Fediverse

Federation is stupid

So don't use it.

convince me otherwise.

Instance blocking and user blocking are features, not problems. Most users want to block trolls for example. If you dont like that, you can make your own instance without, or just go back to commercial social media. The rest of your rant seems exclusively to Matrix, not Lemmy. I think you should spend more time here (or on another instance) before you really judge it.

Federation is critical to the development of alternative social networks. The reason people use specific social networks is because other people are on them. If there's an open source social network app that isn't federated, then everyone using sites powered by that app is isolated. With federation, all instances of the social network can interact with each other. Different instances can pop in and out of existence and the ones that stick around can become popular.

It's better for new social networks to be federated then isolated.

Replace "federation" with "email".

Still stupid?

Federation is the most natural form of human society. We've developed to exist in small communities of a couple dozen people. Some groups talk to each other, some don't, and every one has its own identity. Sometimes a member leaves and gets assimilated into another group.

Existing in large communities with thousands and millions of members - other species do that, like ants.

Ok weird analogy, but I think that's the gist of it really.

Uniform places like Facebook, with one queen/master, perfectly organised, never really seeing outside, being just a cog - that's a life of an ant.

Small, agile communities, sometimes a bit messy and complex, especially when it comes to outside interactions - we can handle that, because of our huge human brains.

It's time for moving away from being ants back to being humans.

It's definitely not stupid. P2P does have its own set problems and inefficiencies that don't exist in federated servers.

Also, the separation in "fiefdoms" is not necesarily a trait implicit in the federation. Email is federated and I don't think people using Gmail feel like it's an isolated island separated from those using Hotmail.

Having to synchronize state across peers in a P2P network can be troublesome and has limitations, specially in groups with very few peers that might not be simultaneously online at the same time and/or have limited bandwidth (if you think content in federated Matrix is slow to spread, then don't be surprised if it's even worse in a situation like that were it be P2P).

I think you can find arguments for both methods and it just depends on what are your requirements. I think a hybrid model of federated servers and peer nodes where you can choose whether you want your community on a dedicated server or in your own peer node (that's what I hope Matrix is doing) would be more flexible and preferable than just going full p2p or full federated. But neither of them are "stupid".

I think a lot of these criticisms are pretty fair in terms of user experience, but I’m more optimistic about federated services.

On matrix you need to know the other server to even find its communities

Can you think of a good alternative that doesn’t fall victim to the issues of centralization? e.g. All communities are registered with a community index – but doesn’t that community index have a responsibility to hide hateful communities?

(I think distributed, curated community lists could work here – which could be a feature where you can see the communities / rooms / magazines another user is publically subscribed to.)

little kingdoms

I think this is a real concern, more than people are giving you credit. I lost my vlemmy.net account this week – it’s unclear if the admins could have prevented this (I bet I would do a worse job!), but it’s a situation of bad stewardship / “lordship” :) There is also the issue of political defederation.

I think the answer here is self-hosting, which I think solves all the issues you mention (let me know if I’m wrong). Self-hosting is not free in money, time, or knowledge – the PC side of me wants to say that this makes it not a viable solution for people in need. But another side of me thinks that - at some point - there is a cost to using a service that needs to be paid: either pay in self-hosting, or pay by serfdom.

performance is horrible

Can you be specific? I know Matrix folks are working on sliding sync to manage some big performance issues. https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/3575

I think performance will never be 1:1 to a VC-funded, centralized tech company, but I don’t think federation inevitably means “horrible” performance (but maybe someone with more technical knowledge can weigh in).

The slow-ness is definitely a Matrix problem only, other federated systems are in fact often faster then centralized systems as they can distribute the network load more evenly. Try XMPP and see how fast it is :)

Sorry, not related to the topic but... nice application of Cunningham's law btw. https://xkcd.com/386/

Matrix is overall a spec, not just the main homeserver implementation, synapse. So things like P2P matrix, and lighter homeservers that could work locally are in development. Then you could control your blocklists, as opposed to relying on a server to do that for you.

IMO the reason matrix specifically is so reliant on a few servers is because:

• The deployment / installation, even with ansible, is fairly difficult.
• Synapse is a system hog that pretty much requires a dedicated server.

These aren't problems with federation, but the implementation of it. Federation overall is the only thing that has the potential to break the silicon valley fiefdom ( which only doesn't feel as isolated, because there are so many users there ).

Reddit mods would block you if had subscribed to other communities they didn't like. People created multiple accounts and still got banned.

Reddit could block/ban your accounts just as easily as Lemmy mods could.

Anybody could pull the material you posted on reddit, run an LLM, and imitate you.

Don't know about slow, I'm OK waiting a couple of seconds. Don't see that as a problem, nothing is crashing on my end

Every system has its advantages and disadvantages. It is the same whether it is centralized, federated, or P2P.

Started cracking up at fiefdom

I think the best part of federation is there are no islands, you can make an account on an instance and follow content from the rest of the fediverse, you can even host your own instance just for you and follow everything else