Why decentralization doesn't work for forums - nightash
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I think federation and decentralization work well for email and text-messaging platforms like XMPP and Matrix because those platforms inherently benefit from being decentralized. They work almost seamlessly with federation.

Forums, on the other hand, don’t really need a federated system. Just look at Lemmy and how many communities defederate from one another because of ideological disagreements. When there’s that much defederation, the entire concept starts to feel pointless. Suddenly, you can’t use your account across “Lemmy” because several instances have decided they don’t like each other anymore.

If this much fragmentation is going to happen naturally, how is federation supposed to be the sustainable future of forums?

I think this is a fair criticism of federated forums. You don’t see this same level of fragmentation with email or text messaging.

Centralized but well-moderated forums are what really matter. Federation doesn’t protect good or useful speech, quality moderation does. And by its nature, Lemmy lacks that.

  • Linda R@nord.pubEnglish
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    13 days ago

    I did not understand properly what you meant with this comment. Could you paraphrase, please?

    • parallelminds@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      13 days ago

      “I want to see everything” means that I want to see even the places that in theory I have no business being in.

      • DosDude@retrofed.comEnglish
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        13 days ago

        If you want to see everything, world might not be the best place. If you click on blocked there, you see all the instances that are blocked by lemmy.world.

        There are instances that don’t, or barely, block any instances. That’s where you are most likely to find “everything”

      • scytale@piefed.zipEnglish
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        13 days ago

        I think you’re misunderstanding how .world works. Lemmy.world doesn’t mean it’s open to everything, that’s just the instance name. They actually block and defederate from a lot of communities and instances.

        If you want to see everything and judge for yourself, just pick an instance with a minimal defederation policy. That’s why I picked .zip so I can curate my feed the way I want it.

        Before signing up for an instance, scroll down and read their instance policies so you understand what you’re signing up for.

      • Linda R@nord.pubEnglish
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        13 days ago

        It looks like the technology behind this forum is not well-understood by you.

        If you create an account on http://piefed.zip/ , you will see practically all of Fediverse, basically regardless of defederations. You have to go the settings there and specifically click some buttons to unblock a group of instances most people don’t want to see. But it can be done and you’ll get what you’re looking for.