this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Technology

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I don't see how Lemmy will fill the gap of Reddit - it's resulting in fragmentation (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by jon_010@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Perhaps I've misunderstood how Lemmy works, but from what I can tell Lemmy is resulting in fragmentation between communities. If I've got this wrong, or browsing Lemmy wrong, please correct me!

I'll try and explain this with an example comparison to Reddit.

As a reddit user I can go to /r/technology and see all posts from any user to the technology subreddit. I can interact with any posts and communicate with anyone on that subreddit.

In Lemmy, I understand that I can browse posts from other instances from Beehaw, for example I could check out /c/technology@slrpnk.net, /c/tech@lemmy.fmhy.ml, or many of the other technology communities from other instances, but I can't just open up /c/technology in Beehaw and have a single view across the technology community. There could be posts I'm interested in on the technology@slrpnk instance but I wouldn't know about it unless I specifically look at it, which adds up to a horrible experience of trying to see the latest tech news and conversation.

This adds up to a huge fragmentation across what was previously a single community.

Have I got this completely wrong?

Do you think this will change over time where one community on a specific instance will gain the market share and all others will evaporate away? And if it does, doesn't that just place us back in the reddit situation?

EDIT: commented a reply here: https://beehaw.org/comment/288898. Thanks for the discussion helping me understand what this is (and isnt!)

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[–] realcaseyrollins@kbin.projectsegfau.lt 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Eventually Lemmy will be split up into two sides like Mastodon has; the side that wants to be fragmented, broken, and blocks almost every instance, and the free side, that talks with everyone.

[–] sudoreboot@mander.xyz 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the free side, that talks with everyone

the side that talks at everyone and gets mad when people exercise their freedom from listening to everyone

[–] bartera@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You hold viewpoint A and claim that those that hold viewpoint B do it because they are mad because they don't get their way instead listening to the actual stated reason, such as OPs.

I think federation is absolutely interesting but this is definitely a consideration and pretending everyone that raises is "umad" or bad is not compelling. Communities online already have problems of "circlejerk" and extreme uniformity. This could easily foster that even more to a point where there's really no communities of significance. Just similar things to 20-100 people using a chat medium to share stuff.

[–] sudoreboot@mander.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

My comment was in response to the implication that people who exercise their right to not listen to everyone talking are using defederation as some sort of weapon to fulfil their chaotic, destructive agenda while free-speech instances are merely open to any and all interactions like exemplary participants in a civilised democratic society.

If you actually want to know what my perspective is, I just wrote about it: https://mander.xyz/post/739439

[–] conderoga@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I think this take makes the most sense. It seems like the totally free and open lemmy instances will do their best to re-create the Reddit that they came from. Other communities will aim for something more tight-knit (not unlike Discord servers). Both can co-exist, but it is hard to imagine the tight-knit ones taking much advantage of the federation features.