This graph is actually wrong, lemmy.ml doesn’t have open sign ups, it just appears to because the Lemmy software doesn’t accurately distinguish between open and closed registrations, it only distinguishes between open registrations and application-based registrations. If registrations are closed it’ll look just like they are open, but we’ll just give an error message when you try to sign up which is incredibly deceiving.
I really wish they would increase the image size to at least 200 or 300kb to fit larger images. You can get around it by using external image hosting but you can’t do that for banners and profiles.
Instance admins make a collective pact to close registrations if their instance reaches x% of the total active base, and only open again when this number goes down to x/2%. I think x=10 would be a good start.
Instead of donations, instances start charging for access after a certain number. This is what my instance is doing: the first 250 active users are free, after that payment is required.
People seem to only want their accounts on “general use” instances that are already pretty popular.
Which is… bizarre. There is no downside to having your account on a more niche instance (as long as it isn’t so niche that it gets turned off), and there are arguably disadvantages to having your account on a more popular instance.
Not everything happens for a logical reason. It’s human nature to get together in tribes, and the majority of people are okay with just following the pack.
I just hope that eventually more people figure out that there is no significant advantage in being in the largest instances, and that it can be actually harmful (too many resources, potential drama because too much power is given to the admins, etc)
A good 40% of users are spread out on servers with less then 5% of the overall user base, but that is still a good 60% in the top 5 instances, considering how laggy lemmy.ml and lemmy.world are, I am surprised anyone stays on them.
One big thing that hasn’t changed from reddit is that lemmy instances are still based on an autocratic power structure. Whether or not your content gets seen or you get to see other content depends on the relationships between those leaders. That means choosing your leadership is of utmost importance, and I eventually settled on lemm.ee because it was the first instance I came across that both a) seemed like it had actual adults running the show, and b) was large enough for that leadership have already faced some challenges and have an established track record.
That’s the core of every problem that’s occurred to every massive human social structure we’ve ever created in history.
We create systems, the systems become powerful, a small group of autocratic people naturally gravitate towards wanting to lead, the system is taken over by this small group, the system is corrupted, the system fails, the system ends … then we start over again.
It keeps happening over and over again and the common denominator is human greed (either in the need to gain money and wealth … or in the need to just want to gain power over everyone)
The only systems that last are the ones where everyone has an equal stake and a shared power structure. But it’s a balancing game that constantly has to be monitored … because once we stop being vigilant, some greedy idiots will naturally start taking over.
It’s not easy to see the list of all communities in an instance you don’t have an account. If I login and federate as [email protected], I can see all the local communities inside example.com, but not others like lemmy.world. I don’t mean individual posts or an individual community, I mean list of all instance communities. I think this is one of high priority issues to be patched.
A slight advantage to big servers is the increase in anonymity on the backend. Given the server admins can do what ever that want. An admin on small server would no doubt be looking into who and where their individual users are. Big severs are more likely to become more population based. Doesn’t really matter though I suppose.
Yeah no exact opposite for me: Big server means lots of user data making abuse of it more appealing and impactful. While an admin of a small instance having some fun digging through user internals would really do no harm (I don’t believe that’s a particularly typical hobby of small instance admins though xD ).
it’s not that bizarre; people want easy and people don’t seem to really understand how it works so they’d rather go where the most people are or the one that is “trending”.
The disadvantage of being on a small instance is that you could have an admin who is a fucking moron and ends up breaking stuff because they don’t know what they are doing.
If they ever defederate from piracy communities, yeah, but I don’t think so, admin has a very anti defederate policy, so I see this scenario very hard to occur.
Well, it doesn’t implicitly mean “survey all instances when making a new account and calculate where your additional account will average out the numbers.” 🙄
ee wasn’t big originally, but it was one of the few instances that were big enough to not dissappear, run by a competent sys admin, and small enough to not be affected by the big instance performance challenges, while keep registrations open when many instances shut the door on newcomers. Basically, ee, sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world were there main options for people moving across. Their sensible stewardship has led to growth, and trust is why it has kept growing.
Federation means people can choose, and they do. It doesn’t mean everything will be exactly the same size and stay small. An instance needs good sysadmin who will investigate issues an liase with dev teams to get them fixed. People will gravitate to those instances run by talented devs.
People will gravitate to those instances run by talented devs.
Eh, people gravitate to where everyone else is. Half of the fediverse doesn’t realize federation means, you can read/post to most communities from most instances, bar federation issues. They see, OH HEY, Lemmy World has the most posts. I want to go where all of the posts are.
People RUN from instances, whenever the instance starts breaking, and the admins show their ineptitude. Either that, or when instances start clicking the defederation button too much.
How did ee, and sh.itjust.works grow? Because they were open. You have a short memory if you don’t remember how many instances closed, during API blackout.
I didn’t want to pick an instance that was running on a thinkpad that would get switched off when someone got bored.
Federation was confusing for many. Many used the join Lemmy website and options that were general purpose open instances that were English speaking and open were not huge. People made decisions in a short period of time and many went with world, ee, and sh.it. It isn’t baffling. It is also no shock that people set up communities where they register and may be big enough to survive. Who would create a community that disappears in 3 weeks.
You painting users as brainless sheep does nothing more than give you some feeling superiority. Maybe your fragile ego needs that. I’ll help if you need it. Congratulations, you’re so smart and clever. More so than most. Thanks for stepping on your soap box and imparting your wisdom/red hot takes upon us.
The only bad part about the fediverse, imho, it’s hard to be the only one with your username. What makes it bad is a malicious user, that you may have pissed off somehow, start using your username in a smear campaign to hurt your reputation.
True. I try to stay anonymous. But that doesn’t work on all social medias. Take Facebook for example, they show all that info in your profile allowing haters to hate
This is true, just like I have an ml account too. But I wouldn’t put past someone to create another account on another instance with efwis and start some shit because I hurt their feelings. So far that hasn’t been an issue but there is a first time. Especially since the username doesn’t show what instance your’re on on the feeds
Uhhhhh. Yeah this was always something I was worried about with multiple instances. Having multiple usernames run my different people. The @ at the end will be crucial for people keep them separate
That’s why we disabled the buy-sell-trade community on our niche instance. Nobody got scammed during the short time it was open, but if a username can be duplicated it makes scamming that much easier.
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