Huge book nerd, chemist, data analytics developer

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • the added context of the US map gives it some utility that a pie chart, which is just straight trash, does not have

    a bar graph or even just a table would convey similar information more precisely and usefully, but if your only goal is to give an intuitive sense of the land use (not writing policy or anything here) it suits






  • Absolutely. I don’t think it’s really sunk in generally that the Fediverse is intended to operate fundamentally differently from a centralized system. An instance selectively (de)federating is how it’s supposed to work.

    If the platform running as intended kills it, then there are big problems. I don’t think it will, but the user culture does have to change and incorporate knowledge of how the system works. We need to not have threads saying the Fediverse, a platform built on decentralization, needs to centralize as much as possible to survive.



  • I certainly agree it’s less than ideal, although I think a large part of that has to do with Lemmy not being fully mature as a software yet. In some future where development has progressed and some features ~ the ability to move instances as a user without creating a new account, for example ~ are available I think this would be easier to smooth out. The whole situation with one instance de-federating the other but not vice versa is also rather confusing (ultimately comprehensible, but still weird) and probably could use some more thought.

    That said I don’t think this is otherwise a fundamentally different occurrence than if the same thing happened in the future with two other relatively large communities. It’s a little flashier and (maybe, dependent on how the Fediverse develops) more central because of the newness, but otherwise… yeah. I think the Fediverse just needs to have the culture and tools to handle this kind of split, otherwise its design philosophy just doesn’t work.

    Lastly I would argue that this does not indicate fragility quite as much as you might suppose. The beehaw team could also have decided they didn’t have the resources to handle membership in the Fediverse and withdrawn entirely. This is a little more bend than break, from that perspective - from my section of the Fediverse I can currently still fully interact with beehaw.



  • I don’t know whether or not this was the right decision for beehaw, although I certainly sympathize with them having staffing and mod tool issues. Modding any forum is a thankless and tiring job, and I’m sure in it’s super early state Lemmy doesn’t exactly have a mature suite of tools to work with.

    I am very interested in the community reaction here though. There seems to be a shared assumption that instance creation in the Fediverse means an open exchange of users and content (outside of bad actor or extreme instances), and most instances should only be distributing technical burden and otherwise be almost just an aesthetic in the larger Fediverse.

    This despite the user philosophy in the Fediverse being ‘go where you want, interact with who your want’, and federation tools meaning that philosophy applies to instances as well. And if you want meaningful differences between communities and instances, this has to be so - there has to be a strong ability to self-regulate, up to and including the ability to defederate from incompatible instances.

    I think it’ll be very interesting to see how the Fediverse develops. A wider Fediverse composed of sets of federated instances which aren’t federated with other sets is possible. A largely open Fediverse with limited walled off instances is also possible. I know right now the latter is probably preferred to encourage growth, but in the long run? (these are not the only conceivable arrangements either, but this post is long enough already)