first comment on lemmy

From kasirate@kbin.social

Lol. There's gonna be a lot of heads exploding when people realize what the fediverse is and how it works.

same, I created a kbin account. this is my first comment 👋

Federation means it’s almost meaningless which instance you register with, and as integration between instances and other Fediverse apps gets better it will just become more and more meaningless.

IMO, this couldn't be further from the truth. Different communities have different priorities, principles, and technical requirements, and will take different approaches to controversy. Some communities are low-profile and laid back. Others are magnets for abuse and may require additional moderation, and even technical changes, like disabling image embeds (as one example) to mitigate harassment. Some are filled with avid shitposters, while others insist on the utmost degree of civility. Some have advanced requirements for operational security. Some want broad access to the network, while other would prefer a quiet corner. Some might be focused on video and require an instance that can handle the additional bandwidth and storage requirements.

Who hosts your instance is important. The jurisdiction your instance is housed in is important. If a community requires special accommodations for accessibility or other reasons, that is important. If you need moderators / admins who understand your native language, that is important. If an instance wants to go above the technical level and do things like verify users (kinda like journa.host) that makes an important distinction from your typical instance.

In the beginning, we won't know who's trustworthy, but this is the Internet. There will be controversies, and we will see how various admins respond to these controversies. Over time, they will gain reputations, both good and bad. It is best if somebody who already has a good reputation, like a respected mod from another community is able to operate the new home for that community.

For now, it probably doesn't matter where you end up, but as time passes, it is good to keep an ear to the ground and see how things develop. Eventually you will find a solid niche. This is a problem even the fanciest join-xyz-fediservice website can't really solve, but it is meaningful.

it's like email. You need a server somewhere to hold your inbox. They should make an easy way to migrate your user to another instance, though.

It feels like user accounts need to be abstracted away from instances somehow. Federation means it’s almost meaningless which instance you register with, and as integration between instances and other Fediverse apps gets better it will just become more and more meaningless. It should be possible to just “Join Lemmy” and have the servers behind the scenes handle spreading the load. You should be able to login to Lemmy from Beehaw.org or Lemmy.ml or any other Lemmy instance. The way it works at the moment is kind of like content is global but accounts aren’t and it feels like it should be the other way around?

User accounts can be independent of anyone else's instance. You just have to host your own.

But it's always going to be much more convenient to register your account on someone else's instance, than to set up your own. Even if instance setup was made to be as effortless as possible, and single-user instances were made to be as lightweight as possible, say you download and run a single binary onto your computer that runs a lemmy instance and everything is automatic from there, most people still wouldn't want to do that.

The idea that you should be able to log in to your account from any instance is...less practical than you might think.

The technical reasons why are hard to boil down into an easy explanation. But the very short version is that everything comes with pros and cons. Doing it this way makes it a little less convenient for users, and a little harder to make a good UX for. Doing it another way could make it more convenient, at the cost of making it very easy for a bad actor to do things like post fake content under another user's name, or could add inconvenience somewhere else, like making it so that users have to manage a private key instead of or in addition to their username and password.

I do think there's room for improvement, but I think the overall idea of logging in and interacting with content specifically via the instance you're registered with is ultimately very unlikely to change.

Nah, read the AMA. He and Reddit (the company) in general are doubling down. I was hoping it was just anchoring (where the initial price for something is so ridiculously high, any other offer even if it's more than you should pay seems reasonable). But from his comments, and the Devs' responses, it's clear it's basically just a way to kill the API totally for users, I guess the only possible remaining use for the API is AI training. Tech companies would probably pay that much because it genuinely is worth it to them.

I joined vlemmy.net today .. I think it said there was 1 other user when I joined lol. No idea what I'm doing but so far it seems like I can see all the content from other instances as well.

I think a barrier to wide-spread adoption of lemmy is that for a regular joe, the instance system is a bit confusing. I'm seeing a lot of people comparing the instances to email servers, but I think something they're missing is that there are a few large email providers which most people default to (e.g. gmail, yahoo, etc.) and a bunch of smaller ones which people go to if they disagree with the policies of the larger ones (e.g. protonmail)

I think that if lemmy is to replace reddit as the most widely-used link aggregator, we need some kind of default server which is large enough that people feel comfortable with settling in on. That way user base growth isn't hindered by confusion. If they later decide that a smaller instance suits their needs better (whether that be the moderation practices or site reliability), they can uproot and move their account there.

This will mean that the 'most recommended' instance will get absolutely hammered with new registrations though. Some randomisation should be necessary.

It also has something Reddit has been losing. Which is the small town feel. More people now even migrate to discord from Reddit. There was a time when on Reddit I felt like real people interacted. Now it all feels astroturfed.

Also, if they are suppressing mentions via Reddit just mention it on discord

It is isnt it

Can you tell me more about the pros and cons of running your own instance? Why did you choose to do that? I'm new at this so I'm very intrigued.

That'll give me a use for my TrueNAS server that's for sure. It's got 24 cores 200gb of RAM and I basically use it exclusively for a NAS.

Now I just have to look into how to set it up.

Only that time nobody decided to leave.

Well, they did, but it was the r/FatPeopleHate folks who left. But they jumped ship to voat, which doesn't even exist anymore.

sorry it just has the best UI out of the one's i've tried, i didn't mean to kill it v-v

a month ago it was like around 400-500 online users, today is 2300

I looked around for an instance like a landing server and found lemm.ee. The admin advertises the intention of this instance to be something like a landing server, so maybe direct confused people to there and let them explore after settling in?