The Downfall of Feddit.UK - And what comes next
The Downfall of Feddit.UK - And what comes next
TL;DR, Feddit.UK is down, we’re working on making a fun replacement!
A number of days ago, feddit.uk had kicked the bucket.
The community on there had noticed months ago that the owner was inactive. This was around September (Going off of memory). So they arranged to set up a new community run by the same feddit.uk admins (except the owner, the only one who had host access) which would replace it. However, on the weekend as Quackhouse was going to be launched, the owner responded to an email and made two users admins. Emperor and GreatAlbatross. However, they did not have access to the console, just lemmy adminship. Ever since, the owner has been AWOL. The community were too afraid to go back to setting up Quackhouse incase the owner showed up again.
Unfortunately, that wariness and being afraid led to the worst case scenario happening - Feddit.uk has dropped offline. We believe the instance has reached some form of file size cap. It was basically an aeroplane flying with dead pilots before then. And it appears that aeroplane has crashed.
If you are from the feddit.uk refugee base, please join the new community whenever it is ready. Do not sign up now. We are busy and still setting up and don’t want an influx of new users just yet.
For now, sit tight. I’ll update this post whenever it’s up and running and ready for sign-ups. I am not posting the name for now so we don’t get overrun with sign ups. But we would love to invite you back to our community when it’s set up.
The new community will have it’s own unique identity that doesn’t have to piggyback off of Lemmy and Reddit for it’s name. But it will still aim to be the main UK lemmy instance that feddit.uk was. By all means, it will be a full lemmy instance, still federated, etc. It should be the same experience as feddit.uk. But we actually do have fun plans to create a nice sense of identity with that instance if all goes well! I will warn you, it does have a silly name, but that was the name that was decided upon.
We look forward to having new members. All are welcome, whether or not you were from Feddit.UK or not. We will have the theme be a UK-based lemmy instance.
I’ll try and remember to update this post when we are ready.
~20CX12
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The fact that there are Owners just doesn't sit right with me. That is just centralisation in another form.
Where do you think servers and infrastructure and the time needed to maintain them come from?
I am not ignoring the money and labour that goes into managing an instance. I just wish there was an institutional way of it not having to be dependant solely on single/select few individual(s).
Just beacuse the alternative way is hard and not feasible (yet) does not mean you should turn a blind eye to the flaws of current state of things.
The way we're trying to do things, is distributed responsibility.
A brace of admins for the day to day, super admins with back-end access, then a final layer of admin with hosting and domain control.
If things aren't happening, it passes up the chain, with people having more responsibility/access. Normally, it shouldn't need to go beyond the admins, unless an upgrade is in progress.
The tricky bit is getting people invested enough.
Conceptually, what would it look like to you?
Instance deployments are centralised, the content is decentralised.
Decentralisation means you can ignore feddit.uk and move to another instance if you want, so it's working as designed.
Real decentralisation would mean that the accounts and communities could have multiple homes (added by the account or community mods so private data doesn't go anywhere you don't trust), so people could just carry on when a server admin forgets about it.
We're not there yet, and I don't think the current Fediverse really handles it. Something to work towards, I suppose.
Agreed, Feddit.uk just ran into this wall due to an absent instance owner.
Decentralised moderation sounds potentially difficult but would be awesome if implemented in a sustainable way.
We do have three people planned to have shell access atm. I think two have host access. We're going to have some form of system in place where if someone gets hit by a bus, things can be okay.
Understandable. However I still would like if there was a way of democratising even the infra/deployment/admin power. I think that should be the future direction of the fediverse. I am even willing to pay for thimgs, with money and labour.
It's certainly an interesting idea, but I think very difficult to execute.
The problem is that individual instances fit more to a model of a utility company than a governmental organisation.
That doesn't mean it can't be done. You could set up a democratic process, elect someone, and then they'd need to collect "taxes" to support the running of the infra and the work of the electees.
However, therein lies your problem. Lemmy has the same issue with its user base that Reddit did/does:
- By and large, they don't like to (or can't) pay for things
- They don't like providing a service (i.e. deployment and moderation) for free.
Luckily lemmy.ml is completely free and doesn't incur any costs, responsibilities or liabilities.
Thanks for the snark. I will do my best to not include in conversations about how to make things better.