Am I the only one who can’t get used to Fediverse?
I’m fairly new to the Fediverse, and I'd like to share my onboarding experience. Personally, I appreciate the concept of decentralization and the community-driven aspect of Fediverse. I’ve used Mastodon and Lemmy, based on ActivityPub, for a while:
I find it difficult to get all the updates I need on a particular instance, and except for a few very large instances, most others appear quite quiet and like the Internet ten years ago.
The content and style of each instance tend to be quite diverse. To find someone to follow, I must switch between different instances with lengthy domains.
Fediverse isn't truly decentralized; instances operate under the will of server owners, who can ban and remove content as they please.
These reasons prompted me to explore more decentralized networks, I mean truly decentralized networks, such as Nostr.
However, creating a Nostr account and saving the Recovery Phrases is challenging (I lost my first Nostr account due to the loss of Recovery Phrases). And generally speaking, the user experience on Nostr is much worse than Mastodon, full of scam and ads.
I believe people should leave Twitter due to shadowbans and robots and Facebook due to privacy concerns, but I'm struggling to choose a platform to migrate to. Each has its drawbacks, making it difficult to decide.
People complain about the algorithms on other social media but you can see here exactly why they have them.
Without them it becomes hard to get connected to things that interest you.
For Lemmy I've managed to build a decent feed by browsing all and subscribing to communities I like.
You just have to do the algorithms job now.
As for the big communities it's exactly what happened to the old internet. It used to be a large collection of individual sites but discovery was hard. So the front pages of the internet started popping up.
I expect the same thing will happen to the fediverse eventually. It's just a better user experience sadly.
Right, but the algorithms that other social media sites use are designed to drive engagement, NOT to help you find things you like.
They want you angry and/or scared and/or jealous so you post, rage argue.
I know it may feel worse, but less content, less clickbait is better for us and our mental health.
I didn't even realise how much raging I was doing on reddit. And for what? To argue with right wing dipshits or bots or trolls, so reddit's numbers can go up and they can sell more ads.
100 percent. I still use reddit but comment very infrequently. If I open a thread and see vile comments I leave, most times I don't open the comments at all. I am glad reddit bo longer has a strong hold over me.
Hot, Active, Time Sort, are open algorithms that we can see exactly how they work. Unlike closed social media algorithms which I think is the point that he is making.
What we actually need is topics/tags per community, so we can individually subscribe to anything "knitting" but block everything "sports" or whatever your interests are.
Everything has positives and negatives. It's up to you to evalute what you want and what you're willing to put up with.
On one end, traditional social media is totally centralized, controlled solely by the corpo. On the opposite, you have total decentralization like P2P networks for torrenting.
You pointed out the problems on one end, very little regulation of spam, scams, total decentralization is often very much isolationist.
To me, federation is the best of both worlds, and I'm willing to deal with some of the frustrations of that structure.
I personally enjoy some regional centralization like you get in the Fediverse, if you really don't like any instance's policies, you can spin up your own personal instance and federate with the instances you want.
For me, the unifying nature of the All-feed allows me to enjoy the specific content I am seeking while still being stationed in a specific instance that generally caters to my preferences.
I am not sure what isthc issue with (1)
I agree that you follow people or community, it's a bit more complicated to follow the global which is too fast and the local might be to slow but how is it different from main social media ? If you follow no person/community you won't find much content (well indeed tik tok has an amazeng algorithm)
The fediverse especiallà Mastodon/Firefish has a community large enough to be usable. May be not for a kid who want to spend 7h a day browsing tiktok but if you just want to see some post and comment there is already more than enough.
No idea about how crypto based platform fare. I tried lbry a while ago and never tried nostr
I would like that. I liked the internet ten years ago. I think today it's filled with yet more noise and lots of low-effort posts. But I don't know where Lemmy is headed. In August/September I was pretty active here and had lots of nice conversations and in the last few weeks I struggled a bit getting meaningful discussions going. And there seem to be a lot of posts where OP doesn't engage and just dumps a question. And people only reply to comments in order to point out mistakes.
I don't know your exactly problem. Maybe you're using Lemmy/Mastodon wrong?! If you mean there's not enough activity in niche interest communities, I agree...
each instance tend to be quite diverse. To find someone to follow, I must switch between different instances
I really like diversity, that's great. But why do you have to switch instances? The fediverse is supposed to be a connected network of instances. You should be able to do everything from everywhere, subscribe across instances and not needing to switch.
Fediverse isn’t truly decentralized; instances operate under the will of server owners
I think you confuse decentralized with anonymous / free speech / unmoderated platforms.
Federated means it consists of several independent servers that get interconnected. Each server has it's own autonomy, rules and people who make decisions. (Distributed is yet another term for something slightly different.) If you mean something where nothing gets moderated and no-one banned, I suppose there are platforms like it. But I haven't yet seen an unmoderated place I like. They are fun for trolls and shitposters for like 3 days, then they become a place for hate and scams, ads and crypto schemes. Mostly posted by bots. And everyone normal will leave the platform so it's just toxic people mixed with lots of bots. You can post something but the only thing you get as a response is someone writing 25-times the n-word and some crypto-scam bots posting unrelated ads.
So here, the will of server owners and moderators is what keeps this place running. Of course they don't always do the right thing. But still, we need them unless you have something different in mind. Maybe a better way to distribute power?
I think there's an issue with coupling on the fediverse. For instance, if I run a community, but I'm not happy with the current instance policies, I can't easily move it to a new insurance (while keeping the memberships). It's also tricky to migrate my account - and it will lose me posting and vote history, edit/delete rights, etc. Finally, if I want to participate in two servers that have defederated each other, I have to maintain two accounts, which is a terrible user experience.
True. That are some Lemmy specifics and I'd like Lemmy to improve. But Lemmy has so many other issues. Moderation tools, UI bugs, missing error messages, you often can't write ampersands because the markdown interpreter is a bit stupid, you can't mute instances... There are currently some 500 issues open for the frontend and 200 more for the backend. There are lots of things to do.
I think moving communities is a bit low priority. Yes, it would be an awesome feature, but rarely needed. Migrating accounts is something I'd definitely like to see implemented. Other federated platforms have this or at least a way to export your account and import it somewhere else. With varying degrees of how well subscriptions are migrated in the process.
The defederation is another issue specific to Lemmy. In my eyes, Lemmy wasn't quite ready for the inrush of people once the Reddit API thing happened. Some moderation features are still missing to this day. People created communities everywhere without intending to use them but just to claim the name and have moderator rights. Admins did some rushed decisions and were a bit trigger-happy with the 'defederation'-button. Security issues surfaced. And the lack of a feature that allows users to block instances or defend themselves against things like brigading, makes it necessary for the admins to step in. And the way Lemmy works, defederation is unnecessarily complicated and has lots of unwanted side-effects like posts and comments being visible to some people but not for others, depending on the triangle of your instance, the instance of the other user and the instance that is home to that community.
been on lemmy.world, accessing via voyager on ios. its basically identical to reddit from an end-user perspective. sure its janky sometimes and content doesn’t get refreshed as frequently as a website that has millions of daily active users but the content is generally more enjoyable and im getting just as much of a dopamine hit of infinite scrolling as i was back in the day, with significantly less annoyance on top.
I find Lemmy works pretty well for a decentralised network.
It is possible to see what everyone has been subscribed to when sorting by all, and so subscribe myself to it to get it in my subscription feed.
There are nice apps like Liftoff which can manage multiple accounts at the same time, and even view instances all feed without an account on them.
Mastodon on the other hand is a bit lackluster in comparison I'd say.
The subscription model is pretty had to start using as I need to either find # or people to subscribe to, and even subscribing to them. And even after doing that the posts aren't that interesting or feel empty due to no comments/likes/boost.
Maybe I subscribed to the wrong #, but I find Lemmy much more enticing than mastodon.
I find it difficult to get all the updates I need on a particular instance, and except for a few very large instances, most others appear quite quiet and like the Internet ten years ago.
About this particular problem, I see no reason to not join the largest instance in any case. Sheer discoverability of content is massively improved from sitting in the biggest pool, as I still have to subscribe to the communities I want to see.
Fediverse isn’t truly decentralized; instances operate under the will of server owners, who can ban and remove content as they please.
If everyone joined the largest instance, then the decentralized aspect would become kinda moot. That would give lots of power to the owner of that instance, almost like on centralized social media.
Of course, but for the user, there's signifcant upsides to doing that unless the underlying system can essentially make the barriers between instances invisible.
Now of course this is a Lemmy-specific thing. Reddit benefitted massively from stumbling into amazing commuities and discussions, and hence sitting in the largest pool is quite useful.
My advice is to join a cental hub in the network if you're interested in a very broad range of content, and a specialized hub if you have more particular interests. The relationship between for example lemmy.world and startrek.website is a great example.
I think a lot of the perceived complexity of the fediverse is that it's not just a social network, but a network of social networks. You'd want to start out on a node that reflects your interests; if that interest is merely "more content", make it a central one.
If you want to be on a tiny or self hosted Mastodon instance it might even make sense to build the base of your network on a central network hub first, and then migrate when you already have rooted yourself in the network.
Fediverse isn’t truly decentralized; instances operate under the will of server owners, who can ban and remove content as they please.
That's called moderating and every platform will have moderators/admins to keep things regulated to some degree. That's just the way it goes. If we didn't have anyone or anything to moderate, people could submit content that would make an instance or site grounds to be removed.
What the Fediverse means by decentralized, is that there are multiple instances, not one giant singularity like Reddit is. Reddit is one big source that has microcommunities. Lemmy and KBin are places that have different servers, almost like going to a new site.
Give yourself time. Anything less than 3 months to get used to a platform is unrealistic. Humans don't like change, if after 3 months you still have issues, then fair shout
I’ve been on Mastodon for a year now and have no problem finding people to follow. Mostly through boosts by people I already know or by following hashtags. I don’t ever go to local or federated timelines. But my goal is not to have a constant stream of new content, so I’m not actively looking for people anymore. I want to open it 2-3 times a day for a few minutes and be able to see most of what happened.
Hashtags should be your main focus though. That’s how you find people and content of your interest.
I made accounts all over the place and settled on kbin. It federates with Mastodon as well as lemmy, you can follow hashtags and block instances or websites yourself, and I just find the interface way more intuitive.
I've been here for a few months and my feed is finally at the point where my needs are being met and I never run out of internet.
I was rooting for Kbin but their lack of official API at the beginning gave them a very late start. And now Artemis App is stale development when it was so promising. At this point I’ve worked on my Lemmy account and plan on staying here on the long run. Hoping some QOL updates come to Lemmy and the apps (community grouping, better hot algorithm…) to make it a perfect platform.
In the end it all depends on critical mass of users. The more users on a platform the better it will be. It’s still light on niche communities and themed communities feel spread thin across instances (where groups would really help) and big communities like Technology news and meme group overpower the small ones on the home page.
@LazaroFilm I know what you mean about overpowering. I actually block all the big meme communities. That way, viewing all and sorting by new is still inreresting and helps me discover communities.
Pick one you do like and just use that. I originally overthought the Fediverse and made accounts everywhere and thought I wanted all the things. Turns out it's perfectly fine to just use one and get content federated over from the others.
Also, most phone apps allow you to store credentials for multiple instances and quickly switch between them which is really handy.
I didn't know about Nostr, and honestly, thank you for letting me know. I find the idea behind the protocol to be pretty interesting, but wouldn't use it myself. I'm not keen on the idea of removing moderation altogether.
However, I do think that it's about time we rethink how moderation works on the Internet, and the fediverse should be a good place to start doing so. Perhaps my biggest gripe with the fediverse is that moderation works exactly the same as in corporate social media. Right now, moderators are picked under discretion of whatever the criteria of the admin are, and they are not subject to "the will of the people" so to speak. If a mod or admin acts in bad faith, the only recourse for the rest of the users is to leave, and maybe setup your own instance if you have the technical know-how. And while corporate media admins are somewhat constrained by investors, fediverse admins don't have to respond to anyone. Which is better than being bound by investors, but here, admins can and do take harsh decisions on a whim without having to justify anything to anyone. Which is honestly not a good thing.
So, while I imagined the fediverse as some network of interconnected small, self-managed communes, what we actually have is a network of petty fiefdoms, some of which do listen to their users even though they are under no obligation to do so, and others outright don't. I don't mean to say that centralized services are better at this, but in the end I'm having some of the same problems regarding arbitrariness of moderation and admin decisions here that I had on Reddit and Twitter.
I see the fediverse as the future of social media, but not in its current form. The way it currently works keeps us bound to drama and petty feuds between admins of instances, and that is unavoidable while large fedi platforms are hosted by single people or very small groups of people. Perhaps the way that this could be avoided would be by using a protocol that enforces decentralization of hosting, like Nostr does. I imagine it would work sort of like a torrent, where we are all sharing and hosting the instance or the communities we use, whether completely or only partially. Or perhaps an instance is made out of multiple relays which are hosted separately. This way, we wouldn't have issues such as admins unilaterally defederating instances because of a disagreement or stuff like that, since we'd all be admins in a way.
I wouldn't want to do away with moderation, but decisions such as who gets to be moderator, who gets to keep being moderator, and who we ban, fed with or defed from, is consulted via democratic process enforced by design. Otherwise, it's not going to be meaningfully different from centralized media once the big instances become big enough.
I think moderation can be solved by giving communities more freedom to merge or move instances. The "market" will correct overreaches in moderation on a free platform such as the fediverse. If the moderators on one community are overzealous or poorly moderate their community, then users will move to the same community on another instance. If instance admins are the same, the community can move to another instance.
Being able to migrate your community to a new instance without losing old content or subscribers would really help moderation stay in check.
I don't mean to be critical, but you complain about having to use multiple instances, then refer to Facebook and Twitter, and I can only assume you used Reddit or something similar, as well. So, two or three silos are two or three silos, whether it be those I listed or Lemmy, Mastodon and kbin (is that even the same as the other two? I don't know). Now, I can appreciate you wanting something more unified, but we didn't have that before and we're closer now.
OTOH, if you're talking multiple instances of a single fediverse app such as Lemmy, that's entirely up to you and where you decide to hang your hat. I pretty much just use one and it works well enough as long as defederation doesn't hit you.
Your comment about Lemmy not being decentralized because server owners can do what they want shows you have a very critical lack of both how Lemmy works and if what being decentralized means
People should leave Twitter, Facebook, etc. because they are Nazi bars. If you hang out at a Nazi bar, you're a Nazi. Case closed.
However, not migrating to any platform is a valid option. You don't have to do the Fediverse. You don't have to do Nostr. You don't have to do forums. You can just make a website for yourself with a blog, and communicating with others by email, XMPP instant messaging, or IRC.