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If the Lemmy fediverse is so fragmented... Then shouldn't people like us run our own instances, which then just act like an aggregator and wrapper around our s

If the Lemmy fediverse is so fragmented... Then shouldn't people like us run our own instances, which then just act like an aggregator and wrapper around our single user account? Or am I federating TOO MUCH in a way that's hard to explain to new people? Because in my head... Each subreddit/community maps almost perfectly to 1 instance, and each technically savvy user also maps almost perfectly to 1 instance. That feels right to me... So why would that be stupid? Genuinely curious and open to being corrected.

pbmonster 3y ago
> each technically savvy user also maps almost perfectly to 1 instance Today, nothing speaks against that. But if this proliferates, I'm predicting white lists to become more common on "sensitive" instances like Beehaw. It's just like Email today. Sure you can run your own Email server. But expect to sometimes end up in the spam folder of users with Gmail accounts. You can thank the spammers for that, and the trolls if that ever becomes common on Lemmy.
0xffff2 3y ago
You're basically right. The devs have explicitly said that the ideal is for every user to run their own instance.that said, while it's not hard to run an instance it's well beyond the level of effort most people are ever going to spend.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >while it's not hard to run an instance it's well beyond the level of effort most people are ever going to spend. This. And it's not just lemmy either. Mastodon, pixelfed, diaspora and other fediverse-capable platforms are a pain in the ass to set up and self host. As a technical guy, I've set up most of these and while it's certainly possible to do, the hoi polloi don't have the knowledge/skills to do so and aren't interested in gaining such skills. RPM/DEB/etc. packages with set up scripts and windows installers would make a world of difference, but instead we have 'curl <url> |bash' and docker containers. While I'm not really too upset about the great unwashed being able to access the Fediverse (I wouldn't mind if it were mostly the technically minded, but I can just choose who to follow to get that), the current situation does little to improve the network effects of the Fediverse. IMHO, the situation is similar to a scenario posited in another discussion[0] about devops, where developers throw their code "over the wall" to let the ops folks handle deployment/operations. Except the "ops" folks in this case are mostly non-technical end users. With the results being pretty much what you'd might expect. And more's the pity. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36354049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36354049
  - VikingCoder 3y ago
    I love Sandstorm.io, but each instance seems to act as an island of users / apps, by design. ...I wish it had thrived enough to have Federated Apps integrated with it intelligently. I love how the App Store works on Sandstorm.io and in Linode (for initial set-up, anyway). I also hope that this stuff gets integrated with something like Tailscale... So if I run an instance, I can see which individual users or apps on other instances are allowed to talk to my apps on my instance, and it's all end-to-end encrypted... I continue to hope for the fediverse to do well! And yes, people will subscribe to Allowlists and Denylists, and that's not great, but people are terrible...
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > The devs have explicitly said that the ideal is for every user to run their own instance I think the only people motivated to do that would be trolls and spammers. In fact, it's probably easily automated too. Spam, get banned, restart instance, repeat.
nerdbert 3y ago
I think you'll end up using a lot of storage space; in my totally uninformed understanding, you would end up storing the full contents of any community/sub that you follow.
- Vvector 3y ago
  Won't that happen anyway? A typical instance with 1000 users is likely to be subscribed to greater than 50% of the active communities out there.
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    Yes but the storage used by that instance is shared among 1000 users, rather than all devoted to just one user. Theoretically there would be a fair amount of duplication and therefore less net resource use.
tracker1 3y ago
I'd thought about running a vanity instance with me being the only user. I can then sub to who I want/where I want as long as my instance isn't blocked... though I do feel that block/clean lists should be at the individual level and not generally at the instance level and easier to share in sub-communities. I prefer blocking at individual level(s) as well over platform blocking, even for what I see myself. YMMV though.

pbmonster 3y ago

> each technically savvy user also maps almost perfectly to 1 instance Today, nothing speaks against that. But if this proliferates, I'm predicting white lists to become more common on "sensitive" instances like Beehaw. It's just like Email today. Sure you can run your own Email server. But expect to sometimes end up in the spam folder of users with Gmail accounts. You can thank the spammers for that, and the trolls if that ever becomes common on Lemmy.

0xffff2 3y ago

You're basically right. The devs have explicitly said that the ideal is for every user to run their own instance.that said, while it's not hard to run an instance it's well beyond the level of effort most people are ever going to spend.

nobody9999 3y ago
>while it's not hard to run an instance it's well beyond the level of effort most people are ever going to spend. This. And it's not just lemmy either. Mastodon, pixelfed, diaspora and other fediverse-capable platforms are a pain in the ass to set up and self host. As a technical guy, I've set up most of these and while it's certainly possible to do, the hoi polloi don't have the knowledge/skills to do so and aren't interested in gaining such skills. RPM/DEB/etc. packages with set up scripts and windows installers would make a world of difference, but instead we have 'curl <url> |bash' and docker containers. While I'm not really too upset about the great unwashed being able to access the Fediverse (I wouldn't mind if it were mostly the technically minded, but I can just choose who to follow to get that), the current situation does little to improve the network effects of the Fediverse. IMHO, the situation is similar to a scenario posited in another discussion[0] about devops, where developers throw their code "over the wall" to let the ops folks handle deployment/operations. Except the "ops" folks in this case are mostly non-technical end users. With the results being pretty much what you'd might expect. And more's the pity. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36354049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36354049
- VikingCoder 3y ago
  I love Sandstorm.io, but each instance seems to act as an island of users / apps, by design. ...I wish it had thrived enough to have Federated Apps integrated with it intelligently. I love how the App Store works on Sandstorm.io and in Linode (for initial set-up, anyway). I also hope that this stuff gets integrated with something like Tailscale... So if I run an instance, I can see which individual users or apps on other instances are allowed to talk to my apps on my instance, and it's all end-to-end encrypted... I continue to hope for the fediverse to do well! And yes, people will subscribe to Allowlists and Denylists, and that's not great, but people are terrible...
lelanthran 3y ago
> The devs have explicitly said that the ideal is for every user to run their own instance I think the only people motivated to do that would be trolls and spammers. In fact, it's probably easily automated too. Spam, get banned, restart instance, repeat.

nerdbert 3y ago

I think you'll end up using a lot of storage space; in my totally uninformed understanding, you would end up storing the full contents of any community/sub that you follow.

Vvector 3y ago
Won't that happen anyway? A typical instance with 1000 users is likely to be subscribed to greater than 50% of the active communities out there.
- nerdbert 3y ago
  Yes but the storage used by that instance is shared among 1000 users, rather than all devoted to just one user. Theoretically there would be a fair amount of duplication and therefore less net resource use.

tracker1 3y ago

I'd thought about running a vanity instance with me being the only user. I can then sub to who I want/where I want as long as my instance isn't blocked... though I do feel that block/clean lists should be at the individual level and not generally at the instance level and easier to share in sub-communities. I prefer blocking at individual level(s) as well over platform blocking, even for what I see myself. YMMV though.