Abstract
This paper examines the potential of the Fediverse, a federated network of social media and content platforms, to counter the centralization and dominance of commercial platforms on the social Web. We gather evidence from the technology powering the Fediverse (especially the ActivityPub protocol), current statistical data regarding Fediverse user distribution over instances, and the status of two older, similar, decentralized technologies: e-mail and the Web. Our findings suggest that Fediverse will face significant challenges in fulfilling its decentralization promises, potentially hindering its ability to positively impact the social Web on a large scale.
Some challenges mentioned in the paper:
- Discoverability as there is no central or unified index
- Complicated moderation efforts due to its decentralized nature
- Interoperability between instances of different types (e.g., Lemmy and Funkwhale)
- Concentration on a small number of large instances
- The risk of commercial capture by Big Tech
What are your thoughts on this? And how could we make the Fediverse a better place for all to stay?
Re Concentration I’m not concerned that it is as of yet a problem. However I do think it is also a larger problem for Mastodon and other user-centric platforms than it is to Lemmy and other community-cetric platforms.
If a Mastodon user wants to leave their server there are migration pains. If your server makes a controversial change, you may have to migrate. As a follower if something goes wrong I have to remember that I was following Ada & Bob, but maybe Bob now goes by Bobby.
However as a Lemmy user I can just abandon my server and be done with it. If my server makes a controversial change, I can just leave. As a community follower can watch as Star Trek Memes becomes Risa, or Risa becomes Ten Forward. The names changed completely but it’s easy to find my community again.
If the server goes bust, the community is gone.
Remember lemmy.film 😔
So the community (users) can move, but I just realized that when an instance shuts down the community (posts) limps on, preventing the community (posts) from actually dying and the community (users) from moving on.
For instance, if you asked me, a lemmy.world user about [email protected] I would see, https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
But if you ask a sh.itjust.works user they see, https://sh.itjust.works/c/[email protected]
And lemmy.ml users see, https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]
We all see different versions of the same community (posts).
I think https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4619 would fix this.
So the community (users) can move, but I just realized that when an instance shuts down the community (posts) limps on, preventing the community (posts) from actually dying and the community (users) from moving on.
Indeed. And it becomes a pain to contact the members of the now dead community as federation is broken. I’ve been there, it’s really a pain.
Good to have a reality check, but this is still better than what we had before
I‘d say I‘ve fully embraced the fediverse for over a year, running half a dozen instances for many fediverse services.
The discoverability is indeed an issue for many services but the worst on peertube. It actually has great content but nobody sees it due to it not being properly suggested.
On lemmy vs reddit I can proudly say a lot of topics have great content and its not easy to run out of it if you subscribe to varied communities. One big problem is how spoiled the users of commercial socials are. The amount of people there is of course insane compared to here so someone used to heroine (x, facebook and reddit) will always feel withdrawal on lemmy, mastodon and such.
Imo, we need to keep making strong, compelling cases for the fediverse, against the corpoverse and increase our technical arsenal. Peertube needs clients for every platform and a central discovery (for example instances.joinpeertube.org).
We also need more straightforward installation procedures so more people can host their own. Of course non tech folks will have a hard time either way but a „fire and forget“ compose file or ansible playbook, ideally next to one another like with awesome selfhosted on github.
heroine
Heroin :)
Be great to get actual instance operators and admins to chime in on this. I already feel like a single aspect of that (Lemmy) is fantastic and I’d be satisfied if it was at its zenith already in terms of what it brought to the table
It’s a reasonable MVP, but still needs major progress around discoverability.
I’ve tried dragging some friends in, and they’re not opposed to leaving reddit, but the refrain is always ‘topic x isn’t there’ or ‘nobody is posting anything’.
You can easily pick the “wrong” community on a topic, and see zero content when there’s another one full of posts but… how do you know which community on what server is the “right” one without finding a 3rd party tool that can provide metrics and you’ve lost most of the people who were interested at that point.
And, since Lemmy is quite a lot slower, it’s also hard to tell if you’re in the right place but nobody is posting or if you’re in the wrong one and nobody is ever going to post anything, which kinda makes this require a lot more time than just picking the single subreddit that looks like what you’re after.
Discovery should not be a function of the Fediverse itself. It should be a tool, app, or otherwise layer on top of a baseline. Discovery is an opinionated service offering—if it’s baked in, it’s not a good thing IMO.
