this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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What is the problem of having communities on several instances? Isn't that the main point of decentralization?
I think there are advances and disadvantages to this. Decentralization is definitely an advantage, however, having the same community split between many instances splits the community and the conversations and makes finding and interacting with the community much harder. This wouldn't be much of a problem on a very big userbase (such as reddit), but on a smaller userbase (such as lemmy), it does constitute a problem in my view.
Having said that, there are probably some UI/UX tricks that could be done to improve this sort of thing. For example, when subscribing to a "privacy" community, there could be a suggestions box/pop-up/whatever showing other privacy communities. Perhaps a graph of communities.
People usually just subscribe to both.
Also the same community can be very different on different servers because the rules might be different, the moderation, etc.
Some people, yes. But the person that wants something that "just works" probably doesn't feel like searching for all the privacy communities. He/She does not want to have to search which one is the most active, which one has the best rules, etc etc. That point makes it a negative. My point is that reducing friction of usage is a good thing, for growing communities at least, such as lemmy.
And just to be clear, I am the most pro-decentralization person you will ever find. I am not against lemmy. I hate reddit and what it stands for.
I agree with you on that point. Feel free to join !fedigrow@lemm.ee and !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com , those communities might interest you
I think if you really examine the realities of what you are saying, you'll land on split communities being fine. It gives people a place to go if there are rogue admins or mods.
No, it's not user friendly but I also don't think attracting every single person to Lemmy is a good goal. There are plenty of people on Reddit in happy to have stay there.
My claim is not that Lemmy should attract every single person. However, it does need to attract many many people. Here is why:
I think we all want to open a post about astronomy and read "Astronomer here. Here is what this post is saying:". Or read a post about nutrition and have someone with actual nutrition knowledge talk about the topic at hand. Perhaps even the author of the paper?
Do you want a random guy who installed arch-linux commentating (probably a shitty meme) on a highly specialized topic about math? Or do you want Terence Tao leaving his thoughts? I want the later. In order to have that, Lemmy needs to be welcoming to everyone and not just to people who know how to install Arch.
I use arch btw.
I mean I hear you. And the experience can be made better, but where that clashes with decentralization, I'd rather decentralization wins.