i’ve seen the sentiment that most of the growth being on lemmy with .world taking on the large share of users isn’t necessarily positive. other than the fact that the point of federation is decentralizing, what kind of issues arise from congregating heavily in a single instance?

i know even in just .world there a few redundant communities and i imagine that this is compounded in other instances. i don’t suppose i should expect or even want monolithic communities at the whim of just a few moderators or admins, but i don’t want to miss out on discussion and content for communities i’m interested in.

i guess i’m just curious what the development of communities and their interaction should look like with federation, and how browsing and engaging with these disparate but related spaces is going to work for the average user.

apologies if my questions about federation are basic or these questions are well known and understood for those who have been a part of communities like this for longer than i have.

  • @[email protected]
    10•2 years ago

    I don’t know the answer to any of your questions, but the duplicate communities thing is definitely an interesting problem to have. I mean, reddit had plenty of duplicate communities as well, but they each tended to build up their own personality which I always found interesting.

    For example, I subscribe to TeslaMotors and TeslaLounge on reddit (I drive a model 3) and I find them both super valuable, but they’re also super different. TeslaMotors tends to be breaking news but overly positive and gets grumpy whenever you post anything remotely negative about the company or its cars. TeslaLounge is much more realistic, where people can freely talk about the things they love about their car, but also the quirks and negatives without getting flamed.

    • @caephiOP
      5•2 years ago

      yeah i think communities being different from each other even if they’re discussing the same subjects is a good point. this same idea probably applies to the way people interact in other instances or what communities grow on there.

      reminds me of going between different forums and boards many years ago when that was something you had to do to see discussion on specific topics before most online activity was grouped into sites like twitter, reddit, facebook, etc.