I get the idea of instances, like you can make your own and this is good for privacy. But some lemmy instances are much more popular and this in fact makes it another Reddit. If there are separate instances for niche topics, why not make it another community inside a larger instance?
Making your own is actually bad for privacy. You can find out what communities I subscribe to by going to my instance and checking what communities there are. Because I’m the only user.
There are mostly no separate instances for topics, but for behavior. Beehaw for example (which you can’t see because they defederated lemmy.world) is all about people being nice and doesn’t even have downvotes. Administration and modding will culturally be harsher there. Programming.dev is niche focused, but that also comes with a culture, and also gives a place for people who want to separate work/pleasure.
Then there’s performance. Lemmy has issues, and especially with huge instances. If a single Lemmy instance had as many users as Reddit, no matter what money you throw at it, it would just die. But if you distribute all those people over many instances, giving just a few 100k or 1mil to every server, … it would still die, because federation is currently also a performance bottleneck, just not as much as many users at one place :D
And then you have the point of federation, not having power in the hands of just some very few people. Let’s say everyone is only on lemmy.world. Then some asshole, let’s call him Spez, offers the Admin(s?) 5 million in exchange for the server and shuts it down. BAM. Lemmy is now dead. Powermods are also a much bigger problem that way.
Also, you own the domain and server. That’s why I decided against setting up my own instance.
I don’t understand, owning the domain and server is the whole point for me.
From a privacy perspective. The domain and server are directly associated to you.
Yeah of course, but what is the point of hosting one for yourself if not that?
You said it yourself that owning an instance is bad for privacy. I just added that even if you set a username that can’t be traced to back you, you still own the domain and server, which compromises your privacy.
Yeah, I get that part. I was wondering why you’d then think about selfhosting one at all.
We don’t control what thoughts and ideas pop up in our heads! The possibility to host your own instance is something that the Fediverse offers. It’s highly advertised. So it’s natural that such things come to mind. You can’t approve or reject them without thinking.
I didn’t mean to insult you or anything, I just like to understand people. And this does indeed clear things up for me, thanks :)
edit: fixed autocorrect
You don’t seem to be getting an actual answer to your question, so I’ll try. IMO it’s the idea of being the master of your own domain and being in control; basically being an admin. If you want to be on an instance designed to your own preferences, like which instances it federates with and what communities you want to host, then the ultimate way to do it is to create and host your own instance.
I think you missed the start of the conversation ;) I host my own single-user instance on my own domain, and I was wondering why one (another user) would even think about selfhosting when the fact that it ties their lemmy identity to their server and domain made them not want to selfhost.
Some users just want to melt in to the crowd I guess.
I have my own domain and i love it. In fact, it’s going to become more and more important knowing how to self host things. Big tech is extreamly preditory.
Brilliant explanation.
Fuck spez.
Your profile is also public. An instance with few 10 subscribers erases much of the information.
Yes, but it doesn’t list your communities.
That sounds like an instance just for friends or a family, which is still worse for privacy (compared to a bigger one) in most cases. And probably even rarer than single-user instances.
Your profile contains your post history to many of your communities.
I’m pointing out that if you’re going to the trouble of hosting your own instance you could as well allow some convenient number of random users to register. It would erase most of your signal and help distribute the load and exposure to specific legal compartments.
Allowing randoms to register, would vastly increase your legal responsibility, from both a GDPR perspective, but also from a legal responsibility for content perspective. I don’t think a small privacy win makes that worth it.
That is true, but that is only those you post to, I have many communities I’m subscribed to but never posted to.
GDPR does not apply here. Content that people write on a forum does not count as PII. If you are not sending your users’s IP or email addresses to a third-party, you have nothing to worry about.
Right to be forgotten may well be relevant.
Also applies only to personal information and not to content generated by the users.