this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Fediverse
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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
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So you're saying that 14 of the 15 "mini forums" shouldn't exist, and everyone should use a single instance, but access it through their instance via the Fediverse (like subscribing to [email protected] on kibin)? If so, wouldn't that mean a consolidation of power for the [email protected] instance, and thus go against what federation is about in the first place? Or am I misunderstanding the whole purpose of decentralized social media? I thought the reason we wanted to use the Fediverse over Reddit was because Reddit had too much control over the content, but if one instance has all the content, doesn't that instance have just as much power as Reddit has now?
For any given community, yes, there must be a center. How else can there be admins and mods doing something as basic as keeping posts in a community on topic?
But we don't need to put all the communities, or users, on one server. Each server can be the hub for different things, or even different parts of the same thing. For example, anime communities for different series are spread out all over the place, but there's still generally only the one, each.
Right, but what about how websites work? Each website has its own server, but it connects via registrars for the domain names, other computers/servers learn about those domain names via distributed DNS servers, etc. I'm looking for a solution where I can access a giant collection of people/content all while using whatever site I want to use that fits my desires (or one that I spin up on my own). Right now, I'd have to access the largest instance if I want to have a large community, but then that one instance has all of the power over the content and users that use it, right? So basically the Fediverse is essentially akin to using a third-party app to browse Reddit: the app (in this case, the instance) grabs content from the API of Reddit (in this case the API of the host instance), and pulls it into its own database. I don't see how this is very different from what we currently have, though I'm trying to learn more about it and not just be a dick saying, "I don't get it, it's stupid, bye losers". Decentralized content is what I'm looking for, not just decentralized user accounts. Is that not a goal of the Fediverse?
The goal of federation is explicitly NOT decentralised content.
It DOES store content it in a decentralized way.
It DOES allow interaction in a decentralized way.
It DOES NOT decentralize control of the content. It can't. It shouldn't.
The admin of an instance, can control all content on it.
The top mod of a community, can control all content on it, across instances.
You are in control of your own content, across instances.
In a system that is truly peer to peer, truly decentralized, you could not edit. You could not delete. You couldn't even reliably take down content that breaks the law.
The point is not that no-one should be in control of anything. Quite the opposite. The point is that no one entity should be in control of everything.
In this, federation is completely different from other systems.
See, I was thinking decentralizing control was the primary goal of federation. Reddit having total control over the content is killer for any other website, so it makes sense for others to want to abolish that grip.
My thinking was like this: a community is made that every instance can join and post to, the posts would be shared across instances like a mailing list, and the community would be moderated on each instance by that instance's community (there would be a mod for [email protected] and a different mod for [email protected]), then each community on their own instances would moderate the content themselves, but it would just be a stream of content flowing into them for each instance to deal with itself. This would allow instances to moderate each community themselves according to their rules, as opposed to each community having rules that stretch across the Fediverse. This way a user would be able to post something to [email protected], and a moderation team for the [email protected] would be able to moderate the content coming from the greater "politics" topic according to their instance's rules and their own community's rules; I imagine users on kbin.social and users on teenagers.wtf to have very different ideas of what's acceptable within their communities. This kind of setup would allow a decentralization of users, content and control.
Obviously I was very wrong as to my assumptions of the Fediverse, and I appreciate the education on the subject matter.
Some form of aggregation may still be possible. Be it user by user, or server by server.
But like I said in another comment, for the fediverse to work the way you imagined, the total number of people doing content moderation would have to be orders of magnitude greater than even facebook's or twitter's.
Additionally the way it works is not mutually exclusive with differing ideas, only, in the way it actually works, instances that agree on moderation policy, can pool their efforts. Only where there are differences, are different communities and different moderators, needed.