This is a big problem. It creates the illusion that /c/cats on one particular instance is the real /c/cats.
This is the root of re-centralization and it must be pulled out.
This is a big problem. It creates the illusion that /c/cats on one particular instance is the real /c/cats.
This is the root of re-centralization and it must be pulled out.
What are you on? So instances should have no say in regards to who they federate with? Also it sounds like you’re advocating for centralization… Why would we want that?
To me it sounds like they’re advocating for decentralization. Defederation means less traffic for an instance. If the majority of users are already on one instance, defederation could end it. I imagine most people want an instance where they can reach the most people. If they, understandably, pick the largest instance, it may not be long before it holds all the power, in terms of user acivity or count, and becomes the center.
I don’t understand the push back. Decentralization is Lemmy’s one trick. It is the entire thing that sets it apart.
The ideal would be a network of single user instances.
Multi users instances being an allowance for helping the technically challenged, but should be considered equivalent to toothbrush sharing.
All single user instance should have every /c/community. In fact, community is overselling it. They are really hashtags plus a sidebar.
I understand the push back and I don’t think it could ever reach the ideal for decentralization without sacrificing much of what it currently is. The average person will need an entry point or some general instance before moving to one that more fits their needs. What’s on the front page, determined entirely by federation and defederation, will be a person’s first impression. If it’s bad, that person may never be back, and growth will likely be slowed or stopped. If it’s a single-user instance, the chance that it’s a bad first impression becomes higher because a user will start without a blocklist.
What you are describing is a core mechanical artifact of how ActivityPub services work. Discovery across the network is difficult because it requires that your instance has information for you to discover. You can not “search the network” for content, you can only search your local instance for the content it has synced. In order to discover new content, you have to first know where to look. For instance, in Lemmy, that means going to the search page and typing !startrek@startrek.website, and clicking search. However, you first need to know that startrek.website is an existing Lemmy instance, but also that they have a StarTrek community (in this case, one would assume that would be true).
From there the overall content of your instance grows. The All feed is a representation of all content federated to your instance, which, will be shaped by the interests of the people on the instance you are a member of.
My understanding is, this works the way it does because it reduces the overall computational burden of the network. Content is periodically synced to instances where someone on that instance is interested in that content. The demands of consuming that content are then handled by the instance it was synced to, instead of say, 100s of instances all querying the data from the content origin every time someone on an instance wishes to view it. Then all the interactions from all the federated instances are pushed back to the origin instance so that it can be consolidated. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the general idea.
The reality is, ActivtyPub and the core ideology of the Fediverse are expressly anti-centralization. It will never be everything Twitter is, or everything Instagram is, or everything Reddit is, because it doesn’t want to be. That’s the whole point of Lemmy having Local, Subscribed, and All feeds. It lets you engage with the network at the scale you are interested in.
Now with that said, I do think there is a core issue with identity being tied to an instance, and it would be nice to find a way to divorce your identity from a service being hosted on an instance. That is a topic that has been discussed to death, and likely will have no movement on for a long time if ever.