Fragmentation around the Fediverse.

I'm a fairly new users, but I feel that navigating around the fediverse is a bit cumbersome, maybe the wrong word for it. But there is a lack of overview in a way. I enjoy being on this server, but I also like to follow other communities. Lots of different topics, everything from cars to Linux to architecture.

Right now there are 10 (that I could find on browse.feddit.de) instances named Linux on different server. So the small number of Linux users using some fediverse instance is spread around over many servers. Coming from reddit, things were far from perfect over there, but there is only r/Linux. It's a shame users are spread so thin all over the place.

I used Linux as an example, I've seen the same "problem" for other topics as well. Anyways, just my perspective as a new users. Hope this wasn't too much of a rant, maybe we can look at this as an issue where the fediverse can improve.

TimTheEnchanter,

I’m enjoying the slow, early-stages feel so far. It feels like there is good potential here at Beehaw and I’ve seen way less “not nice” behavior here than I have on subreddits.

But yeah, I haven’t explored the other instances too much because I’m not quite sure how find communities I’m interested in without getting overloaded by things that I’m not interested in. It will just take time to figure out.

themobyone,

Oh definitely, I'm hoping this place last for decades. And I think since the fediverse is FOSS that is much more likely.

peroleu,

I agree. I started off creating an account on lemmy.world because I had no idea what I was doing in the fediverse (still don't lmao). All this drama/defederation between lemmy.world and beehaw.org was annoying because I liked the posts and discussions from communities in beehaw.org. Decided to give kbin a shot, which seems to be working well? The UX for lemmy and kbin are honestly gross and is taking a while to get used to.

EDRBd97kWbT2KzK,

Right now there are 10 (that I could find on browse.feddit.de) instances named Linux on different server

Over time one of them will have more activity than the other and attract more and more users, it will then be THE linux community on lemmy. Just give it time.

Skooshjones,

I've been subscribing to a bunch of different instances and communities as they come up on my feed.

Makes things feel closer.

I get what you're saying though.

slowd0wn,

Niche communities will organically begin to congregate in one or two places in the fediverse over time. It won’t happen instantly. The same thing happened over at Reddit, but they’ve had almost 2 decades for it to happen, and communities are still fragmented there. Just look at r/gaming, r/games, r/pcgaming, etc. It’s no different on the fediverse, the only difference is that these communities might share a name. So instead of having r/gaming and r/games, you have two communities both named c/gaming.

For now, what I do is search for the community I’m interested (i.e. Linux in your example), take a look at the number of users subscribed to each option and pick the largest one as my main source. If I find the quality of that community to be lacking, I check out the other ones as well.

orbitt,

This isn't a problem with decentralization but more a UI/UX issue with current Fediverse clients. We all need to remember all of them are in early stages of development. I full suspect new features and tools will start popping up in the coming months to assist in the overall usability.

jursed,

I'm sure a lot of folks came in saying that its better than centralization and I do agree with it. Centralization is simply easier to consume a lot of content mindlessly but I don't think thats how the fediverse works nor is it how it should be.

(Also sorry for using the terms incorrectly I'm not really a tech person. Also obligatory these are just my thoughts)

Centralization means that people usually get buried. Bigger instances are also harder and more expensive to host (from what ive heard). Perhaps we'll see the same issue when a certain instsnce gets bigger and more dominant, but the nice thing about different communities is if we dont like one we can move to another. And the cool thing about federation (ideally) is that we aren't completely disconnected from the fediverse if we decide to move instances.

While if its like with twitter, discord, reddit if we dislike a main rule or aspect we would be stuck with it because of the network affect. Even reddit has many different subreddits for the same topic because people have issues with how a subreddit is ran. For example r/childfree spawned r/truechildfree because people disliked how it became a child bashing forum.

But I do see how the fediverse can be seen as being too spread thin at times. But I hope that with welcoming communities it can seem more alive because people are more likely to participate. Its what will need to happen with a smaller community.

heartlessevil,

Fragmentation is much better than centralization

StringTheory,

That is the nature of the Fediverse. That is the nature of decentralization. Decentralized systems aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.

furrowsofar,

It is a matter of perspective. The internet has many Linux communities. Reddit has many too. One always chooses. You never get it all.

What is true though is change is hard. I built up my Reddit community list over 5 years. Doing this again in a day is not easy.

ffmike,
@ffmike@beehaw.org avatar

There are a couple of open issues in the Lemmy repo discussing this sort of thing:

So far it doesn't look like a priority for the core developers, but you know, open source etc etc-

themobyone,

Yeah, it's good to have a discussion. I don't want to say it's a big problem. I only wish for it to be a little better.

Lycan,

I don't see this as a problem at all. The internet has always been this way. If there was one singular Linux community in the Fediverse and you had to go there to discuss the topic, you'd just have Reddit. And Reddit already exists.

Bowen,

It also happens on Reddit too. There's like 3 AITA subs, a few subs for Making a Murderer because I guess someone had some issues with the mods of the original one being a cop or something.

I don't see anything different with lemmy honestly, but it would be nice to have the option to kind of merge into bigger ones. I imagine that's in the roadmap at some point.

yuun,

yep - we could use better tools to navigate the Fediverse, but this is 100% the intended nature of the platform.

jursed,

the centralization of people also was a more recent thing. I remember specialized smaller forums and websites used to be more popular when I was younger. hell even earlier with GeoCities people had their homepage and blogs.

and even with discord and twitter people had their own small groups that may seem "redundant".

PascalSausage,

Easy solution to this would be introducing a feature similar to multireddit where you can group smaller communities together as one. It could be on a global basis where everyone gets the same communities or on a local basis where users can add or remove communities as they see fit. I really don’t think it’s ultimately going to be as much of an issue as Reddit users think. The alternative is doing it the way Reddit does and then you just have…Reddit again. I keep seeing people who left Reddit because they don’t like the way things are being done complaining because Lemmy doesn’t do things the way Reddit does. That’s bizarre to me. You don’t solve the problem of a few people holding all the power over a platform by moving to a new platform but keeping the same architecture that caused the problem in the first place.

themobyone,

Yes, I don't wont it exactly like reddit. We are over 12k people here on this server so there are plenty of people so talk to to have a general discussion. The small issue is the more niche a hobbie/community is there more of a problem it. Instead of 100 Linux users on one server there is 10 people on 10 servers (just imaginary numbers to get my point across).

The point is to connect with people with similar interests. If one "sub" does go bad, we can just make a new one on a different instance.

I do agree that no one wants power-hungry mods ruining a sub.

Mac,

If all the linux users subscribe to all the Linux communities it won't be a problem, right?

justanotherjo,

yes it will because it means they each need to monitor 20 linux subs to keep up on all the conversation. Decentralizatin is a good idea, but it is not very user friendly, and it only works well for those who are computer savvy. for the other 90% of internet users, it is extremely complex and confusing.

themobyone,

Yes this is true. I guess there's also nothing in the way to subscribe to all 10. Except for a bloated personal subscription list.

IlliteratiDomine,
@IlliteratiDomine@infosec.pub avatar

It's worth remembering that this is a bit of a goldrush scenario on creating new communities. I strongly suspect communities will to start to consolidate over time.

youronlyone,

Hopefully that doesn't happen.

  1. For some topics, there are already existing, very active, communities before the subreddits with the same topic migrated over. Who should merge with whom? The existing large communities with subreddit migrators? Or, the subreddit migrators merging with th existing large communities … and conforming to the rules and culture in those existing large communities?
  2. As mentioned, there are different cultures and rules that develops per community. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all.
  3. Even if communities “consolidate over time”, it will still split up no matter what. That's how it has always been sincee the beginning of online communities.
  4. IF communities indeed consolidate over time, if that server/instance goes down, the entire consolidated communities will be gone overnight, and all the content they collected together. We've already seen this happen just this year, forget about the previous years.

In short, don't expect it. In fact, it should be supported to ensure that:
a. we don't return to a centralise system
b. we don't put all our eggs in one basket
c. we build redundancy, continuation, and resiliency.

^_^

derived_allegory,

In my experience I find niche community are very well "centralized", like there is only one gnome community.

However larger community are speard between servers like tech etc. That really is not a problem for me, as any of these larger community can give me the news I need. Also sub to all 3 of them is not a big deal either.

Like everyone on reddit sub to at least 3 art communities, 5 dank meme communities, and 10 music communities.

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