It appears to me that the current state of Lemmy is similar to other platforms when they were smaller and more insular, and that insularity is somewhat protecting it.

I browse Lemmy, and it feels a bit like other platforms did back in 2009, before they became overwhelmed and enshitified.

If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar “landed gentry” moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.

If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    0·
    12 hours ago

    You’re still thinking about it as an asymmetrical problem. Taking one portion that has a problem and isolating that from the rest.

    I am. I don’t believe there is one version of success nor one version of failure. That’s one of the beauties of the Fediverse. While there can be fully integrated interaction between instances, there doesn’t have to be.

    I’m saying if every part has the same problem that doesn’t solve it AND it means the entire network is no longer interoperable, which was the entire point from the start.

    Bolding is mine. That is an opinion, but not a fact. I’ll agree it was one of the biggest features, but it is by no means the only reason for Lemmy or the Fediverse’s existence.

    What you’re ultimately saying is that you can have a small interoperable network or a large centralized network, but not both.

    I’m citing those as the two extremes but I’m not saying those are the only two options.

    Which, if you’re right, begs the question of why try to decentralize and federate in the first place if you don’t have a solution to secure that arrangement.

    I reject that premise. If decentralization and federation were inexorably linked to Lemmy (and the Fediverse as a whole), the authors of Lemmy would not have built in the functionality to defederate, nor to block other instances. They did though. This tells us that while they envisioned the benefits of sharing, they also recognized those that wouldn’t want to and endorsed it with methods to cut out the sharing.

    And, to be clear, even in that scenario now you have an isolated, self-run social network that has exactly the same moderation issues and running costs as Reddit or any other alternative.

    Not quite. From an operators point of view, sure. However from a consumer’s point of view, a social media application stack is a massive undertaking to write as whole cloth. Lemmy software simply existing means that anyone can stand up their own social media network with their own rules (and yes, costs). This, in itself, is a better evolution over Reddit as a private platform. If you don’t like that “reddit” you can stand up your own “reddit”.

    If you’re looking for me to say Lemmy is the perfect platform without any flaws, you won’t find me saying that. I will say however that it is better than the alternatives we have today. We’ll see if it has enough autonomy and control to its operators to stand the test of time. Irrespective of where we each stand on this discussion, I think we’ll both be hoping it does.