I run a few groups, like @fediversenews@venera.social, mostly on Friendica. It’s okay, but Friendica resembles Facebook Groups more than Reddit. I also like the moderation options that Lemmy has.
Currently, I’m testing jerboa, which is an Android client for Lemmy. It’s in alpha, has a few hiccups, but it’s coming along nicely.
Personally, I hope the #RedditMigration spurs adoption of more Fediverse server software. And I hope Mastodon users continue to interact with Lemmy and Kbin.
All that said, as a mod of a Reddit community (r/Sizz) I somewhat regret giving Reddit all that content. They have nerve charging so much for API access!
Hopefully, we can build a better version of social media that focuses on protocols, not platforms.
Used Reddit for 13 years, tried out Kbin and Lemmy yesterday and settled on Lemmy.
Long story short, I’m going back to Reddit.
I initially setup an account on Lemmy.world, then realized that I couldn’t migrate it to another server and that when I deleted that account on that server all my comments were deleted.
Deciphering the distributed nature of it took me, a relatively tech-friendly person, almost the entire day and several ‘What the fuck?’ posts. I now understand it more. There are some very low-level guides that have been haphazardly put together, but there absolutely needs to be a MUCH smoother guide/explanation to this whole thing. That learning process will turn people away for sure.
With a large corporation, they have the staff and resources to secure and maintain the servers physically and digitally, and keep staff up-to-date on current infosec threats and get out in front of them. Beyond that, if there IS a breach, they have the ability to recognize it, understand the legalities and requirements of reporting it, and can be held accountable by regulatory bodies. Joe doesn’t have the resources to really maintain and keep a server running, nor the knowledge of his responsibilities for keeping the data safe digitally or physically.
On top of that, if Joe’s basement loses power/gets hacked/Joe decides he’s moving to San Fransisco and can’t bring his NAS with him and the server goes down, and that’s where my instance is hosted well there goes my entire account/comments/data.
Finding and subbing to communities is painfully difficult. It should be one-click, but somewhere I need to goto an external list, find what I want, and then copy/paste the URL into the search… and then 50% of the time, it doesn’t work. This is an understandable growing pain and can likely be fixed by UI/UX upgrades, but for now it’s a definite turn-off.
There simply is no content. I’m not a creator, I want content aggregated for me, and I’ve gotten used to having a single place to get it from that floods me with thousands of different articles/memes/posts/etc every minute. Until the user base arrives in one single place and starts generating content, there’s no reason for most people like me to be there as by far the larger number of users never create anything at all and only exist to consume the content generated.
What you’re describing is just another Reddit. Where, eventually, a few select individuals with all the power make the wrong decisions and this entire disaster happens all over again.
Lemmy (and the fediverse) is a chance to change all that. It brings power back to the people, to the community.
I think that’s the exact opposite of what this is. ALL the power on Lemmy is limited to 1 person: The instance host. They set the rules, they decide they don’t like you or the server, your entire account gets deleted because they shut it down. Another instance gets into a flame war or conflict with another, they block THE ENTIRE OTHER SERVER, essentially quarentining them out of existing.
I wonder if IPFS would be better suited for the fediverse for this reason? You’ve brought up some solid points here and if history is anything to go by, it’s likely already seeing some exploitation in the wild. I think there’s likely to be a lot of work needed here. For example: Your cookies store JWTs in base85. Nice!
It’s funny; I know the usual advice is to stick to com/net/org, but I think there’s a certain crowd online that’s all about the wacky TLDs. I’ve definitely seen devs and artists with TLDs like .pizza and .rocks (not a portfolio, but https://stoneclub.rocks as example). I’ve seen enough of these sites that something like https://sh.itjust.works doesn’t make me blink and I trust I’d be able to tell a phishing site from folks playing with TLDs, but I can totally understand how that could be off-putting without that sort of background.