I get the idea of instances, like you can make your own and this is good for privacy. But some lemmy instances are much more popular and this in fact makes it another Reddit. If there are separate instances for niche topics, why not make it another community inside a larger instance?
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Actual answer? Who knows…
MY answer, because instance operator/server can establish whatever rules they want, and aren’t beholden to a CEO, shareholders, or any other entity that might want to put 50 ads on your feed for every post…
Because it’s open source and the community apparently wants it to stay that way.
Making your own is actually bad for privacy. You can find out what communities I subscribe to by going to my instance and checking what communities there are. Because I’m the only user.
There are mostly no separate instances for topics, but for behavior. Beehaw for example (which you can’t see because they defederated lemmy.world) is all about people being nice and doesn’t even have downvotes. Administration and modding will culturally be harsher there. Programming.dev is niche focused, but that also comes with a culture, and also gives a place for people who want to separate work/pleasure.
Then there’s performance. Lemmy has issues, and especially with huge instances. If a single Lemmy instance had as many users as Reddit, no matter what money you throw at it, it would just die. But if you distribute all those people over many instances, giving just a few 100k or 1mil to every server, … it would still die, because federation is currently also a performance bottleneck, just not as much as many users at one place :D
And then you have the point of federation, not having power in the hands of just some very few people. Let’s say everyone is only on lemmy.world. Then some asshole, let’s call him Spez, offers the Admin(s?) 5 million in exchange for the server and shuts it down. BAM. Lemmy is now dead. Powermods are also a much bigger problem that way.
Making your own is actually bad for privacy. You can find out what communities I subscribe to by going to my instance and checking what communities there are.
Also, you own the domain and server. That’s why I decided against setting up my own instance.
Also, you own the domain and server. That’s why I decided against setting up my own instance.
I don’t understand, owning the domain and server is the whole point for me.
From a privacy perspective. The domain and server are directly associated to you.
Yeah of course, but what is the point of hosting one for yourself if not that?
Some users just want to melt in to the crowd I guess.
I have my own domain and i love it. In fact, it’s going to become more and more important knowing how to self host things. Big tech is extreamly preditory.
Brilliant explanation.
Fuck spez.
Your profile is also public. An instance with few 10 subscribers erases much of the information.
Your profile is also public
Yes, but it doesn’t list your communities.
An instance with few 10 subscribers erases much of the information.
That sounds like an instance just for friends or a family, which is still worse for privacy (compared to a bigger one) in most cases. And probably even rarer than single-user instances.
Your profile contains your post history to many of your communities.
I’m pointing out that if you’re going to the trouble of hosting your own instance you could as well allow some convenient number of random users to register. It would erase most of your signal and help distribute the load and exposure to specific legal compartments.
exposure to specific legal compartments.
Allowing randoms to register, would vastly increase your legal responsibility, from both a GDPR perspective, but also from a legal responsibility for content perspective. I don’t think a small privacy win makes that worth it.
Your profile contains your post history to many of your communities.
That is true, but that is only those you post to, I have many communities I’m subscribed to but never posted to.
GDPR perspective
GDPR does not apply here. Content that people write on a forum does not count as PII. If you are not sending your users’s IP or email addresses to a third-party, you have nothing to worry about.
Right to be forgotten may well be relevant.
Also applies only to personal information and not to content generated by the users.
Part of it is figuring out how to pay for all the servers. If we have 1000 instances instead of 100, more people pay a smaller amount for server maintenance. If everyone uses a single instance, who pays for it?
For what it’s worth, once you get to the single user level, the cost is pretty much nil assuming you have the hardware and domain already
Nice! I have neither; how much’ll it run me?
Lemmy is a federated social network, similar to Mastodon, where anyone can create and run their own instance. This means it’s not centrally controlled by one entity. The reasons for having many instances include:
1. Decentralization: This reduces the power of any single entity over the entire network and prevents any central point of failure. If one instance goes down, others are unaffected. This design also helps resist censorship because content moderation is handled individually by each instance.
2. Community autonomy: Each instance can form its own unique community with its own rules and norms. This can promote diversity of thought and freedom of expression, as different communities can have different standards and policies.
3. Privacy and security: Having separate instances can provide a higher degree of privacy and security. The admin of an instance only has access to data from their instance, not the entire network.
Regarding the concern of popular instances becoming like Reddit, it’s worth noting that decentralization inherently provides a counterbalance. If an instance becomes too dominant or its policies become unpopular, users can migrate to or create a new instance. In the end, the federated nature of Lemmy allows for a much more democratic and user-driven online community.
If an instance becomes too dominant, users actually love it.
Example: Lemmy.world :)
We need to see the whole context here. We are the ones who grew up watching how corporation’s advertisement-driven and centralized model of internet took over the wild west that was before the 2000s. Internet access wasn’t widespread before that and it consisted of many separate and independent websites, each ran by its owner, with a small but tight community of people, usually around their own forum.
It’s a “going back to the internet’s roots” kind of movement. Thus, self-hosting (as it used to be) and decentralization (while also introducing modern innovations such as ActivitiesPub) is romanticized. And because Lemmy has only recently started growing in popularity, we are at the stage where there is a plethora of selfhosted small instances in a chaotic way. It’s like watching solar system formation in an astronomical scale - first you have the matter spread out everywhere but most eventually concentrate around big spheres. I presume the same will happen here too, but the Federation model we’re adopting will also leave the door for small scale independent communities to thrive too.
Some people want instances which align with them ideologically
Lol I joined for the piracy, then I see the sidebar linking the Anarchist Code of Conduct and I just felt so… liberating.
We know who are those vocal crazy minorities, don’t we
Except it’s not a minority? Maybe you didn’t shop around for an instance, but most fediverse users do.
Basically when there are many instances, a loss of one is not a big issue
In addition to what the others have said, we’ve lost some big and popular instances (Vlemmy, FMHY and others) along with the communities they had. Also, with the 2 biggest (lemmy.world and lemmy.ml) coming under attack every week, some users want to be on a smaller instance that’s under the radar.
Finally, people want to choose an instance that fits their interests/beliefs. I chose mine mainly for what they don’t allow and who they’re defederated from, but to each his own.
What happened to vlemmy, FMHy etc?
vlemmy disappeared (alternate link) a few weeks ago with out a trace or any explaination. FMHY’s domain was confiscated by the government of Mali.
