this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Right, and for people who want that low defederation, lemm.ee is not just a good but a great option. Though for normies, it may be turning people away.
But as you said, what other options are there? Lemmy.cafe seems so perfect in so many ways. Like their welcome messages are actually helpful, e.g. pointing people to !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca, as opposed to e.g. "What is Lemmy.ml" that is just a broken link to nowhere, or Lemmy.World's Getting started guide that doesn't mention things such as cross-posting. But then again, normies especially wouldn't like it when/if the instance suddenly has to shut down for whatever reason... I get you there.
So who else defederates from the entirety of the big 3? (Btw lemmy.cafe defederates from almost nothing but these, and threads ofc, so still has e.g. NSFW and anime instances linked. And quokk.au likewise has only a single admin.) Or better yet allows custom user blocking? PieFed does, Tesseract on dubvee.org, and perhaps some apps (not sure which ones - and the trick is that some appear to at first glance, but it's merely the same Lemmy back-end blocking that doesn't block users, only communities). And I'm not clear about Mbin - I think not.
Moreover, nearly every instance other than Lemmy.world is having federation issues with lemmy.world right now. But we can't just keep sending people to lemmy.world bc it's the only one that always works for >80% of the content on the Fediverse? That would somewhat work, but be a purely short-term solution. Yet nothing else would work... e.g. I made a post from StarTrek.website to tenforward on lemmy.world and couldn't see the comments (or votes) that people made to it for at least 2-3 days. Eventually I responded from a third instance involved - discuss.online - but federation issues such as this tend to have a cooling effect in terms of shutting down conversations. This stuff is going to turn normies away as well, on top of the toxicity issues.
So there are problems with every instance. At least you get your choice of which issues you want to deal with:-). The toxicity issue though is particularly what has driven away 100% of the people that I've mentioned Lemmy to irl, so it seems to be the major one. Perhaps if not for it they might have joined Lemmy and then left it later, but as it is they refuse to even consider it bc they can't get past that. So THAT is the one that I think we need to focus on to get more people. At which point yeah, perhaps add Lemmy.cafe to the recommendation list? Alongside PieFed that allows custom user blocking of whatever instance you want - and I mean the good kind, blocking not just communities but all comments as well.
Perhaps the reason that people are mentioning the defederation issues is due to Mastodon's heavy fragmention and inability to really search for content outside of someone's initial chosen instance? (Though that feature seems to be coming "soon(TM)".) If so that would make a LOT of sense?! However, the difficulties faced by Lemmy are of a different sort. Not being able to search for content from any other instance is nowhere near the same as e.g. the Western world defederating from an instance that constantly mocks and disrespects everything that it does - and kinda vice versa btw bc there is much that the Western world does not respect about how the Eastern world (specifically Russia and China) does things as well, e.g. the extremely heavy-handed banning from all communities, and how the East is "not" doing genocide, fully and literally directly, even while the USA "is" (I mean it low-key is, but how does that justify the Ukrainian invasion or the Uyghur situation?!) - the whole "one rule for thee, an entirely different set of rules for me" thing is a real turn-off for people to remain in the Fediverse. So while I don't doubt that people are asking for instances that aren't defederated from anything, I do question whether that's truly what they want, especially "they" meaning the majority of normies. It's complicated bc some truly do want something like lemm.ee, while on the other hand I see some people leaving Lemm.ee wanting to go somewhere that defederates from at the very least Hexbear. It's one thing to foster and encourage STRONG diversity of opinions, but it's another to open the door to people who consistently argue in bad faith (and rarely if ever do not do such). The former makes dull conversations better, while the latter ends conversations entirely.
What do you mean? Having a quick test right now
It does not seem like "nearly every instance is having federating issues with LW right now".
It's always the same issues, there is no generalist instance that fits the bill:
You might have higher chances of convincing lemm.ee, lemmy.zip, lemmy.dbzer0.com, discuss.tchcs.de to defederate hexbear, than getting a small instance that does popular enough to enter the top 20
Or you can convince lemmy.cafe to get another admin, and get a bit more "professional" (a la lemmy.zip)
I covered the federation issues in my other comment.
PieFed allows users to decide their own personal defederations without needing to depend upon an instance admin for that.
Hopefully as the UI gets more developed, people will gravitate more to PieFed, or Sublinks.
If the worst were to happen (another Ernst/Kbin.social situation) then any instance with only a single admin is indeed vulnerable, as is any instance that remains federated with it due to the inevitable spam attacks that will come from it.
Though the issues with federation with lemmy.ml are also important too. See e.g. that recent discussion at https://lemm.ee/post/45248880, where the admins expressed a desire for OP to physically commit suicide, all based on an easily preventable misunderstanding about a situation that happened in a game. Just to underscore how ridiculous what we are talking about is, here is a mini run-down of the facts: one non-existent irl character kissed another non-existent irl character, who had been dating in the game for awhile btw, having reached a "hearts" level of 8 of 10 points so quite an established relationship showing mutual interest, whereupon the 2nd character had just given a bouquet of flowers to the 1st one, who then kissed the 2nd one in a surprised and pleased movement, which the ML admins described as "sexual assault" (mistakenly thinking that that did not happen until reaching 10 of 10 points), banned the OP, oh and in the process also told the OP kill themselves. This sounds like insane ranting on my part I know, but it all actually happened!?!?!?! And it's not even something that we need to hear second-hand stories of, it's all right there in the modlogs preserved for anyone who wants to see directly.
It is because of events such as that - which KEEP HAPPENING - that I have stopped recommending Lemmy to anyone. Though I would love to start recommending PieFed as its UI improves a bit - and I will be helping that process along by submitting loads of bug reports to their team!:-) In the meantime, perhaps the downsides of instances such as lemmy.cafe being run by a single administrator do not seem so bad? After all, lemmy.ml has an entire team of administrators - but that did not stop SagXD from losing their account there, suddenly and without warning. Nor macniel or any of the others that we keep hearing about happening. That is why we are saying that having a single admin is bad right - b/c it is vulnerable to go down without warning? Afaik, I've never heard that lemmy.ml has offered a warning first before smashing the entire instance-wide ban hammer, even against a mod of a community there. Nor, again even for a mod there, do they even so much as tell them that it happened. Or explain what the cryptic modlog messages mean, which look at first glance as if they pertain only to individual communities, leaving people confused and having to figure out on their own what happened?
So anyway which is worse: a community with a single admin, or one with a whole team that is unhinged and somehow even more likely to boot someone, and with a demonstrated pattern of doing exactly that whenever it suits them?
And then ofc hexbear is a whole other thing too - who wants to be actively bullied, like why would that be fun for most of us, especially normies? If someone REALLY wants to be exposed to thus, then okay I won't stop them, but it really does seem to me like it would be helpful to at least offer a WARNING to new users that it is likely to happen. Which afaik lemm.ee does not do. Maybe as you recommend lemm.ee you can attach such a warning?
Possibly something like: "if you want an instance that is connected all servers across the fediverse, such does not exist but the closest seems to be lemm.ee, although be warned that it federates with known multiple instances known to encourage trolling behaviors; otherwise lemmy.cafe seems quite welcoming although it is small and with only a single admin so is less stable than others."
As you say, nothing is perfect. All we can do is try to help manage and perhaps mitigate this absolute shit-storm. Thanks for all your efforts there:-).
You should probably bring us it to achieve
I do
https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/
The tricky aspect with lemmy.ml is that they host the most active open source communities. So recommending everyone to block them would probably make Lemmy as a whole appear hostile, as you need to choose between accessing open source communities and blocking a hostile instance.
To be fair, at this point in time, you might probably want to create a dedicated community to discuss this issue with the rest of the people (maybe !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works) and agree on a potential action plan.
I feel like we've had this conversation two or three times in the last few weeks, it's not really solving the core issue.
Here's such a conversation with an admin at sh.itjust.works if you are interested: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12051373, or with the mod of traditional_art@lemmy.ml https://discuss.online/post/12722075/11762479, and ofc there are many more. One conversation at a time, bringing up the logical points, condensing them, helping people know their options, etc.
Not... entirely, but yes an entire section dedicated to "hardcore tankies" helps!:-) I suppose that helps more for people brought in via Reddit, but not word-of-mouth recommendations, so if I am speaking of the latter then the burden is on me, and upon everyone else doing likewise, to "warn" their irl friends that they recommend to take a look at Lemmy. Which is why I am saying that it would be good to add automated labels. I think we are still waiting for a Lemmy upgrade though, that would allow for those? Or perhaps people are waiting specifically for 0.19.6 when Lemmy.World will upgrade, leading the way.
Lemmy.World naively might seem the most likely to attach a warning label to Lemmy.ml communities, seeing as e.g. they have defederated entirely from Hexbear.net, whereas so many other instances do not even do that much.
Though for myself, the longer this goes on the less faith I have that it will ever be fixed whilst remaining dependent upon the Lemmy.ml + lemmygrad.ml admins & devs to help accomplish the goals of bringing in more mainstream normies from the Western civilization that they so abhor and constantly ridicule. Why should they? They themselves do not want that. It is a harsh truth but we are on their platform, and that's that. We will receive what they deign to offer. Which is why I am trying now to help PieFed thrive, despite how far behind it is, and it would be great to see Sublinks arrive as well.
You keep asking questions though... so I kept answering them:-P. I feel like we got some addditional clarity on your only focusing on the top 20 instances.
Little by little, progress is made. This issue is not entirely solvable though, using current methods available to us - e.g. the issue you mentioned that the desires of users to avoid being bullied are at cross-purposes with being able to access particularly the FOSS content such as !firefox@lemmy.ml. I will say that "accessing open source communities" isn't terribly hard - you don't even need an account for that, though indeed lacking one would cut someone off from participating by asking questions, posting, replying, and voting. Which is why something like a "community label" holds such appeal to me, and even more approaches such as PieFed's ability to enact user-initated user-blocking of custom user-specified instances without the need for the approval of an entire admin team and thereby the support of an entire community. It thereby democracizes blocking, making it available to anyone who wants it, which I for one think is awesome!?:-) Though the UI needs some polish, so I will focus on submitting bug reports to help with that.
For me, writing things such as "many instances are having federation issues with LW' lacks nuance, and people less aware of the context could just read this with "well, the whole thing does not work anyway, I'll just quit this place", which is probably not the message we want to convey.
That's why I focus on the top 20, because that's where the vast majority of the userbase is, and in those instances, only aussie.zone really experiences federation issues due to LW size (pg.dev is a different issue, it's their own database that is corrupted)
That's probably the consensus among the community. But as we all know, there are only so many people interested in developing Lemmy alternatives.
About the lemm.ee vs lemmy.cafe choice for instance suggestion, would you like to open a thread on https://piefed.social/c/fedigrow@lemm.ee ? That way we can have more people voicing their opinions on the matter.
I started gathering some thoughts to make a post - I had intended !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca but it could be cross-posted, or whatever - about ways to block an instance. I got stuck with Mbin but finally have what I need there. The thing is: I lack the knowledge of which Lemmy apps will allow you to implement user blocks - and I mean the full defederation kind, not just the mere "community blocking" that does not block the comment replies of users from those instances. Do you know more about that? If you could give me a paragraph or table or link to point to or some such, then perhaps this weekend I could try to write that post.
No idea about that point specifically unfortunately. My idea was more to discuss the instance choice rather than the blocking.
At this point, the only way to implement blocking is to switch instances, it would seem. Or at least get an app, though that is the part that I know the least about. I switched instances myself specifically for this feature - and we've been saying how superb Discuss.Online is even, all the more notable for a smaller instance! - but I'm not sure how many others would think similarly. Still, they could be told that it's an option. Or perhaps !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca is almost dead at this point, with so few posts? Then again it's not the number that matters, if the content is relevant.