Lemmy federation in action?

submitted by JasonCarswell from (self.Cassy)

We need to see Lemmy federation in action - 2 servers sharing content.

 

My best evidence (thus far):

Updated Lemmymap: https://lemmymap.feddit.de
(Discovered here: https://lemmy.cat/post/27907)

How would you feel about having the ability to merge communities across instances?
https://lemmy.ml/post/57975

" Federation test instance. Data might be wiped without any warning. Use lemmy.ml for normal usage. Please follow our Code of Conduct when posting.
All federation test instances:
https://voyager.lemmy.ml/
https://enterprise.lemmy.ml/
https://ds9.lemmy.ml/ "

 

My basic DDG search Lemmy federated instance sharing data reveals some excellent criticisms of Lemmy, decentralization, federating, fiefdoms, lack of moderation democracy, etc:

Lemmy Documentation
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/federation_getting_started.html

Primary Lemmy instance enables federation
https://tildes.net/~tech/tja/primary_lemmy_instance_enables_federation
(Tildes is another Reddit-like forum, I think decentralized too.)

https://www.libhunt.com/compare-lemmy-vs-instances
https://www.libhunt.com/compare-instances-vs-lemmy

Federation is stupid convince me otherwise.
https://lemmy.eus/post/7657

More democratic moderation #417
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/417

What is missing from lemmy for it to become "successful"?
https://lemmy.ml/post/60821

The underlying problem of the Fediverse and other decentralised platforms
https://lemmy.ml/post/56268

LOL
ELI5: What is Lemmy? What is Lemmygrad? What's the difference?
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/152589

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[–]fschmidt 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Okay, I see federation in action. It works but it sucks. The Lemmy documentation explains the problem. Federation is off by default and will mostly be used with an Allowlist. This will result in minimum actual federation. The way federation really should work by federating the closure (in the math sense) of the Allowlist minus the BlockList. This would produce much bigger federation sets.

I also hate the idea of federation at the server level instead of the forum level. Server owners should have almost no power, only to remove forums. Otherwise server owner will naturally become fascists, as is human nature when people are given too much power. Forums (subs) should federate, and the server shouldn't matter.

Also it looks like federation is done by cloning data across servers (like NNTP does). This is a mess to maintain. No wonder ActivityPub is such a mess. Much simpler is just to query across servers as needed in real time using map-reduce and maybe a little caching.

In conclusion, Lemmy sucks but there is nothing better, so I guess it is the place to start.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

All of that sounds very rational. It's inspired a thought. What if, rather than rebuild a forum or start from scratch, you only work on the following things to create a "universal protocol module". Master that first, then be able to use it as your foundation to begin a forum later, with all the support you'd want.

Select an existing protocol, tweak it, fork it, and/or just design a new decentralization protocol as necessary.

Build just the decentralization module with adjustable settings to interface with existing forum platforms that would input/output from their databases, manage federated networking, and have maintenance tools and options. Also, build in room for many extra channels/settings to come in the future (ie. metatags and metadata).

Improve this "new protocol module" to be able to also deal with the half dozen other decentralization protocols. Also build extensions for this module allowing various existing forum platforms to plug in. This would not only make it the "universal adapter" but this would be the foot in the door to...

Become the best decentralization protocol module.

By providing equalizing tools you can directly set up federated forum fairness (rather than federated servers) to prolifically succeed.

IMO, decentralization is the most important part of everything we need to resist tyranny. That's why I think we'd need to fix that first.

Lemmy is what it is, but sharing the federation is a simpler GUI in Lotide (https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide/) which may be easier to start rebuilding from. I don't know if it's better or worse for your purposes.

Perhaps sharding databases (as with Ethereum, blockchains, torrents, etc) might help too.

I've only heard of these concepts to be able to mash and present them, so I don't know if any of this is obvious, impractical, or maybe even useful.

[–]fschmidt 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I wouldn't build a house on a foundation of dog shit. Everything produced by modern culture is shit and should be rejected. There are good older protocols like NNTP but they address the conditions of that time, and things have changed. The internet has become much faster which makes possible radically simpler approaches. Anyway, I don't see any real demand for a good free speech platform (and protocol) so I will just forget it.

I finished coding my Mercurial hosting service this week which will serve the 5 to 10 good programmers left in the world who I care about far more than the 8 billion scum.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Whatever.

Big talker and waste of time.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

https://wolfballs.com/instances

https://wolfballs.com/home/data_type/Post/listing_type/All/sort/Active/page/1

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks! So much yet to learn.

I like that there are at several Friendica, Lotide, Lemmy, and misc instances. I asked at least twice on Friendevu if it was based on Friendica but got no answer. Next time I'll ask the founder directly. I don't think they're into sharing, perhaps wisely as they have some crypto and market stuff.

It seems like it might be nice to see where the OP originates in the federation, just as you've got the [title], [user poster], and [website]. Even a linked favicon would suffice. Perhaps few would care, but IMO it would certainly promote awareness about decentralization in general as well as awareness of the alt-instances. It would be handy to know where to go if one goes down.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Thoughts? : /s/AskSaidIt/comments/9812/any_reddit_alternarives_that_are_not_memes_and/xu5l

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

confusing

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Obviously this is just brainstorming on ideas, without making anything concrete.

I just thought of two other ways to try to explain the unstated, now stated, potential-goal of having one as a more serious site - not just without trolls but potentially minimizing the "fun" (like memes, humour, and other distractions) in order to be productive in resisting tyranny with alternatives and solutions.

The Wild .Party is for fun and free speech.
The Crusty .Club is for serious analysis without time-suckage.
Maybe in the future a 3rd middle ground could be .Social or something.
This is a filtration system.

20+ years ago, before Web 2.0 and all this, we used to communicate via email lists. Groups for animation, Burning Man, and endless other interests. Often these groups would have several lists, usually a few at minimum: Announcements/Calendar, Topical, and Social. If you need critical info you don't need to sort through endless reams of shit (ie. chaotic unorganized Facebook/Messenger) because you know exactly where to look. Similarly if you post some shit about your kid's soccer practice in Announcements/Calendar you'll be banned for noise. "Take it to social," or something to that effect, was commonly repeated in Topical discussions.

Maybe organizing the chaos is just wishful thinking.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Pro-Tip: Change from "local" to "all". Identical shared posts (randomly selected at the top of when I loaded WolfBalls.com):

Unpopular opinion: The abortion issue being raised at this time is a trojan horse

Plus, 4 instances of Friendica wanted me to login.