It appears to me that the current state of Lemmy is similar to other platforms when they were smaller and more insular, and that insularity is somewhat protecting it.

I browse Lemmy, and it feels a bit like other platforms did back in 2009, before they became overwhelmed and enshitified.

If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar “landed gentry” moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.

If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    9011 days ago

    What you’re worried about is basically what federation was built to stop.

    If you don’t like the moderation of a community or other aspects, you or anyone else can make a new one on the same or a different instance, if you want.

    You can even make it “private” (not federate) to keep others from coming in and recreating the problem you just fled.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      23
      edit-2
      11 days ago

      To be optimistic, I’d hope the federation would be able to guard against deeper centralization like a more extreme .world or .ml, a la meta or whoever. There’s always space for grassroots instances, and I’m pretty sure there will always be someone out there running something or with enough interest to learn.

      • HobbitFoot
        link
        fedilink
        English
        2511 days ago

        It will still probably end up like email. There will be a working group, public or private, that defines minimum spam requirements. If you don’t comply, you’ll be defederated.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          1211 days ago

          You’re totally right. My optimism gets around that by hoping if it isn’t Lemmy, this federation, that federation, some other new initiative or tech, community will find a way to make itself. I guess my bigger worry is accessibility and notoriety/viability, but I think that will always come in time too. There are smart, willing people out there, and gathering is human instinct.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          210 days ago

          Except with email, the sender and receive have no choice. With Lemmy, both can pick an instance that isn’t relying on whitelist/blacklist rules.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        1311 days ago

        I agree with everything you said.

        I’m thinking/hoping that this new wave of Europeans going to European instances will help spread out the centralization of .world and .ml, now and it’ll hold into the future, but we’ll see.

        Hearing that several people have started country specific instances also gives me hope in this. With country/geographicly specific, topic specific, and just general instances, I think/hope it will lead to a more balanced user base.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          610 days ago

          Not just Europeans. I was talking to my roommate about how I deleted my Reddit accounts and fully committed to switching over to Lemmy, and his main concern was which instances were hosted in America so he could avoid them.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            310 days ago

            That’s awesome to hear.

            Hopefully, the newest reddit influx will be able to settle in without any/too many issues.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          311 days ago

          I just made another comment that elaborated my stance more too.

          I didn’t realize there was a trend of European users. I haven’t really thought about it, but Lemmy could use some sort of translation layer to facilitate multi-but-not-bilingual community. There’s a lot of German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers I’d probably love interacting with and would never know! For now I rely on bilingual non-English natives or the little French I remember and just lurk.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            611 days ago

            I don’t know how big the “wave” is but buyeuropean has jumped to the 11th(?) most popular/active community in the last week or so. The activity level reminds me of more niche subreddits, where you’d see a couple posts every hour through the day. Quite an increase over what it was at.

            I also recall seeing a chart of a German (?) instance that had linear growth and over the past week it went exponential. I doubt the exponential growth will last more than a couple weeks before going back to linear, but still cool to see.

          • Natanael
            link
            fedilink
            110 days ago

            Lemmy has language tags. Clients could offer integration with translation tools.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              110 days ago

              True, that might be more in scope for a client. I do like the idea of a system baked into the protocol that “just works”, but I also know nothing about activitypub lol

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      2
      edit-2
      10 days ago

      You can even make it “private” (not federate) to keep others from coming in and recreating the problem you just fled.

      So assuming you don’t like to only talk to yourself, how do you decide who to let into a private instance?

      And if you stay public, let’s say for argument’s sake, that the same thing that made you leave this first community immediately happens in the new instance, then what?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        310 days ago

        I would suggest starting the invite process with the people who were in the community before it went awry. You can also make a post about how you’re starting a new community in the old community and explain what will be different in the new community. I belive this happened recently with the “196” community becoming the “oneninetysix” community when the mods made decisions the users didn’t like.

        Being mod of the new community would allow for removal of unwanted users. Additionally, if you were admin of the instance, you could block other instances that had users that tended to not match your stance on issues.

        Hopefully, that helps.