atomicpoet

See you’re trying to mince words here but the point indeed does stand because microblog and community based engagement are wildly different from each other, and have wildly different expectations and stipulations.

I run an Akkoma server, which is a fork of Pleroma – and I use a custom front end. I do not run it as a microblog but as a blog.

Using the power of Markdown, my posts have headings, bullet points, and emphasis.

And more importantly, I’m not limited to 500 characters.

I also have a Friendica account. Friendica is not a microblog but a Facebook-style macroblog. Just like Lemmy, it supports groups. It also supports galleries, events, and personal notes. It is not a microblog.

There is also Misskey. It has all those things but also cloud storage too.

I’m not mincing words. These are all services that have significantly diverged from Twitter-style microblogs to become something distinct and different. Many of these services have group functionality just like Lemmy. Hell, groups are on the road map for Mastodon – but Mastodon development is super slow, so some people on Mastodon use guppe as a bolt-on feature (not intuitive at all).

The only thing that sets Lemmy, Mbin, and Piefed apart is that they’re decidedly more Reddit-like than other services.

I don’t really know how relevant that is considering that the competing platforms aren’t federated to us.

What competing platforms are you talking about?

I never tried to say or imply it wasn’t an option, because it is, but for big servers that contain more of the pie it’s a bad idea.

And my point is, not necessarily. A server that proves toxic, no matter its size, eventually becomes defederated.

Personally, I don’t think lemmy.world is in danger of this at the moment. Ruud seems to be an upstanding guy. I don’t think he’ll go the way of lemmy.ml. But still, I never take anything for granted.

The Fediverse absolutely is a platform whether you like it or not, a decentralized platform but a platform nonetheless.

A “platform” implies that a singular entity runs things, and they have final say on what is or is not allowable. This is not the case with the Fediverse. I can built whatever want with it, set up a server as I wish, with a wildly different UI/UX.

Now it really seems like you are misrepresenting my words here, trying to spin me as some anti-defederation troll. When the reality is I said that defederation of large servers and large communities has consequences.

Of course it has consequences. Nobody is arguing that. But in the context of the original post (“I don’t like that a moderator uses lemmy.world, and I find that intolerable”), what’s reasonable is defederation.

These are Mastodon server

Nope, only one server I mentioned is a Mastodon server.

Now you seem to think that defederation of lemmy.ml is a big gotcha though they aren’t actually very large all instances considered

Actually, lemmy.world is not that big all things considered. It’s big for Lemmy, sure. But Lemmy isn’t that big at all.

Enter Beehaw.org. They defederated lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works back in 2023 during the first Reddit Migration.

Beehaw.org didn’t lose influence because they defederate the bigger servers. They lost influence because they took a heavy-handed approach to things. But if that’s how they want to run things—fine. No one owes anyone else federation.

This is kind of a stupid argument because if platforms or communities don’t have any people in them creating content or replying, or voting, they don’t really function at all as a social platform.

This is not a “platform”. It’s a software distribution for an open protocol. And how people choose to use that protocol is up to them.

If you want to federate with everyone, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too. No one is putting a gun to your head and telling you who or what to associate with.

But the fact is, defederation is an option. It’s always an option.

The fact is that in the fediverse any server that has a significant IS to big to block, else userbase and interaction will suffer.

The second biggest Mastodon server is near universally defederated.

The biggest Pleroma server is also universally defederated.

You probably don’t know what these servers are, and that’s a good thing because the actual fact is defederating them improves the user experience for everyone else.

To say this isn’t the case is to spread misinformation, as people who follow such advice will notice they have a much poorer Fediverse experience.

Until July 2023, the biggest Lemmy server was lemmy.ml. It has now found itself defederated by many servers. If lemmy.ml was too big to defederate, how did it find itself defederated?

The myth of “big server = undefederatable”—that is misinformation. Big servers find themselves defederated all the time. See also: Gab.

Assuming good-faith effort, don’t you think it’s reasonable to publicly call out disingenuous, trollish behavior, especially with that sublemmy being one of the biggest ones across the FV?

Not at all. Trolls can be vindictive and litigious. Call-outs can result in swattings or long drawn out lawsuits.

The best way to deal with trolls is to quarantine them. That is, minimize their reach.

Consider that we don’t have the same mechanisms across the FV as exist on Reddit, such that other means of correcting (evidently) terrible decisions (such as making a huge troll a mod on a big community) need to be explored at the very least. I.e., sometimes I think it doesn’t help in the end to run away from this kind of problem, and none of us should really want LW to drift towards an abomination such as HexBear, right?

I assume that all servers can be compromised – even the “good” ones. Which is why you should always consider an escape hatch. And federation itself is that escape hatch.

LW is not so big that it is immune to defederation. It’s not even among the top 10 servers on the Social Web either by MAUs or total users. And you don’t even need a big server to be seen. I’m on a small server (atomicpoet.org), and from my experience, it’s a lot easier to be seen on the Fediverse when you run things yourself.

But “bigness” is also a reason to build more Fediverse servers and redundant communities that exist on those other servers.

Let’s be real. What OP really wants is for a certain moderator to not have power on a server she deems as influential. Thus, she’s trying to leverage peer pressure in order to make that happen.

But the moderator can join any server or create her own as well. So trying to remove her perceived influence is basically playing whack-a-mole, and because she herself doesn’t run any servers, peer pressure is an ineffective tool.

So if the moderator is that objectionable, the reasonable thing to do is either:

1. block the moderator
2. block all communities the moderator runs
3. block LW

If neither of these options have the desired results, then I’m sorry – that’s just life.

OP’s problem is with LW allowing a certain person they don’t like to become moderator of the server. They could block the user, but their issue is that the specific user has power in an LW community.

If OP doesn’t like that, and feels like that moderators presence is a non-negotiable, she has options.

I’m not saying that everyone should block LW. I’m saying that if one has an ethical objection to LW, it’s on them to block the server. If they don’t want to block the server because of its size, then it’s also on them to either promote alternatives to LW or build your own.

No server on the Fediverse is too big for blocking.

OP, sounds like the solution for you is to join another server and block lemmy.world.

Of course it’s discouraging because any deviation from a norm requires change, and people by their nature hate change.

But I’ve been on the Fediverse for quite a few years, and nothing moves the needle like stubbornness.

Be the change. Start discussing those things, and others will eventually discuss it with you.

This was posted in December.

It’s similar to how Twitter users say Mastodon is “hard”. They want a 1:1 copy of Reddit or Twitter, and don’t want to learn new things because any kind of learning at all is unpleasant.

But that will change when—not if—the network effect of the social web becomes apparent.

Like Lemmy, I think the UI/UX of Mbin needs improvement. For example, just the other day, I tried to hide a specific community and was t able to easily discover how to do that.

This isn’t to say that Mbin is horrible. I’m using it right now. It just needs improvement.

Well, I know Lemmy, Mbin, and Piefed are imperfect but they will have to do.

As for me, I think I’ll indefinitely stop using Reddit except to keep r/Sizz on maintenance.

No more posting or commenting there.