@itadakimasu
Plus, the Lemmy servers are part of a much larger network; the fediverse. Not just other forum apps like KBin either. Right now I'm replying to this from Mastodon.
I have an alt on a .nz Lemmy server, but haven't got into the habit of using it yet. So at least some of the perceived shrinkage is due to that, rather than any failure of the network. Also due to spam and troll accounts being purged.
@DaisyLee
> What are the best fediverse alternative to the big sites on the web?
Which ones are the best is a matter of taste, but this page gives you an idea which of the corporate DataFarms the various fedi apps can be a replacement for:
@itadakimasu
> there’s only 60k of us? And that’s a good thing?
A centralised platform is a numbers game. The money for upgrading servers for growth has to come from one company, and if the platform shrinks it gets harder to get a return on that spending.
It just doesn't matter as much in a federated network. The cost of growth is spread across many servers. Some of which will end up shutting down, for a range of reasons. But others have room for growth.
FYI what Discord calls a "server" is actually just a group of chat channels and their pool of members. The equivalent of a Discord "server" on matrix is a "Space". This blog post is a couple of years old out-of-date, but it gives you the general idea:
@knighthawk0811
> can we get young people coming here though
That's a very good question to ask a young person. OTTOMH though...
... anything they have to use at school, they're unlikely to use by choice at home or elsewhere. What would have got me to join the fediverse if it existed when I was a young person? Hearing that someone I respected had joined like Upper Hutt Posse, or Michael Franti, or RATM, or even David Bowie. Pop poets are the vanguard party of the young.
@knighthawk0811
> since there isn't any strong way to collect data or advertise it will always be an underdog compared to big business
... unless and until democratic governments ban corporations from spying on the people using their platforms, as they bloody well ought to, if they have any respect for the human rights of the citizens. Or pass laws that force the Walled Gardens to federate with similar platforms, like the Digital Markets Act.
@deadsuperhero
> development of a Go-based backend implementation, Dendrite
Also Rust-based homeserver implementations like Construct and Conduit. Both of which are usable, although missing a few nice-to-have added features. Eg Conduit is still working on;
"E2EE emoji comparison over federation (E2EE chat works)... Outgoing read receipts, typing, presence over federation"
@smileyhead
> But noone figured out how to prevent that in federated systems
You've basically got a choice been a centralised service where metadata can be limited but E2EE is mostly pointless (you have to trust the service operators' E2EE deployment), or a decentralised network where E2EE is reliable, but it's harder to limit metadata.
Which one is best depends on the situation/ threat model.
@theKalash
> Lemmy neads a feature where people can “merge” communities from different instances so it appears like a single one
I'm confused by this. I'll admit I haven't used Lemmy much yet, but I thought communities do exist across all servers? So if I join "c/fediverse" on any one server, and you join "c/fediverse" on any other server, we're joining the same community. Is that not how it works?