When I look at https://lemmy.ml/c/startrek vs https://kbin.social/m/startrek I see two entirely different lists of posts. Why? It’s the same topic, just on different instances. How can we have communities about topics without having them siloed into their own instance-based communities? Is this just related to that 0.18 issue with Lemmy/kbin not talking nicely, or is this how the Fediverse is?

Is it (at least theoretically) possible for me to post an article on https://kbin.social/m/startrek and have it automatically show up on https://lemmy.ml/c/startrek, or are they always going to be two separate communities?

19 points
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I believe that Lemmy should add the ability for an instance to self-aggregate, were an Admin bundles other instances communities into a /g/ grouping.

So instance.tld/g/community could include the whatever communities across the fediverse they felt it should.

Some instances would use it for general aggregation, others would be more strict as a way to merge identical communities.

But as for now, there is no feature set.

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9 points

@briongloid Not admins. Users should be able to do it.

As an admin, there is no way I can be across all of the niche subtleties and naming schemes of communities I’m not involved in. If I have to group them, I’m going to get it wrong.

If it’s going to sit anywhere above the individual level, it should be at the community mod level, not the instance admin level. But of course, many community mods aren’t going to want to actively point people at other larger communities that overlap with theirs.

@timbervale

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5 points

Maybe if G is common across the Fediverse, it’ll help solve the difference in URL formats? (C vs M)

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4 points

/c/ & /m/ is the same, /g/ would be a grouping of both.

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1 point
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I was thinking more of a situation where we have community registrars, “DNS” like servers, etc. Still a distributed system sharing power, but far more structured than the email analogy that is always used. That said, it appears I had the wrong idea of the goals/functions of federation and the Fediverse in general. Oh well, at least I learned a bit more about it.

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2 points

I think indexers are going to be a must, we need central servers to catalog even just all the community addresses for lookup.

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18 points

This could be achieved within the UI and seems like a good idea.

Each kbin/lemmy instance decides to follow magazines/communities from others through activity pub and stores it locally for the instance.

Having the UI retrieve all local posts with the same magazine/community name (e.g. m/star_trek@kbin.social c/star_trek@lemmy.world). Wouldn’t be hugely difficult, I believe Kbin uses postgres database as the local store. The community/instance should be columns you can search for, it would be a small SQL change.

Even if that wasn’t an option, there is a means to get all of the magazines/communities from the kbin UI and retrieve all posts for a specific magazine/community. So you could do it entirely in a web client.

The combined view wouldn’t change how you comment on specific posts. The issue is where do you post and what view would take dominance (e.g. if a magazine had themed itself).

The solution here would be to default to the local instance if it exists or the instance providing the most posts/comments. Perhaps with a drop downso users can choose.

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17 points

You’d probably open yourself up to magazine poisoning that way. Would be easy enough for a troll to spin up a new community or entire new server that helpfully drops spam into magazines with the same name. I think I would prefer users be able to create meta-magazines that will aggregate posts from multiple federated/local sources.

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3 points

How about something that works like this?

https://i.imgur.com/qDuT1oz.png

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2 points

looks good

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3 points

Technically can’t they do that even now?

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5 points

Sure, I guess. Truth be told there are probably lots of vectors for spam to come in until the moderation tools get a big overhaul.

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3 points
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That’s just a moderation tool. A community would simply need the ability to run a whitelist or blacklist of communities to aggregate.

Frankly, I think a more manual process as an option is better because it would help account for naming variations. It’d also allow a mod team to create a place SPECIFICALLY to aggregate, which strikes me as inherently useful even within an instance.

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10 points
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I think you’ve misunderstood. Lemmy/Kbin absolutely DOES allow for one big forum to exists for a subject, across the whole fediverse.

It’s just that people are creating communities on their own instances, because they don’t know or care that one already exists on another somehwere, which they could be joining.

They are two separate communities. They are like if you had two subbreddits called r/startrek and r/alsostartrek.

They could be about the exact same thing, but they were started by different people. The second of which, either didn’t check if one already existed, or wanted to make their own for one reason or another.

In the future, it might be possible to combine communities in some way (like multireddits), but for now, all they have in common is the subject matter.

And, while communities have a “home” instance they are not solely accessible by people on that instance. They are accessible by any user on any other federated instance. Making more communities for the same thing on other instances, is not how federation works. You’re just making more “subbreddits” with similar names.

Basically, both communities exist on both instances. Only one is needed, on one instance, for there to be a community for a given subject on the entire fediverse.

You can view the Kbin magazine, of course: kbin.social/m/startrek

But you can also view the lemmy.ml community, still in Kbin: kbin.social/m/startrek@lemmy.ml

And the same works in reverse, the Kbin magazine, in lemmy: lemmy.ml/c/startrek@kbin.social

Basically, someone made a second one, even though only one is needed. They both exist for the entire fediverse, not just their respective instances.

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4 points

The redundancy that is being complained about is a problem, but it’s also one of the fediverse’s greatest assets. What happens when a group of discussion is forced or becomes more dominant in just one place and something happens to that place (whether it be corruption, data loss, just cut off from other places)? I think rather than creating a desire or necessity to congregate in one place, having tools for similar groups to distribute topics among themselves is a much better solution for everyone.

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2 points

If we can decentralize users, we can surely decentralize content, can’t we? I don’t want content to be restricted to one instance, and that’s my problem. I was looking to have the same community and its content to be on all instances at the same time, removing the power of one instance to shut out the Fediverse and control all access to the content. If !startrek@startrek.website decides to shut down all traffic to/from kbin, for example, then that would leave kbin users in the dark as it currently stands, right?

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3 points

The old content would not disappear. Federated content is in fact stored on every server, and is not fetched from the “main” server every time someone wants to interact with it. Only changes are transmitted to and fro. Defederation entails the ceasing of this synchronization.

If startrek.website had genuine reasons for shutting your instance out, you probably don’t want to stick around on it either.

If it didn’t, that will mean people likely wont want to stick around on it.

The third option is something like what happened with beehaw, where an instance was unable to deal with the moderation load of large outside instances. In these cases, the defederation is likely to be temporary.

Either way, the content moves around a little… Establishes new homes on new instances… And you’re back to business as usual after a bit of turmoil. A lot less of it than with a commercial centralized services going down though.

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2 points

Much like people making copycat subreddits. As apps become more popular, the larger communities with better content and engagement will naturally consolidate into the more ‘dominant’ ones.

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4 points

Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of the Fediverse in the first place, though? Consolidation of users/power? If we’re going to use a single instance for every topic, then why not just stick with Reddit?

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3 points

Because there’s multiple instances, and new ones can be spun up if the existing ones “go bad.” It’s completely different from Reddit, I don’t see how you’re considering them the same.

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1 point

It’s because nothing’s gonna centralize into one instance. There’s gonna be communities that thrive on one instance, and communities that thrive on others. So, if one instance goes to shit, it doesn’t bring down ALL of the Fediverse; just those communities.

It’s almost like diversifying you investments.

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9 points

This is how the Fediverse is. That said, I’m pretty sure there is functionality being worked on in some way to accomplish exactly what you are looking for.

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7 points

You’re probably wanting something like Reddit’s “multireddit” functionality. I know of this issue for Lemmy, with some links to related issues in the comments. Kbin has one here.

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1 point
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Unfortunately, not. Multi-reddit just lumped everything together, which allows for duplicates. Using my Star Trek analogy: if there was a new episode, and both communities had a thread for discussion, I’d have to go into both threads to talk about the latest episode. What I want is a single thread being posted to one community automatically gets pulled into the other, and comments can be posted on either site but appear on both. That’s the way federation should work, but it doesn’t currently work like that. That’s my frustration. If I wanted to go to multiple communities to have the same conversation multiple times, I’d search for web forums that have existed ever since “Web 2.0” was a thing in the early 2000’s. There’s a reason people tend not to use those small forums anymore, and favor larger sites like Reddit. Hopefully it’s a change that can come to the Fediverse sooner rather than later.

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8 points
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That’s the way federation should work, but it doesn’t currently work like that.

I would dispute that, actually. Sometimes people make separate communities because they want there to be separate communities. Over on Reddit that required you to make communities with different names, but here you can also do it by going to different instances. Maybe there’s a startrek@lemmygrad.ml that’s all about how awesome the Romulans are, and startrek@startrek.website wants nothing to do with them.

There’s a reason people tend not to use those small forums anymore, and favor larger sites like Reddit.

If that’s the case then your “problem” will be self-correcting, if there are multiple threads on the same subject in different communities people will tend to contribute to the larger one and it’ll snowball at the expense of the others.

Some people might prefer the smaller communities and threads, though, and thanks to federation they can pick whichever one they want.

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5 points

It sounds more like you want a cross posting feature. There is no reliable programmatic way to determine both threads are about the new show, and anything that’s not reliable and programmatic is just ripe for abuse.

A cross posting feature would be nice, but for something like “the new episode just dropped” without some serious coordination between the communities, you would still end up with a lot of threads.

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1 point

Basically I want a mailing list feature, but one that mimics Reddit’s UI. We already do this with websites (there are registrars and DNS servers that aren’t controlled by any one organization), so why can’t we do it with content? Share content with every instance as it’s posted, as referenced by a “DNS server”-like setup, and bam, done. Each instance can moderate the content how they see fit, and if one instance decides to be dicks about it, users can switch to a different instance and have literally the exact same community and the exact same content as they had before the previous instance owners became dicks.

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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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