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>It suffers from the same problem as Mastodon - "Join a server". But which one? [...] USENET had that problem solved. It was federated, but it didn't look feder
by jasode 3y ago
>It suffers from the same problem as Mastodon - "Join a server". But which one?
[...]
USENET had that problem solved. It was federated, but it didn't look federated to the end user.
USENET also had the "chose the wrong server" problem.
If I chose my ISP (e.g. Verizon) as my USENET entry point, then I would miss out on many newsgroups that Verizon didn't have. Or, Verizon had the newsgroup but had extremely short retention of old messages history.
So, I paid $12.99/month for GigaNews to get all the newsgroups with months-to-years retention.
Lemmy/Mastodon/etc replicate the same federation issues as USENET because running servers costs money and different people have different thresholds of spending. This independence/freedom of the admin running the server the particular way they want is touted as a positive but it also has inherent disadvantages.
The contemporary situation of Beehaw instance defederating lemmy.world -- is replaying the same tradeoffs that USENET went through. (E.g. similar to an ISP's USENET service choosing not to carry alt.binaries.* or whatever.) Beehaw explains they have limited resources and can't handle the influx from lemmy.world. Yep. Very understandable.
- Accujack 3y agoThis is actually as designed, and is a good thing. It creates the possibility for a business model where subscribers pay for access to a big news spool and lots of groups. Just like USENet. There will be some growing pains, but there will eventually be a continuum of "free" lemmy servers, for pay premium ones, and lemmy servers where the front end is only an app on your phone. And they'll all see the same messages.
- jasode 3y ago>And they'll all see the same messages. I think you should re-evaluate that assumption: https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+instances+blocks+gab https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+instances+blocks+ga... https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+blocklists https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+blocklists https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+blacklists https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+blacklists https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/kw8jht/how_do_i_see_what_a_given_instance_has_blacklisted/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/kw8jht/how_do_i_s... Also, expand the ">Moderated servers" heading and scroll down through the instances they block: https://mastodon.social/about#unavailable-content https://mastodon.social/about#unavailable-content Why do different Mastodon instances decide on not federating some of the other instances?!? It's because the owners pay money for running their particular server which makes them feel entitled to run it the way they want. The "pick any server, it doesn't make any difference, you'll see _all_ messages anyway" -- is not realistic given that each fediverse node administrator can exercise their freedom to choose what messages their server accepts.
- LexiMax 3y ago> The "pick any server, it doesn't make any difference, you'll see _all_ messages anyway" -- is not realistic given that each fediverse node administrator can exercise their freedom to choose what messages their server accepts. That is true, but most Mastodon apps make multi-accounting a breeze, and I imagine the Lemmy ecosystem will provide the same functionality. It also helps that Lemmy is trying to court the userbase of Reddit, who are already a pseudo-anonymous lot and in my experience don't seem to have as much of an attachment to their old content as Twitter users, deleting their old posts and accounts on a regular basis.
- Animats 3y agoThis is a generic problem when discovery and storage are combined. Originally, Google was pure discovery. There was no Google content, just links. That's pure discovery. A standalone blog is pure content. Together, you have a social system. Separating those is a step to freedom from oppressive service providers.