31–40 of 201 posts
Smaller Lemmy instances feel more personal to me than subreddits did, and I think that is something people will find valuable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Email is often a good analogy for questions like these: Why do you pick one email service over the other? Maybe you think the domain is cool. Maybe you heard that they are reliable or have features that others don't. Maybe your university, company or other community you belong to runs its own service. Or you decide to host your own. O…
Except that with e-mail there are obvious good reasons, which basically boil down to whether you've centered your digital life around the Google, Microsoft, or Apple ecosystems (or never moved away from Yahoo, etc.). These are recognizably proven brands that aren't going to disappear next year, and which integrate with your other tools in ways that clearly provide benefit. And back in the day before webmail was a thi…
I offered the email analogy because that helped me to wrap my head around it when I was starting out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Email is often a good analogy for questions like these: Why do you pick one email service over the other? Maybe you think the domain is cool. Maybe you heard that they are reliable or have features that others don't. Maybe your university, company or other community you belong to runs its own service. Or you decide to host your own. O…
Except that with e-mail there are obvious good reasons, which basically boil down to whether you've centered your digital life around the Google, Microsoft, or Apple ecosystems (or never moved away from Yahoo, etc.). These are recognizably proven brands that aren't going to disappear next year, and which integrate with your other tools in ways that clearly provide benefit. And back in the day before webmail was a thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unfortunately, none of the fediverse seems to actually talk about this so without signing up and using an instance for a while to see what the moderation policies are like there's no way to know. Correct, but that's why you can actually migrate your account (including your followers!) from one instance another. The initial choice doesn't matter too much. Just migrate if you don't like it. That's why there isn't muc…
Can you migrate to another instance if yours becomes defederated?
I agree with the premise of the article. I’m a new Mastodon user trying to give the platform an honest shot, but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Why choose anything other than the pseudo-default Mastodon.social? If I’m forced to choose another server, is that choice actually meaningful? I feel like I’m randomly picking between Hachyderm and TechHub.io and others. One advantag…
>I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another Who runs the server? On what kind of funding, and how long can it last? Are you served intrusive ads? Are your a customer or a product for the people running this instance? How hard is it to run an instance yourself, and what happens if you suddenly post a video that attracts 10M views? So many questions, I know, that's too hard, gimme somethin…
I agree with the premise of the article. I’m a new Mastodon user trying to give the platform an honest shot, but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Why choose anything other than the pseudo-default Mastodon.social? If I’m forced to choose another server, is that choice actually meaningful? I feel like I’m randomly picking between Hachyderm and TechHub.io and others. One advantag…
> ... but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Email is often a good analogy for questions like these: Why do you pick one email service over the other? Maybe you think the domain is cool. Maybe you heard that they are reliable or have features that others don't. Maybe your university, company or other community you belong to runs its own service. Or you decide to host your own. O…
If you're thinking of federation in terms of "apps" yes it's doomed. Like with email, you have to think about it in terms of "service". The "gravitate to one provider" problem is there (as with gmail), but those who care can still have their own email services or use reasonable third parties. The tragedy of course is that very few people care.
Well since circa mid-2010s the Internet is apps. Or app-like centralized web sites (like Hacker News). People want to install a single “Lemmy” app on their phone that shows them all Lemmy content and lets them post to all instances, using a single account and a *simple* user interface. If Lemmy cannot provide that user experience (abstracting away the federation), then yes it is doomed.
There are several rust instances: https://lemmy.ml/c/rust, https://programming.dev/c/rust, https://lemmyrs.org/, and probably more. Why aren't they linked together, so that you see posts from one instance in another and can post and comment in one instance from an account on another? (I get there is e.g. https://lemmyrs.org/c/rust@lemmy.ml, but you should see and make posts from https://lemmy.ml/c/rust on the page https://lemmyrs.org, not a specific subpath).
Even better, why can't Rust lemmy link with rust kbin (https://kbin.social/m/rust) link with Rust discourse (https://users.rust-lang.org/) link with Rust Zulip (https://forge.rust-lang.org/platforms/zulip.html), so you can see and make posts on all instances from one?
This is what I initially thought the Fediverse was like. Right now it honestly just seems like many people running completely different servers and communities using the same software.
(This could even help with the decentralization aspect, because ideally the content and accounts would be replicated. So if one instance goes down, its content is still on connected instances, and possibily "ghost accounts" from that instance which let users there continue to post).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you post on many instances? Shouldn't you be posting on _your_ instance, that people you authorized can view?
You make posts on a particular community (through your home instance), and federation means all the other instances will mirror your post
Federation just means multiple independent servers/domains can talk to each other, such as with email or Matrix, without the need for central authority (other than for discovering each other).