Also I'm concerned with where and how people's data is stored. Where are the account usernames, email addresses, and passwords stored? It sounds to me like each instance is a separate physical server, so you're 100% reliant on the instance 'host' to properly secure the data and maintain it. How does that work with GDPR compliance?
That scares the hell out of me...
That's a huge barrier to entry for most people, myself included. I don't have time, or the interest, in subbing to multiple versions of the same community and figure out which one is the best one.
I honestly have no idea what is even meant by 'having to fetch an instance'? If I can't find it in the search already, how do I even know it exists, nevermind knowing what the url is to paste? Surely there is a list of all the instances and communities that have been created in Lemmy, so why isn't that just used by the search?
I'm honestly not trying to be combative, I'm just really confused about all this, and I really don't know if I even have the bandwidth to learn it at this point. I might just have to stick to Reddit because learning all this new shit is too stressful for me and it's very frustrating for me.
The problem there is that I don't want to have to, nor have time, to sift through 80 'r/gaming' communities to find which one is the one that 'fits' me.
The analogy I'd use is do you want to goto a restaurant with a 2 page menu of food, or 100 pages to choose from? From a user experience, most people will be far more comfortable and happy with the 2 page limited menu that guides your decision vs too open of a choice.
Too much choice is a real problem, and leads to people more often than not choosing to just leave if there is no real guided options.
Yeah, I looked for a way to delete the "magazines" I'd created, but couldn't find one so I just deleted my whole Kbin account. I don't want that level of responsibility, being the owner of those and having to be responsible in any way for what people post. I'll just have to wait until someone else creates one and it climbs to the top of the heap and then join it I guess.
So, as someone trying desperately to figure this 'decentralized' thing out, what is to stop someone from creating their own 'instance' that simply has 0 moderation or administration, allowing torrents/drug deals/piracy/child pornography. It sounds like there's no overall control over that from Lemmy or anyone, so how would that be policed in any way? It doesn't sound like there's any over-seeing body who could either be held accountable or actually force the removal of that content, correct?
Its not the subreddits themselves I miss, its the centralized content. I don't want to have to scour 18 different communities from 4 different sites to get all my news and memes and videos. I liked having it all in one place and just being able to hit 'refresh' and have it all in front of me at once...
Thanks, I do get that part of it, but the whole 'Multiple websites' thing really throws me off. Like, until I started looking into this thing, I didn't even know you could have anything but a .com, .net or .org website ending, and here's .world and 1000 other ones. I just want one large site, preferably a .com, with a centralized collection of pages and content, like.... well, honestly like Reddit did.
Plus, there's just no content here (or anywhere) because it's all on Reddit. I know that if I just wait long enough, the content will fill in, but like... how long will that take? And people won't just all move from Reddit to Lemmy, some will stick with Reddit, some will start their own competing sites, some will goto Kbin or whatever the others are, meaning a total loss of the collective knowledge that was aggregated into Reddit. It's so sad to see the collective consciousness and critical mass of the internet being blown into the wind, I feel significantly lesser without having it around.
I'm not a creator, or even really a poster. I just want to consume the content, not have to work at creating it or maintaining it or anything.
I really hate this. I used Reddit for 13 years as a news aggregator/internet 2.0. I don't understand how this whole Lemmy/Kbin instance thing works, I just want to find the primary ~~subreddits~~ sigh, Communities for the things I'm interested in and have them aggregate the content... but now there's all these separate 'instances' each with their own ~~subreddits~~, and they're all empty and I don't know which ones to join to get content from...
Having just come from Reddit myself, I'm finding this really hard to wrap my head around. I initially jumped over and made a Kbin account and started looking around for ~~subreddits~~ "Magazines" to subscribe to. I found a few, then was surprised that I didn't see "Movie Suggestions", so I went ahead and created one thinking 'Okay, now it's around, I'll hold onto it for awhile and surely someone who used to moderate the old /r/moviesuggestions subreddit shows up, I can hand it off to someone as I have 0 knowledge or interest in doing any of that BS.
Eventually, I made a Lemmy account (here, I guess? I still have no idea what the fuck an "instance" is, or whatver this is...), and found that there already exists a Movie Suggestions ~~subreddit~~ "Community". So... are there like, 9000 Movie Suggestions ~~subreddits~~ whatevers for every instance/server of Lemmy and/or Kbin?
How in the fuck is that supposed to work, if everyone just creates their own thing?
Honestly, very. A large corporation has the resources to properly secure both physically and digitally their servers, keep up-to date in security threats and deal with them in a timely manner. If they don't, they can be held accountable for any data breeches or improper storage. Plus, ALL the servers of that corporation are secured to the same standard.
A bunch of dudes running servers in their basements has none of that, and their resources for managing/running/securing those servers vary greatly between them, and may even vary and change often depending on the server.
So yes, I trust a properly staffed/supported data farm vs individuals anyday in terms of security.
And that even starts off on the assumption that everyone running a server at all is aware of and concerned with securing the server and data properly, let alone bad actors who might actively try and subvert data integrity laws for their own gain.