It seems https://lemmy-federate.com/ is just wildly popular with people suggesting it and eagerly biting on the suggestion they were given. It seems to just completely subvert the intention of not wasting any storage or space or even energy by federating out communities others did not ask for, or federating in communities nobody on the instance subscribes to, by having bots on instances follow communities. So my understanding is that even if nobody on example.instance cares about [email protected], example.instance still wastes resources on federating it in if someone submitted it here.
I do see that
If you want to add your instance to the list, you can login from top right. If you are a user, you can ask your instance admin to add your instance.
on this page. And I have heard of instances opting out from this. So I am curious: if your instance does not participate, what does that mean? No bots subscribing to communities on your instance so they go to everyone else? How does it work? I looked at https://lemy.lol/c/[email protected] and https://lemmy-federate.com/ and https://github.com/ismailkarsli/lemmy-federate and did not see an explanation. On the list of instances on lemmy federate almost everyone seems to be enabled. So I’m curious how it works. Half of me thinks this chips away at the whole point of decentralization, just making sure every instance federates tons of stuff in regardless of actual user interest on the instance. The other half says people can do what they want with their instance, maybe I just do not understand how it works and it does not cause the problems I think it does, even if I’m right maybe most Lemmy users want it, and that it doesn’t actually impact my life unless I decide to start being an instance host myself (and in that case then I would really need to know how it works, to figure out how my own instance would behave with lemmy-federate and what restrictions I could place on it).
Please let me know if my understanding is wrong, and how it actually works if so, because I have actually tried the provided resources by the lemmy-federate project to understand before coming here and sharing my understanding and disapproval of how it works if it works the way I think it does.
The main issue with lemmy-federate is IMHO that it removes on of the main advantages of smaller instances: a instance specific “all” feed that allows to easily discover new communities that other like minded people on your instance subscribe to.
With Lemmy-federate it becomes the same bland mix like on lemmy.world and pretty much useless.
Thanks for bringing this up, I wouldn’t have thought of that one myself at all!
I created this tool and have been using it in my instance since the very beginning. My instance is almost 2 years old and it’s total database size is 60.2GB.
The thing is:
- If a community is generating enough activity, it’s likely that someone from your instance is already following that community.
- If a community isn’t generating enough activity, it won’t create much of a network/storage burden anyway.
Sure, it will make a small difference, but it’s nothing compared to the benefits it provides.
Since you are the creator, could you point me to learn how it works besides “now every post from communities signed up will show up on your instance?”
I’ll also admit part of my prejudice is because I’ll never touch All with a ten foot stick, so I end up not experiencing any benefit personally, and I do not mind checking out communities on their instance if they seem to have no posts on mine.
Thanks for replying civilly by the way, and not just flipping out on me for my position on lemmy-federate. I am not sure I’d have the same grace in your position, which is why I’m incredibly careful about putting things I make out there online in public lol.
Lemmy Federate doesn’t do anything special. It searches and follows communities just like normal users do. The only difference is that it does this from every (registered) instance, for almost every community. The reason I didn’t explain it in more detail is that it has evolved into an admin tool rather than a user tool. Generally, admins know what this tool is for.
However, I can explain a few things that will be useful for you outside of the “All” tab:
Discoverability
Lemmy Federate enhances community discoverability by allowing users to search communities from their instance. Instead of relying on an external site, you can discover new communities while staying within the context of your own instance.
Crossposts
Let’s say that [email protected] is federated in your instance, but [email protected] is not. In this case, you won’t see crossposts from [email protected] sharing the same link as [email protected].
Initial post count
When a community is pulled for the first time, only a certain number of recent posts are pulled with it. If you are the first to follow a community you are interested in from your instance, you will not be able to see all posts from that community.
These benefits are honestly things that do not enhance my personal experience, but I hope others find them useful. I’m probably forever going to be the “not for me but the community has outvoted me so I guess I can let it exist without complaint for the common good even if I personally don’t like it” guy. Thank you for your explanation. You might want to put these benefits somewhere on the Lemmy Federate project sites so people can learn about them.
for almost every community
Do you have to sign a community up to have it put on Lemmy Federate, or is everyone’s community glommed up regardless of whether it was signed up for it? How does this work? I want to know how it works, all the things an admin needs to know, or maybe a mod, not just a list of benefits.
Again, thank you for engaging with me, I realize my questions and bias against it are probably seeping through and making me appear more hostile to you than I am. I don’t really like the tool but I notice a lot of others do and you did put it forward and, I think, create it with good intentions for the Fediverse, and I (have not contributed any code to the Fediverse’s wellbeing) thank you for that.
Seems reasonable
It would be interesting to see someone spin up an instance, no signups, just Lemmy-Federate. Check how much resources it uses up.
But for an instance that already has a lot of users it’s going to be a drop in the bucket. Any large communities probably already have a real user following them, and any small communities won’t have enough activity to cause significant load anyways.
Yeah, federation is kinda inherently “wasteful” in that so many copies of everything get made.
There are ways to reign it in a bit, by aggressively pruning old content, leaving original copies of images on their home instance, etc… But fundamentally saving on resources is pretty difficult to do if you want redundancy, decentralisation and resilience.
It’s definitely the better alternative to one server (person/org) owning everything.
I think people might need to accept that if they want a better world, maybe it’s ok that everything isn’t feature rich and UX designed to the edges.
It would be great if in the future, pictures were stored locally when fresh and then proxied and deleted when less in demand. Or if a can was used for new content. It could be an Aussie issue, but a bunch of content doesn’t load quickly and makes browsing some content a chore.
There is a balance between not duplicating and lowering latency. It seems like there are a lot of other things to focus on first, especially mod tools, but the federation aspect is still ripe for tweaking.
aggressively pruning old content
I can understand why instance admins would do this, but I’m personally not a fan of this approach, as it contributes to link rot and makes the fediverse a poor archive for information.
leaving original copies of images on their home instance, etc… But fundamentally saving on resources is pretty difficult to do if you want redundancy, decentralisation and resilience.
I wonder if it would be feasible to store a list of which other instances also have a copy of the file, and only make a local copy if the number of “seeders” drops too low. It would cost more in CPU and API usage, but would cut down on storage.
You could do it as a DHT network (distributed hash table)
Neat!
Social media in general just isn’t a good archive of information. It’s a discussion space – a living space – not an archive.
If you want information archives, you should creating websites for that specifically.
Social media in general just isn’t a good archive of information
I would offer the ubiquity of appending “reddit” to Google searches when trying to find solutions to a problem as a counterexample to your point.
If you want information archives, you should creating websites for that specifically
While dedicated archival websites are undoubtedly valuable, I think the Fediverse can play a part in archiving as well.
Upvote for visibility
These are good questions
