Asklemmy @lemmy.ml JohnWorks @sh.itjust.works 12 mo. ago

Do you think there's better ways to fediverse?

Personally I think that if there was like a central link/front end to access everything and then have each user be able to have a recommended list of instances/hosts to access would be a more user friendly solution and a better solution for search engines. I know the fediverse is about decentralization but having a central front end and decentralized back end seems easier for new users. And then for the back ended hosting aspect each host would be able to manually pick which instances or communities to host and mirror. I'd like to hear your ideas since I have no idea what I'm talking about.

22 comments

Give it time I would say. Nobody cares about not having a central mail index, because everyone is used to how email works.

Now with Lemmy we are changing the central approach of reddit to a decentralized one like email. It's not a big problem if you ask me, it's only that people don't like change. Still, I think it's crucial that we stay with the decentralized approach instead of creating the same problems we had with reddit/facebook/twitter and the likes.

We did it the wrong way nummerous times. This time, let's be patient and please do it the right way for once.

And don't forget that the big corporations are already trying to undermine the new approach. Look at meta and threads for example.
- Nobody cares about not having a central mail index
  
  Some mailing lists have an archive page. Could be useful.
  
  Sure and there are pages helping you find communities, but there isn't that one central instance that works as a frontend to all the decentralized content.
  
  I really wish to get a solution that builds of a free protocol, not on a single centrally managed instance of something that gives disproportional power to the instance hoster.
  
  I fucking love the idea of activity pub. Everything can talk to everything and offer different features for different requirements like forums, short messages or even video distribution.
  
  Internet, as much as anyone acts like it's not, is in its childs steps. We should really make sure in 100 years it's a communication tool for the masses, not another advertising platform.
  
  OSS and open protocols are so important for the future. Who cares if some people feel overwhelmed by adding an @instance to some handles?!
  
  Sorry for my bad English btw. ;)
- Yeah this is a good way of looking at it. The main reason I made this post was after seeing some more fediverse drama I kinda figured it sucks for large instances to have a lot of power with defeding from smaller ones to shut them down super easily. From what I understand it'd be like if Gmail prevented people from sending email to people on Hotmail or something.
And theeeen the centralized front end starts charging for API access and picking and choosing which communities to recommend based on corporate sponsors
- Hi it's me, your centralized front end. You can trust me.
  
  I "promise" I won't sell you access to [rich evil corporation here].
- Maybe the front end could also be hosted by everyone then it's just the link that stays the same then?
  
  You've just kicked the can down the road. What then when the centralized link repo charges for api access, and also drops links it doesn't like?
  
  When you try to go centralized, it's turtles all the way down. Something will have control that breaks the nature of being federated.
  
  Unless there's multiple link aggregators to choose from... but then that's what we already have!
Unless you physically own your hardware and connection, all of this is moot anyway.

Any time you're spinning up an instance on cloud-hosted solutions, you're by it's very nature putting everything on someone else's physical property.

This is an issue I wish was discussed more, because Federation helps ameliorate certain problems with the modern internet, but it doesn't address how much of the physical hardware and networking infrastructure is privately owned and operated.
- Seize the means of computation.
I hear,there's some people working on making it more p2p, that seems like a nice improvement.
- That would be interesting! Could have everyone who's using the fediverse be both a host and a user. Honestly sounds like a good idea the more I think about it although the only downside would be more data and battery use on mobile users.
I agree. There is a ton of functionality and UX that can’t be addressed on the backend because of the limitations of the architecture. Those limitations come with some very positive tradeoffs, but the hit to the users could be hidden behind client-based functionality.

Just as an example, it’s okay and part of the design that the same article could be posted to seven different instances. However, we then end up with users seeing the same article seven times, some of which will be having discussions and others which are completely ignored. A client could allow a user to decide to consolidate them all into a single post and read cross-instance integrated discussions. For posts from non-federated instances (for the primary instance for the client), they could mark them the same way they do deleted or removed tags now. You could even communicate to the user that the post came from a non-federated instance and give them the chance to retrieve it.

Basically, users should be allowed to create a news community that consolidates news.whatevers and merges duplicate posts.
Well, since you don't mention boundaries, it could be very different to todays platforms. For example every 'instance' is just the frontend/entrance to the same, decentral network that stores the data. Your username would work on every single one of them and it didn't really matter which one you picked.

We could also do away with the moderators and have it a democratic place. We could either all vote on decisions or delegate our power to other individuals and keep something like moderators/sheriffs but elect them democratically.
I feel like we need different ways to share and learn things about harmful posts and comments. Like, sure maybe your server aggregates the posts, and because you own the server you can remove or edit things if you really want to. But I should be able to say “this is objectively wrong in a dangerous way, and here’s proof” in a side channel that the server owner can’t block.

And for it to have any point at all, clients should be able to subscribe to feeds. Like, a science educator I respect can say “I trust this foundation that fights harmful disinformation” and I should be able to click a button and see their stuff. Without the server owner banning me for some weird reason.
- That's kinda why I figured if the people hosting could choose what instances/subs to host then thats the control they'd have but they wouldn't be able to remove or edit specific posts since that would be the job of the users/mods.
- Honestly, I've seen the Fediblock thing on Mastodon, and it's...pretty terrible. A whole lot of minority groups get targeted disproportionately by that stuff, especially by misinformation about their instances. The answer is really to leave instances if you disagree with moderation policies and the admins won't listen, and to join instances that are philosophically aligned with you, because unlike in a centralized/capitalist model, this actually works at cultivating a community that you can engage with in a healthy manner. If not, and you go with something like Fediblock/the one big blocklist site, you're just gonna end up with most instances that serve 2SLGBTQIA+ people getting blocked or having more harmful misinformation spread about them. Hell, if a lot of Lemmy had its way, anything but being capitalist and pro-USA would be banned.
  
  But also, a lot of clients can subscribe to feeds already. ActivityPub is pretty great at cross compatibility with Mastodon and the like. You just subscribe to someone who uses a microblogging platform based on ActivityPub and it'll show up in your feed.
  
  Really great ideas. I read up a bit on Fediblock and I think you’re absolutely right.
  
  If I could riff off of your ideas a bit: instance-blocking recommendation lists bundle an entire stack of things together:
  
  statements of fact or intent: this is wrong, this is right, this is insulting and harmful, this is insulting but not harmful if you can laugh at it
  
  value judgements about those statements: I care about this issue but not that issue, this wrong statement is easily disproven, that wrong statement takes paragraphs to disprove, etc.
  
  actions to take based on those value judgements: block, tag with a statement, link to an article, etc.
  
  With things bundled, the whole stack has to be a pretty close match for a user’s own values, or else there’s friction. The user can just tolerate the friction, maybe miss out on some content, or they can decide to switch to a whole new list.
  
  Suppose we could unbundle those from each other. Subscribe to the work of a group of volunteers that recommends safe defaults but lets you customize things when you encounter friction points.

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