FOSSDLE PieFedThe Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves: Cohost and the Fate of Centralized Platforms
submitted by
Riley
submitted by
Riley
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"You are bob@gmail.com, but someone could create bob@outlook.com and pretend to be you"
Also, this kind of impersonating would probably get the trolls banned.
Lemm.ee had 5 admins. The main one has been very clear that he keeps defederation to a minimum: https://lemm.ee/post/35472386?scrollToComments=true
Of course you need to trust him and his team.
If you prefer a paid model where you have a customer relationship with the admin, you might to have a look at https://communick.com/services/lemmy/
The owner is @rglullis@communick.news , who commented below
That's 5 admins out of how many users?
In the end Lemmy is centralized, just in a different way, someone can wipe out a huge part of the content in a single click.
The content itself is *harder* to be deleted, because federation means that *every* post comment gets duplicated on all instances.
You do have a point regarding identity, and this is something that bluesky has solved already in a more elegant way. But this is also fixable with activitypub: as Takahe already showed it is possible to efficiently serve different domains with the same server. And on the extreme case, you can run your instance.
Did you see the scramble when feddit.de went offline for weeks and all its content became unavailable?
If there's going to be duplicates anyway, why not do as I said (decentralize the hosting separately from the front end and make it available to all) and just really duplicate everything so there's always a real backup and no one can wipe anything by shutting down their server?
Like I said, the content did not become unavailable. My instance still has the data from every community being followed.
The only unrecoverable problem with feddit.de is that the *domain* was lost. If the owner had given the domain to someone else, one could (theoretically) get all the identities back. They would need new keys, but the accounts would still be salvageable.
As for "separate frontend": this is already possible and like I said it is a matter of improving the existing clients. We don't need a fundamental change in the protocols to get what you want, we just need to get more resources available to developers so that they can continue working and improving on what we have.
But if a new instance is created after one was deleted, the new instance users will never have access to what was on that instance that got deleted.
We have "separate front ends" at the moment (guessing you're referring to apps, otherwise people log in through their instance's website), but the content the users have access to and the people they can interact with still depends on the instance they sign up on, I'm talking about eliminating that completely and letting the users be the ones that decide who and what they can interact with.
I'll never be able to check what's going on on beehaw or hexbear as long as my instance is the one I'm on, but no one should have the power to decide that for me or the other users I'm interacting with.
You are always free to run your own instance, and this is absolutely no different than "decentralizing" everything. The federation model where all users distrust each other degenerates into a fully p2p network.
And then admins from other instances can decide they don't want to federate with my instance, see how it doesn't solve anything?
Yeah, that's exactly the point! How do you think that a decentralized system is any different?!
If everything is "decentralized", you still must have a way to get rid of bad actors. Even nostr is set up in a way that you can not force your node into anyone else's relay.
Forgive my bluntness, but the more you try to argue you point the more it seems you have no clue what you are talking about. There are plenty of things to criticize about Lemmy and ActivityPub in general, but you are missing the mark on all of them.
Getting rid of bad actors is the job of the users (from their feed) and the mods (from the communities they moderate), no one should have the authority the admins have.
Admins still need to have control over what goes into the servers. If you are running a server and someone pushes content that is illegal in your jurisdiction, you can not go around asking users to please stop it for you.
No, but you can delete the illegal content from your server and other server owners can do the same on their side.
The way it works currently is no different for that, the person who controls the server can block IPs if they want.
What I'm saying is that if some servers are ready to host your content then it's the users' and moderators' decision to block it on their side.
As a matter of governance, I agree with you: my instance is only blocking one instance and that's because they got reported for hosting CSAM. As an admin, I believe that my users are mature enough and smart enough to know how to filter out what they want to see.
But if you acknowledge that server admins can censor content on their servers, your complaint is only about *the way* that this is done, not the principle, and you agree that there needs to be an established hierarchy.
They can block content on their server, but as long as one server hosts the content, it would be available to anyone who wants to see it, which isn't how things work on Lemmy unless you want to sign up to a bunch of instances to make sure you have access to everything.
If you just want to see the content, you don't need an account. You can just pull the data, like opening up a different website.
What you want is the ability for some other server to *push* content to a server that the admin might have chosen to say "no, I do not want to have data from them, and I do not want to have my resources used by these users".
If you follow that logic, people should never be able to block or ban you? That makes no sense. Of course anyone should be allowed to block anyone else for whatever reason they choose. That's what defederation is as well. If you don't have the option of blocking or banning, stuff degenerates really badly and really quickly.
No, by my logic only users should be able to decide to ban me entirely and only mods should be able to ban me from specific communities, admins shouldn't exist at all, that's real decentralization, Lemmy is an half-measure.
As I stated elsewhere, I don't really see how you can even have mods without admins.
But how is admins banning you from an instance any different than a mod banning you from a community? Why are you okay being banned from a community by a mod but not okay being banned by an admin from an instance? Isn't it the same conceptually speaking, just on a different moderation/administration level?
An instance ban or defederation is a high level decision that has an impact on thousands of users at once, in a single click the admin can decide that tens of thousands of people don't connect with each others anymore or that a single person doesn't have access to hundreds of thousands of communities.
Moderators on the other hand have control over a single community, the amount of damage they can do is minimal.
Indeed - that is why you should consider at least a little bit which admin you want to sign up with (i.e. which instance you choose). Choose an admin that wouldn't just do that willy-nilly (except maybe in cases where abuse/bad actors is obvious), but would only do it after careful consideration and maybe even with involvement from their users.
This is not an argument against the fediverse model of admins owning instances. It's just an argument for choosing good admins.
You can choose the best admin in the world, the admin from another instance has the power to make it so you can't see what's on their server just because they don't like how your admin manages their part of the fediverse.
Again, then choose an admin or an instance that doesn't get defederated a lot. And as said elsewhere, you (or at least most people) don't want a scenario where you can't block other people or whole instances. Defederation is an important moderation tool.
What I'm suggesting wouldn't prevent people from blocking other users or communities, just like on Reddit, instances wouldn't exist at all, which would solve the main issue with Lemmy.
Reddit does have an instance, in that sense. There's just only one. Reddit has admins too. They can even ban entire communities and you can't go to another instance to make the community again.
Also again if there are no instances I'm really at a loss for where these communities are hosted and who is legally responsible, for instance, to remove illegal content.
Backend: The hosting is a database, people provide servers, host content, filter what they don't want on their own servers but if it's hosted by someone else on another server then it's available to users. In the end it works the same way as hosting any website except that you're not dealing with AWS or another such service, it's just people like you and me providing space on their servers to host chunks of the database and you back up everything so no one can wipe their server and make part of the database disappear
Frontend: The database is 100% public, if you create a website to access it all you're doing is providing the UI for users to see what's in the database and interact with it, you don't host the content itself
If you've ever played with crypto the principle is similar, the ledger is public, anyone can create a website to let people see the transactions on it and to push transactions to it
It sounds like nostr. Why don't you just use that?
That said, it's not realistic to have everything be public. But whatever, I'm not going to argue this any more.
"real" decentralization was never the goal of Lemmy or any project in the Fediverse.
Again, it seems like you are either stating the obvious or complaining that the people designing the applications have made different trade-offs that you would like.
There you go, a fully p2p reddit alternative. Now go away and be useful instead of complaining for the sake of complaining.
Well, that's a choice Beehaw made. Shouldn't they be allowed to defederate?
Quite a few people left Beehaw because of that, which is a sign that the decentralized model is working.
In your model, how do you deal with spammers, CSAM, trolls etc. ? Should every user do their own moderation for the 47k Lemmy monthly active users? Or should people create shared moderation lists? But then you still come back to the trust issues: do you trust someone else to add a user to a block list?
Allow NSFW content at your own risk, same for users and hosts.
Block users and communities as you see fit, why should a centralized authority decide for the users? It's the same thing as Reddit except that there's a bunch of centralized authorities instead of one.
I can create my own instance but other instances can decide to not federate with it.
If admins were the problem on Reddit we should work on making a platform where admins don't exist at all, not one where there's just more of them.
I am not talking about NSFW, I'm talking about CSAM. There were a few CSAM attacks last year, some mods had to see some disturbing pictures of pedo pornography, that's probably not something you want your average user to have to deal with.
Then it's not the same. You have communities like !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com or !fediverselore@lemmy.ca used to document abuse from admins and mods, and modlogs are public, it's a drastic change from Reddit.
Have you ever had a look at Nostr? It only has moderation at the user level, so that might be what you are looking for.
And those CSAM attacks weren't prevented by the way it works at the moment so that point is moot...
That people will upload illegal content is basically inevitable, the important thing is that there is someone (other than the original poster) with the authority to remove it.
That's the server owner's job, it doesn't mean they should also have the authority to decide who the users are federated with.
Holy crap, the point is going completely over your head.
If having absolute power over the communication channel is so important to you, you can only do that by *owning* everything. This is not an issue you are going to solve with changes on Lemmy, or Mastodon, or ActivityPub, or XMPP, or anything.
You are arguing where the line is drawn, but the line is not going to go away. Unless you go full blockchain, there is always some aspect of internet communication that it's mediated: the server, the internet provider, the domain registrar.
If you decentralize the hosting and make it a "public database" where everything is backed up on multiple servers then yes, you can in fact have people hosting the content they want to host without having actual control over the website itself. If they don't want to host NSFW content then they can filter it, someone else will host it and people can pull it from the database when they browse the website from their favorite front end.
You are describing nostr. Why not just use it then?
Yes, I'm surprised too, I mentioned it in a previous comment, and they even mentioned crypto in another comment, seems definitely like something they should try.
I'll go take a look and if it's what I'm talking about then I don't know why it wasn't the solution people jumped on when Reddit admins started fucking up instead of leaving to go on Lemmy where admins are still a thing...
One reason is that Nostr is filled with crypto-bros who think cryptocurrencies is the future. The whole Nostr space is filled with bitcoin news and deranged people yelling "HODL". Not surprising coming from a social media that makes it harder to ban you and encourages more absolute free speech.
I think the UX on Nostr is also just worse. You need to keep a private key for yourself I believe and that's just a technical hurdle and annoyance that most people don't want to deal with.
Another reason is that people like having admins. People want moderated places. People don't want to bother moderating stuff themselves. People don't want douchebags calling them stuff all the time and having to block stuff. Admins and moderators provide that service and users like that.
I get that you're frustrated that the admins at Reddit were mistreating you. The answer to that is not "abolish all admins" but rather "choose better admins", if you ask me at least. The good thing on the fediverse is that you can go to another place if you feel the current place isn't run by reasonable people.
Well put
Have a look, based on the discussion, you'll probably like it: https://nostr.how/en/why-nostr
Some people still want to be able to cut themselves from other people. If you ask Beehaw what they would think about Nostr, they would probably tell you that for them being able to defederate is a must.
Sure and I have a huge block list on here and I would never advocate for a solution where you can't choose to block someone or where mods can't block people from the communities they moderate, it's the person above that I have a problem with.
On Reddit I got blocked from a community (bread tube), I contacted the mod for an explanation and told them I didn't see why I would get blocked for an honest question (What is the alternative to cops when people get robbed if we get rid of cops?) from someone who is a progressive but who just isn't informed on that subject, they contacted the admins and I got banned from Reddit altogether. That's my problem with having admins at the top, one mod didn't like me questioning them, I had no issue in any other communities I took part in, bam, locked out of the whole place.
Please do take an honest try and let me know what you think of the UX.
Word of warning: the "no admin to censor you" also means "no one to help you in case you lose your account".
I mean sorry but that's just what decentralization is, unless you want a fully peer-to-peer protocol which is not realistic at all.
Or, as I keep suggesting, you make the authority figures have as little power as possible, i.e. the only people with authority are mods so they only have control over communities and don't have the power to prevent tens of thousands of people from communicating with each other.
They really have as little power as they can given the constraints. If you don't want an admin to have power over a lot of people, join a small instance and advocate others do the same.
It really sounds like you just want to be your own admin though. Maybe a personal instance would be a way for you.
But other admins still have the power to cut you off, so no, that's not a solution.
Well other admins should be entirely in their right to cut you off. Same as anyone should be able to block you. If another admin decides to cut you off, that's up to them, you can't stop that and shouldn't be able to. That is anyone's freedom.
But usually it is not a problem, as long as you are reasonable. Why would another admin block you if you are reasonable?
And what I've been saying from the get go is that no one should have that kind of power. That you can get banned from a community is one thing, that you can get banned from all content available on one instance and that one person can decide you're unable to communicate with tens of thousands of other users just because they don't like your face? Well that means that Lemmy is no better than Reddit.
Post on a community moderated by Lemmy's main dev to share a political opinion he doesn't agree with? Say goodbye to all Lemmy.ml users, you're banned from the whole instance mother fucker! No one should be able to do that in a decentralized system and if that's what people want from Lemmy then they should stop pretending it's decentralized because it's not.
I think you're totally misunderstanding how decentralization works. It sounds like you think it should be a free for all and everyone should be free to access everything. But again, the fediverse is about choice. It's totally okay for an admin to be able to cut off another instance. It's their instance, that's up to them. Nobody wants absolute free speech.
If you don't like that, go to another instance that doesn't do that and if you get cut off from another instance by another admin, maybe consider joining that instance or another instance that isn't defederated.
And consider also that this power is great motivation for everyone to stay nice and well moderated. If you are mean or spammy or whatever, you get defederated. So you better be nice! That's a great feature if you ask me.
All the feddit.de content is still available on https://lemmy.world/c/dach@feddit.de and all the other instances which where federated.