lemm1ngs

Federation is stupid convince me otherwise.

https://lemmy.ml/post/76623

Federation is stupid convince me otherwise. - Lemmy

Genuine inquiry . Maybe I am not experienced enough with the various federated platforms but I am an avid user of matrix, and have dabbled in lemmy. From what I have seen is federation is on the path to decentralization but not fully there. It creates fiefdom, little kingdoms . Great yes you may find one that suites you better, but users now can end up isolated to their island, switch island sure but now you are isolated for the previous island and maybe others. Its stupid. On matrix you need to know the other island(server) to even find its rooms(communities). Some rooms block users from one server while others block users of other servers. You either have to run multiple accounts or accept the limits. Add in you are at the mercy of your home server, you can lose your account have it immitated, and more. The performance is horrible not sure why, but content is slow to update and spread. Matrix has the problem because of its design most people are on the matrix.org [http://matrix.org] server and so the point of federation is largely lost. They are moving to p2p where it seems the solutions for federation now dont apply. Anyway why is federation not stupid? Are these problems only with Matrix? Cause I look at lemmy and it seems far worse.

Aug 8, 2021 at 3:45amWeb
Show threadLemdeeJul 10, 2023

Federation is stupid

So don’t use it.

convince me otherwise.

Show threadYellowtoOrangeJul 11, 2023

Perhaps it’s one of those self selecting things in life - if people bitch and complain and are those sorts of people that don’t want to research into a topic enough or are generally negative and will complain about everything, then they shouldn’t use Lemmy, and this would lead to Lemmy with the best people.

Win-win.

Let’s not convince him/her.

Show threadfrozenJul 10, 2023

Replace “federation” with “email”.

Still stupid?

Show threadMountaineerJul 10, 2023

I want to be clear, that I disagree with his “federation is stupid” point, but email has problems right now.

Theoretically it’s federated, theoretically you can spin up your own mail server and self host.

But even if you do that absolutely perfectly (SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc), you can falsely end up on spam list, that effectively block delivery of your email to large segments of the network for days if not weeks.

Whilst theoretically federated, email falls under the broad dominion of google, microsoft and a couple of other large players.

Show threadIowaManJul 11, 2023

As a cybersecurity pro who primarily deals with email security right now (in the sense that there is basically none)

STOP

CLICKING

LINKS

Show threadMountaineerJul 11, 2023

I mean yes, but that’s not a federation problem.

To completely strawman AND slippery slope what you’re saying:

As a car safety pro, who primarily deals with car crashes:

STOP

TOWING

TRAILERS

Agreed, dangerous, I don’t want numpties doing it.
But it’s a large part of why I have a car.

Show threadChickenAndRiceJul 10, 2023
Started cracking up at fiefdom
Show threaddgwdJul 10, 2023

I think a lot of these criticisms are pretty fair in terms of user experience, but I’m more optimistic about federated services.

On matrix you need to know the other server to even find its communities

Can you think of a good alternative that doesn’t fall victim to the issues of centralization? e.g. All communities are registered with a community index – but doesn’t that community index have a responsibility to hide hateful communities?

(I think distributed, curated community lists could work here – which could be a feature where you can see the communities / rooms / magazines another user is publically subscribed to.)

little kingdoms

I think this is a real concern, more than people are giving you credit. I lost my vlemmy.net account this week – it’s unclear if the admins could have prevented this (I bet I would do a worse job!), but it’s a situation of bad stewardship / “lordship” :) There is also the issue of political defederation.

I think the answer here is self-hosting, which I think solves all the issues you mention (let me know if I’m wrong). Self-hosting is not free in money, time, or knowledge – the PC side of me wants to say that this makes it not a viable solution for people in need. But another side of me thinks that - at some point - there is a cost to using a service that needs to be paid: either pay in self-hosting, or pay by serfdom.

Show threadWindex007Jul 10, 2023

I appreciate an actual insightful answer. I feel like most people speaking for or against federated systems don’t understand what it is they’re even talking about… So an absolute breath of fresh air.

I’d say the worst thing about the fediverse is people talking about it rabidly but stupidly. The number of posts demanding defederation between instances because of the XSS vulnerability was mind blowing. People with no clue what was going on but only one lever to pull just wanting to pull it. Crazy.

Show threadcurlygirlJul 11, 2023
What happened to vlemmy.net? I’m OOTL, all I know is I can’t login or reach the server.
Show threaddgwdJul 11, 2023
No one can log in or access it, and there is no communication about it from vlemmy admins :( lemmy.ca/post/1307147 seems to be a good summary.
VLemmy .net's defederation and disappearance - Lemmy.ca

Note: It would be best not to visit the instance for the time being until the issue is resolved. At some point in the last 24-48 hours (approx. July 7-8, 2023) the instance vlemmy.net went down without a clear explanation, and at certain times redirected to a parked domain. This comes after a notice from vlemmy admin pyarra announcing it was forced to de-federate with another instance due to content that is considered CSAM under Irish law (link to legal definition [http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1998/act/22/section/2/enacted/en/html#sec2]) syncing with vlemmy, hosted in Ireland. The original post link disappeared with the server but here is a link to a cached version from lemmy.world [https://lemmy.world/post/1148656]. There is no official confirmation whether there is any connection between this event and its disappearance. This post on [email protected] [https://feddit.nl/post/458654] has a screenshot of the redirected domain name. An investigation by a user on [email protected] is underway [https://lemmy.world/post/1232070]… their findings were as follows: * [Information from 1AM EST Jul 9th] vlemmy is still “up” and intermittently accessible. It is running “slow as hell” * Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed. Closure date unknown * Reddit account still exists and has been messaged * No mentions of the instance in Element.io [http://Element.io] chats but still searching * They have almost certainly NOT lost their domain. Who.is [http://Who.is] historical records show no ownership or nameserver changes. * The user updated the post stating “I’m working through about 40 different potential leads right now” * The user is requesting help from the community finding an image from the kerbalspaceprogram community on vlemmy potentially left in someone’s browser cache. Please be careful in ensuring content on lemmy.ca [http://lemmy.ca] follows the site rules and Canadian law, so as not to get this wonderful server in trouble either!

Show threadMigratingtoLemmyJul 10, 2023

Reddit mods would block you if had subscribed to other communities they didn’t like. People created multiple accounts and still got banned.

Reddit could block/ban your accounts just as easily as Lemmy mods could.

Anybody could pull the material you posted on reddit, run an LLM, and imitate you.

Don’t know about slow, I’m OK waiting a couple of seconds. Don’t see that as a problem, nothing is crashing on my end

Show threadSpaceMonkJul 11, 2023
youtu.be/L1BDM1oBRJ8
GI Joe - Pork Chop Sandwiches

YouTube
Show threadvariantsJul 13, 2023
I think the best part of federation is there are no islands, you can make an account on an instance and follow content from the rest of the fediverse, you can even host your own instance just for you and follow everything else