I just joined Lemmy and so far I’m enjoying it. It’s a little bit sparse in terms of content and users, but I think it has a really cool structure, and it feels more human than certain other social media sites.
I’m curious to know what users think about who is welcome here. Do you think it should be gates open, everyone including your aunt should join, or is it more exclusive to people interested in the fediverse as a starting point? Or something else?
Not trying to stir up shit, just genuinely curious about what the vibe is and where the community thinks it is or should be going.
It would be great if it could become a virtually universal social media eventually, but for its quirks to be understood by everyone, some critical mass of first adopters must understand the fediverse. So I think the fediverse will self-select for technically knowledgeable people at first before eventually becoming accessible to the public, not by any fault of its own but by virtue of having been around long enough and grown enough of a community to attract the average person from traditional social media.
I also think there are different instances and communities for people with different priorities. People interested in the ideas behind the fediverse can congregate on lemmy.ml (because that’s where Lemmy’s developers are, right?) and in FLOSS communities, etc., while people looking for a social network that won’t use them for profit can flock to region-specific instances, etc.
R****t felt like the place for tech savvy people when I first joined a decade and a half ago (I feel old now). It was confusing and I had no idea how to use it but the content was better than 9gag which was hugely popular at the time. Felt the same way about the fediverse half a year ago. Now it’s all natural to me.
That’s the genius part: It doesn’t matter whether I think if someone is welcome or not. Everyone can run their own instance, with the software they prefer, and connect it up to whatever other instances they prefer. In that sense it is more democratic than the closed garden platforms.
It’ll take time before these things become more accessible to technically inept people.
That plus the ability for each user to self-curate their feed.
Block things you don’t want, sub to things you like. Post things you like, downvote things you don’t like.
Everyone can control their own corner of the fediverse, and our feeds can all intersect as much or as little as each of us want.
To be honest I don’t see a difference to Reddit other than it having much less users and content and more geeky at the moment.
Same people as email.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
This is the future of social media and you are a part of it. Currently there are only a few people but later on everyone will catch up and this will have most of the population on it.
But because of the federal nature it will be cluttered overwhelming or difficult to manage like other centralised social media.
The biggest advantage is neither the corporate nor the governments or dictatorships can censor content here. Only the community can decide what’s best for them.
The future is federated, decentralised and anonymised and open to everyone.
Eventually people are gonna get tired of the toxicity of mainstream social media.
Eventually all of the internet is going to be decentralised and free from control again as it was meant to be.
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For accuracy’s sake, Lemmy is an ActivityPub client. Mastodon is an ActivityPub client. kbin and mbin are ActivityPub clients. I’m sure there are others that I’m not aware of.
IMO one of the cool things about Lemmy is that it could be both. I can imagine some instances keeping a high barrier of entry and strict posting rules, but federate with more open, mass appeal instances that your aunt joins. I would be surprised if it ever catches on in that way though.
That’s the cool thing, different instances have different ethea on this and you can pick one that’s more open, like dot-world, or one that’s more of a walled garden, like beehaw.
Well, it’s federated and runs on free (as in freedom) software. So the whole point is it’s theoretically for anyone and everyone. Anyone with a computer and internet connection can host their own instance, or join another instance that aligns with their interests and politics, and connect with any other instance that’s federated with them/doesn’t have them blocked. And similarly if there’s people you find insufferable you can block them as individuals, and if they break the rules of your instance they can be banned from your instance. Or an instance can block another entire instance if they find the other community particularly vile.
Not sure about the positioning of “aunts” as people who wouldn’t be interested in the fediverse though. Plenty of people are aunts, I’m sure there’s plenty of aunts on the fediverse too.
federated
Anyone is welcome, that’s the entire point of making it decentralized.
Each user, each community and each instance has control over how they conduct themselves and what behaviour they find acceptable.
If you don’t like your spot in the fediverse, you can pick another, or roll your own.
If others don’t like your behaviour, they can deal with that within their own sphere of influence.
Unlike other social networks, where some CEO can make up random rules as they see fit and enforce them arbitrarily, the fediverse allows for much more granular control.
That said, it’s an experiment that is being played out right now, across society. Your aunt can join, or watch what happens, as can anyone else.
There’s still plenty of rough edges, so the user experience is going to vary, some good, some less so.
Participate, or not, it’s entirely up to you.
