I’m a reddit refugee trying to figure this out. It seems to me like it’s a decent idea to break up countrol like this, but unfortunately there are some inherent problems that mean it might not work in the real world.

The biggest in my view is that communities are scoped to the instance they started in. You could have 2 different communities with the same niche and the same or similar name but different insurances and the subscriber numbers will be split across them. I think this is damaging to growth because it spreads active users.

Eventually if the niche grows one of the communities of the niche will be the biggest and most active. So generally users will consolidate around the instances with the most active communities thus making those instances have a lot of control and defeating the purpose of federation.

Is there something I’m missing here? Because currently I’m not convinced this can both grow and keep things decentralized.

  • livus@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    @PlutoniumAcid first of all, you would go by most active not biggest subscriber numbers (which you can’t actually see accurately from within your own instance), and not everyone even does this, let alone joining everything.

    Recently I made a multi for news communities so I could get an overview, and it’s definitely not all the same people in all the big ones (my instance lets me see the names of upvoters). People join what feels right.

    I don’t want to bother posting on all the damn sites.

    I don’t get what you mean by this. I post all over the fediverse but I do it all from right here on kbin! That said, there’s no need. Why not just post in the communities you like most? It’s no different to reddit in that regard - you don’t feel pressure to post in all the subreddits, do you?

    Eg outside my own instance I like the big movies over at .world but when it comes to global news I prefer .ml, but for sciencey stuff I tend to sub on mander.xyz.

    but it’s juuust shy of being mainstream enough for the average Joe

    True, for now. Full disclosure, I don’t particularly want reddit to move here just yet. It was getting too full of people who sound like my racist aunt. The fediverse has a feeling of chill still, people contribute because we’re having fun building something new, there’s no algorithms, shill armies, or enshittification.

    I’ve been on the internet since the 1990s, so I’ve seen things rise and fall, and I think the future of social media is federated. I get enthusiastic about it, but of course it’s not ready for everyone yet, and realistically most older people may never even get here. But now I’ve discovered it, I’m never going back. :)