Something I noticed a lot is that while the whole promise if the fediverse is decentralization, it’s not sustainable and very centralized at most.
In the last months I opened multiple accounts to use multiple fediverse services(Mastodon, Pleroma, Lemmy,… etc) and I chooses non-mainstream servers to test the decentralization of the fediverse.
Most of the servers that I opened account in to use got shutdown by the servers owners due to a lot of reasons( literally every server that got shutdown has it’s own specific reason, from financials to ideology and software).
From what I can see currently at least, the best approach to social media sites are either complete P2P(which comes with it’s own disadvantages, but it has a strong advantages to consider) or one centralized server.
I find it sustainable. I host my own instances. I can moderate as I seem fit.
Private forums have worked before. We have to relearn how not to have a corporate overlord without soul who moderates only based on law and advertiser friendliness.
But we also have to learn that we are not always welcome on other peoples instances and that’s okay. People host these instances and they have opinions. Since it’s the fediverse we can try to find a place where we fit in and there is a good chance we still get to talk to everyone else. Mastodon for example has a good way to move to another instance so it’s okay to start on a big instance. I’m sure lemmy will get that too some day.
Reminds me of the old BBS and Usenet days. Pros and cons to it, like anything else. I agree that it’s sustainable. Biggest issue right now is the lack of users and content in niche communities. But that problem is fixable.
If we hang in and keep talking, more folks can find us. We don’t need hundreds of millions to have something worthwhile here. I read and enjoy lemmy every day.
I disagree with you respectfully.
The day the fediverse begins to gain a significant amount of users( speaking in terms of tens of millions) is the day where every pitfall of the fediverse is going to make the experience very miserable(bad reliability, bad security and terrible privacy)
The reason why the fediverse is surviving right now is that it’s relatively very small (under 20 million accounts, with most users not being active at all in the fediverse) compared to the alternatives.
I get your point. More numbers brings more problems. But I think it also brings more solutions and more helpful hands, too. Growing pains, if you will.
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What will happen to your instance users if you decided to shutdown for whatever reason?
Users who want to join the fediverse right now are faced with 2 choices:
- Join one big server:
If the user chooses this option then he/she has to void the decentralization feature of the fediverse, which defeats the purpose of the whole thing.
- Join medium or small server:
If the user chooses this option, then he/she (from what I witnessed by myself and seen) will have to create a new account every 3-6 months.
All that and I did not speak about the whole security and privacy issues associated with using the fediverse.
As I said before in my humble opinion I think that the superior options here are:
- complete P2P.
- non-profit opensource centralized services.
If the user chooses this option, then he/she (from what I witnessed by myself and seen) will have to create a new account every 3-6 months.
I’m a member of an old school forum that has been running for 15 years. What is the difference with a Lemmy instance?
I don’t want to sound like a d*#k but, ask the admins who shutdown their servers.
The fediverse is P2P. You can host an instance only for yourself. Just like email.
Non Profit centralized will not solve your problem because they can still fail or you can get banned if you do something stupid.
To be fair, many large centralized platforms have shut down as well.
Omegle got shut down? MSN didn’t?
I predict it’ll be simmilar to email, a coupple of really big providers and then a long tail of small ones and selfhosters.
The problem is that the concept of “user of a site” is still a thing. There should just be “fediverse users”. Everything gets federated, why not user credentials? Then it would not matter if you register on site X or Y. It would be the same. What we need is a federated identity service. It would still be completely decentralized, dependent on no single server, and much more resilient to server shutdown, defederation, etc.
Edit: typos
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Did you read the whole post?
My point is not that someone will shut down the fediverse, my point is that small and medium instances got shutdown within a year, what that leave us with, is a centralized big instance that does not use the fediverse and holds so much power.(think Lemmy.world/lemmy.ml)
All this leads me to the conclusion that the superior options in this case as I keep saying is:
- Complete P2P.
- non-profit, opensource, centralized service/social media.
(BTW, one of the benefits of the centralized service is easier moderation.)
The problem sounds more like hobbyists trying something out and finding they don’t like it or can’t sustain it to make it bigger. It still costs money to host the servers and maintain a domain name. If the instance hosts can’t afford to keep it up or have no motivation to do so, of course they will eventually shut down, and I would expect many small instances to die after a few months because there’s no justification to keep spending money on hosting a thing barely anyone is using. Host your own if you want. Join a bigger one that actually has some kind of funding to keep going. Simply due to the fact that any random person with the time and resources can run their own servers to host the same software is what makes federated stuff resilient and nigh unkillable.
If it was centralized, if just that 1 thing died so too would the entire idea. Like putting all your eggs in one basket.
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You don’t want to understand my points or argue with good faith.
You just want to say fediverse is good any other option is bad and if I don’t agree then I should look elsewhere.
The good news for you is that I am actually going to move to another service in a month, the bad news is you will keep pretending that the fediverse is perfect till you see the day where everything I just said and you ignored, is proven to be valid and truthful.
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You’re making good points, and I want to read them but, the terrible/lack of punctuation makes it so I have to read everything twice to understand what you’re saying… I mean this purely as constructive criticism because you seem like an intelligent person with intelligent points to convey.
