A lot of us come from reddit, so we’re naturally inclined to want a reddit-like platform. However, it occurred to me that the reddit format makes little sense for the fediverse.

Centralized, reddit-like communities where users seek out communities and post directly to them made sense for a centralized service like reddit. But when we apply that model to lemmy or kbin, we end up with an unnecessary number of competing communities. (ex: [email protected] vs [email protected]) Aside from the issues of federation (what happens when one instance defederates and the community has to start over?) this means that if one wants to post across communities on instances, they have to crosspost multiple times.

The ideal format for a fediverse reddit-like would be a cross between twitter and reddit: a website where if you want to post about a cat, you make your post and tag it with the appropriate tags. This could include “cats,” “aww,” and “cute.” This post is automatically aggregated into instantly-generated “cats,” “aww,” and “cute” communities. Edit: And if you want to participate in a small community you can use smaller, less popular tags such as “toebeans” or something like that. This wouldn’t lead to any more or less small communities than the current system. /EndEdit. But, unlike twitter, you can interact with each post just like reddit: upvotes, downvotes, nested comments - and appointed community moderators can untag a post if it’s off-topic or doesn’t follow the rules of the tag-communities.

The reason this would work better is that instead of relying on users to create centralized communities that they then have to post into, working against the federated format, this works with it. It aggregates every instance into one community automatically. Also, when an instance decides to defederate, the tag-community remains. The existing posts simply disappear while the others remain.

Thoughts? Does this already exist? lol

Edit: Seeing a lot of comments about how having multiple communities for one topic isn’t necessarily bad, and I agree, it’s not. But, the real issue is not that, it’s that the current format is working against the medium. We’re formatting this part of the fediverse like reddit, which is centralized, when we shouldn’t. And the goal of this federation (in my understanding) is to 1. decentralize, and 2. aggregate. The current format will eventually work against #1, and it’s relying on users to do #2.

  • @humdrumgentlemanEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I agree your points represent challenges, but I think they are opportunities rather than fatal flaws.

    • Community collapse = intra-instance interaction = success of the model.
    • Community splintering among instances = greater opinionation, fit between user and community = success of the model.
    • Spicier domain names, content, and users are likely to attract eachother over time. Blocking that domain or choosing an instance that is defederated with it then becomes a powerful tool to shape your experience.
    • Unlike the corporates, instances don’t need active users or growth to survive. They exist because someone with the skills and resources wants them to. If anything, some of them may benefit from users moving on to more popular instances.
    • I concede that getting a healthy supply of mods and content is the biggest challenge for Lemmy right now. However, I more would be lost than gained by replacing communities with tags. I’m tempted to go on here about the virtues of subreddits/communities vs. tags here, but I think anyone that’s here instead of on Mastodon probably has an idea of that already.
    • To bring it home, I think this type of social network is inherently decision-focused. The federation model amplifies that, which is intimidating and challenging, but I think ultimately to its benefit rather than its detriment.