Cross posting this here for visibility as it’s easy to not see the edit. They are adding thoughts and resources to the post as they evolve so maybe keep an eye out for future edits.

I think the questions they have are very reasonable & they have welcomed cis people to discuss on the post (but not elsewhere on the subreddit)

I’m new to Lemmy and doing what I can. Long time member of the subreddit. Maybe some of you all are better than me at discussing these topics with them?

Thank you all for your help so far 🫶

  • @NOT_RICKEnglish
    24•19 hours ago

    Here’s hiddenstill’s main concerns. It sounds like they’re open to considering Lemmy, but they definitely need some reassurance

    • Can Lemmy can scale to the size required if trans content was banned on reddit.

    • I couldn’t find much information on Lemmy’s moderation tools. Currently this sub attracts a lot of hate and chasers, which moderation easily takes care of. In the past the have been excessive amounts, but reddit has cracked down on it, and provides tools to limit it (not very good ones). Lemmy would be unusable without this.

    • Lemmy works by sharing data across multiple instances (computers) and it appears there seem to be privacy concerns about the amount of data on users that is shared.

    • What is to stop the owners of the instance shutting it down, or the data being lost for any other reason? Although not a corporate it makes no difference. There would be a massive loss of knowledge and history.

    @[email protected], don’t feel the need to reply or reach out to hiddenstill if you’re not comfortable with it, but I thought you may be the best person to speak to many of these concerns

    • AdaEnglish
      11•14 hours ago

      Can Lemmy can scale to the size required if trans content was banned on reddit.

      Yes. A Lemmy insurance doesn’t federate all content to all users. It federates only a single copy of any content to each instance that has users that subscribe to that content, and those instances put it on the timeline of their members that subscribe to it.

      The federation design can handle a lot more traffic than the trans community on reddit can generate.

      I couldn’t find much information on Lemmy’s moderation tools.

      It’s better and worse than reddits tools. There are more active mods and admins that have less tolerance for bigotry, meaning that bigots get stomped on more reliably than on reddit. But creating new accounts is easy and locking down communities isn’t as granular as it is on reddit.

      Federation also allows an admin to restrict access to other instances that don’t deal with trolls, or even to operate on a white list basis. We’re thinking of spinning up a white list only instance to insulate sensitive groups from the wider fediverse, whilst allowing our members to access it.

      Lemmy works by sharing data across multiple instances (computers) and it appears there seem to be privacy concerns about the amount of data on users that is shared.

      Admins have access to the database for their instances, but that’s true of reddit too. The difference is lemmy admins aren’t selling that data off. And some instances (like blahaj) don’t require an email address to register, and allow the use of VPNs. Privacy is best achieved by not providing identifying data in the first place and many instances work to enable that option.

      What is to stop the owners of the instance shutting it down, or the data being lost for any other reason?

      Nothing. That’s the biggest issue IMO. Content that federates will still be available on the instances it has federated to, but even then, the loss of the hosting instance makes it hard to coordinate a replacement.

      I have hope that as the fediverse matures, this will improve and user and community mobility will protect against this.

      The only thing I can say here is that it’s less an issue than the possibility of reddit just banning a sub, because at least most of the content is recoverable on lemmy.

    • AdaEnglish
      23•17 hours ago

      I’m road tripping around New Zealand at the moment, so I can’t reply in depth just yet, but I’ve been talking to @supakaity about the possibility of spinning up another lemmy instance that is white list only. We could white list blahaj.zone, and other safe instances, and host sensitive communities there. It would mean our users still had access to the fediverse at large, but that the sensitive communities were insulated from trolls and bigots.

      I’ll address the rest of the post in more detail later today when we’re not on the road

      • cabbageEnglish
        11•16 hours ago

        If this works out it could really demonstrate the strength of decentralized social media. Thank you so much for considering taking on this challenge, and good luck!

        I really hope it will work. It sounds to me like it should.

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        5•14 hours ago

        Okay that’s rad. I’d been privately thinking of something similar to that myself but I’m new to the fediverse and didn’t know whether it was possible. If it’s like what I’m thinking you’re suggesting that would solve a HUGE issue in our community for balancing visibility (to help others and give information) with privacy (to support each other and avoid bigots). Centralized social media/messaging platforms have never prioritized this need in their design so we are always switching between apps to fulfill either function.

        • AdaEnglish
          9•14 hours ago

          So, broadly, what I’m thinking is two instances. One is public facing, (ie blahaj). Any communities hosted there would be visible to and usable by anyone on the fediverse.

          And then a private instance. It would only be visible to users on hand selected instances.

          People generally wouldn’t create user accounts on the private instance, and instead would access communities on those instances through user accounts hosted on the whitelisted public instances. For super sensitive stuff, folks could host user accounts on the private instance, but those user accounts would not be able to access most fediverse content.

          • @[email protected]OPEnglish
            6•13 hours ago

            Yes this was basically exactly what I was thinking! It’s very reassuring to hear that could be possible in the real world and not just in my head :D

      • @NOT_RICKEnglish
        6•16 hours ago

        Enjoy your trip!

    • @A_Union_of_KoboldsEnglish
      6•18 hours ago

      What’s to stop any other site from going down? That’s a concern with literally every part of the internet. Either host a decentralized node or accept your fate, what’s even the argument there

      I’m curious about the sharing of user data across instances, that could be a very valid reason for folks to be reluctant. But afaik it’s just surface-level user data that’s self-provided, same as anything else with a login.

      • @NOT_RICKEnglish
        4•17 hours ago

        Yeah for the second point you bring up, I’m not sure how that would be substantially different than the stuff that Reddit collects. They do a ton of fingerprinting to find ban evaders to my knowledge. All that info is just one subpoena away. At least there are fediverse instances outside US jurisdiction.

        • @A_Union_of_KoboldsEnglish
          5•16 hours ago

          Exactly.

          The biggest disadvantage to lemmy is just the size of the community. Reddit is established. People are there.

          Pretty much every criticism people have of lemmy is worse under reddit.

          • RentlarEnglish
            2•10 hours ago

            Yep, my effective downtime is zero because when lemmy.ca goes down I use one of my two alts to browse the rest of the fediverse, and if one of the popular ones happens to go down then I just browse locally more. It only sucked a bit when a big piece of Canadian news happened (PM Trudeau resigning) and there was an unscheduled outage due to shitty OVH hardware and support. Thankfully our admins migrated off that server.

            In contrast, when I remember Reddit was 500-ing all you could do is sit, refresh and wait.

    • Lvxferre [he/him]English
      5•18 hours ago

      Sorry for the double reply!

      Done. If anyone here notices some mistake from my part, please do tell me, and I’ll promptly fix it.

          • Lvxferre [he/him]English
            3•18 hours ago

            I did ;_; I completely forgot how Reddit works in this regard. I hope that HiddenStill can still see it as a mod.

            In case they don’t, I’ll copypaste the content here:

            I don’t claim to have “expert knowledge” on Lemmy, but I was discussing the topic there with one of the users of this sub (hi bayesianbandit!), and I’ve been in Lemmy for long enough (2021) to know a few things about it.

            Can Lemmy can scale to the size required if trans content was banned on reddit.

            Lemmy as a network can scale indefinitely. Even if a specific instance is reaching its limit, people can create new instances to split the load.

            So the problem is mostly if the “transgender surgeries instance” would be able to handle the load, and how much it would cost. Accordingly to this link, “the 10 biggest Lemmy servers still only have hosting costs of $50-$300/mo”.

            I couldn’t find much information on Lemmy’s moderation tools. Currently this sub attracts a lot of hate and chasers, which moderation easily takes care of. In the past the have been excessive amounts, but reddit has cracked down on it, and provides tools to limit it (not very good ones). Lemmy would be unusable without this.

            The official mod tools are awful and only suited for small communities. However larger instances developed a few third party mod tools to alleviate the burden, including an AutoMod of sorts.

            Lemmy also allows something called “defederation”, where users from one instance cannot interact with users from another instance. The nearest of that in Reddit would be if you were able to prevent all users who posted in a subreddit to post in yours. That helps wonders to keep haters at bay.

            Lemmy works by sharing data across multiple instances (computers) and it appears there seem to be privacy concerns about the amount of data on users that is shared. / What is to stop the owners of the instance shutting it down, or the data being lost for any other reason? Although not a corporate it makes no difference. There would be a massive loss of knowledge and history.

            The main concern is that data shared with one instance pops up in other instances, due to the federation. That’s both a liability and a feature - because if the original instance goes down, the data is still preserved in the other instances.

            • @[email protected]OPEnglish
              3•18 hours ago

              That’s an awesome response tbh and clears up some of my questions I didn’t even know I had too

              • Lvxferre [he/him]English
                2•17 hours ago

                Thanks.

                And… like, Lemmy is not perfect. We got a small userbase, official mod tools are shitty, so goes on, the points HiddenStill raised are all valid. But the way that things are going, I genuinely feel like the community will be safer (or at least less unsafe) here than in Reddit.

                • @[email protected]OPEnglish
                  4•17 hours ago

                  Yeah I agree. It’s progress and personally I’m very impressed by lemmy. It feels good to get connected with people who are charting paths forward in this environment.

                  It sucks but historically trans people have always been a bit underground by necessity and needing to find solutions outside the mainstream (in the case of the fediverse maybe one day it will be mainstream). And a lot of us do work in tech, can help those who aren’t as savvy out. We were always active on irc and Usenet back in the day

                  I think at the end of the day it’s good we’re working on this now because if things go downhill fast we can minimize our losses