this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Technology

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Dispelling the myth of a universal "Lemmy" community, and discussion of what the fediverse really is (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Cipher@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Like many, when the recent defederation went down, I decided to create a couple other logins and see what the wider fediverse has had to say about it.

I've been, honestly, a bit surprised by the response. A huge portion of people seem to be misidentifying communities as belonging to "lemmy" as opposed to the instances that host them. I think a big portion of this seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this software is, and how it works.

For example, lemmy.world users are pissed at being de-federated because it excludes them from Beehaw communities. This outrage seems wholly placed in the concept that Beehaw's communities are "owned" by the wider fediverse. This is blatantly not how lemmy works. Each instance hosts a copy of federated instances' content for their users to peruse. The host (Beehaw in this example) remains being the source of truth for these communities. As the source of truth, Beehaw "owns" the affected communities, and it seems people have not realized that.

This also has wider implications for why one might want to de-federate with a wider array of instances. Lets say I have a server in a location that legally prohibits a certain type of pornography. If my users subscribe to other instances/communities that allow that illegal pornography, I (the server admin) may find myself in legal jeopardy because my instance now holds a copy of that content for my users.

Please keep this in mind as you enjoy your time using Lemmy. The decisions that you make affect the wider instance. As you travel the fediverse, please do so with the understanding that your interactions reflect this instance. More than anything, how can we spread this knowledge to a wider audience? How can we make the fediverse and how it works less confusing to people who aren't going to read technical documentation?

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[–] assbutt@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

Many ActivityPub services allow you to seamlessly transfer your profile from one instance to another. It even sends messages that let your followers update so they follow you at your new address. Moving profiles isn’t a big deal. It’s Ok if they join a big instance at first, and move later.

But do people know that? Not a rhetorical question, I only have direct experience with kbin and only a week's worth at that. I had only the very foggiest idea what all of this was when I came to kbin and signed up. I've learned a lot more since then, but I'm still brand new to this.

If I have no complaints with kbin, why would I be motivated to look for a new instance? Should I be looking anyway? What compelling reasons exist to shop around, as it were?

There are compelling reasons why new folks join big instances and it’s not definitely a bad thing

Seems like the natural progression of this sort of thing, no? Has enough time even passed to tell if this is a problem or not? This is a bit of an aside, but I feel like there's been a lot of doomposting the last few days about imagined future problems. Have we really had enough time to make any actionable observations?