Federation is stupid
So don't use it.
convince me otherwise.
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2021
-94 points (16.9% liked)
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Instance blocking and user blocking are features, not problems. Most users want to block trolls for example. If you dont like that, you can make your own instance without, or just go back to commercial social media. The rest of your rant seems exclusively to Matrix, not Lemmy. I think you should spend more time here (or on another instance) before you really judge it.
Federation is critical to the development of alternative social networks. The reason people use specific social networks is because other people are on them. If there's an open source social network app that isn't federated, then everyone using sites powered by that app is isolated. With federation, all instances of the social network can interact with each other. Different instances can pop in and out of existence and the ones that stick around can become popular.
It's better for new social networks to be federated then isolated.
Replace "federation" with "email".
Still stupid?
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.
As a cybersecurity pro who primarily deals with email security right now (in the sense that there is basically none)
STOP
CLICKING
LINKS
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.
Federation is the most natural form of human society. We've developed to exist in small communities of a couple dozen people. Some groups talk to each other, some don't, and every one has its own identity. Sometimes a member leaves and gets assimilated into another group.
Existing in large communities with thousands and millions of members - other species do that, like ants.
Ok weird analogy, but I think that's the gist of it really.
Uniform places like Facebook, with one queen/master, perfectly organised, never really seeing outside, being just a cog - that's a life of an ant.
Small, agile communities, sometimes a bit messy and complex, especially when it comes to outside interactions - we can handle that, because of our huge human brains.
It's time for moving away from being ants back to being humans.
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.
performance is horrible
Can you be specific? I know Matrix folks are working on sliding sync to manage some big performance issues. https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/3575
I think performance will never be 1:1 to a VC-funded, centralized tech company, but I don’t think federation inevitably means “horrible” performance (but maybe someone with more technical knowledge can weigh in).
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.
What happened to vlemmy.net? I'm OOTL, all I know is I can't login or reach the server.
No one can log in or access it, and there is no communication about it from vlemmy admins :( https://lemmy.ca/post/1307147 seems to be a good summary.
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
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
Started cracking up at fiefdom
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