Writing an article on the Fediverse and Lemmy in particular. What are your thoughts?

Decentralized Social Media: An Introduction to the Fediverse

I’ve always wished that, in some ways, messengers and social media would be more like email: You chose who hosts your inbox (Google, Microsoft, good old GMX/WEB.DE, more specialized providers such as Proton, …)—or, if you feel truly adventurous and trust no one, you can even run your own mail server in your basement. And regardless of your backend choice, you can pair it with whichever client application works best for you (the stock iOS Mail app on your iPhone, the Gmail web interface in the browser, Outlook on your desktop PC, …). And the beauty is: no matter what each one of us opts for, we can all stay connected and seamlessly send emails to each other across providers and client applications—thanks to widely-adopted standardized open protocols.

Now, imagine if social media worked the same way. Currently, most mainstream messengers and social media platforms are walled gardens, that lock their users into a closed ecosystem. But as some of these platforms like Twitter and Reddit have evolved (or deteriorated), some users found themselves seeking alternatives that offer this kind of freedom and choice.

Enter the Fediverse, a collection of decentralized social media platforms built on the principles of openness and user control. This post will introduce you to the Fediverse, focusing on Lemmy—a decentralized Reddit alternative—and explore the benefits and challenges they bring to the social media landscape.

What is the Fediverse?

The Fediverse is a collection of interconnected but independent social media platforms that communicate via open protocols. Unlike traditional social networks, which are centralized and owned by companies, the Fediverse is decentralized, meaning no single entity controls it. Instead, anyone can host their own server (called an “instance”) and connect it to the wider network.

Platforms within the Fediverse cover different use cases. By far the most popular platform is Mastodon (an alternative to Twitter) with currently over 7 million registered accounts and 800,000 monthly active users. In second place is Lemmy (a Reddit alternative) with a smaller but still significant number of around 400,000 registered accounts and 40,000 MAUs. Other less popular Fediverse alternatives include Pixelfed (Instagram), PeerTube (YouTube) and Friendica (Facebook).

The Rise of Lemmy and Mastodon

While over the course of time many platforms have been pitched as alternatives to mainstream social media platforms, few have gained lasting traction. Two platforms in the Fediverse, however, seem to have reached a critical mass of users that gives them a real chance of long-term relevance: Mastodon and Lemmy. Their growth can be attributed to user dissatisfaction with mainstream platforms.

Mastodon

Mastodon offers a decentralized alternative to Twitter. Its rapid growth coincided with Elon Musk’s controversial takeover of Twitter, which led to the reactivation of previously banned accounts, reductions in content moderation, and spikes in hate speech and misinformation. As these issues escalated, advertisers pulled out, and the platform’s value plummeted. Users flocked to Mastodon, seeking a less toxic, more user-centric environment.

Lemmy

Lemmy serves as a decentralized Reddit alternative. Its appeal grew after Reddit imposed high API fees on third-party developers, effectively forcing popular third-party client applications offline. While it is reasonable for Reddit, as the operator of the backend infrastructure, to seek a share of the revenue generated by these apps—most of which displayed ads and offered premium subscriptions—the proposed fees were excessively high. This move was widely seen as a shift of Reddit toward prioritizing its own ad revenue over its user experience. Lemmy, with its openness, community-driven ethos, and no API restrictions, became a refuge for those seeking to preserve the Reddit experience.

Getting Started with Lemmy

To truly understand the Fediverse, I’d recommend to dive in and experience it for yourself! Getting started with Lemmy is easy:

The first step is to choose an instance. An instance is a server that hosts the Lemmy software and that federates with other instances in the Lemmy network. You can check out join-lemmy.org that provides a directory of active Lemmy instances, including each instance’s focus and user count, helping you find one that suits your interests. Don’t overthink your choice—remember that you can still consume content from all other instances and communities, no matter which one you choose as your home.

Once you’ve selected an instance and registered an account there, you can start exploring the different communities hosted on your home instance as well as those hosted on other instances. Communities are spaces where users share content on specific topics, similar to subreddits on Reddit. You can join as many communities as you like, engage with posts, comment, and contribute your own content.

On most instances by default you’ll encounter the default lemmy-ui web client. While functional, this interface is not particularly visually appealing—don’t let that overwhelm you. Once you’ve registered your account, I suggest exploring alternative client applications that better suit your preferences. There are various options available, including web clients and native mobile apps. Some of the mobile clients have previously been third-party Reddit clients, but pivoted to Lemmy as their new backend after Reddit imposed the aforementioned API fees.

The Technology Behind the Fediverse

The Fediverse is powered by ActivityPub, an open protocol that allows the different instances of a platform to communicate with each other and exchange its contents ("federation"). It can also facilitate connections between different Fediverse platforms and other platforms outside the Fediverse, provided their functionalities are compatible (for instance, interconnecting Lemmy and Mastodon is less practical because, among other functional differences, Lemmy is built around the concept of communities, whereas Mastodon focuses on individual users).

Here’s a simplified explanation of how ActivityPub works:

Naive Approaches

One option for decentralization would be for every instance to maintain a complete copy of all data, but this would be inefficient (this is what blockchain does, btw). Another option would be to retrieve foreign content on-the-fly only when requested, but this would make certain functionalities, like search, cumbersome.

ActivityPub’s Solution

ActivityPub strikes a balance by allowing servers to communicate and share content more intelligently. Servers exchange data when users from different instances interact, allowing for an efficient, distributed experience.

Integrity and Defederation

To ensure data integrity, the Fediverse relies on cryptographic keys and signatures. Each instance can also block other instances (defederation), giving users some protection against spam or malicious actors.

The Advantages of the Fediverse

The Fediverse offers a few clear advantages over centralized social media platforms:

Interoperability

Instances of Fediverse platforms communicate with each other, allowing users from one instance to follow and seamlessly interact with users on other instances.

Openness and Choice

Users can freely choose what instance to use, without missing out on the content of other instances. If you don’t like or trust any of the existing instances, you can even host your own instance. Furthermore, due to the open nature of the platforms, there are many client applications / frontends to choose from, for both, web and mobile. And also here you are free to start building your own client.

No "Concentration of Power"

Due to its decentralized nature, no single company controls the network, reducing the risks of data exploitation, censorship, or the negative effects of corporate takeovers.

Challenges Facing the Fediverse

Despite its promises, the Fediverse faces several challenges:

One-man Shows and Unstable Software

Most instances as well as client applications are run by individuals or small groups. If they lose interest or funding, their projects are vulnerable to outages or sudden discontinuation. Furthermore, Platforms like Lemmy are still in early stages (version 0.x), making them prone to unexpected bugs and stability issues.

Deletion of Content

Content removal is less straightforward than on centralized platforms. Once content spreads across instances, reliably enforcing its deletion from all places becomes difficult.

Monetization

The operating cost of the instances are largely funded by donations and the efforts of enthusiast developers, which is a model that often lacks long-term viability. While some client applications show ads to their users and offer paid premium subscriptions, this primarily benefits the app developers rather than the server operators, who carry the much more significant burden in terms of infrastructure costs. This needs to be solved, possibly with a revenue-sharing model, to avoid a repetition of what happened between Reddit and its third-party app developers.

Decentralization Slows Innovation

In decentralized ecosystems, introducing new features or updates can be a slower process because decentralized protocols like ActivityPub require broader consensus for changes and must maintain backward compatibility. Centralized platforms, by contrast, can move faster since they control the entire protocol and user base.

"Outcompete and Isolate" Threat

Meta’s Threads, a centralized platform, has recently started to federate with the Mastodon network, which raises strategic concerns. They might use their substantial resources to offer a more polished experience over the same content, potentially attracting users away from independent Mastodon instances and client applications. If Threads were to later limit or cut off their connection to the Fediverse, they could retain the users they gained, leaving Mastodon out to try. While this scenario might sound far-fetched, it is precisely what happened more than 10 years ago with Google Talk and the open instant messaging protocol XMPP.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while the Fediverse offers a promising alternative to traditional social media through its decentralized, interoperable, and open nature, significant challenges remain. Compared to the mainstream social media platforms, while not insignificant, the user numbers of platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon are still merely a drop in the bucket. Coupled with issues such as long-term financial sustainability, for which effective solutions have yet to be found, the future of the Fediverse may be uncertain.

However, recent regulatory changes like the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) could shift the balance. For instance, WhatsApp is currently working on and rolling out a "third-party chats" feature, which is all about making WhatsApp interoperable with other different messaging services. This move, driven by regulatory pressure, signals that even major platforms might need to embrace more open and interconnected ecosystems—potentially opening the door for decentralized platforms like those in the Fediverse to gain more traction and user interest.

I've had real issues trying to search the fediverse. I've had bad luck with the search function of both Lemmy and Mbin, and while https://fedi-search.com/ exists the Whoogle server is down and either way the search just seems to be a list of various fediverse instances and nothing fancier (which also means that it's not a complete search?). Other than that it's quite the hassle to list all the instances you'd like to search for every search. What's the best way to search the fediverse? What works for you? And is it somehow possible to add a shortcut to e.g., DDG that searches specific sites without having to type for example site:lemmy.dbzer0.com and all the other instances all the time?

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

As a community grows in popularity, it often shifts from hosting insightful discussions to attracting memes, funny, and low-quality content. This change appeals to a larger audience interested in such content, creating a vicious cycle where valuable discussions are overshadowed and marginalized by the platform's primary demographic.

It's the pendulum swing of pretty much every community on Reddit.

• Community starts out with a small group of users dedicated to quality content related to the topic
• Community growth reaches a point where the most popular posts begin to trend outside of the community
• New users join the community after seeing popular posts show up in their own feeds. Growth accelerates
• Community becomes "popular" enough that posts regularly trend outside of the community
• New users flood in
• Users flood the community with low-effort content to karma farm
• Community now sucks.

It happened to basically every big sub on Reddit once reaching a large enough size.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21340843

Came across this article in the latest stuff magazine and in the past, a lot of writers were a little unsure, but seams more positive.

Hello everyone, We built clubsall, a frontend for federated content. Since the goal is to help build a reddit competitor, open sourcing is the logical next step.

However, without a review, I am afraid website could get hacked quickly.

Does someone with experience in scanning code for security issues or white hat hacking wants to help increase confidence so I can open source it?

I’ve setup my own federated podcast through Castopod, but unsure of how to federate it with Lemmy directly. It is project-focused around FOSS tooling and just enjoying life. X-posted to selfhosted and technology communities.

Any suggestions on better integrating it with Lemmy, Mastodon and other services? Relay servers were mentioned to me, but I haven't messed with them yet. This article on joinfediverse wiki, https://relaylist.com/ and Fedi Tips guide are what I'm working through understanding. Thanks!

I don't like the clickbait title at all -- Mastodon's clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn't surprise me if it outlives Xitter.

Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn't stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.

What are the risks associated with this? With image uploading capabilities and the like I'm thinking there might be an issue with people posting highly illegal content. I used to run some smaller forums 15 years ago and that went fine, but it feels like the risks are higher today... I'm both thinking about one's own personal mental health in needing to moderate such content, and also whether it'll be a legal liability to run an instance if people post illegal content.

cross-posted from: https://poliverso.org/objects/0477a01e-3667-0cf8-ae4a-3c3758676480

Scegliere il Fediversoin base al proprio iQ 🤣

Secondo me Hubzilla dovrebbe finire nell'ultimo percentile, mentre Bonfire andrebbe fatto usare solo a chi ha superato l'esame per la MIT Bonfire Advanced Certification User... 😂

@fediverso

I am thinking about setting up a simple blog on a spare Raspberry Pi using YunoHost. I want it to be federated (of course), and it looks like my only choices are WordPress or Ghost. Are there any other lightweight CMS out there that are federated that appear on this list? Thanks.

The Social Web Foundation (SWF) is a new non-profit with a mission of "a growing, healthy, financially viable and multi-polar Fediverse”. In TechCrunch, Sarah Perez reported that SWF has "some backing" from Meta as well as Flipboard, Ghost, Mastodon, and others as well as a "large grant" from the Ford Foundation. "In total, SWF is closing in on $1 million in financial support."

One of the hot buttons in the discussion is SWF's relationship with Meta. So I set up a series of polls on Mastodon. Here are the options for this one -- I'm not sure how to do polls on Lemmy, so please leave your thoughts in the comments

• SWF shouldn't engage with Meta at all
• SWF should work with Meta occasionally, when it's necessary
• SWF should work with Meta together often, but no formal relationship
• SWF should have Meta as a partner, advisor, or some other formal relatoinship, but no funding
• SWF should take funding from Meta, but no formal relationship
• SWF should take funding from Meta and a formal relatiionship

I've just read about ClubsAll in the Fediverse Report and did some digging. It seems to be another Threadiverse service federating with Lemmy and others.

While I always welcome new platforms into the fediverse, there are some weird things with this one.

• It isn't open source, but the developer mentioned on ProductHunt that they want to open source it in the future.
• You can't run your own ClubsAll instance at the moment
• They want you to join their Discord, but wouldn't it be better to have the conversation around it on ClubsAll itself? I've found a ClubsAll Community on ClubsAll but it only has two posts from 10 months ago without any comments or upvotes.
• Their main search bar is just a Google search
• They want to finance it through paid accounts, awards and donations according to their about page.
• According to their privacy policy they collect interactions with the content, like voting, bookmarking and reporting to improve and personalize the website and to develop new products and services and for marketing and promotional purposes.
• I haven't found content that originated on ClubsAll yet, apart from c/ClubsAll. All I'm seeing is content federated from Lemmy communities.

For me there are some red flags in there, like closed source code, paid accounts and data collection for marketing. But, correct me if I'm wrong.

This reminds me of Tom Scott's excellent video on electronic voting machines, where he mentioned that the system for counting votes needs to be easily understandable to the average person so that they can adequately trust it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/24088740

Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have. There currently is not financial incentive like the ones that have led centralized platforms to enshittify. But there might be in the future. Does decentralization protect against that tendency in some way?

Lemmy and Mastodon do give me the hope, that when one platform turns to shit, there will be people creating a platform that - for the time being - is not.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21166273

Does anyone know of a script I could run to import my Flickr data into, say, pixelfed or another federated service?