If LW admins really care about the fediverse, they probably should close their registrations for the time being, otherwise every newbie will start joining LW because it is the biggest instance out there.
Comment on New to Lemmy. I have a couple of questions.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
Btw: It's good you signed up with a smaller instance. Ideally we want the users to spread across instances. So for example lemmy.world doesn't gain too much power (which it already has). So signing up on a different instance is a good thing for the Fediverse.
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
On the flipside, that also scares people away. They want to take part and immediately hit a barrier. The place where everyone mingles is closed off. They have to learn why that is and how the Fediverse is supposed to work, find some instance overview list and make a choice. Be angry for a short while until they understand the concept and realize it's for the better... I think that'd be detrimental to the cause. I rather live with the issues that come with big instances than with a complicate onboarding process. But I think people already complained about onboarding on the Fediverse in general. I think we need to solve that issue first and then we can go ahead and also add some mechanism to steer people towards a more even distribution. But I don't see anyone working on any of that in Lemmy.
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Naturally. This is the fediverse, if newbies don’t want to understand how it works even a little bit, they shouldn’t be here.
And lemmy.world won’t shrink. I said “for the time being”, not forever. If LW keeps growing rapidly without giving other instances a chance, then it won’t be any different than Reddit.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
I don't think I agree. The big difference in total users and monthly active users tells me lots of people abandon their accounts. As long as that policy is in place, it'll naturally shrink because people leave and there aren't any new users anymore to replace them. The only question is at what rate that's going to happen.
And I also don't agree with people who don't understand the Fediverse shouldn't be here... People should be here because it's a nice place and they have a good time engaging here. The exact technology behind it shouldn't matter too much. If at all.
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
There’s also no fix to the “onboarding problem”. That “problem” is the design of federation.
Mighty@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
What’s the danger there? (Just curious)
Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Same as reddit, every instance can choose to just start monetizing if they wish and even stop being part of the fediverse. If they get too big and decide to do it then it’ll be a blow to the content on all the fediverse. That’s why it’s better to spread out a bit more to avoid one big instance controlling the whole.
Blaze@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
Happy cake day
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 5 weeks ago
Aw, I thought we all agreed on beans day?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
First of all we had big instances die. Like feddit.de and kbin.social That always damages a big part of the network. If things were distributed more evenly, it'd be a smaller chunk of the fediverse that vanishes in such a case.
Then, being way bigger than the others gives someone disproportionately bigger power. If you're not having any issue with that, you might as well join Reddit. And the first big Lemmy instance (lemmy.ml) arguably does that, too. They'll act against you once you say something negative about communism, China, ... and that's not okay. Now we have lemmy.world as the bigges instance and it's way better. But still I've also read people complain about their moderation practices.
If we have some dominating entities, they'll disproportionately shape the tone, atmosphere and behaviour on the whole network. We might or might not want that.
In the end I think what actually happens should reflect the vision and the capabilities of the software. The Fediverse is supposed to be an interconnected network of instances. If the technology works as intended (and the vision behind the Fediverse is correct) I expect that to manifest in the way it actually grows. If it favors one or two large instances, we either might have an issue with the technology/software and it's not able to truly achieve it because of some shortcomings. Or the idea behind all of it might not be more a theoretical concept than viable in the real world.
Mighty@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
hey I really appreciate the insight and the explanation! you made me understand that concern and helped me learn :) thanks!
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
Thanks for the kind words 😊
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
If the LW admins decide to wrongfully ban someone, that person is banned from a lot of communities and from interacting with a lot of people. In a more equal network, each individual bad decision has a smaller effect on the whole