this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023

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Technology

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177

Lemmy needs two things to be successful (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by DaughterOfMars@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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In my opinion, there are two big things holding Lemmy back right now:

Lemmy needs DIDs.

No, not dissociative identity disorder, Decentralized Identities.

The problem is that signing up on one instance locks you to that instance. If the instance goes down, so does all of your data, history, settings, etc. Sure, you can create multiple accounts, but then it's up to you to create secure, unique passwords for each and manage syncing between them. Nobody will do this for more than two instances.

Without this, people will be less willing to sign up for instances that they perceive "might not make it", and flock for the biggest ones, thus removing the benefits of federation.

This is especially bad for moderators. Currently, external communities that exist locally on defederated instances cannot be moderated by the home-instance accounts. This isn't a problem of moderation tooling, but it can be (mostly*) solved by having a single identity that can be used on any instance.

*Banning the account could create the same issue.
Communities need to federate too.

Just as instances can share their posts in one page, communities should be able to federate with other, similar communities. This would help to solve the problem of fragmentation and better unify the instances.

Obviously there are plenty of bugs and QoL features that could dramatically improve the usage of Lemmy, but these two things are critical to unification across decentralized services.

What do you think?

EDIT: There's been a lot (much more than I expected) of good discussion here, so thank you all for providing your opinions.

It was pointed out that there are github issues #1 and #2 addressing these points already, so I wanted to put that in the main post.

(page 2) 50 comments

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[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't understand the first one, why would we want that? Wouldn't it be enough to make it possible to move accounts similar to how mastodon does it (but including your local content)?

My bigger problem is that if a instance goes down then the community is gone. I like how Matrix has solved it that you can have aliases and the content gets replicated on other servers, etc. Then even if people defederate then you still have your old copy and people can keep using it.

[–] nodiet@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago

The need for decentralised identities stems from the same problem you are describing in your second paragraph. A decentralised identity would imply that your content will also stay if the instance goes down. I don't really know however if there is a feasible way to implement this. An easier solution to me seems to be to enable account backups that can be used to recreate your account on a different instance.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

I like your points.

Short term they need to work on the "all front page". It doesn't seem to give me popular posts from all instances, it's full of 2 to 3 to 4 day old posts that were never very popular. I have to manually go around (like to this community) to find content.

[–] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A few points about #1 I did not see talked about. First global ID is of a lot less value on Forums then on things like Mastodon. At least the way I use forums I have no interest in building a persona. Frankly would prefer totally different IDs on different servers and frankly I think we should encourage people to be subject focused not persona focused on Lemmy anyway. There's to much of this ego stuff that goes on on other platforms.

The second thing is logging into multiple systems is a solved problem. If you do not have a password manager get one. Bitwarden or one of the LastPass versions depending on your platform for example. Another better way is SQRL or U2F. There is also a more recent thing, maybe PassKeys (?), cannot remember. In particular central authentication servers are nuts. Not even LastPass that specializes in them could do it correctly. Just NO. More then that let us not rebuild Reddit. We do not want central infrastructure.

[–] Dr_Cog@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I understand that you don't. But some of us do not mind these things and/or want them. Perhaps there is a compromise (e.g. an optional global ID if you opt in to the system)

[–] the_itsb@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

I feel the same way - totally understand why some people wouldn't, but I definitely would appreciate the utility. Looking at the way someone interacts with others is often a consideration when I'm deciding whether to engage with them myself.

[–] Mintyytea@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

I think number 1 is important so it’s easier to move. Otherwise we could feel centralized to one instance rather than feeling free to federate

[–] xtremeownage@lemmyonline.com 2 points 2 years ago (11 children)

Regarding point 1- if people would just stop signing up on lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and beehaw.org, because they have the most people-

Things would go much smoother!

Pick an instance based on uptime, or hell, create your own instance.

Piling all of the eggs into a single basket is destined to result in failure.

[–] freeman@lemmy.pub 3 points 2 years ago (13 children)

For sure. But beehaw in a good example of aggressive moderating (which is totally their right) that can limit growth and why a decentralized approach is necessary. There can’t be a single massive place for x content. It’s rife for abuse. Allow it to be categorized and decentralized where beehaw can contribute but in their own way and users outside of beehaw can index and participate with them and even other instances that maybe beehaw defederated.

[–] retronautickz@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Beehaw did nothing that isn't common in the fediverse. I know people that are new to all this may be shocked by Beehaw's decision, but defederating from intances that promote intolerant discourses or allow trolling is the way to keep an instance alive. People will end up suspecting and defederating from an instance that interacts with intances that allow or promote that type of content or behaviour.

[–] freeman@lemmy.pub 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Again. Its not a criticism of beehaw. Just kind of an example of you are who you associate with sometimes IRL, but in the fediverse. Its unfortunate for some honest folks that may have been bit in the crossfire, but given the options..it is what it is. And I understand why they are building what they are. I support that.

Its also a reason why having very large concentrated communities can be bad and why federation or de-centralization is important. But with that, it does appear we need some better tools for cross-instance moderation and cross-instance community grouping so that you can say...create a "technology multi-community" that includes technology@beehaw.org and technology@lemmy.ml and apple@whateverinstance.com or whatever etc. etc.

That would allow for decentralization but still give people the ability to browse them as one community and if you so happen to be registered on something like lemmy.world, then you cant see the beehaw.org content but can see the rest etc.

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[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I signed up with lemmy.ca and I regret it. It doesn't load "all" content very well so I have to hunt to find content. Hopefully they will fix it.

[–] xtremeownage@lemmyonline.com 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

We can only go up from here!

Also, cannot promise my instance is any better, but, your welcome to try it. https://lemmyonline.com/

Its working quite nicely today though.

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[–] Spzi@lemmy.click 1 points 2 years ago (6 children)

if people would just stop signing up on lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and beehaw.org, because they have the most people-

Things would go much smoother!

Somehow I trust the individual instances to self regulate. When an instance thinks it should not grow any further at the moment, it can close for new registrations, and users will naturally flock to others which are still open. I don't see this as a responsibility of the users, and in case of users completely new to lemmy, I also don't see how they could make a reliably informed decision.

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[–] utg@mander.xyz 2 points 2 years ago

Been exploring, setting up my account, learning to use lemmy since 2am, this is the fundamental issue in facing, one that I cannot seem to wrap my head around.

I'm not sure (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) if my account is in certain instance, I can subscribe to communities in that instance, or other external instances. However, subscribing to communities in other instances is pretty tedious. I still don't know how to reliably do it on PC let alone mobile. It's a toss up for me if it'll open in my account or a new page asking me to log in to that instance.

Hopefully in the coming months lemmy can take off and we can have something amazing on our hands

[–] sibloure@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

The idea of federating communities does sound like a good idea. Now that I think of it I'm surprised that isn't already a thing.

[–] average650@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, #1 is kind of impossible now. Different people can have the same ID on different instances.

#2, unless they really want to just be their own separate community completely, like an entirely different website, then yeah of course. That's the point. Regarding the current major defederation, my understanding is that this not meant to be permanent and is a different situation. It's a workaround basically.

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[–] thgs@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Friendica, I believe, federates their groups. You can see them from mastodon as a user. I guess in AP vocabulary they are an actor. You can post to the group from mastodon too.

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

However let me just bring into mind that we recently defederated from some Lemmy instances and for which reasons we did that (as beehaw I mean).

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