this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
96 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37742 readers
500 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Most people access the Fediverse through one of the large instances: lemmy.world, kbin, or beehaw. New or small instances of Lemmy have no content by default, and can most easily get content by linking to larger Lemmy instances. This is done manually one "Community" at a time (I spent 15 minutes doing this yesterday). Meanwhile, on larger instances, content naturally aggregates as a result of the sheer number of users. Because people generally want a user experience similar to Reddit, I think it's inevitable that most user activity will be concentrated in one or two instances. It is probable that these instances follow in the footsteps of Reddit- the cycle repeats.

I actually think the Fediverse is in the beginning the process of fragmenting into siloed smaller, centralized instances. Beehaw, which is on the list of top instances, just blacklisted everyone from lemmy.world. Each of the three largest instances now are working to be a standalone replacement for Reddit and are in direct competition with each other. It is possible that this fragmentation and instability? of Lemmy instances will kill the viability of Federated Reddit altogether, but hopefully not.

These are my main takeaways from my three days on the Fediverse. I will stick around to see if the Fediverse can sustain itself after the end of the Reddit blackouts.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] small44@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So if I'm interested in many topics I have to create an account on every singles instance?

[–] tet42@ka.tet42.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's not how Lemmy works. You just need an account on ONE instance. And then subscribe to all the communities that interest you, some may be local to your instance and some may be hosted on other instances.

[–] small44@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would I join an instance about music for example to end up subscribing to communities that have nothing to do with music?

[–] tet42@ka.tet42.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Of the themed instances that exist now, I'd be willing to bet that in addition to their local communities they host that they also subscribe to other communities that aren't strictly related to whatever theme they are going with.

For example, I'm sure the Star Trek instance also subscribes to the lemmy@lemmy.ml community so the admin can stay abreast of Lemmy news. And probably also follows other technology related communities as well.

I think most people would just want to gravitate to whatever they want to be identified with. There's nothing stopping you from joining a music themed instance and then adding some non-music subscriptions to your list. It doesn't force those subs on anyone else on the instance.

And if you don't want to be identified with any specific topic or community, you can always join Beehaw or Lemmy.world and subscribe to whatever you like piecemeal.

[–] Spzi@lemmy.click 1 points 1 year ago

Why would I join an instance about music

Maybe the user feels music is an important part of their identity and likes the idea to call a music instance their home. Or any other reason, doesn't have to have any reason, especially not a reason which is compelling to others.

to end up subscribing to communities that have nothing to do with music?

Maybe the same user still has other interests besides music and likes to follow those.

Or in summary: Why not? It's possible.

For different people, different criteria will influence their choice of home instance. Some may even choose to have several home instances. Other factors might be uptime, latency, defederation status, size, local communities, rules, ...

For most people, it does not matter much what their home instance is, which is just another possible explanation for registering on a music instance and subscribing to remote, non-music communities. Like how you can register to Microsoft services with a Gmail address.