Yes, the owner of each instance can decide which other instances to federate with. I wouldn’t call this paternalism or authoritarianism though, as you are free to use whatever instance you like, and thus are able to see whichever content you want to see. If someone chooses to join an instance that defederates pretty much every other instance, well that’s simply their choice. The only issue I see is when someone who wants to join Lemmy is told “just join any instance, it does not matter which” as this is bullshit. It absolutely matters which instance you join.
I wouldn’t call this paternalism or authoritarianism though, as you are free to use whatever instance you like, and thus are able to see whichever content you want to see.
Hard disagree. It’s a power imbalance. Instance admins are technologically more powerful than their users. on average. The user did not consent to having their ability to read other’s opinions censored. It is often done after joining. It is digital oppression. The technology is flawed. It gives a unjust amount of power to a few specific kinds of people.
The user gives their consent the moment they sign up to a given instance. And they continue to consent for as long as they decide to use that instance rather than to switch to a different one. No one is forcing them to continue using that specific instance.
You can call this a power imbalance, but ultimately, the admins are only as powerful as the users allow them to be. Hosting an instance does not grant an admin any power by default, rather it is earned by gaining and retaining the trust of users, and it is lost as soon as the users decide to switch to another instance.
Or for another angle: Suppose you set up a server and allow others to use it for free. Why wouldn’t you be allowed to limit the content you host on your own server? The other users are guests, by hosting an instance you are providing them with a free service, it’s only reasonable for you to be allowed to decide on which terms you do so.
I’m saying the whole paradigm is admin centric when it should be user centric. Thats why i’ve been advocating for nostr lately. Which makes Switching instances easier.
The problem with the fediverse is it makes it to hard to switch instances and gives to much power to admins.
We can fix this issue by moving development over to nostr. That way if a admin bans content a user can just pull that content from another relay.
the first step is identifying the problem. Admitting it is a problem and then talk about solutions. Mastodon allows account migrations. Which helps and lemmy should too. But it’s not good enough when admin has the power to delete a user. In nostr they cannot because they don’t have the private key.
so I suggest lemmy add account migrations to mitigate the problem here and developers start developing and advocating solutions on nostr relays.
The technology is flawed. It gives a unjust amount of power to a few specific kinds of people.
So does Twitter, YouTube and any other centralized platform. At least with Lemmy it’s not all concentrated in one place.
The only way for decentralized platform to truly give power to the users is if every user stands up their own instance, which is unrealistic.
That would work yes but it’s not the only solution. You need the user to have complete control of their account not the admin. Nostr works like this. So you can switch backends as easily as you want. The user exist as a private public key pair. You push and pull your content to and from multiple backends rather than to one backend ( that then pushes to other backends in the case of the fediverse. ).
In the fediverse the admin blocks and bans users. In nostr it’s more like the users and admins have a more equal amount of power. The user can just listen to another instance.
Very well said.
Yea, I can see this. I could also see a white-list style federation. I think either is fine.
OTOH, I’m not sure having closed circles is all that bad. It’s how we used to do it anyway. Wanna chat about motorcycles? You didn’t go to some site that has everyone talking about everything, no, you went to the motorcycle forum. And if you found that you didn’t work with that group, you found some other motorcycle forum.
Sure, it would be nice to have an online forum where everyone can go and speak freely, but that place needs to be specific to that. Federation is probably not the correct answer for this.
Maybe things will improve as the lemmyverse grows. I’m hoping that more instances means more choices, more voices, less censorship.
Here is a new site that describes itself as free speech:
It’s natural to want to find a community an individual aligns with. Because instances are curated, it is my assumption that users engage more than an alternative like nostr for example.
Personally, I struggle trying to curate my feed with stuff I’m actually interested with nostr. In Lemmy a user starts with a small world and expands, it is the opposite with nostr even though technically a user could find a curated relay but this isn’t very intuitive.
What’s stopping a Lemmy instance from federating with two instances that don’t federate with each other?
