this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Technology

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Perhaps I've misunderstood how Lemmy works, but from what I can tell Lemmy is resulting in fragmentation between communities. If I've got this wrong, or browsing Lemmy wrong, please correct me!

I'll try and explain this with an example comparison to Reddit.

As a reddit user I can go to /r/technology and see all posts from any user to the technology subreddit. I can interact with any posts and communicate with anyone on that subreddit.

In Lemmy, I understand that I can browse posts from other instances from Beehaw, for example I could check out /c/technology@slrpnk.net, /c/tech@lemmy.fmhy.ml, or many of the other technology communities from other instances, but I can't just open up /c/technology in Beehaw and have a single view across the technology community. There could be posts I'm interested in on the technology@slrpnk instance but I wouldn't know about it unless I specifically look at it, which adds up to a horrible experience of trying to see the latest tech news and conversation.

This adds up to a huge fragmentation across what was previously a single community.

Have I got this completely wrong?

Do you think this will change over time where one community on a specific instance will gain the market share and all others will evaporate away? And if it does, doesn't that just place us back in the reddit situation?

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[–] lmaydev@vlemmy.net 2 points 2 years ago

Those are two different communities. The same as they would be on Reddit. Literally different names.

Communities are hosted on one a synced with others. So technology will be the same on all servers as long as they haven't defederated each other.

[–] FVVS@l.lucitt.com 1 points 2 years ago

I just visit the top Lemmy instances, sort by local category, and follow the ones I like on each instance. It doesn't matter if I follow 4 different channels called !technology cause I'll just get them all in my feed. I'm following self hosting on both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world and I get posts from both. I couldn't care less where it comes from, as long as I'm following I'm good to go.

There are many sites and list of large Lemmy servers right now. Just check out beehaw, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, etc.

[–] WidowsFavoriteSon@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

When I grew up I could call local telephones without the area code. Now I can't. I managed.

[–] Deref@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Bluesky is working on a fix. They have a global identity system where you can move all your data (posts, likes, followers, blocks) to another instance if you get banned. The only thing that changes is your handle.

[–] jarfil@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Think of it like this:

  • Instances: define some ToS and Code of Conduct
  • Communities: define a theme and a sub-Code of Conduct

By having multiple instances, you aren't bound by a single ToS or Code of Conduct, you can pick whatever instance you want that matches the content you want to post to a community.

For example, the same "Technology" community could be on:

  • an instance directed to kids
  • an instance that allows visual examples of medical procedures
  • an instance that discusses weapons technology

Having the community limited to a single instance, would never allow the different discussions each combination of instance:topic would allow, even if the topic is technically the same in all cases.

Forcing communities from multiple instances to merge, would also break the ToS of some of them.

So the logical solution is for the user to decide which instance:communities they want to follow and participate in, respecting the particular ToS and Code of Conduct of each.

On Reddit, the r/Technology community needs to follow a single set of ToS and Code of a Conduct. If you try to discuss something that meets the topic but is not allowed, then you will get banned, possibly from all of Reddit.

[–] NOOBMASTER@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I think you are correct. But hey, at least this is better than the shitshow of reddit.

[–] CookieJarObserver@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago

Right now it might be a problem, but in the long term the communitys work it out themselves, reddit also had 10 different (general) memes subreddits.

As long as the instances are federated you can find their communitys pretty easily and participate there

[–] sourcerer@fosstodon.org 1 points 2 years ago

It's my 2nd day here. I love fediverse. Imagine that i write to you from mastodon. This thing have a lot of potential.

We are integrated and fragmented at the same time. Mind-blowing but i love this.

It's like writing from twitter to reddit user, this is insane. <3

[–] prorester@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Once "multi-reddits" have been defined and implemented in kbin that shouldn't be an issue. I don't know what'll happen with lemmy, but it would probably be in its interest to implement it too.

[–] Otome-chan@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (14 children)

What you need to understand is that "lemmy instances slrpnk, lemmy.fmhy.ml, beehaw.org collectively are reddit" is not correct. The proper analogy is that beehaw.org alone is reddit. And then beehaw.org is linking up with other "reddits".

The technology communities in those different instances are their own thing. They aren't "the same one community split fragmented" they're separate communities.

so while I can post in here on technology@beehaw.org it's very much the case and obvious to me that it's separate from the magazines we have here on kbin. we have our technology@kbin.social which is our technology community. and this technology on beehaw simply happens to be another technology community that I can see and participate in.

In practice, what results is that people interested in these topics will generally subscribe to all of them if they want to see all of the content. but they aren't the same thing.

I know y'all here on beehaw have some pretty emphasized posting guidelines that simply don't exist elsewhere on the fediverse. as a result, whenever I'm in a beehaw community I make sure to not kick the hornets nest (sorry I couldn't help but make the pun). but on the communities here on kbin? yes I happily participate more comfortably.

tl;dr: they're different communities, not the same community split among instances.

edit: it's also worth noting that us kbinauts aren't even using lemmy, and neither are the mastodon users who sometimes participate in these threads.

[–] effingjoe@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I'm hoping (actually, expecting-- if we're being honest) that features are added to reddit-esque apps like lemmy and kbin that allow you to make personal groups of magazines/communities. This would very nearly solve the fragmentation "problem". Better yet if they add a way to share these personal groups to be imported by others.

Then we would get the benefits that come with decentralization, but without the detriments that come along with it.

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