I know that is bs because I haven’t been there in days and I probably added 100 visits a day to their stats. So they’re at least a couple hundred shy.

The article mentions 55.31 million daily visits (average). You decreased their stats by 0.00018%. Even if all new active lemmy users had your level of activity, the other site would still return to normal. There are just so many other users.

I know that I am not back. And I won’t be back, and I think a lot of people are staying away as well. That the traffic is now normal seems a bit sketchy.

I’m afraid that’s just bubble bias. Most people just don’t care or haven’t found a viable alternative yet. These +43k active users on Lemmy are huge for Lemmy, but not even a scratch for the other site.

After the initial exodus at the start of this month, you could see more and more comments demanding returning to business as usual.

https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Lemmy%3F

Sorry for being unclear. What I meant is:

These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore [as a presence in the fediverse].

When they run the most and the biggest popular communities on their instances, do most of the development, offer the best tools and services in the fediverse, they have become too big to ignore.

If they then start playing dirty, it is too late to defederate them. They will play dirty. Let’s not make ourselves dependent.

why would I want to keep in contact with the “head in the sand” people

Forget contacts. Imagine Meta has

• poured way more developing hours in their fork than the FOSS community ever could
• the most effective and easy to use mod tools
• the best search tools for finding communities, topics and everything else (by a margin)
• free instance hosting
• every major wish list feature implemented
• a working feed with endless content you actually find interesting
• a vibrant community for every niche interest you might have
• advanced development so much that it feels a couple versions ahead

The more money they throw at this, the more people will feel tempted to join or at least try their service. It offers objective benefits. It would feel like using lemmy 0.09 when others already enjoy 0.18.

There’s nothing wrong with Lemmy’s user interface design.

The first step is a UX disaster: https://join-lemmy.org/

Only 2 clicks / pages down the road you can start registering an account, and you don’t see what the experience might be before that. Instead, you’re being presented tech talk about servers.

You might argue it’s not actually lemmy but just the landing page. I argue, it’s so good at being a scarecrow, most people visiting lemmy haven’t seen anything else except for that page.

The inner lemmy is pretty fine, I agree. Some parts are still confusing. For example, most people will not figure out they can search for content from within a specific community by carefully configuring the drop downs in the general search form. Most will look for the search directly attached to the community.

If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.

These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore. If you let them gain that much ground, it’s too late to isolate them without doing even more harm to your own network.

Also Meta is not a startup with unknown reputation. Meta plays dirty, that’s a given.

See (and please help if you can with)

• A way to link posts across instances #3259
• [Bug]: local links #3261

It’s the first and only lemmy app working on my old 2015 android phone.

Great to have backwards compatible options. I also like it :)

They are, I get results. My worry is they are not aggregated/unified. Some lemmy instances don’t have ‘lemmy’ in their name, and I’m not sure if they would show up in a search “X + lemmy”.

Ok, but you can only do that if they already joined the fediverse. I replied to “the powers that be must never be allowed to join the fediverse”. It’s also questionable if everyone will block them.

The article is not about single persons who might be trolls or whatever to qualify as a “bad guy”. But about megacorporations like Meta.

Yes, sorry for being unclear. I meant the bad ‘guy’ Meta. Maybe continuing with ‘entity’ would have been better:

we can be sure some entities will join

ensure only good entities enter

The best way to deal with them is-in my opinion-to not cooperate and defederate them as soon as they start to enter.

I tend to agree. Still quite new to the topic.

I’m worried this will not be enough in the long run.

Imagine Meta provides more original content, a higher user base, more engagement, more activity. That alone would make it interesting for many other users, further increasing their relative attractivity.

Additionally, they could invest in the codebase, and implement some of the community’s dream features, some nice mod tools, search engine discoverability and whatnot. On a fork which lives on their instances, of course. Services which work if you federate with them.

They have the resources to rase the stakes higher and higher. The incentives are objective, real, advantages for users, communitites, mods and admins. Isn’t it only a question of time / stake height until significant parts of the fediverse choose to cooperate for various reasons?

We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.

How could that be done? Anyone with the resources can host an instance, and there are plenty of instances with a low entry bar.

If the fediverse grows enough, we can be sure some entities will join not because they share our values, but because they see our value.

I don’t see how we could prevent that or ensure only good guys enter. The fediverse is open by design.

the powers that be must never be allowed to join the fediverse

How are they not allowed? How is it checked, how prevented?

As I see it, they can freely use the code, freely set up instances, freely create user accounts on their own or other instances, with ‘independent’ users, employees or bots.

The only thing stopping them is the current fediverse’s insignificance. We’re just not tasty enough, yet. But if we become, how could we disallow them from joining?

Let them join…and be ignored.

I see the threat in the sheer developing power of these giants, making all the shiny tools people were wanting, making their service too attractive to be ignored.

I disagree on moderation, I don’t think any #Fediverse admin would trust #Meta enough to use their software for moderation.

I found the example interesting in principle. We can think of varieties besides moderation. What other features are highly requested and sought after?

What about an easy way to find, join, and engage with even niche communities? Comm lookup and joining is wonky, especially when coming from small instances. Another related feature is user-side grouping of similar comms into one multi-community. Or being able to easily move between instances, relocate your account. Better indexing for web searches.

The list of possible features, ranging from QoL to Enablers, is endless. Big companies with coding experience can easily dominate the scene, and make it hard to not join them or use their service. Their mere presence could spell dependence.

Like I heard we’re using lemmy 0.18 now. Would you voluntarily still use an older version, like 0.9, when you can just as well use 0.18?

If they have any ability to post to the Fediverse or to track things they’ll do it all over again.

They have that ability, and always will have. They can create as many accounts as they like on as many instances as they like, or run as many instances as they like themselves, use incentivized individuals, or employees, or bots, or any combination of all of the above. No one can stop them, maybe even no one can spot them.

The only thing which is holding them back right now is lemmy/kbin still being too insignificant. If the network continues to grow, more and more big corps will see it as a market and an opportunity, and they will have plenty of ways to interact with it.

if Google or Meta wants to join they should to us not us to them so if they break federation we should not care and continue implement our stuff

As I understood the article, the danger is that large actors like these are too important too ignore. Too many users, too much content to neglect. So while in theory you are obviously right, in reality there will be a temptation to cater to their needs, because it seems so worthwhile.

Freedom of the press never extended to the front lines of an active war zone.

Autonomous reporters (even if they only are that, which isn’t safe to assume) wandering around on battlefields can cause all kinds of issues for everyone involved.