Some concerns I have regarding Lemmy and Fediverse architecture
Some concerns I have regarding Lemmy and Fediverse architecture
So if I understand this right, you pick a server and your server account can post on that server and any servers that that server federates with.
So what happens to your account if the server you joined goes down? Yes, you could always create a new account somewhere else, but you lose all your followed communities and post and comment histories as well.
Yeah it's the issue with this 'middle ground' of federation. some ideal world would be fully p2p, identities fundamentally would rest with the user's device or backed up somewhere public and encrypted, then servers just become meeting hubs or caches of content. there's some protocols that already do this at a technical level, secure scuttlebutt and nostr are two. there's other issues that crop up, for one moderation and content discovery starts to be a lot more complicated.
so, not a solved problem by any means, but federation at least gives us a bit more freedom than a singular centralized service.
SSB would be great if joining it was simplified. Nostr's problem is one of moderation. Online spaces all moved to having moderators to protect users from an onslaught of hurtful content constantly and with Nostr you're all on your own to block each. Individual. Harmful poster you don't want to hear from anymore.
I thought Manyverse had to redo the entire SSB protocoll due to limitations in the structure?
I read up on the Manyverse blog while writing this comment, the new protocol is named... PPPPP.
Ayy.
In mastodon, you can move your account into another server. Technically it just copies your accounts, disables the old one and instructs all people following you to follow the new one. Here we don't have the "follow" problem, so less hassle, but not clear what happens to the communities of a shut down instance. Do they stay cached in other lemmies, but unable to post more into them?
I don't know if there's a community transfer feature though
There should be a failsafe for this because as this grows, you'd also have a lot of servers which are not feasible to maintain anymore and thus they'd go down. Maybe an instance dedicated to archiving could work. Other instances could refer to that archive in order for users to migrate without losing their settings.
The same holds true for monoliths like Reddit and Facebook and Twitter. What if they decide to just turn it off? In those cases you just lose everything. Period. With the Fediverse, if one instance turns off, then we just lose the stuff on that single instance. Everything else you have been following or doing is still there.
By and large, though, Fediverse instance operators are a communicative lot. If things are going to go south and the instance is going to go away, my experience has been they'll give you plenty of warning to move elsewhere and work to preserve whatever data you would like to keep.
But in those cases, the users trust that the server hosting the platform they are on isn’t just some guy’s Personal laptop.
Are there any stability requirements for starting up a server or can someone start up a server on their personal laptop?
The other problem is that eventually you will have only a few large servers because people who join will want as much content as possible. Basically the “Google” problem.
can someone start up a server on their personal laptop?
Anyone can start a lemmy instance on their Raspberry micro computer, personal laptop, dedicated home server, script-compatible NAS'es and on and on.
But most Lemmy instances are hosted on VPS's for stability and scaleability.
The other problem is that eventually you will have only a few large servers because people who join will want as much content as possible.
This is an issue I've talked about before with the general response of "It'll sort itself out". Now, a few years later it's total fragmentation and a budding centralization with the new "megainstances".
I envision special interest servers that are monolithic in community nature, dominating certain topics. Unless there's some sort of mitigation, like a federated subscription list+multi"reddits" or something similar.
Yeah an easy way to migrate/backup accounts would be nice. Also a way to backup communities so all of the content doesn't get lost.
You post and comment histories would likely still be saved on any instances that federated with them previously, I would imagine.