his analysis.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I see those challenges mostly affected and still affect e-mail and the Web and survived somehow so far, they are indeed not free from them, threats return from time to time when a Big Tech get a large quota: not like my opinion is important nor an expert one but I think the decentralisation philosophy is well beyond the fediverse only and its destiny is linked to it in the same way as other things.