Ask Lemmy

On Reddit, before it went full goose step, you'd have the problem where the top mod of r/linux would be this weird open source zealot who would delete any thread that had any practicality in it. So actual discussion of using Linux would happen in r/linuxmasterrace, which was nominally a meme sub but it's where the actual community landed. You could use Reddit's vast namespace to steer around an individual top mod.

You couldn't steer around Reddit's admin though, they have root access to the servers, they can, have and increasingly do shut things down they don't like. It's double plus ungood.

Lemmy, and indeed the entire Fediverse, offers every user the Bender gambit. You can make your own instance with blackjack and hookers. There is no mechanism to shut it down everywhere. Instances are hosted by multiple people on multiple hardware platforms on multiple power grids in multiple countries under multiple jurisdictions.

The top mod of !linux@example.lol is being a shithead? You could make !actual_linux@example.lol, or you could start !linux@lemmy.world, or you could start your own instance and then YOU are in control of who gets to be a mod on at least one instance. No one person has the power to shut down everything everywhere; you start talking about severing undersea cables at that point.

Federation.

There's a reason why worldnews@lemmy.world and worldnews@lemmy.ml are not federated with eachother, yet lots of users are subscribed to both.

If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar "landed gentry" moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.

For lemmy, it's again a federation thing. You just don't see many multiple defederated examples due to the small user count.

It's not the most optimal solution, but it's still miles better than dealing with single instance or single community issues.

What you're worried about is basically what federation was built to stop.

If you don't like the moderation of a community or other aspects, you or anyone else can make a new one on the same or a different instance, if you want.

You can even make it "private" (not federate) to keep others from coming in and recreating the problem you just fled.

It depends which instance you are on. Some instances are full of mods that censor everything that doesn't fit their ideology. Other instances are more relaxed with their moderation approaches. It definitely pays to shop around a bit before you settle on an instance that is a good fit for you.

On dbzero we have a governance community and instance users have the right to vote out mods/admins if they are unpopular. But most instances are run in a much more top-down BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) fashion.

lemmy is part of a horizontally scaling network of instances (servers). if a popular community on an instance goes sideways... say because of a new terrible mod or rule change, the entire population of that community can up and move to a new community in another instance without having to create new accounts anywhere.

this has already happened a few times.

I think the primary defense is the decentralized nature of the application..

Moderators/admins can block and remove content on the instace(s) they control, but this does not impact the content of any other instance.

Effective censorship of the entire ecosystem would require control of many instances and defederation from those that are not deemed appropriate.

There is not really a way for the operator of one instance to control the moderation decisions of the operator(s) of any other instance.

the enshitification happens at a smaller location level.

look at some of the shunned/pariah instances. lots of people just end up blocking it or joining the instance to participate... what ever

imo it will continue to be a rollercoaster of ups and downs that only a core group of users will notice but there's going to be drama

because drama is how humans behave

What federation protects from is the singular owner of the platform sweeping in and setting/enforcing new rules for some or all communities. This could still happen on one instance, but new instances can mitigate the effects. Single communities can still turn bad, but it will be up to the users to decide whether to stick around or move to other communities.

If people get fed up, they just create another community under the same name somewhere else. This happened with 196 recently.

I don't know how it'd work but I'd be interested in something to deal with spam/scams. That annoying "Fediverse chick" thing, sure i blocked her, as can other individuals. And I guess the account could be flagged to whatever instance the account is registered to? But if it became a frequent problem, with bot account spamming people, it would be handy to have a way a tracking what accounts are getting blocked by lots of people.

Even if I wouldn't want to autoblock accounts just because they're unpopular, I might want to stop or mark as 'caution' private messages from "problem" accounts.

I think the difference here is there is not some weird, ephemeral person deciding. For example, at the bad place, it could have been a shitty admin, a good admin or actually spez deciding the rules for everyone.

Here we have instances that make up their own rules on who to federate with (who you see), and whether or not you're banned (who sees you). Also, the admins of your instance can redo moderation order anyway they see fit. It really will be an instance controlled vibe.

The real thing to be worried about is that if certain instances get too big. They have the most users and can control who sees what across the fediverse. For example, if a super large instance doesn't want any posts on any volatile or controversial topic to be seen (immigration, Nazi salutes, transgender, etc.), they could just have it not show up on their instance and the biggest part of the fediverse would never see it and have no way of knowing they didn't see it.