I’ve been talking to many people about the controversy with Reddit, why I left it and why I went onto Lemmy, Kbin and Mastadon instead. Some of my friends have commented that the control is still a problem as other platforms and it is all dependent on who owns the software, who owns the hardware, who are the admins, who are the moderators and which community or group has the most influence.
Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?
So … for the ELI5 version of the question … Who owns the fediverse?
@ininewcrow
Who owns EMAIL?!? Its the same sort of question… its a protocol to spread or propagate links and other things on the internet WITHOUT a centralized company able to control wat u see to en extent (hence differnect instance) (what you see ) i cant spell and dunt judge me too hrash…, btw does this show as edited?Yes it shows as edited
This analogy should be the top comment. Fediverse services are like email services. They’re basically interchangeable. If your email service starts to suck, you get a new email address. It’s a huge pain to move all your old email, copy your contacts, set up redirections, and then change your contact info everywhere, but what’s the alternative? Are you not going to have an email address?
If ActivityPub services become the kind of de facto standard that email did, unless you’re a server admin the instances will fade into the background noise of the internet, just like your email server has. Once we establish the standards on how a server should be maintained and moderated, it will become easier to see and ban rogue operators, just the way we do with email spammers now.
Does anybody worry about the political leanings of their office Exchange365 administrator?
Does anybody worry about the political leanings of their office Exchange365 administrator?
Yes, I worry about whoever controls the spam filter. I check my spam folder often. I’ve caught many mistakes, but haven’t noticed any clear political bias. Yet. But the great thing is, if I ever do, it’s possible to switch. If I’m especially masochistic, I can even be the one controlling the spam filter.
Ok, that explains all these different instances. But this analogy relates ActivityPub protocol to simple email protocol. Then, it should mean that all different federated services like Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin are various servers (similar to Gmail, yahoo) and have to be owned by someone who regulates them. So can you make it bit more clear!
Kind of, but there is one more layer.
ActivityPub allows more than one type of data (or rather it’s all just data, it’s the medium in which the user uses it?). MSTDN.ca, Lemmy.ca, lemmy.world, et al are the equivalents of an email server. Lemmy, kbin, Mastodon are different services running on the ActivityPub backbone. There is a fair amount of cross-compatibility, since they are all using ActivityPub. You can easily subscribe to a Lemmy community with your Mastodon account, or a kbin magazine with your Lemmy account. It just might be a little messy.
Remember when Microsoft started pushing “rich” email? If you were using a text based email client, you’d get all the HTML formatting tags. It was still email, you could still read it, it was just messy. Likewise, my experience with Lemmy via Mastodon was that you loose the threading and grouping. Comments tended to show as random messages out of context. Absolutely works, just less nice than using Lemmy for Lemmy and Mastodon for Mastodon. I will say that kbin magazines seem fine on Lemmy, but I haven’t really played with kbin yet, so I may not know what I’m missing.
So the email analogy has it’s limits. BeeHaw.org, Lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works are like email servers that all focus on one format of email. MSTDN.ca, mastodon.social, mas.to, Universeodon.com, etc. are also all email servers focusing on a different format for email. They can all talk to each other, but emails from the wrong format won’t fit in as well.
I think your question and my answer strain the limits of using an an analogy to simplify a concept. Might be almost ready to abandon analogy and just directly learn about Federation.
Next to the time (11h) I see a pencil icon that says when your post was created, and when it was modified.
It doesn’t show as edited.
“you mean to tell me that different entities can communicate with each others without a ceo ? Preposterous !”
Well the main developers of lemmy and admins of lemmy.ml are communists, if I recall correctly.
But there are already far-right instances.
The answer basically boils down to “Nobody, however it is important to know who runs the largest instances, as they will wield a fair amount of influence”
It doesn’t matter who the devs are because the code is open source. The beauty of the fediverse is that nobody controls it.
Open source just means that they’re not doing stuff behind your back that you’re not unaware of like collecting your data. I don’t think that means that the mods of a specific instance can’t arbitrarily ban users or delete comments and fuck with communities within their instance.
Open Source means I can take the code and deploy my own instance without permission from anyone.
And you could fork the code, if the original project goes in a direction that isn’t popular. Q.v. LibreOffice and OpenOffice, NextCloud and OwnCloud.
The power of open source/copyleft is that it can’t be owned as such.
There are a couple of caveats, if there aren’t enough developers on the forked project, it will wither. Also, there tends to be lots of fragmentation, as different visions take things in different directions (not a singular project, but what’s your favourite Linux distribution?).
Having said all that, each instance is running on someone’s hardware, and whoever is paying the bills has a lot of sway for that instance. As you say, since it’s open source, there is nothing really stopping you as an individual being that person. A small instance with a user count of 1 is going to be fairly cheap to run. Personally it’s another thing to keep up to date. Maybe with a Docky loader…
A fork of Lemmy won’t “wither” like some other things, because all of this stuff uses the ActivityPub protocol and is compatible anyways. It could be abandoned and still probably work for a long time.
It’s why KBin and Lemmy can work together, even though they are completely different.
That would be exactly what I mean by “wither”. Lack of developers means a lack of updates.
OpenOffice updates are orders of magnitude less impactful than LibreOffice. Pretty much all the developers went with LibreOffice. OpenOffice still works, it’s still available, but it is much less vibrant. Much less, alive? Like it’s “withered”.
You could absolutely fork Lemmy, and of Lemmy improves it’s sorting, adds other features, tweaks, improvements, etc. your fork wouldn’t include those. If there was enough developer interest, your fork could parallel those changes, or it could even go in a different direction. Without developers though, it would just be stagnant.
Lemmy has two developers. Many AP projects run with just one developer. If someone’s project lacks one developer, that’s their choice to end the project. It’s not “withering due to a lack of developers.” It’s being closed entirely.
you can also read it duh
If you can figure it out. Lemmy at this point is probably still straightforward, but for example go try to compile Android. Just compile it. Last time I tried was 2018, but I spent two full days trying before I gave up. And Android is open source.
There are ways to obscure and gate the codebase even if it is open source.
That’s true, I’m just not sure how it’s applicable to the current conversation? I don’t think anyone is making the argument that open source projects are easy?
You really need to seperate the development of Lemmy from administrating a Lemmy instance. The political views of the devs don’t matter at all. You don’t support these by using Lemmy.
Well the main developers of lemmy and admins of lemmy.ml are communists,
doubt, but even if yes, their are making a free and open alternative to a money grabbing closed source capitalist owned platform, make sense their political spectrum is leftist, but i also agree they need moderators other them themselves
They definitely are. https://lemmy.ml/post/55143
“While @dessalines and I are communists”
I believe the .ml domain was chosen specifically to signify Marxism-Leninism.
Though I said this as a statement of fact, to answer the question. As a Marxist-Leninist myself I did not mean to imply anything by it.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter in my opinion. People are open to their viewpoints and the good thing about this platform is that the creators viewpoints don’t bring down the individual lemmy instances.
My fear though with these Lemmy instances is that some of them will become dominant, such as maybe this Lemmy.ca instance for Canadian content. It can end up with the same kind of problems reddit faced where communities become echo chambers of one person’s viewpoint and it is hard to move to alternative spots.
Especially when it comes to topics of “hate” and “discrimination”, many people lump a lot of stuff under the “hate speech” category whereas many people would view it as normal non-discriminatory speech. It would be nice to see a place that can support viewpoints that lean far-left, left, center, right, and far right but based on the current rules/dialogue here I fear this community will likely only be more supportive of left sided conversation and will deam differing opinions as “hateful” like we see on Reddit.
It would be nice to see a place that can support viewpoints that lean far-left, left, center, right, and far right but based on the current rules/dialogue here I fear this community will likely only be more supportive of left sided conversation and will deam differing opinions as “hateful” like we see on Reddit.
Yes, if you hold and communicate far-right views you’re going to have a rough time in a community that leans left-of-center. You’ll be called hateful, a bigot, an asshole, and you’re likely to be censored before too long.
Likewise, if you have and express views that aren’t on the right, or exist as a person who’s not “moral” within the views of the far right (are 2SLGBTQIA+, a person of colour, etc), you’re likely to find that the community you’ve joined is a threat to your safety.
I’m all for echo-chambers, personally, with some degree of variation of course. But it’s perfectly acceptable to look at the political ideology of someone and say that their opinions and views are unacceptable and dangerous, and that they will find themselves unwelcome in a community who’s directly negatively impacted by such views.
The problem I see with echo chambers is that people start to believe their views are normal, but often times they are the extreme minority. It can allow unproductive and toxic ideas in society to spread like a virus that undermines things.
For example, there are groups of people out there who believe the government is trying to give you microchips in vaccines and that they cause autism. The reason people often end up believing these kinds of things is because they get pushed out of regular communities when they start to get attacked and censored for “wrong-think”. Instead of being able to engage in some rational conversations with more rational people they get pushed out if they question things. This often results in them finding a fringe echo chamber of people who are already far deep into this weird viewpoint. Their viewpoints now start to seem to make more sense because everyone around them also feels the same way. They no longer feel like they could be wrong in how they think. Now not only do they get more hardened in their beliefs, but now they also HATE that group that kicked them out.
So in my opinion these echo chambers often lead to more division and more hatred in society. I think when people are forced to absorb more opinions and a differing set of viewpoints they become a smarter, more intelligent thinker.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this shift, but for most of my life I’ve held more liberal values. Nowadays I find I need to call myself a more “traditional liberal” as a lot of current liberal ideologies have shifted to become more far-left. It seems like the division between being liberal and conservative has immensely widened and previously liberal people can often get called conservative despite their views not having changed over the years. Often the vocal minority in a community is able to force people to adhere to their more radical viewpoints or they kick them out of the community.
Overall I just think echo chambers often can just be called a “cult”. Because that’s usually how they operate. Anybody who refuses to accept one narrow viewpoint of the world is cut out of the cult.
For example, there are groups of people out there who believe the government is trying to give you microchips in vaccines and that they cause autism.
They don’t. They follow a political ideology that tells them to ignore facts. Studies have shown they’re truthful and able to discern facts if incentivised (paid) for doing so correctly.
Instead of being able to engage in some rational conversations with more rational people they get pushed out if they question things.
I can’t speak for your echo chambers, but in my own, those who are simply questioning things are reasoned against, and only when one acts in bad faith does one receive bad acting in return. I have no duty to educate those who have no desire to be educated.
Now not only do they get more hardened in their beliefs, but now they also HATE that group that kicked them out.
If they don’t support human rights just because some people were mean to them, then they never supported them in the first place. Bad people can be bad in their own spaces.
I think when people are forced to absorb more opinions and a differing set of viewpoints they become a smarter, more intelligent thinker.
I agree with this broadly, but every community has their own overton windows and their own safe space. I’m not looking to combat right wing fascism every day when I’m just vibing in my space.
Nowadays I find I need to call myself a more “traditional liberal” as a lot of current liberal ideologies have shifted to become more far-left.
Liberalism is a conservative ideology that upholds capitalism. If you’re on the left, i.e. against the structural hierarchies, which is what the term was used to describe back when it was coined before the French revolution, you’re not liberal.
Overall I just think echo chambers often can just be called a “cult”
You can make this argument for literally any social grouping. A family can just be called a “cult”, and all too often actually are. A religious order, a fraternity, a group of drinking buddies, a workplace. “Cults” aren’t measured by the social structure, they’re measured by their impact and the level of control they take over the members within.
I own some of it.
Aha! … I found an owner!
So there are kinda 3 answers to your question:
Who owns Lemmy? Nobody; it’s FOSS
Who owns Lemmy.ca? Smorks
Who owns activitypub protocol? The world wide web consortium created it I believe, but it’s an open standard and will likely evolve based on which organizations use it. In the same way as how HTML and HTTP have evolved over time alongside the growth of some of the largest applications that use those standards.
Nobody owns the fediverse. It’s just a network of networks that are interoperable.
Nobody owns Lemmy. It’s just a type of Fediverse software that’s maintained by @dessalines@lemmy.ml and @nutomic@lemmy.ml.
Your admins own your instance. You can find their names on the front page side-bar. For lemmy.ca it’s @smorks and @crb. They’re the ones who have the most control over your experience. It’s best to get a feel for if their interests and values align with yours, and if you can trust them to help curate your experience. They may defederate from communities you may or may not dislike. They may remove users you may or may not find harmful. They may refuse to take such actions as well where you think it would be appropriate.
If they don’t align with you, there’s other instances you can join that may better align with you. Or you can even self-host if you have the technical ability and want a more custom experience.
Just joined, still getting used to this. I joined lemmy.ca because people were asking to pick an instance other than the overloaded lemmy.ml and I’m Canadian. This instance seems nice, but it’s a little too…Canadian, y’know? I like seeing global news in my feed, not mostly Canadian news. I guess I’ll switch from the default Local view to Subscribed and keep subscribing to communities that I enjoy.
If I decide I want to switch to another instance, is there a way to import my data from this account? Or do I have to start fresh?
I like seeing global news in my feed, not mostly Canadian news.
Did you know that you can subscribe to whatever communities you like, even if they’re hosted on other instances? They will show up in your “Subscribed” feed, which you can choose in your user settings as the default view.
In other words, you can have a non-Canadian feed regardless of whether lemmy.ca is your home instance.
Yep, figured that out, thanks. :)
Currently there’s not. I think Lemmy devs are looking into implementing that, but there’s a whole lot of other work to be done.
IMO, I don’t think that my account is really that valuable on one instance or another, so I’m perfectly fine just deleting or leaving another account elsewhere as I move on. Comment history, I guess, can be nice? But it’s also sorta invasive having other people poke through that. And there’s no overall account scores on Lemmy, so there’s not any hard-earned numbers I’d wanna keep.
Unfortunately your user is not currently portable. You may also find that you end up with multiple accounts due to certain aspects of federation and a desire to engage elsewhere.
Moving entirely you could post a reference to the new one in your profile. That’s about it at the moment.
I use “Subscribed” and “Top - Day” the most, and it would be kind of nice for that preference to be “remembered”. I know several Lemmy clients for Android and iPhone are under development, and I expect that behavior will be common. Jerboa seems to default to Local/Hot whenever you hit Home. Might be configurable though.
In the meantime, there’s an RSS feature, and I just use “Subscribed/Top-Day” for my default page.
Point being, this will likely be a common complaint. Even Beehaw.org and Lemmy.world are just a fraction of the Lemmy-verse, so every instance will only ever be a small subset of what’s going on. Personally, the Local tab is useful for keeping up on the health and development of your local instance, but I really only scan the local feed once a day or so.
It’s just a protocol between servers. So no one? Who owns “English”?
Each instance can elect to federate or not federate with others.
So the question just goes down one level … who owns the instance? It’s an important question as it then determines what influence can occur with any instance or any owner or owners of an instance.
Yes, no one can own the English language but the language can only occur because each and everyone of us own the hardware because the hardware is built into our bodies.
A fediverse instance has to be run from some location and by some hardware … so the question I still wonder about is … who owns any one instance … who owns or controls Lemmy.world? who owns and controls lemmy.ca
hello! i’m the current owner & admin of lemmy.ca.
Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?
i don’t really consider myself very policital, but I have taken those “vote compass” things just to see where I would fall, and i typically lean left. not sure exactly what you mean by easily influenced, but I would hope that I’m not. I think of myself as fairly level-headed, and probably overly analytical about things, and I typically don’t try and let my emotions get involved in my decision making.
I have to run but can answer more questions if you’d like. or i can maybe do an AMA later?
That’s amazing that you responded … that would never happen to any commercial social media service out there.
Thanks for that.
My concern is not so much what your personality or political leanings are … to a degree, if any owner holds extreme views, it should be concerning.
My biggest concern is money and funds - where it comes from and where it goes.
The work you guys (owners of an instance) are doing is admirable but no one should expect you guys to provide any and all of these services for free. I am sure you are working hard and tirelessly to keep this instance working and maintained but it must take up a considerable amount of your time and energy. Which begs the question, how do you make your money? Do you have a separate job … or do you make any money by running this instance? And also, what are your costs in being able to maintain this instance? Do you break even? Are you running a loss? Are you making a profit?
My questions are two fold because I would like to know if you are benefiting from this work … and I would be the first to congratulate you on that.
The other side of that question is … if you are suffering a loss … shouldn’t we be helping you with your work? We shouldn’t be taking your work and energy for granted and expect you to work for free, pay for services for us who enjoy them. Even if you are able to pay for services, hardware and rentals … we shouldn’t expect you to work for free.
I know you have to maintain your own privacy but as users of your service, it would be nice to know what your situation is … maybe you are independently wealthy and you don’t care about money … I don’t know. Or maybe you have no money at all and you are barely getting by.
If you do need funds … I would be more than willing to donate, subscribe or sign onto a subscription to keep this instance running.
Which begs the question, how do you make your money? Do you have a separate job … or do you make any money by running this instance? And also, what are your costs in being able to maintain this instance? Do you break even? Are you running a loss? Are you making a profit?
I currently have a day job not related to this at all. I’m a software developer by day. I currently accept donations that go towards the hosting of this instance. The users so far have been very generous, so we have enough to carry us for around 6 months (from what I remember), based on current usage. As long as we don’t get any huge spikes in usage (and i’m likely talking about in the thousands of new users joining), we should be ok for a while. If donations slow down I will be able to maintain the instance on my own, but ideally i’m hoping it can run off donations. I will be as transparent as I can be about this instances financials, as I plan on doing a monthly (maybe every other month?) “State of the Instance” type post, that I’ve seen done on mastodon, and some other lemmy instances too.
My questions are two fold because I would like to know if you are benefiting from this work … and I would be the first to congratulate you on that.
I have no plans to ever profit from this. All donations will 100% go towards our hosting costs. If, for whatever reason, this instances changes owners, I will transfer whatever donations are left over to the new owner as well.
If you do need funds … I would be more than willing to donate, subscribe or sign onto a subscription to keep this instance running.
Thank you! You can see from the donation link above how much we currently have. As I said earlier, we’ve had quite a few generous donors, so I’ll let that up to you! I’ll be adding my hosting expenses into opencollective as well so that will be visible too.
Hopefully I’ve answered most of your questions? If there’s anything I’ve missed or if you have other questions, let me know!
I’m not a rich man (I wish I were and I would just send more to you) but I’ve subscribed to a $5 month plan … if all us users did the same, it would be more than enough to pay for the services you run and pay you for the work you do … I honestly believe that we users have to learn that we need to directly pay the people who do the actual work of maintaining these open source social media systems … even if it means that each user contributes a dollar a month, with thousands of users, it would all add up … if we don’t, we will eventually run into the same scenario of someone coming along to monetize it, commercialize it and sell it all along with our content.
I look forward to what you will with this instance … keep up the good work, you sound like a good man who is working towards admirable goals.
thank you! it’s greatly appreciated! i will do my best!
that would never happen to any commercial social media service out there.
Actually it does. Lots of people used to talk to the dude who started Twitter and he would respond. Making “important” people accessible to randos like you or I was kind of the major benefit of the whole service, especially in the early days.
Likewise, I’ve personally had comment chains back and forth with /u/spez on Reddit on many occasions, and a few other notable admins, founders and CEOs too (keysersosa, aaronsw, yishan and kn0thing spring to mind) although they weren’t necessarily CEO at the time.
That said, it certainly is nice when communities can stay small enough to still have regular interactions with each other, admins and users alike. And fediverse is designed to promote exactly that. These huge communities like lemmy.world and even lemmy.ca are sort of a sign we’re not using it quite “right” and we’re still following the “centralized” model, but that’s okay they are serving an important role for now and will continue to serve an important role probably forever, but hopefully never too important, and it will always be possible to break out into smaller more specialized communities but still stay in touch with these bigger ones.
We subscribe via one of the funding methods in the sidebar. ☺️
If you’re interested in seeing how much they’re getting in donations, the sidebar of lemmy.ca lists their opencollective and liberapay - the numbers are listed publicly. They get CA$30.59 per week from liberapay (CA$122.36/mo) and CA$21/mo on opencollective. Roughly $100 USD/mo
Hey @smorks I am interested to hear how you will handle content that some people may view as “hateful”? One of the problems I often see in some reddit communities is that they can be heavy-handed on moderation and it can often mean the subreddit is filled with primarily left-leaning comments as the right-leaning comments are counted as “hateful”. I’m personally looking for an instance where I can see a diverse set of viewpoints and based on what you said here it sounds like this may be an instance that is supportive of that.
Just to be clear, I am not asking whether people would be allowed to be blatantly racist, but whether people could disagree with political movements that lean right/left without being censored? I personally think communities thrive when they can have more open, productive good-faith conversations about topics. When people get censored it usually seems to create more division and more hate in my opinion.
first, i’m one of the admin’s here, and try and let the mods of their respective communities handle the bulk of the reports. i will only step in if there’s anything blatantly against the rules.
i don’t care if it’s left-leaning or right-leaning comments. i’m going to remove it if it’s hateful, and will start with a temporary ban if it continues, and a permanent ban if it persists.
the first two rules from this instance’s sidebar read:
- No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
does that help?Just to be clear, I am not asking whether people would be allowed to be blatantly racist, but whether people could disagree with political movements that lean right/left without being censored? I personally think communities thrive when they can have more open, productive good-faith conversations about topics. When people get censored it usually seems to create more division and more hate in my opinion.
i agree 100%.
if you want to give me an example of what others deem “hateful”, but you do not, i can tell you where i stand on it and why?
hope that answers your question!
I can throw out a view examples of content that I have seen deemed as “hateful” in local subreddits that I personally don’t think fit under the purview of “hate speech”.
- Comments removed that were speaking about drivers from a particular city being bad. The city has one of the highest insurance rates in Canada due to high collision rates. It however also has one of the highest immigrant populations of East-Indian people so I will often see any comment vaguely mentioning this cities poor driving being deemed “racist” simply because it could be a racist implication despite the bad driving comments having no race component and being backed by stats.
- Comments that are against PRIDE movements. Now again I am not meaning blatantly homophobic comments like “Gay people suck”, I mean comments like “I don’t agree with this content being taught in schools”. In many subreddits both of these comments will get removed and result in bans. Which I’d agree is valid for the first comment, but not the latter.
- With COVID-19 specific topics I saw some pretty heavy handed moderation as well. It’s been a bit so I don’t have any specific example, but I saw people who would be presenting simple opinions who were trying to have good faith discussions/debates have their comments removed and get banned. Again, I am not talking about the blatant “don’t get vaccines, they cause autism” clowns. During COVID I actually was working for a public health clinic and worked in vaccine clinics. So don’t get me wrong on which “side” of things I stand on, but it was always disheartening to see people who had differing opinions, or who were hesitant about things get mobbed by people, comment removed, and banned. People who could have had reasonable conversations and eventually maybe formed different science-based opinions instead get shut out and pushed off to fringe communities.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am a moderator on some communities on reddit and I know content-moderation in general is a hard topic. Knowing someone’s intentions behind a comment can sometimes be murky and that is often part of the issue. I come from a viewpoint where I think it is important for people to see comments that they may disagree with or may even offend them. Of course there is no need for posts that just flame someone, or attack specific immutable characteristics, but I think there is harm from being too isolated from different viewpoints as well.
thank you for taking the time to send me those examples!
i 100% don’t agree with your second example. from my understanding (i have a son currently in grade 3), they are teaching about acceptance and inclusiveness. and i know not all schools teach the same thing, and it could vary with different schools and at different grades, but i personally don’t see anything wrong with that. If people don’t want to join in in pride parades, then they don’t have to, plain and simple, that’s their choice. But don’t hate on the movement just because you don’t agree with it.
for your first and third example, it’s hard to say, since like you said, intentions (and context) matter a lot. so I will always try to take all those things into consideration.
htpps:/lemmy.world is run by <redacted> (@ruud@lemmy.world) and htpps://lemmy.ca is run by <redacted> (@smorks@lemmy.ca). That information literally took me a matter of seconds to google… there’s no conspiracy. The deal is that literally anyone can spin up a server and fire up an instance. The answer is different for every instance (usually).
Your friends are stating the obvious - pretty much everything in the world is owned by someone, whether it’s a Huffy Princess Bike or a message board server. The difference between Reddit and Lemmy is that Lemmy is open source.
If you don’t trust lemmy.world and lemmy.ca for whatever reason, it’s trivial for you to move on to another instance and continue using Lemmy on an instance that makes you feel more comfortable, and still get the Lemmy experience. Or as others have pointed out, spin up your own instance, but with blackjack and hookers, then you can defederate from whomever you wish. That’s when the fun really begins (but by “fun” I mean tremendous workloads and tons of responsibility. And financial costs :p)
oh noooooooo I’ve been doxxed! 😂
I think it is important information to know … Reddit was started by a small group of tech developers who then went on to sell their site to a large media corporation … and for many years, everyone just hoped that the corporation would stay open and free for everyone forever.
The same concern should be made aware for us all here … we can’t expect these owners, moderators and instance owners to just pay for stuff, run them for free and we get to enjoy them for nothing. If owners start feeling the pinch of costs, funds, money and resources because their instance becomes too popular, eventually one of two things happen … they either shut down / slow down / degrade … or they start seeing monetary value to their work and think of selling it to someone or something for a profit.
As I said to many of my responses … if I know of an owner or developer that needs money to keep these tools operating … I would be more than willing to pay for something or help out financially in some way … I’m not rich and neither are the majority of users on here, but maybe all of us together sending a bit of cash to the right people, we can keep these services from falling into corporate hands.
Difference is that Lemmy is open source, anyone can start the whole thing again if things go south. Reddit is closed source, only they can run it, and they definitely don’t want to release the source because they are aiming to control the market and go to stock market.
Reddit used to be open source too the problem with centralized software like that is that even if you start up your own instance (and lots of people did) it’s completely empty and it’s going to STAY completely empty forever unless you also get users posting things, which they’re not going to do because you’re empty.
The idea of Fediverse is that you can break down that impossible barrier to entry by communicating with all the other sites in the Fediverse even as a brand new site. Even though when you start your Fediverse server it starts out empty, it can pick up all the content from every other Fediverse site in the world (gradually) and get you past that initial roadblock, treating you as a potentially valuable partner and not a competitor. And if a big site goes away, their content is still with you, and everyone else.
It’s not going to magically get you users, but maybe you don’t want users, and all you want is the content. Or maybe it will buy you enough time to get the users you want to get. No matter what, while it’s not a magic wand and building an active community is always going to be hard, it’s certainly a step above Reddit’s retracted “open source” offering in the way that it tries to encourage and support people to start their own communities. It’s more than just throwing some software at them and saying good luck, it’s also giving you content, and communication, and hopefully eventually even more as it grows and matures into the future.
I am really eager to see what kind of content discovery / search / recommendations people can start building on top of Fediverse and ActivityPub, I think that’s the next step. Reddit’s search and community discovery has always sucked, and Youtube’s recommendation algorithm has always been untrustworthy, and I think things like that tells us it’s probably a hard problem, but I look forward to seeing what the platform can do.
Reddit was able to go closed source because the code was only being run by one entity. Their code was years out of date when they stopped claiming to be open source, because they weren’t actually using their GitHub repo for the site.
Lemmy won’t have this problem because it isn’t one monolithic instance.
While I agree in principle with the idea that we shouldn’t be freeloaders, there is another side to it.
I used to put a dozen hours a week into unpaid tech support for all comers, just because it was fun and it helped out the community. When I moved away, I started doing other things (volunteer firefighter, etc.)
My brother pours tons of work into his custom birdhouses and they are very popular. He absolutely refuses to take any compensation because it is a labour of love.
I don’t expect that any one instance will remain available and viable over the long term. If things look dire or the mood strikes me, I’ll look into spinning up an instance, just as part of being a good citizen. I assume that human nature will ensure that there are plenty of people like me.
I’ll kick in a few bucks here and there and human nature means that there are plenty of others doing that, too.
Never underestimate the drive of someone with a hobby! Hell, I wish my hobbies ran to only a couple of hundred dollars a month!
Same here … I’ve been involved in lots of construction, renovations and building over my lifetime … my family owned a construction business so I know a little of everything - plumbing, electrical, construction, woodworking, structure, concrete, HVAC, roofing, landscaping, heavy equipment and all sorts of other things construction related
Yes, I’m like you … I love what I do and I enjoy helping people out with big or small projects when I feel like it … but often there comes a time when the work is so big, so time consuming and costs me money that it makes one wonder why I should do the work … it also makes me wonder sometimes if people are just taking advantage of me.
I love doing stuff for people … but I also appreciate it when people give something back for the free work you offered them … especially when there was a lot of work or energy or skill involved.
The work you do may not seem like much … but to have the skill, knowledge, education and training that you have in order to complete complex technical tasks is worth a lot of money … especially for us who don’t have that knowledge … never sell your abilities short. It may seem like nothing to you but it is a world of difference that many of us can not cross.
I understand how feel because I feel the same when I help out others too … but I also believe that we should foster and build a culture of encouraging everyone to contribute a little bit of money everywhere to experts and knowledgeable people like you, to owners of instances, to developers of open source software and to those advocating for all of this … if we don’t, we will always run the risk of all this activity and all these projects becoming lost either by burning out all this volunteerism or creating situations where owners become so desperate for money that they see no other option than to sell their work and their efforts to the highest bidder.
You raise some important points. When I started providing tech support to all comers, it was about building a community. There did come a time though when too many were exploiting my skills in that it was all take and no give. After that, I started working only by referral and eventually transitioned to that field as my living, rather than a hobby.
I think we have to be willing to throw a bit of cash around, but not everyone can support every worthwhile endeavour.
Each operator has to find their own balance.
I think the advantage here is that the average instance size can remain small and relevant to the individual users values without sacrificing the amount of content available in one spot. The owner of lemmy.world (for now) is easier to reach out to and share concerns with. You can’t go directly to Spez or to Reddit’s future shareholders with a problem in the same way you could with an instance’s owner. It’s the (im)perfect blend of old school bb forums and the mega platforms.
The biggest issue with the fediverese is the non-transferable nature of your profile. If that can be resolved, I’m all in. Afaik that is a planned feature for Lemmy in particular.
I don’t own this instance. But I run my own. I do so that I can control my access and am in control of my destiny. I have been going back and forth, pretty heavily, about opening it up come July.
I have worked in IT infrastructure/operations for years so I know the responsibilities, hence the hesitation because if I do allow others on it, it ups the stakes a bit.
Personally I know the costs. I am willing to accept them, and do not have any interest in increasing them to accommodate more than my instance can handle. Nor do I have much interest in policing and moderating people or communities. So if I opened my instance it would be solely so others can federate and join witb other instances. Drama someone caused would be dealt with my removing the drama.
Anyone can run one. Why not run one yourself for $20/month?
Which leads to the question … what if the owner no longer has any money to pay $20 / month … what if his instance grows popular and now he has to pay $40/month $100/month $500/month … I can appreciate the goodwill of people but whenever anyone puts lots of energy into any activity, eventually it costs money, time and effort … all of which does not come for free and usually comes with a price
These are all good questions and lead you to explore more about what it means to run software.
So as well as the instance (domain name / hardware server) admins, there are also the open source developers of the Lemmy software. They keep things updated and put out new features and releases. They currently have a (partial) grant from some European agencies who are making sure that open source software isn’t all built and owned by American corporations.
It would be good for every instance to allocate some funding to the open source software they rely on.
I’m one of the people responsible for (currently a test Lemmy instance) news.cosocial.ca. Our main service today is our Mastodon server (cosocial.ca). We are a registered member-owned Canadian cooperative. Every member has paid at least $50 per year. We currently have volunteer moderators and server admins, our goal is to eventually pay those roles. More on our blog.
We’re also here to be a resource to anyone running services in Canada, especially if you need legal or other help. /me waves at smorks
Back to keeping things running: the Lemmy software needs a bunch more features to scale. The moderation tools are very basic, there are a couple of mobile apps in development that are very early on. We should think about pooling funds and donating.
It’s great to see Lemmy.ca on OpenCollective (we use it for Cosocial too). I’ve just donated as a $5 monthly backer. Thanks for setting this up!
Everybody is different, but I’d suggest subscribing as a backer or just tossing in a one time donation to start to support @smorks@lemmy.ca and Lemmy.ca.
thank you Boris! i’ve sent you a long PM to your matrix account.
Hi Smorks! I used LibrePay. Is Open Collective the preferred platform? If so, I will switch going forward. :)
thank you! i don’t currently have a preferred platform, i know that liberapay doesn’t take any cut of the donations.
Great to see this and come along for the ride! Dang it. I realize now that I used LibrePay to donate. Is Open Collective the preferred method?
I mean, this was a very real issue for every random forum site back before the internet became consolidated. In some cases people would donate to keep the servers running, in other cases the ownership gets passed on to someone that could keep servers running. At least things are way cheaper to keep running nowadays.
Yup or just websites in general until everyone wanted to move to FB…
I see Smorks has answered your question but just to follow on from what @Hotzilla said, the great thing about the software being open source is that it’s totally possible for any group, for example an Indigenous arts collective, to run their own self-funded instance for their members, which can still inteact with others in the fediverse.
for example an Indigenous arts collective, to run their own self-funded instance for their members
that is a neat idea … but I am like most internet users and social media users … I don’t have time to do these things or organize them … I will participate in many of these activities, but I have neither the time, resources, skill or money to take part in them … I’ll support those who are capable and do support the same communities and perspectives I like … but the question always concerns me
->who owns/pays for/manages/maintains the service I am using
To be clear, I am not saying to you, “you must do this yourself”.
I am only saying, the source code of these platforms are resources that anyone can use.
There will be many different ways of owning/paying/maintaining. There will be many kaupapa (purpose and process), some you will agree with and some you won’t.
But, spread the word that the resources are here for us all. You and I might not have the energy but we probably know groups who would.
You are in Canada on lemmy.ca and helping to support smorks, I am in Aotearoa reading your words through kbin.social and I donate to kbin’s dev, Ernest. It’s wonderful that we can have this conversation across platforms like this. I think great things will happen.
I guess to put the question back to you, what would motivate you to pay $5/month or $50/year to support LemmyCa?
You’re also talking to people who also think it’s an important question. My answer is “I think we should all pay for it”.
What would motivate me is in understanding and knowing who the instance owner is and what kind of person they might be and what kind of instance they would like to run … and all of it explained and presented to me as clearly and openly as possible.
The instance owner of lemmy.ca … @smorks … answered many of my questions today which motivated me to go ahead and sign up for a $5 a month contribution
I agree with you … we should all pay for it, even if it is a small amount of a dollar a month … across thousands of users, it would make a huge difference. If no one pays for it or not enough people pay for it … money, greed, desperation, economy and finance will always creep in to corrupt what an instance owner will or won’t do.
The software is open source. No one owns it.
Different instances are run by different people of varying political backgrounds.
Mastodon leans left mostly. Pleroma leans right mostly. Lemmy leans left and even has or had hard coded censorship baked into their software. Misskey is Japanese language mostly, or populated by weebs of all flavors.
Your experience will definitely depend on who’s running the server but the overall integrated platform can’t be shut down by any one person or group. You can always change servers or platforms and reconnect with people.
It had hard coded censorship. It got removed because it ran into the Scunthorpe problem and also was blocking certain nonenglish words that were slurs in english. I believe now there’s a configurable file you can set for your own filter now.
Scunthorpe problem, if anyone else is wondering.
Tom Scott did a video on that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZdwX4noCE
A key distinguishing feature of the fediverse is decentralization. There is no central authority that controls or determines what is acceptable as each instance is independent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
You can create your own instance or choose one from those that match your own affinities ✌
Running your own instance seems to be a common answer here … that is probably correct but most of us do not have the time, the resources or the skill to do such things … which is why we rely on others to run the instances and hope that they are accountable enough to the people they have allowed onto their instance.
Bottom line is … whoever is running the instance … yes the software is open and available … the services are open and available … but …
The monetary costs are running / owning / renting hardware … having the skill and training and knowledge to setup / run / maintain / update these systems on your own … taking the time to maintain all this on your own … and the costs only increase as your instance becomes more and more popular with more users accessing more and more content.
I will keep accessing the fediverse from an instance I’ve signed up for at lemmy.ca … and I will support them because now I am starting to realize that the only way we can keep this new form of social media free and open is if we all step up and support those who volunteer their time and effort to run these systems for us who can’t or don’t want to.
Lots of non-techie people rely on their techie friends to fix their broken wifi or crashed laptop for free and us techie friends still do it, sometimes with a grumble, but just as often with a smile. It’s great that you’re looking to compensate and support the people running these sites and I strongly encourage you to do so, the more you do the more practical and reliable the network will be. I just want you to keep it in perspective that as long as there are techie people out there who like to play with this sort of stuff in their spare time, and enjoy the feeling of “contributing”, and believe me there are lots of us, we don’t need to live in terror of all the server gods deciding one day that it’s too expensive and the whole network shuts down. There will always be lots and lots of people running small nodes and contributing far more than their fair share, and that’s okay. While they someday may not be enough to support the whole network on their own, they probably are right now and I think it’s still much too early to be alarmed about the health of the network or that there’s too much centralization on a few big servers. That will pass, and if it doesn’t, you can be sure people will keep relentlessly talking about it, because it’s important.
Your friends sound like they don’t know what free open source software is, or that anyone can launch a lemmy server of their own. Think of Reddit roughly like visiting a cafe, but they can change the hours and duration you stay with your friends, and how much your coffee costs. compared to Lemmy being you meet all your friends in a public park that is open 24/7 and they can invite others and nobody has a say who joins, determines the stay. But random strangers bring coffee because they want to share.
its a cabal made up of the communists, GE, the catholic church, Saudi Aramco, and the royal family.
I guess we’re keeping the Imperial System then?
And @kichae !
https://kbin.social/m/main@lemmy.ca/t/71719/-/comment/308100And @jerkface too!
https://lemmy.ca/comment/489423Keep pulling that string we’ve almost got them!
Hardware: I personally own/operate my own instance, so I own the hardware. In case of just signing up for random instances, they own/operate the hardware or rent the hardware. This does bring up a lot of possibilities, so if you are concerned about such things consider running one for yourself/friends.
Software: The software is open source under the AGPL license, so it’s free to use. It is copyright the original author(s) or organization that wrote it, who control which license is used.
Protocol: The protocol specification is ActivityPub which is separate of fediverse projects and a W3C specification. This means it’s as safe as HTTP or other common web protocols in terms of ownership.
As for censorship, each instance can choose to block other instances they deem are inappropriate. So the system relies on each community making decisions about what is acceptable and isn’t acceptable. There will be servers that have more fringe content, and these will likely have the least number of federated instances due to other users not wanting to participate in this content.
Ideally, the users of each instance will agree with the policies that instance has. If not, they can move to another instance that more closely aligns with their preferences. It’s also important to respect the policies of other instances, as they are choosing to allow instances to communicate with their user base. If they see an instance as a threat to their instance, it’s only natural to take action. Where this line is drawn is based on the instance admin and by extension the instance users. This will lead to a less connected network as a whole, but allows groups to exist without fear of being removed for their personal preferences. This is of course ignoring legal requirements, which will be a concern for most instance operators.
As for politics, large politically active groups will most likely have many instances that align with their politics. Once things get political, they can get murky fairly quick. Any instance admin could push their politics onto the instance, it’s up to the users to decide if that is ok or not. The only way this would lead to censorship/control is in the case of centralization, where a small group of entities (or single entity) run the largest instances. This is the reason the fediverse is pushing back against Meta trying to join the fediverse in my opinion. It’s up to the user base to strive for a decentralized system, and all the tools to do so are public and free (as in speech, it does have an economic cost). It’s easier to just “join an instance”, but with convenience comes a cost.
As I mentioned in my other replies on this thread … I think it is important for anyone of us to know who the owners and operators are of the instance we use. It not only protects us users but it also keeps those owners and operators accountable to what they created and maintain.
The logic works the other way too … users should understand that these services require funds and money in order to operate … we can’t just expect tech specialists and hobbyists and technology enthusiasts to just work for free … they have to pay for hardware, they have to pay for rentals, they have to pay for services and most importantly they should be paid something for all their time, effort and expertise.
Nothing comes for free … and when we take for granted all these free services and free work that are being done by anonymous people, eventually they will get tired of working so hard and they will drift towards a position of looking for money and in seeing monetary value to all the work they created, and then sell it to a corporation that can take advantage of it.
Which is why I find it important to know who the owners of my instance is … and if I like them, I may want to send some funds their way to help support the work they do.
I feel like people are missing the question that is really being asked here.
The way I read the question is “How are the individual federated servers able to interact?”
I mean, there has to be some sort of system somewhere that helps the servers connect to each other. How does Lemmy.ca know that Lemmy.world exists? There must be some sort of authority that knows. There must be some sort of first step when a new instance appears that lets everyone know that the new server exists.
Unless it’s like routers and routing tables but that only works because of the physical structure allowing it, a federated server isn’t going to reach out to its nearest neighbor and see another federated server. When you start a new server, do you have to like… pick an existing federated server to… like… knock on the door of? Give them a pie and tell them that you’re in the neighborhood now?
I don’t know the answer to this question… But I like the pie idea.
Your knock on the door analogy is exactly right–when I started my instance, I had to search every community that I wanted to see directly by URL. Then my server would send a message to that community’s server saying that I subscribed to that community. Now, every time a post is made at that community, it’s server sends my server an update. If I post a comment to a community on lemmy.ca (like I am now), from my kbin instance (remy.city), and you are reading it from kbin.social, that means my server first saved my comment locally, then sent it to lemmy.ca, and lemmy.ca sent it to your kbin.social because you subscribed to the community. So in that case, lemmy.ca is the ‘authority’, and is responsible for sending updates out to subscribed parties.
There is no such thing for instances–each new instance has to manually make a connection to another (i.e. a user on the new instance must subscribe to something from another instance). I think the tools like fediverse.observer are reading comments or other activity from popular instances, and are then compiling a list of the instances they find by doing that. But there is no central server/authority that makes communication between instances possible. Each instance has to talk to each other instance for it to happen. It’s a bit inefficient but is necessary for decentralized communication.
I mean, there has to be some sort of system somewhere that helps the servers connect to each other. How does Lemmy.ca know that Lemmy.world exists? There must be some sort of authority that knows. There must be some sort of first step when a new instance appears that lets everyone know that the new server exists.
There literally isn’t. New servers do not automatically federate with each other. Someone on the new server needs to manually start following users or groups on existing servers just to to establish any kind of connection. And even then, people on the existing server won’t know that any users or groups exist on the new one.
It takes conscious effort by users to create connections and start content flowing between fediverse websites. There’s no central authority of any kind. If someone doesn’t make those connections, a fediverse website is functionally a stand-alone social media website.
Yes, it’s literally just like that. You have to announce to the fediverse you’re open to federate with them and then they have the ability to defederate whenever they want.
The way I’ve seen this work previously on fedi is that people post “hey I made a new server, please boost for reach”. That effectively announces the existence of the server to the network. It can be difficult to get noticed at first, if you are a single-user instance without many followers.
Think of it like email vs a website. Microsoft.com isn’t connected to Yahoo.com, but they store email originating from both places. The difference here is those emails are email lists (posts and comments from subscribed communities) and get sent automatically once they learn each other exist (because a user asked to get an email).
Whoever is running the instance.
Lemmy, kbin, and mastodon all use activitypub to share content between instances. Each instance is run by a different person or group than the others.
The hardware depends, but usually is owned by a hosting company (cloud) or an independent operator.
The software is open source and isn’t really owned by anyone.
Admins are whoever the server owner determines. I’m not sure how moderators are defined on Lemmy, though likely dealt with on a per-community basis.
Lemmy and Kbin are just open-source software that can be run on servers. To answer your question, in short, the community has the most influence over the fediverse.
I don’t have a problem with the software … I know it is open source and made available - its the main reason why I went onto Lemmy and Kbin
I’m not so concerned with the software … its the costs of running these services that end up becoming an issue with users, instance owners and admins … running services takes money, renting servers takes money, bandwidth takes money, having people run, operate and maintain these services is unpaid labour
I like using these things for free like anyone else … but I think our community should build a culture of encouraging people to subscribe, pay or donate to instance owners, software developers, open source software in order to help the people that maintain these things and keep these services, software and projects out of corporate hands.
If we let them all suffer without funding … the owners will eventually look for ways to make money on their own … and depending on who these people are and how desperate they can become with rising costs … Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon could all grow to become the next corporate owned Reddit all over again
But Lemmy and Kbin can’t just “go corporate” because there is no Lemmy LLC with a CEO and shareholders. Lemmy is open source software that a whole bunch of people have been contributing to (although admittedly, I have no idea who’s in charge of approving changes, or how that works). But one thing that MIGHT be true (I’m still figuring this out myself) is that if you and I are excellent coders and we know that lemmy 3.0 is nothing but a corporate cash grab, we can just go back to Lemmy 2.99, and Save As… call it Jemmy, and then anybody who follows us is part of our cool new anti-corporate club.
I think, maybe. I’m not actually sure at all.
The biggest corporatization risk I see is that if one instance, like lemmy.jrubal gets SO big and awesome and concentrated that it would be really painful to leave and start over, then whoever operates lemmy.jrubal would have the leverage they need to be greedy, until they make it painful enough that people leave.
Your concerns are valid but the whole point of fediverse is so that anyone can host their own instances, as with the users are encouraged to sign up different instances instead of a central one so will the cost never be as astronomical as something like Youtube or Reddit and there will not be a catastrophic loss even if a major instance does go down. While I agree admins should be allowed to have donations accepted, I don’t think admins should treat this as a business at the first place.
TL;DR: For a not so huge volume instance, the cost isn’t as high as people would think, I believe the community can sustain itself.
It’s hard to accept anything is ‘free’ these days. “If it’s free, you’re the product”, comes to mind. It’s not ad revenue clearly (yet). Are we giving info to data brokers? Someone somewhere has to be making money off this.
I don’t particularly care that I’m being exploited for revenue, but I do like to know how the exploitation is happening.
It’s a very sad commentary on the world we live in that we can’t just have something nice as a community without someone trying to make a buck, but it’s certainly what we’re used to.
It almost feels like it should use tax money to be up and running you know ? Like the government take a tax on everyone and they use this money to help the community run their infrastructure.
Let’s use the people’s money to build a good social network!
