this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023

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Lemmy needs two things to be successful (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In my opinion, there are two big things holding Lemmy back right now:

Lemmy needs DIDs.

No, not dissociative identity disorder, Decentralized Identities.

The problem is that signing up on one instance locks you to that instance. If the instance goes down, so does all of your data, history, settings, etc. Sure, you can create multiple accounts, but then it's up to you to create secure, unique passwords for each and manage syncing between them. Nobody will do this for more than two instances.

Without this, people will be less willing to sign up for instances that they perceive "might not make it", and flock for the biggest ones, thus removing the benefits of federation.

This is especially bad for moderators. Currently, external communities that exist locally on defederated instances cannot be moderated by the home-instance accounts. This isn't a problem of moderation tooling, but it can be (mostly*) solved by having a single identity that can be used on any instance.

*Banning the account could create the same issue.
Communities need to federate too.

Just as instances can share their posts in one page, communities should be able to federate with other, similar communities. This would help to solve the problem of fragmentation and better unify the instances.

Obviously there are plenty of bugs and QoL features that could dramatically improve the usage of Lemmy, but these two things are critical to unification across decentralized services.

What do you think?

EDIT: There's been a lot (much more than I expected) of good discussion here, so thank you all for providing your opinions.

It was pointed out that there are github issues #1 and #2 addressing these points already, so I wanted to put that in the main post.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

@DaughterOfMars That’s why you do your research and create an account on a successful instance so you don’t have that problem. I have a lemmy account and mastodon. I have lemmy because of the blackout but didn’t know what I was doing. I note know how to use lemmy and mastodon from the user side of things. Lemmy for my subs and general looking at the sub home page and communities. Mastodon to chitchat and everything else

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I think number 1 is important so it’s easier to move. Otherwise we could feel centralized to one instance rather than feeling free to federate

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Been exploring, setting up my account, learning to use lemmy since 2am, this is the fundamental issue in facing, one that I cannot seem to wrap my head around.

I'm not sure (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) if my account is in certain instance, I can subscribe to communities in that instance, or other external instances. However, subscribing to communities in other instances is pretty tedious. I still don't know how to reliably do it on PC let alone mobile. It's a toss up for me if it'll open in my account or a new page asking me to log in to that instance.

Hopefully in the coming months lemmy can take off and we can have something amazing on our hands

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (15 children)

Regarding point 1- if people would just stop signing up on lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and beehaw.org, because they have the most people-

Things would go much smoother!

Pick an instance based on uptime, or hell, create your own instance.

Piling all of the eggs into a single basket is destined to result in failure.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (13 children)

For sure. But beehaw in a good example of aggressive moderating (which is totally their right) that can limit growth and why a decentralized approach is necessary. There can’t be a single massive place for x content. It’s rife for abuse. Allow it to be categorized and decentralized where beehaw can contribute but in their own way and users outside of beehaw can index and participate with them and even other instances that maybe beehaw defederated.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think it's fair to call it "Aggressive Moderation". It's barely possible to moderate on Lemmy right now at all, and that's why they defederated. They simply cannot trust outside instances as much as their own, because they screen every user, and they can't keep up with moderation. Defederating is their only option until mod tools get better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I mean. It’s clearly subjective and I’m not judging whatsoever. It’s their prerogative and frankly I think there are some positives to it. And if it helps their space then that’s all that matters. I’m just a control freak and want to be in control of my account, backups, location etc.

But if you weren’t one that’s a troll on one of these others and were cut off it’s a tough pill too. I get there’s no easy answer.

When I looked at the mod log I was seeing some instances where, imho, it seemed aggressive policing of symantics. Individuals were t necessarily being offensive or trolling, though their opinions may not have been well formed or fully thought out or in line with others there and were bounced. And again that’s their call.

I’m not saying I would do better. In fact it’s why I’m not open and EVEN if I open my instance I’m not gonna have communities. I have no interest in policing fools that argue in bad faith or just want to get their jollies off angering others.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

if people would just stop signing up on lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and beehaw.org, because they have the most people-

Things would go much smoother!

Somehow I trust the individual instances to self regulate. When an instance thinks it should not grow any further at the moment, it can close for new registrations, and users will naturally flock to others which are still open. I don't see this as a responsibility of the users, and in case of users completely new to lemmy, I also don't see how they could make a reliably informed decision.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

How do decentralized identities interact with unique usernames? By Zooko's triangle, if identities are distributed and secure (implied by unique), the names are not human-meaningful. So we would be identified by public keys rather than usernames, like Tor onion addresses. Am I understanding this right?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, #1 is kind of impossible now. Different people can have the same ID on different instances.

#2, unless they really want to just be their own separate community completely, like an entirely different website, then yeah of course. That's the point. Regarding the current major defederation, my understanding is that this not meant to be permanent and is a different situation. It's a workaround basically.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Using DIDs would involve a completely different system. Everyone would have to create a new identity anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't understand the first one, why would we want that? Wouldn't it be enough to make it possible to move accounts similar to how mastodon does it (but including your local content)?

My bigger problem is that if a instance goes down then the community is gone. I like how Matrix has solved it that you can have aliases and the content gets replicated on other servers, etc. Then even if people defederate then you still have your old copy and people can keep using it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You can create a one-person instance and hold your identity there.

If you what you want is for every server to hold your identity, you have to trust all servers. I think that an evil admin would be able to impersonate any user from any instance if that were the case. How do you delete your account? Can an any admin delete your account everywhere? Which one is the real "you"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I would assume the same way any other system with untrusted nodes works: with the client authenticating by use of a cryptographic signature on everything they submit.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Friendica, I believe, federates their groups. You can see them from mastodon as a user. I guess in AP vocabulary they are an actor. You can post to the group from mastodon too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

However let me just bring into mind that we recently defederated from some Lemmy instances and for which reasons we did that (as beehaw I mean).

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