this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023

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Lemmy needs two things to be successful (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In my opinion, there are two big things holding Lemmy back right now:

Lemmy needs DIDs.

No, not dissociative identity disorder, Decentralized Identities.

The problem is that signing up on one instance locks you to that instance. If the instance goes down, so does all of your data, history, settings, etc. Sure, you can create multiple accounts, but then it's up to you to create secure, unique passwords for each and manage syncing between them. Nobody will do this for more than two instances.

Without this, people will be less willing to sign up for instances that they perceive "might not make it", and flock for the biggest ones, thus removing the benefits of federation.

This is especially bad for moderators. Currently, external communities that exist locally on defederated instances cannot be moderated by the home-instance accounts. This isn't a problem of moderation tooling, but it can be (mostly*) solved by having a single identity that can be used on any instance.

*Banning the account could create the same issue.
Communities need to federate too.

Just as instances can share their posts in one page, communities should be able to federate with other, similar communities. This would help to solve the problem of fragmentation and better unify the instances.

Obviously there are plenty of bugs and QoL features that could dramatically improve the usage of Lemmy, but these two things are critical to unification across decentralized services.

What do you think?

EDIT: There's been a lot (much more than I expected) of good discussion here, so thank you all for providing your opinions.

It was pointed out that there are github issues #1 and #2 addressing these points already, so I wanted to put that in the main post.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't understand the first one, why would we want that? Wouldn't it be enough to make it possible to move accounts similar to how mastodon does it (but including your local content)?

My bigger problem is that if a instance goes down then the community is gone. I like how Matrix has solved it that you can have aliases and the content gets replicated on other servers, etc. Then even if people defederate then you still have your old copy and people can keep using it.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (21 children)

Regarding point 1- if people would just stop signing up on lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and beehaw.org, because they have the most people-

Things would go much smoother!

Pick an instance based on uptime, or hell, create your own instance.

Piling all of the eggs into a single basket is destined to result in failure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (12 children)

For sure. But beehaw in a good example of aggressive moderating (which is totally their right) that can limit growth and why a decentralized approach is necessary. There can’t be a single massive place for x content. It’s rife for abuse. Allow it to be categorized and decentralized where beehaw can contribute but in their own way and users outside of beehaw can index and participate with them and even other instances that maybe beehaw defederated.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think it's fair to call it "Aggressive Moderation". It's barely possible to moderate on Lemmy right now at all, and that's why they defederated. They simply cannot trust outside instances as much as their own, because they screen every user, and they can't keep up with moderation. Defederating is their only option until mod tools get better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I mean. It’s clearly subjective and I’m not judging whatsoever. It’s their prerogative and frankly I think there are some positives to it. And if it helps their space then that’s all that matters. I’m just a control freak and want to be in control of my account, backups, location etc.

But if you weren’t one that’s a troll on one of these others and were cut off it’s a tough pill too. I get there’s no easy answer.

When I looked at the mod log I was seeing some instances where, imho, it seemed aggressive policing of symantics. Individuals were t necessarily being offensive or trolling, though their opinions may not have been well formed or fully thought out or in line with others there and were bounced. And again that’s their call.

I’m not saying I would do better. In fact it’s why I’m not open and EVEN if I open my instance I’m not gonna have communities. I have no interest in policing fools that argue in bad faith or just want to get their jollies off angering others.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Beehaw did nothing that isn't common in the fediverse. I know people that are new to all this may be shocked by Beehaw's decision, but defederating from intances that promote intolerant discourses or allow trolling is the way to keep an instance alive. People will end up suspecting and defederating from an instance that interacts with intances that allow or promote that type of content or behaviour.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@DaughterOfMars

For #1 - ive thought about that.

My thought would be something like a small LDAP type server. Self-hostable. You make a user like [email protected] and its honored as a log in for the various fediverse stuff.

So like it could hold the subsciptions for the communities on the various threadiverse servers you connect to localy, and when you open say lemmy.ml, part of the info sent for your user would be a list of communities you are subscibed to on lemmy.ml.

If it just handles the user auth, then it could also be a user auth for other fedivers stuff too. PixelFed, and Mastodon, etc. Each service could have its own sub section of the user object's info.

You would still probably end up with a "home" instance you would use, but if that home instance becomes untenable, or goes away, then you would just pick a new instance and log in there with your [email protected] account.

Im not a good enough dev to code it, but thats my idea anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I think number 1 is important so it’s easier to move. Otherwise we could feel centralized to one instance rather than feeling free to federate

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A few points about #1 I did not see talked about. First global ID is of a lot less value on Forums then on things like Mastodon. At least the way I use forums I have no interest in building a persona. Frankly would prefer totally different IDs on different servers and frankly I think we should encourage people to be subject focused not persona focused on Lemmy anyway. There's to much of this ego stuff that goes on on other platforms.

The second thing is logging into multiple systems is a solved problem. If you do not have a password manager get one. Bitwarden or one of the LastPass versions depending on your platform for example. Another better way is SQRL or U2F. There is also a more recent thing, maybe PassKeys (?), cannot remember. In particular central authentication servers are nuts. Not even LastPass that specializes in them could do it correctly. Just NO. More then that let us not rebuild Reddit. We do not want central infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I understand that you don't. But some of us do not mind these things and/or want them. Perhaps there is a compromise (e.g. an optional global ID if you opt in to the system)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I feel the same way - totally understand why some people wouldn't, but I definitely would appreciate the utility. Looking at the way someone interacts with others is often a consideration when I'm deciding whether to engage with them myself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Lemmy needs me to be able to login.....Let's start with the basics.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

The idea of federating communities does sound like a good idea. Now that I think of it I'm surprised that isn't already a thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

How do decentralized identities interact with unique usernames? By Zooko's triangle, if identities are distributed and secure (implied by unique), the names are not human-meaningful. So we would be identified by public keys rather than usernames, like Tor onion addresses. Am I understanding this right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Friendica, I believe, federates their groups. You can see them from mastodon as a user. I guess in AP vocabulary they are an actor. You can post to the group from mastodon too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

However let me just bring into mind that we recently defederated from some Lemmy instances and for which reasons we did that (as beehaw I mean).

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