Pretty much everyone I see is on lemmy.ml. Why aren’t people moving to other instances? I see thisproblems on Matrix too.
from what I see, Lemmy is still too small to be a full “network”, it’s just a flagship instance with some satellite instances around it.
We need to help it grow in order for proper decentralised network to form.
But I don’t see many people promoting it. About a year ago I made a draft for Wikipedia article about Lemmy, but I did not find much to write about. Recently I checked how it is doing, and I saw that apparently people made some questionable additions to the draft and submitted it for review. Submission got rejected, reason being that Lemmy is not “notable” enough, as in, practically no independent information sources talk about it or even mention it. Of course I went to search the internet in hopes of proving this wrong, but I was not successful. Apparently promotion of Lemmy and rest of the Fediverse is something that is not being done as much as I would have wanted.
There should probably be some Fediverse Promoting Guide that would list effective means of spreading the word about what Fediverse is and why people should use it.
spoiler
Would someone please make a Fediverse Promoting Guide?
I signed up for this instance because:
- I align with its stated core interests (anti-capitalism, FOSS enthusiast, privacy enthusiast). Even if it wasn’t the biggest or the flagship, it would be the most suitable in that sense.
- It’s somewhat central, so when a new instance is added there’s less chance I’ll need a new account to post there
- It’s not likely to fall. In my past fediverse usage, I have built up a history on a semi-random instance only for it to shut down without notice, while others became neglected by their hosts and stayed out of date. PeerTube didn’t have account exporting settings so I lost what was there (luckily the raw videos were still on the hard drive).
- There’s an implication that the devs will have no problem running the instance, at least on a technical level, and (this is my opinion, it’s subjective, yes) they seemed reasonable when interacting with controversial communities like wolfballs.
However, as you can already see, I’m not limiting myself to posting on this instance. The Local/All filters in Communities do a nice job of making other instances conveniently accessible, but of course there aren’t many that are popular enough to rank highly on that list, or have a unique topic that I have an interest in.
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Yes. It was the 4th most popular instance.
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I don’t think it’s a good instance. I certainly don’t think it’s a good community, and I see that as an inevitable result of its existence (“left-wing” people looking to avoid reddit’s censorship have two large lemmy instances for their interests, so almost none will have a want or need to go to wolfballs to counter out the “right-wing” people who are looking to avoid reddit’s other censorship and don’t have a designated instance). Theoretically it could be neutral, but it’s userbase simply won’t be. That’s how ‘free-speech extremism’ works online; only a few idealists and a heap of people no-one cares to hear need those places, so they become its target audience.
I do think the instance is fine to have on that site.
The Lemmy software isn’t created as an exclusive space for Marxist-Leninism, or leftism (unlike the two largest instances). It’s a self-hostable solution. And I’d personally rather the kind of people who would choose to post there see that there’s a place that caters to their views over there rather than mistakenly think they need to create a place for themselves on the other instances, especially smaller ones more vulnerable to flooding.
Furthermore, the more developers (such as their admin) who feel welcome in the project and can act in a constructive way, the better the code gets. Their admin made a post saying they would upstream any useful features they develop
(although I haven’t checked to see if they did)they have, see replies.So what if it’s there? What’s the actual problem with it being listed there?
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I think there is a distinction. It’s not a ‘nazi instance’, it’s an instance with a couple of nazis using it and tolerated by it. The site ideology is best characterized as “US Libertarian”, the point being that the admin isn’t a Nazi, and their “pro-[personal] freedom” beliefs don’t conflict with the software project and its goal, even if they conflict with me. They can constructively collaborate for mutual benefit. We both hate “big tech” and want an alternative.
A ‘Nazi instance’ and/or a ‘pedophile instance’ is a
grayer areacut off, as their goals are more antagonistic and promoting harm by nature rather than incidentally. That’s where I see the benefits of collaboration less worth it and would have no issue rejecting them. And I recall the admins here saying something a little similar, that fascist instances wouldn’t be advertized there.It isn’t a comfortable decision, but I am able to put aside ideals to work against a massive common enemy. When I read “workers of the world, unite”, I realize it didn’t say “workers who I like, unite”. If a liberal or a US libertarian wants to join an environmental protest or action, good. If collaboration is a pragmatically effective way towards improving conditions and reaching goals, my idealism of purity isn’t helpful. Small FOSS projects need all the help they can get against a multi-national capitalist-funded website worth multiple billion dollars.
A ‘Nazi instance’ and/or a ‘pedophile instance’ is a grayer area
WTF, at some point you have to stand up against shit that is way wrong, and those types of instances are waaaaaay past the gray area.
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Damn, that new post is a brave move. I’m not surprised by the mini-essays you’re receiving from a few people.
It’s an interesting dilemma that I think explains a major difference in libertarian socialism and US libertarianism (‘right libertarians’) behaviors (warning: over-simplification!): extreme personal freedom can come at a cost to everyone’s collective freedom if the person/people want to oppress others. It’s hard to resolve that without compromising liberty, especially with more abstract things like speech which obviously have power but aren’t really comparable with physical violence, and especially in a culture like USA’s that ostensibly values individualism and freedom as core virtues. That’s the reason I’m surprised that post has a positive vote count.
Like I said in the post before, we’re in an unfortunate situation where most of the people who seek free speech are seeking it because they’re banned from other places, rather than by virtue of valuing freedom for all. Of course I don’t need to explain the massive banning of speech on commercial platforms like Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/YouTube that need to keep a good reputation in order to maximize profit (and are ultimately beholden to US government interests that aren’t really open to change). But then you have alt-platforms, like Gab, Parlor, (most/all of) Mastodon, lemmy.ml and similar who allow some alternative and even radical ideas but are definitely not free speech either, even the ones that use it as a marketing point.
So, unless someone values free speech without a personal stake (such as being constantly banned), they’re going to be the people those places reject, which in my experience on loosely-moderated forums is uncivil nazis, open pedophiles and ‘schizophrenics’ (non-technical term used for any obsessive people who spam forums with their obsession to the point were they disrupt conversation and aren’t welcome, usually with a rambling style seen in the writings of people with schizophrenia). Basically, the people who are anti-social to the point of mass rejection even among radical groups.
Which is unfortunate because by being one of the few places to allow neutral free speech, it’s guaranteed that place will mostly be used by the people who most of society don’t want to hear. It would be pretty nice to have some popular melting pots where everyone can be truly sincere and honest and civilly approach sensitive topics, but it’s pretty hard to get that when most people are comfortable where they are and don’t want to regularly see people arguing views they consider abhorrent and shocking.
And, on a second note, thank you for upstreaming code improvement! Having done that in other projects, I realize it’s an extra effort that often seems thankless, but it does feel good to see those changes improving more than just one site.
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I think it’s mainly because people lack a reason to do so.
I crosscomment here:
It could be weird but here[1] it seems that people who doesn’t understand federation at first use to associate the software name with the instance name.
You speak about “moving to Pixelfed” and they look and use Pixelfed.social at first.
I think that could also have happenned with Lemmy.
1- my environment
Well…my journey in the fediverse was different…
Began in an instance of Pleroma from one day to another (although for me Pleroma is the most decentralized platform of fediverse). And even used a lot an instance of pixelfed that enter to maintainable state, and then closed…and now I’m on the main. Even the owners of the pleroma instance I was on, told me, “learn to go to the biggest instances that probably would last much longer”
Which instances did you use?
There are several which were pretty stable and are still ongoing.
These were even small instances and not main ones.
Don t remember the pixelfed I used. Think it was pixfed or something like that. Pleroma was hatthieves
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I joined Lemmy before federation worked, which is why I joined the “flagship” instance. In addition, other instances are often more localised, theme-specific or very political (Lemmygrad, Wolfballs). And some instances are poorly guarded outposts via which the troll incursions are coming in. Mind you, the admins there are probably good people but it does do little good to the name of those instances (and they risk defederation). Maybe if Lemmy as a whole grows people might successfully spread, but for now most would stick to the bigger instances with the most topics and the best moderation.
Edit: I interpreted the question as specific to Lemmy, even though the topic is in /c/fediverse.
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If you look at the website and find one of the communities you can subscribe to it. To find get to that community do: lemmy.ml/c/[the community]@[the website URL]. For example: https://lemmy.ml/c/science@mander.xyz
Alternatively, I just figured out an easier way. Click the Join Lemmy button at the bottom of the page while on your signed in account. You can then go on the different servers while logged into your main account
I don’t think migration is possible, you would just have to make an alt account. Although mastodon does have this feature, so it is possible that it gets added one day
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I have not seen too much activity from your here since the last months.
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Aren’t most of the users from lemmygrad now? At any rate, for me lemmy feels like the best fit, there is no instance that better suits my interests, nor for my region.
lemmy.ml is still bigger overall, but lemmygrad is more active over the last month
Probably due to the sudden influx of GenZedong users after their subreddit got quarantined.
I don’t care to. I’m here to have a good time, learn different perspectives and have some debate.
If lemmy.ml goes down the toilet like Reddit and Ruqqus though, it’s a big +1 that it’s federated and I won’t have to ditch the platform
The idea that you’re missing out? Its probably a good issue to have when things are reasonably small. Regarding the issue of a music community on lemmy ml - should this be on lemmy.ml at all? The admins have disowned ‘flagship’ and have clearly stated the site to be leftist/foss and have also restricted logins. Music should be maintained elsewhere on a gen pop instance like cough sopuli.
When it comes to choosing an instance I think sopuli loses a bit in translation, but when I found out sopuli means *lemming * in english it made sense. Also visiting the site it looks like there are a lot of finnish posts = finnish only server when in reality these are posted to the /suomi finnish community. Long short thats why I set up https://sopuli.xyz/c/classicalbums there and will be posting to /c/music.
I think domain names matter to a point. One reason mastodon.art grew big I think is it declares its intent in the domain.
Lastly one of the strengths of landing on another instance if you are not interested in leftist/foss content it doesnt appear in your local timeline, but thanks to lemmys format you can easily subscribe/find/enage if you wish - better than landing on the wrong mastodon instance.
Yeah, without a doubt. Domain names are a key aspect of any instance, and their “quality” greatly influences the retention rate. At least that’s what I’ve always felt on the Fediverse. Instances with great domain names are more likely to get used than the others.
I created my first Lemmy accounts in two instances hosted by people near me. I’ve found some problems to interact with people in other instances, except for lemmy.ml.
It could be some federation lack between instances.I don’t know.
The maintenance, support and moderation of the instanc are also important to choose it for the daily use.
Finally I created an account in lemmy.ml and it’s the only one I’m using now.
There were some major bugs with federation that were fixed in Lemmy 0.16. If you tried other instances before that version, it would be worth giving it another try now.
Ok. Thank you. Let’s try again!
🤔
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Like @nutomic@lemmy.ml said, there were major issues with federation up until recently, but they have been completely resolved from what I can tell now.
Lemmy.ml was the first point of contact for me with Lemmy. I joined it. I liked it. I saw no reason to go looking for another instance.
What’s my incentive to move to another instance supposed to be? Because I can?
Only one I’d heard of tbh
For me this is the most appropriate instance as far as I can tell. The other instances mostly seem to be run for countries in which I do not live or for interests which I am not especially interested in
I use Beehaw some, but honestly I don’t think federation is all that useful for this kind of site vs self hostable regular link aggregator software. Do I really want lemmy.ml’s music community and 3 other instances’ music communities, all of which being held up by one or two posters each? Not really. And at the moment, lemmy.ml has the only community sizable enough for regular usage.
I think it’s alright. It removes the possibility for name squatting and monopolizing on a community name, any instance can make their own version if they don’t like the moderation. But I think some communities will tend to be more active over time than others. You could see a community about music on lemmy, but maybe the most active community for backpacking happens to be on another instance. As long as users are spread out, it will work this way.
edit: I think a good example is how communist/marxist communities are more active on lemmygrad. It helps if an instance is tailored to a particular topic, like mander.xyz is for biology, collapse.cat is for climate change, etc
How to deal with duplicate communities within and across instances has been an ongoing concern.
