@ininewcrow
Who owns EMAIL?!? Its the same sort of question.. its a protocol to spread or propagate links and other things on the internet WITHOUT a centralized company able to control wat u see to en extent (hence differnect instance) (what you see ) i cant spell and dunt judge me too hrash.., btw does this show as edited?
Yes it shows as edited
This analogy should be the top comment. Fediverse services are like email services. They’re basically interchangeable. If your email service starts to suck, you get a new email address. It’s a huge pain to move all your old email, copy your contacts, set up redirections, and then change your contact info everywhere, but what’s the alternative? Are you not going to have an email address?
If ActivityPub services become the kind of de facto standard that email did, unless you’re a server admin the instances will fade into the background noise of the internet, just like your email server has. Once we establish the standards on how a server should be maintained and moderated, it will become easier to see and ban rogue operators, just the way we do with email spammers now.
Does anybody worry about the political leanings of their office Exchange365 administrator?
Well the main developers of lemmy and admins of lemmy.ml are communists, if I recall correctly.
But there are already far-right instances.
The answer basically boils down to "Nobody, however it is important to know who runs the largest instances, as they will wield a fair amount of influence"
It doesn't matter who the devs are because the code is open source. The beauty of the fediverse is that nobody controls it.
Open source just means that they're not doing stuff behind your back that you're not unaware of like collecting your data. I don't think that means that the mods of a specific instance can't arbitrarily ban users or delete comments and fuck with communities within their instance.
Open Source means I can take the code and deploy my own instance without permission from anyone.
You really need to seperate the development of Lemmy from administrating a Lemmy instance. The political views of the devs don't matter at all. You don't support these by using Lemmy.
It's just a protocol between servers. So no one? Who owns "English"?
Each instance can elect to federate or not federate with others.
So the question just goes down one level .... who owns the instance? It's an important question as it then determines what influence can occur with any instance or any owner or owners of an instance.
Yes, no one can own the English language but the language can only occur because each and everyone of us own the hardware because the hardware is built into our bodies.
A fediverse instance has to be run from some location and by some hardware ... so the question I still wonder about is ... who owns any one instance ... who owns or controls Lemmy.world? who owns and controls lemmy.ca
hello! i'm the current owner & admin of lemmy.ca.
Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?
i don't really consider myself very policital, but I have taken those "vote compass" things just to see where I would fall, and i typically lean left. not sure exactly what you mean by easily influenced, but I would hope that I'm not. I think of myself as fairly level-headed, and probably overly analytical about things, and I typically don't try and let my emotions get involved in my decision making.
I have to run but can answer more questions if you'd like. or i can maybe do an AMA later?
That's amazing that you responded ... that would never happen to any commercial social media service out there.
Thanks for that.
My concern is not so much what your personality or political leanings are ... to a degree, if any owner holds extreme views, it should be concerning.
My biggest concern is money and funds - where it comes from and where it goes.
The work you guys (owners of an instance) are doing is admirable but no one should expect you guys to provide any and all of these services for free. I am sure you are working hard and tirelessly to keep this instance working and maintained but it must take up a considerable amount of your time and energy. Which begs the question, how do you make your money? Do you have a separate job ... or do you make any money by running this instance? And also, what are your costs in being able to maintain this instance? Do you break even? Are you running a loss? Are you making a profit?
My questions are two fold because I would like to know if you are benefiting from this work ... and I would be the first to congratulate you on that.
The other side of that question is ... if you are suffering a loss ... shouldn't we be helping you with your work? We shouldn't be taking your work and energy for granted and expect you to work for free, pay for services for us who enjoy them. Even if you are able to pay for services, hardware and rentals ... we shouldn't expect you to work for free.
I know you have to maintain your own privacy but as users of your service, it would be nice to know what your situation is ... maybe you are independently wealthy and you don't care about money .. I don't know. Or maybe you have no money at all and you are barely getting by.
If you do need funds ... I would be more than willing to donate, subscribe or sign onto a subscription to keep this instance running.
Which begs the question, how do you make your money? Do you have a separate job … or do you make any money by running this instance? And also, what are your costs in being able to maintain this instance? Do you break even? Are you running a loss? Are you making a profit?
I currently have a day job not related to this at all. I'm a software developer by day. I currently accept donations that go towards the hosting of this instance. The users so far have been very generous, so we have enough to carry us for around 6 months (from what I remember), based on current usage. As long as we don't get any huge spikes in usage (and i'm likely talking about in the thousands of new users joining), we should be ok for a while. If donations slow down I will be able to maintain the instance on my own, but ideally i'm hoping it can run off donations. I will be as transparent as I can be about this instances financials, as I plan on doing a monthly (maybe every other month?) "State of the Instance" type post, that I've seen done on mastodon, and some other lemmy instances too.
My questions are two fold because I would like to know if you are benefiting from this work … and I would be the first to congratulate you on that.
I have no plans to ever profit from this. All donations will 100% go towards our hosting costs. If, for whatever reason, this instances changes owners, I will transfer whatever donations are left over to the new owner as well.
If you do need funds … I would be more than willing to donate, subscribe or sign onto a subscription to keep this instance running.
Thank you! You can see from the donation link above how much we currently have. As I said earlier, we've had quite a few generous donors, so I'll let that up to you! I'll be adding my hosting expenses into opencollective as well so that will be visible too.
Hopefully I've answered most of your questions? If there's anything I've missed or if you have other questions, let me know!
I'm not a rich man (I wish I were and I would just send more to you) but I've subscribed to a $5 month plan ... if all us users did the same, it would be more than enough to pay for the services you run and pay you for the work you do ... I honestly believe that we users have to learn that we need to directly pay the people who do the actual work of maintaining these open source social media systems ... even if it means that each user contributes a dollar a month, with thousands of users, it would all add up ... if we don't, we will eventually run into the same scenario of someone coming along to monetize it, commercialize it and sell it all along with our content.
I look forward to what you will with this instance ... keep up the good work, you sound like a good man who is working towards admirable goals.
that would never happen to any commercial social media service out there.
Actually it does. Lots of people used to talk to the dude who started Twitter and he would respond. Making "important" people accessible to randos like you or I was kind of the major benefit of the whole service, especially in the early days.
Likewise, I've personally had comment chains back and forth with /u/spez on Reddit on many occasions, and a few other notable admins, founders and CEOs too (keysersosa, aaronsw, yishan and kn0thing spring to mind) although they weren't necessarily CEO at the time.
That said, it certainly is nice when communities can stay small enough to still have regular interactions with each other, admins and users alike. And fediverse is designed to promote exactly that. These huge communities like lemmy.world and even lemmy.ca are sort of a sign we're not using it quite "right" and we're still following the "centralized" model, but that's okay they are serving an important role for now and will continue to serve an important role probably forever, but hopefully never too important, and it will always be possible to break out into smaller more specialized communities but still stay in touch with these bigger ones.
htpps:/lemmy.world is run by Ruud Schilders (@ruud@lemmy.world) and htpps://lemmy.ca is run by Andy Brandt (@smorks@lemmy.ca). That information literally took me a matter of seconds to google... there's no conspiracy. The deal is that literally anyone can spin up a server and fire up an instance. The answer is different for every instance (usually).
Your friends are stating the obvious - pretty much everything in the world is owned by someone, whether it's a Huffy Princess Bike or a message board server. The difference between Reddit and Lemmy is that Lemmy is open source.
If you don't trust lemmy.world and lemmy.ca for whatever reason, it's trivial for you to move on to another instance and continue using Lemmy on an instance that makes you feel more comfortable, and still get the Lemmy experience. Or as others have pointed out, spin up your own instance, but with blackjack and hookers, then you can defederate from whomever you wish. That's when the fun really begins (but by "fun" I mean tremendous workloads and tons of responsibility. And financial costs :p)
oh noooooooo I've been doxxed! 😂
I think it is important information to know ... Reddit was started by a small group of tech developers who then went on to sell their site to a large media corporation ... and for many years, everyone just hoped that the corporation would stay open and free for everyone forever.
The same concern should be made aware for us all here ... we can't expect these owners, moderators and instance owners to just pay for stuff, run them for free and we get to enjoy them for nothing. If owners start feeling the pinch of costs, funds, money and resources because their instance becomes too popular, eventually one of two things happen .... they either shut down / slow down / degrade ... or they start seeing monetary value to their work and think of selling it to someone or something for a profit.
As I said to many of my responses ... if I know of an owner or developer that needs money to keep these tools operating .. I would be more than willing to pay for something or help out financially in some way ... I'm not rich and neither are the majority of users on here, but maybe all of us together sending a bit of cash to the right people, we can keep these services from falling into corporate hands.
Difference is that Lemmy is open source, anyone can start the whole thing again if things go south. Reddit is closed source, only they can run it, and they definitely don't want to release the source because they are aiming to control the market and go to stock market.
I think the advantage here is that the average instance size can remain small and relevant to the individual users values without sacrificing the amount of content available in one spot. The owner of lemmy.world (for now) is easier to reach out to and share concerns with. You can't go directly to Spez or to Reddit's future shareholders with a problem in the same way you could with an instance's owner. It's the (im)perfect blend of old school bb forums and the mega platforms.
The biggest issue with the fediverese is the non-transferable nature of your profile. If that can be resolved, I'm all in. Afaik that is a planned feature for Lemmy in particular.
"you mean to tell me that different entities can communicate with each others without a ceo ? Preposterous !"
I own some of it.
Aha! .... I found an owner!
So there are kinda 3 answers to your question:
Who owns Lemmy? Nobody; it's FOSS
Who owns Lemmy.ca? Smorks
Who owns activitypub protocol? The world wide web consortium created it I believe, but it's an open standard and will likely evolve based on which organizations use it. In the same way as how HTML and HTTP have evolved over time alongside the growth of some of the largest applications that use those standards.
A key distinguishing feature of the fediverse is decentralization. There is no central authority that controls or determines what is acceptable as each instance is independent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
You can create your own instance or choose one from those that match your own affinities ✌
Running your own instance seems to be a common answer here ... that is probably correct but most of us do not have the time, the resources or the skill to do such things ... which is why we rely on others to run the instances and hope that they are accountable enough to the people they have allowed onto their instance.
Bottom line is ... whoever is running the instance ... yes the software is open and available ... the services are open and available .... but ...
The monetary costs are running / owning / renting hardware ... having the skill and training and knowledge to setup / run / maintain / update these systems on your own ... taking the time to maintain all this on your own .... and the costs only increase as your instance becomes more and more popular with more users accessing more and more content.
I will keep accessing the fediverse from an instance I've signed up for at lemmy.ca ... and I will support them because now I am starting to realize that the only way we can keep this new form of social media free and open is if we all step up and support those who volunteer their time and effort to run these systems for us who can't or don't want to.
Nobody owns the fediverse. It's just a network of networks that are interoperable.
Nobody owns Lemmy. It's just a type of Fediverse software that's maintained by @dessalines@lemmy.ml and @nutomic@lemmy.ml.
Your admins own your instance. You can find their names on the front page side-bar. For lemmy.ca it's @smorks and @crb. They're the ones who have the most control over your experience. It's best to get a feel for if their interests and values align with yours, and if you can trust them to help curate your experience. They may defederate from communities you may or may not dislike. They may remove users you may or may not find harmful. They may refuse to take such actions as well where you think it would be appropriate.
If they don't align with you, there's other instances you can join that may better align with you. Or you can even self-host if you have the technical ability and want a more custom experience.
Whoever is running the instance.
Lemmy, kbin, and mastodon all use activitypub to share content between instances. Each instance is run by a different person or group than the others.
The hardware depends, but usually is owned by a hosting company (cloud) or an independent operator.
The software is open source and isn't really owned by anyone.
Admins are whoever the server owner determines. I'm not sure how moderators are defined on Lemmy, though likely dealt with on a per-community basis.
Hardware: I personally own/operate my own instance, so I own the hardware. In case of just signing up for random instances, they own/operate the hardware or rent the hardware. This does bring up a lot of possibilities, so if you are concerned about such things consider running one for yourself/friends.
Software: The software is open source under the AGPL license, so it's free to use. It is copyright the original author(s) or organization that wrote it, who control which license is used.
Protocol: The protocol specification is ActivityPub which is separate of fediverse projects and a W3C specification. This means it's as safe as HTTP or other common web protocols in terms of ownership.
As for censorship, each instance can choose to block other instances they deem are inappropriate. So the system relies on each community making decisions about what is acceptable and isn't acceptable. There will be servers that have more fringe content, and these will likely have the least number of federated instances due to other users not wanting to participate in this content.
Ideally, the users of each instance will agree with the policies that instance has. If not, they can move to another instance that more closely aligns with their preferences. It's also important to respect the policies of other instances, as they are choosing to allow instances to communicate with their user base. If they see an instance as a threat to their instance, it's only natural to take action. Where this line is drawn is based on the instance admin and by extension the instance users. This will lead to a less connected network as a whole, but allows groups to exist without fear of being removed for their personal preferences. This is of course ignoring legal requirements, which will be a concern for most instance operators.
As for politics, large politically active groups will most likely have many instances that align with their politics. Once things get political, they can get murky fairly quick. Any instance admin could push their politics onto the instance, it's up to the users to decide if that is ok or not. The only way this would lead to censorship/control is in the case of centralization, where a small group of entities (or single entity) run the largest instances. This is the reason the fediverse is pushing back against Meta trying to join the fediverse in my opinion. It's up to the user base to strive for a decentralized system, and all the tools to do so are public and free (as in speech, it does have an economic cost). It's easier to just "join an instance", but with convenience comes a cost.
As I mentioned in my other replies on this thread ... I think it is important for anyone of us to know who the owners and operators are of the instance we use. It not only protects us users but it also keeps those owners and operators accountable to what they created and maintain.
The logic works the other way too ... users should understand that these services require funds and money in order to operate ... we can't just expect tech specialists and hobbyists and technology enthusiasts to just work for free .. they have to pay for hardware, they have to pay for rentals, they have to pay for services and most importantly they should be paid something for all their time, effort and expertise.
Nothing comes for free ... and when we take for granted all these free services and free work that are being done by anonymous people, eventually they will get tired of working so hard and they will drift towards a position of looking for money and in seeing monetary value to all the work they created, and then sell it to a corporation that can take advantage of it.
Which is why I find it important to know who the owners of my instance is ... and if I like them, I may want to send some funds their way to help support the work they do.
The software is open source. No one owns it.
Different instances are run by different people of varying political backgrounds.
Mastodon leans left mostly. Pleroma leans right mostly. Lemmy leans left and even has or had hard coded censorship baked into their software. Misskey is Japanese language mostly, or populated by weebs of all flavors.
Your experience will definitely depend on who’s running the server but the overall integrated platform can’t be shut down by any one person or group. You can always change servers or platforms and reconnect with people.
It had hard coded censorship. It got removed because it ran into the Scunthorpe problem and also was blocking certain nonenglish words that were slurs in english. I believe now there's a configurable file you can set for your own filter now.
its a cabal made up of the communists, GE, the catholic church, Saudi Aramco, and the royal family.
I feel like people are missing the question that is really being asked here.
The way I read the question is "How are the individual federated servers able to interact?"
I mean, there has to be some sort of system somewhere that helps the servers connect to each other. How does Lemmy.ca know that Lemmy.world exists? There must be some sort of authority that knows. There must be some sort of first step when a new instance appears that lets everyone know that the new server exists.
Unless it's like routers and routing tables but that only works because of the physical structure allowing it, a federated server isn't going to reach out to its nearest neighbor and see another federated server. When you start a new server, do you have to like... pick an existing federated server to... like... knock on the door of? Give them a pie and tell them that you're in the neighborhood now?
I don't know the answer to this question... But I like the pie idea.
Your knock on the door analogy is exactly right--when I started my instance, I had to search every community that I wanted to see directly by URL. Then my server would send a message to that community's server saying that I subscribed to that community. Now, every time a post is made at that community, it's server sends my server an update. If I post a comment to a community on lemmy.ca (like I am now), from my kbin instance (remy.city), and you are reading it from kbin.social, that means my server first saved my comment locally, then sent it to lemmy.ca, and lemmy.ca sent it to your kbin.social because you subscribed to the community. So in that case, lemmy.ca is the 'authority', and is responsible for sending updates out to subscribed parties.
There is no such thing for instances--each new instance has to manually make a connection to another (i.e. a user on the new instance must subscribe to something from another instance). I think the tools like fediverse.observer are reading comments or other activity from popular instances, and are then compiling a list of the instances they find by doing that. But there is no central server/authority that makes communication between instances possible. Each instance has to talk to each other instance for it to happen. It's a bit inefficient but is necessary for decentralized communication.
I mean, there has to be some sort of system somewhere that helps the servers connect to each other. How does Lemmy.ca know that Lemmy.world exists? There must be some sort of authority that knows. There must be some sort of first step when a new instance appears that lets everyone know that the new server exists.
There literally isn't. New servers do not automatically federate with each other. Someone on the new server needs to manually start following users or groups on existing servers just to to establish any kind of connection. And even then, people on the existing server won't know that any users or groups exist on the new one.
It takes conscious effort by users to create connections and start content flowing between fediverse websites. There's no central authority of any kind. If someone doesn't make those connections, a fediverse website is functionally a stand-alone social media website.
Yes, it's literally just like that. You have to announce to the fediverse you're open to federate with them and then they have the ability to defederate whenever they want.
Lemmy and Kbin are just open-source software that can be run on servers. To answer your question, in short, the community has the most influence over the fediverse.
Your friends sound like they don't know what free open source software is, or that anyone can launch a lemmy server of their own. Think of Reddit roughly like visiting a cafe, but they can change the hours and duration you stay with your friends, and how much your coffee costs. compared to Lemmy being you meet all your friends in a public park that is open 24/7 and they can invite others and nobody has a say who joins, determines the stay. But random strangers bring coffee because they want to share.
So from my understanding at least for kbin is that the software is open source and for kbin.social, ernest is paying for the server to run this instance and he is planning to get someone to help with the server while he works on the administration side. There are other instances run by other people and all the magazines seem to be backed up in one way or another in each instance so that if this instance dies, there is some parity? Not 100% sure on this last part so correct me if im wrong...
Welcome to lemmy.ca's c/main!
Since everyone on lemmy.ca gets subscribed here, this is the place to chat about the goings on at lemmy.ca, support-type items, suggestions, etc.
Announcements can be found at https://lemmy.ca/c/meta
For support related to this instance, use https://lemmy.ca/c/lemmy_ca_support