The fact that this is being upvoted so much I think demonstrates a big misunderstanding of how the fediverse works.
Nobody owns Lemmy and if a instance does something shitty it costs hardly anything to change instances. Nobody owns the lemmy software, and other softwares like mbin/piefed exist too with the same content.
The protocol itself could surely start its journey if enshittification? In which case different, possibly incompatible, branches would spawn fragmenting the Lemmy space. Still miles better than the whole thing burning to the ground. But with no shareholders looming around (yet) we can hope it won’t come to that.
I guess the closest I know of is Maps.me and Organic Maps? Maps.me was open source, but got purchased and enshittified, so Organic Maps was forked from it. And now there is some drama with the Organic Maps shareholders/co-founders, so unless that is (or has it already been?) sorted out we’re likely to see another fork of it.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the main dev(s) members of lemmy.ml? So I can certainly see how differing political views could skew the development of the main branch of Lemmy.
The organic maps founders seem to have convinced the volunteers that a private company would be best to manage an open source project. The community got duped hard.
I agree. And luckily for Lemmy and all other FOSS projects the worst that can happen is a fork of the project is created with a potentially fractured community.
That’s a bad example because it got forked and it wasn’t an actual problem?
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the main dev(s) members of lemmy.ml[3]? So I can certainly see how differing political views could skew the development of the main branch of Lemmy.
People say this all the time but never can give even one example of a potential problem. Preemptive forking sounds insane to me. The notion that lemmy might enshittify because you don’t like their politics is also ridiculous when their politics are anti-capitalist… aka the politics that are least likely to enshittify.
But that’s exactly what I said in the beginning. The worst that can happen is the original creators take the project in an undesired direction so a fork is created.
if .world says being a minor is bannable suddenly there’s no minors anywhere on Lemmy. A minor example that is understandable, sure, but it’s just to show that a single large instance can cause a lot of change if they decide to.
Lemmy.world is the second largest Lemmy instance, and less than a third of all users. If someone doesn’t like their rules it is trivial for a person to move to an instance who’s ruleset better aligns with their wishes.
With Mastodon you can migrate your account, Lemmy can’t migrate (yet). But the difference between Fediverse and commercial platforms is that you can access the same network of content from different instances. With Twitter/Reddit etc. everyone is forced onto a single instance (and a single moderation policy).
There is only one Twitter whereas anyone can start “a Lemmy” (instance). I am using a different instance than you, for example. So if mine enshittifies I can go somewhere else and still have access to the broader network.
No, not at all, twitter is not decentralized, with a lemmy instance, if you leave, you lose nothing at all. With twitter, you can’t take the content or your account
Not quite accurate. If you leave an instance, you do lose any posts or comments you had. Not a big loss, but there is that sense of investment in an account and reputation.
Not really. It’s not a centralized platform by design - unless you’re talking about the flagship instances, which are a common problem with federated projects
Don’t we still have a few years before lemmy somehow enshittifies?
The fact that this is being upvoted so much I think demonstrates a big misunderstanding of how the fediverse works.
Nobody owns Lemmy and if a instance does something shitty it costs hardly anything to change instances. Nobody owns the lemmy software, and other softwares like mbin/piefed exist too with the same content.
It’s impossible by design. If an instance enshittifies people will just leave the instance.
The protocol itself could surely start its journey if enshittification? In which case different, possibly incompatible, branches would spawn fragmenting the Lemmy space. Still miles better than the whole thing burning to the ground. But with no shareholders looming around (yet) we can hope it won’t come to that.
I don’t see how, it’s covered by a good license, and if it did it’d be forked in an instant. Can you give a historical example?
I guess the closest I know of is Maps.me and Organic Maps? Maps.me was open source, but got purchased and enshittified, so Organic Maps was forked from it. And now there is some drama with the Organic Maps shareholders/co-founders, so unless that is (or has it already been?) sorted out we’re likely to see another fork of it.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the main dev(s) members of lemmy.ml? So I can certainly see how differing political views could skew the development of the main branch of Lemmy.
The organic maps founders seem to have convinced the volunteers that a private company would be best to manage an open source project. The community got duped hard.
I agree. And luckily for Lemmy and all other FOSS projects the worst that can happen is a fork of the project is created with a potentially fractured community.
That’s a bad example because it got forked and it wasn’t an actual problem?
People say this all the time but never can give even one example of a potential problem. Preemptive forking sounds insane to me. The notion that lemmy might enshittify because you don’t like their politics is also ridiculous when their politics are anti-capitalist… aka the politics that are least likely to enshittify.
But that’s exactly what I said in the beginning. The worst that can happen is the original creators take the project in an undesired direction so a fork is created.
if .world says being a minor is bannable suddenly there’s no minors anywhere on Lemmy. A minor example that is understandable, sure, but it’s just to show that a single large instance can cause a lot of change if they decide to.
perhaps you aren’t aware of how many instances there are that have much looser rules
Lemmy.world is the second largest Lemmy instance, and less than a third of all users. If someone doesn’t like their rules it is trivial for a person to move to an instance who’s ruleset better aligns with their wishes.
How?
Can I just move my existing account to a different instance? Or do I need to create a new account on another instance?
With Mastodon you can migrate your account, Lemmy can’t migrate (yet). But the difference between Fediverse and commercial platforms is that you can access the same network of content from different instances. With Twitter/Reddit etc. everyone is forced onto a single instance (and a single moderation policy).
But I don’t think that’s true at all.
I haven’t seen anyone share their age that’s less than 18 since that change 🤷♀️
I hadn’t seen that before the change? I didn’t even know there was one.
that’s a fair point lol, good talking to ya!
Isn’t that the exact same argument for Twitter? If Twitter gets shitty, people will just leave? Because I feel like we’re not really seeing that.
No because Twitter is a walled ecosystem, you can’t move to Bluesky and interact with people on twitter for example.
With federated stuff you can move and still interact with people on other instances.
You’re telling me you can’t cross post links from Twitter to Bluesky and vis versa?
Sure you can, but I can’t follow someone on twitter or bluesky from other platforms.
There is only one Twitter whereas anyone can start “a Lemmy” (instance). I am using a different instance than you, for example. So if mine enshittifies I can go somewhere else and still have access to the broader network.
No, not at all, twitter is not decentralized, with a lemmy instance, if you leave, you lose nothing at all. With twitter, you can’t take the content or your account
Not quite accurate. If you leave an instance, you do lose any posts or comments you had. Not a big loss, but there is that sense of investment in an account and reputation.
It’s entirely possible in the future, since ActivityPub accounts can be “forwarded”. It’s a little clunky but look at Mastodon.
Not really though, you can still see them from the other account, so meh
Millions of people have left Twitter, wtf are you talking about?
Not really. It’s not a centralized platform by design - unless you’re talking about the flagship instances, which are a common problem with federated projects
It’d be pretty difficult, any instances that start that shit would be defederated with a quickness, but I don’t want to be too optimistic lol