I’ve been one of the people saying “we don’t need more users. we need quality over quantity” and i was wrong.

the way it’s going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.

So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.

edit: source for the graph

  • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    But if it doesn’t, then other instances removing the content on their side doesn’t federate. So you can either trust every instance that you federate with with your legal security, or you will have to moderate everything yourself as well, just in case someone missed something.

    Sure, you’re right there - but an instance that kept having problems with removing CSAM would find itself defederated.

    This would be extremely important, but I don’t know if such a low level conceptual change can still be performed with a reasonable amount of work. Remember, for such a change you need to get every instance on board. That would be difficult now, and only more difficult later.

    Well it would be built in from Lemmy or Piefed. The devs would have to spearhead it. But were the load ever to get to that point, I suspect that would be the obvious move.

    No, it was specifically because of the moderation issue: https://lemmy.ca/post/45390962

    Yes, so not financial. You seemed to be implying it was financial.

    • squaresinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      Sure, you’re right there - but an instance that kept having problems with removing CSAM would find itself defederated.

      Depends… Imagine it also contains some of the most relevant communities and defederating would mean you lose users. That’s not such an easy decision any more. Also, at that point hosting would likely be so expensive that for-profit instances would emerge, and for those defederating an important community wouldn’t be such an easy choice either.

      But it’s not only CSAM. For example, there’s illegal speech in quite a few parts of the world. In Germany, for example, a lot of nazi-related stuff is illegal. In russia or china some regime-critical speech is illegal. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the US also joins this club sometime in the near future.

      Actually, if you are a non US citizen and you and you want to travel to the USA, it’s already troublesome if you are hosting a website with anti-Trump content.

      That kind of stuff is unlikely to be deleted on the original instance if that instance isn’t hosted in the same country.

      Yes, so not financial. You seemed to be implying it was financial.

      Sorry if that came across. I said lemm.ee was shutdown because of the scaling issue. I could have been more clear with that I meant the moderation scaling issues.

      • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        Depends… Imagine it also contains some of the most relevant communities and defederating would mean you lose users. That’s not such an easy decision any more. Also, at that point hosting would likely be so expensive that for-profit instances would emerge, and for those defederating an important community wouldn’t be such an easy choice either.

        I don’t think that would save it, to be honest.

        People would just clone the communities on other instances and rebuild.

        I suspect eventually lemmy/piefed federation will not be automatic, but subject to approval.

        But it’s not only CSAM. For example, there’s illegal speech in quite a few parts of the world. In Germany, for example, a lot of nazi-related stuff is illegal. In russia or china some regime-critical speech is illegal. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the US also joins this club sometime in the near future.

        No-one cares what Russia or China thinks here. Germany? I mean, sure, but this is also a complication for any regulatory bodies trying to police social media sites. As “Lemmy” or “Piefed”, as you know, are not singular entities.

        Sorry if that came across. I said lemm.ee was shutdown because of the scaling issue. I could have been more clear with that I meant the moderation scaling issues.

        Yeah, in part because they had a “no defederation” policy which came to bite them back.

        • squaresinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          No-one cares what Russia or China thinks here. Germany? I mean, sure, but this is also a complication for any regulatory bodies trying to police social media sites. As “Lemmy” or “Piefed”, as you know, are not singular entities.

          People living in Russia or China might care.

          UK might be much more difficult, btw. They now ban all porn without identity checks. So if you host a lemmy/piefed instance that’s accessible in the UK you will need to delete all adult content that makes it to your instance, if you don’t want to violate UK law.

          People would just clone the communities on other instances and rebuild.

          Cloning communities isn’t quite that easy. Were you present when feddit.de went down? Their communities didn’t vanish. The replications are still up on all other instances, and you can still post there. There’s no indication to a casual user that the instance hosting the communities is down and thus federation doesn’t work. To the users it just looks like participation dropped like a rock with no obvious reason.

          The communities were cloned onto a new instance (IIRC feddit.org) but even up to now, people keep posting to the old now-unfederated communities.

          Btw: that’s another quite critical issue: Lemmy lacks any and all migration tools. Can’t migrate an instance to a new URL, can’t migrate users or communities to other instances. All you can do is scrap all you had and start fresh.

          • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            4 hours ago

            People living in Russia or China might care.

            I mean, okay, but they likely use VPNs to start with. There’s already heavily oppressive laws there. The point is Russia and China have no power to threaten Fediverse owners here.

            UK might be much more difficult, btw. They now ban all porn without identity checks. So if you host a lemmy/piefed instance that’s accessible in the UK you will need to delete all adult content that makes it to your instance, if you don’t want to violate UK law.

            I am from the UK. And lemmy.zip has geoblocked the UK because of this (the owner is from the UK). But no other instances has done anything so far.

            Cloning communities isn’t quite that easy. Were you present when feddit.de went down? Their communities didn’t vanish. The replications are still up on all other instances, and you can still post there. There’s no indication to a casual user that the instance hosting the communities is down and thus federation doesn’t work. To the users it just looks like participation dropped like a rock with no obvious reason.

            Keep in mind that Piefed actually has community migration now. There are moves being made here.