Incredible to think about that we got it right the first time (with email) and still had to spend the last 20 years complaining about centralized social networks.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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That is why it's important to also use other software than Lemmy like Mbin or Piefed. Users want choice and the Fediverse is only as decentralized as the software running on it. So please, think about this.
I dont think its the software* but the instance that matters. Everyone being on lw is not good (not that there is anything wrong with lw, just that centralization is bad). Thankfully most lemmy apps nowadays default to lemm.ee which should hopefully counter most of the centralization. Lemmy apps should rotate the default server when it gets too big which will help a lot (also shows the impact defaults have).
*Software would have mattered if the main devs instance was also the biggest. Or a very popular lemmy client defaulted to their own instance. With lemmy thats not the case.
Great point. If defaults didn’t matter Google wouldn’t have spent billions of dollars buying the default search position on other browsers.
I do not agree with you. Yes I'm a developer myself of Mbin. And I created Mbin. However, the problem with decentralization is that you still need to trust the developers who are building the decentralized apps. So within a decentralized ecosystem the centralized point are the developers and its project.
If you do not agree with Lemmy, you can go to Mbin. And visa versa; if you do not agree with Mbin devs, you can go to Lemmy, etc. Meaning you do need to have alternatives, otherwise choice is an illusion and decentralization is also an illusion.
~ Melroy, Mbin developer.
Big fan of mbin,
I'm sure this has been asked before, but do you plan on adding support for lemmy's api? Lemmy really has the edge in apps.
There's !interstellar@kbin.earth
Exactly, Mbin has Interstellar. And Mbin also has an API, since that is what Interstellar is using.
I think a surefire way to help with this would be to have a rule that any instance that becomes the largest one on Lemmy should lock itself instantly. That way, we'll only surpass the current max number of users on a single instance until it's completely spread out
This sounds neat, I kinda like this
I would suggest giving it a smallish margin so that it wouldn't get annoying with two similarly sized instances.
Fair point
I'm not sure the smaller Lemmy servers running on a pi or resident internet upload could handle the equal sizable fraction of .world . it would be interesting to calculate how many users total on Lemmy divided by how many public joinable instances and see the averages or which servers are forced to scale the most.
This would take away complete user freedom to choose the server they want which is controversial.
Also, have a look at https://lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active and count the number of non-LW communities in the top 20
Ironically, !fediverse@lemmy.zip could also be an alternative to this community.
@coffeeadmin@lemmy.coffee , have you considered crossposting there?
I think piefeds combined view makes this less of an issue. Like people subscribe to/post in the big communities because they are more active so get more comments and stuff. But in piefed you get the combined discussion from all the communities so you get the same experience even if you are subscribed to a less popular community on that topic.
Feeds are awesome 😎
Ex: https://piefed.social/f/fediversevideos
Allows you to sub to many fediverse account/communities/etc...
Piefed feeds do not solve technical delay between LW and aussie.zone
https://lemm.ee/post/59055817
Piefed feeds do not solve technical delay between LW and aussie.zone
https://lemm.ee/post/59055817