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Addressing the Exponential Growth of Communities (lemmynsfw.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by OptimusPrime@lemmynsfw.com to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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Over the past few days, I've witnessed a remarkable surge in the number of communities on browse.feddit.de. What started with 2k communities quickly grew to 4k, and now it has reached an astonishing 8k. While this exponential growth signifies a thriving platform, it also brings forth challenges such as increased fragmentation and the emergence of echo chambers. To tackle these issues, I propose the implementation of a Cross-Instance Automatic Multireddit feature within Lemmy. This feature aims to consolidate posts from communities with similar topics across all federated instances into a centralized location. By doing so, we can mitigate community fragmentation, counter the formation of echo chambers, and ultimately foster stronger community engagement. I welcome any insights or recommendations regarding the optimal implementation of this feature to ensure its effectiveness and success.

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[-] nickpeirson@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

My instance is @lemmy.world, so this community/post is "local" to my instance, but in practice that's not super important.

I think that's generally true, however it's worth noting that what you can see from other (non-local) instances is dependent on the admin of your instance. They choose with other instances to federate (exchange data, e.g. communities, posts, comments, etc) with. If they choose not to federate with a specific instance, you won't see content from that instance.

There are already examples of this, but I don't know the details well enough to be confident in expanding on it.

[-] g0nz0li0@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Excellent point!

[-] nickpeirson@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

And as if to illustrate my point, Beehaw is no longer federated with Lemmy.world, so @mountainmycelium@beehaw.org won't be getting updates to this thread any more.

[-] g0nz0li0@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah I just read that news and thought of this comment trail! My description did not age well.

Hopefully this is just due to sudden and rapid uptake of users to the fediverse and not something that happens regular once things have settled down a little.

[-] nickpeirson@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it's not immediately obvious what the implications of an account on a particular instance are. I think over time it should become more obvious, for example meta data about instances on lemmy instance directory sites, so users know what they're signing up for. I also think things will settle down as communities find an instance that works for them, and tools improve for more granular control over federation.