569
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
569 points (100.0% liked)
Selfhosted
52122 readers
4 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
No? The instance covers a certain geographic location, for example a city. So what you want is already included in that. Federation adds nearby city instances to the mix.
AFAIK all the major classified platforms (except ebay) are location limited very similar to the above.
I'm in the United States.
Can I join and see the city closest to me? Or search by distance from me?
Me, not the server. Because the descriptions sound like thats not the case.
You chose an instance that covers the geographic location you are interested in, for example your city. I don't get what is do hard to understand about that. Afaik Craigslist or what ever you call that US platform started out the same way.
So by server.
There are no online classifieds I know of that work like that.
All the ones I know work like that here in Europe, except ebay (and even they have country specific pages).
Craigslist, freecycle, Facebook market, offerup - they all go by user region, not server region.
I literally linked you the Craigslist FAQ above that shows that they have server specific locations, just like Flohmarkt.
I think youre misunderstanding that page - those are regions, they are not server specific. You aren't connecting to a different physical server hopping between 5 different cities across the United States (well you might be with CDNs but thats kind of besides the point).
They are designations - like an MQTT topic or a community here on Lemmy/piefed.
I can start a local community for my city here on anarchist.nexus, and a friend can create one for his local city in Canada. Its the same server, but the regions covered are different.
I can't post on a Mastodon instance with another instance account, only comment on people's posts. This is the same way Flohmarkt does federation.
I also can't create an community on Lemmy with an account from another instance.
Can you create a hashtag for australia with your account on a US server? Can you create a hashtag for France while living in Poland? Can you create a post with a hashtag for Romania while living in Scotland?
I can easily create a post for any location without requiring an account for that instance.
Hashtags are only search filters, nothing gets posted anywere.
And Lemmy is designed like that because it doesn't aim to be location specific, unlike classified ads pages where that is the design goal.
Please explain to me how I, as a user in the United States, can use flohmarkt, with the current servers available and online today.
You set up a server with the software that is available to you today 🤷 Don't hide behind self-inflicted learned helplessness to be a lazy capitalist consumer...
Ok, now you're just being an asshole rather than understanding why its a design problem.
We are absolutely done with this conversation now. Goodbye.
https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting/features/location
So what do you call this?
There aren't servers in each of those locations.
Its a designated region for users to make use of. User based, not server based.
What? That is 100% exactly like Flohmarkt works with server specific locations.
Maybe there is some miscommunication here.
Does the user determine their geographic region of themselves as a user, or is that determined by the server?
(Again, Craigslist works by the user picking a location, there is absolutely not a physical server at those locations)
You can chose your geographic location by chosing the instance that covers the geographic location you are interested in, just like you chose the location of the server in Craigslist.
Obviously the server is on the internet an can be physically hosted where ever 🙄
No, I can't.
Because as you just said, the server is limiting the region. Making it server and not user.
There is no server for my region (or continent), so its not something I can use without standing up my own server.
I would not consider that a good design. Its extremely limiting to adoption and expansion.
There is no server yet. Just like Craiglist doesn't have a server for any place outside of the US afaik. Flohmarkt is very new and apparently more popular in Europe otherwise it is the same.
I think you are confusing Flohmarkt with an online retailer market like Amazon or Alibaba.
Classified listings have always worked by being location specific, and that is their main appeal and why they are popular. Flohmarkt is copying that exact tried and true design and just expands it a bit with region based federation.
There shouldn't need to be is my point. Its an arbitrary limitation.
Thats a business decision, purely. They charge for certain types of postings.
Its really not though - there is no technical reason to lock a user to a region or business reason like with Craigslist. It was a design decision.
One that limits use and adoption.
I'm glad its working out well in Europe! I, as an american, can't use it without standing up a server and then being host to all of the United States (or North America? No idea).
Not "don't want to" but "can't".
All of my earlier examples are direct comparisons. I'm not confusing it with anything.
I just think it wasn't a well thought out design.
Not based on where the server is set to. Based on where the user or item is.
I would say they are copying hyper-localized newspaper classifieds, including the hyper-localized aspect, which caused newspaper classifieds to stop being used by the overwhelming majority of people when alternatives like Craigslist, eBay, and even Facebook market came about.
Tried, yes. True... Well, I'd have to disagree.
Good reply, I was coming to that conclusion based on the same response from them on my example of buying from another area. It is very odd that anyone would place such limits on functionality on an internet-bound platform.
I'm having trouble understanding if this person is representative of flohmarkt or not, but either way, I don't think they understand any of our questions or arguments.
And a federated one at that! Creating silos like this is... Counter intuitive.
They admin slrpnk.net, no idea of their involvement with flohmarkt.
I think its safe to say they don't understand or don't care about any concerns though, agreed.
It seems like on CL the city labels are mostly for human readable convenience and behind the scenes it's by distance. You can set a distance from any point:
This is correct.
You used to have to go by city/metro area only, but now you can do it by search area. That said, you can alter your metro area or search radius at any point.