blue_berry @ blue_berry @lemmy.world

Coder, Artist, Blogger (https://fungiverse.wordpress.com/, https://philpape

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Is huggingface non-profit by the way?

Ok, I got carried away a bit here

But wasn't ChatGPT trained on huge amount of data from social media, Reddit etc.? With distributed I mean that if the server fails the LLM still stays alive, like this. So I thought about fail-safe. Maybe I didn't thought it through enough ...

This was also complained about in this post: https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-alternatives-lemmy-3335429/ and probably mirrors experiences of other lemmy-users, especailly new-comers.

One paragraph reads: “Sure, there are categorization tools like Lemmy map that let you look up instances, but the Matrix-like grid will certainly not make things any easier for the average user. Even after logging into Lemmyworld, it took me a while to figure out that the local tab restricts all conversations to discussions on the Lemmyworld server. Switching the tab to all and catching up on discussions happening in the broader multiverse of Reddit alternatives is also possible. Still, there’s no visual identifier that guides you toward it.”

This was also my first impression of Lemmy and why I almost dropped it: I thought I could only interact with the communities on my server, which was very frustrating until I saw the filter for “all” and that I could join them just like that. Then it was fine.

The whole conundrum of “choosing an instance” is a phase that early adopters like us go through. People can’t be expected to go through the choosing part, then find communities to follow.

You don't necessarily need to. Here you can just send somebody a link to an instance. But this should not be the case for communities.

I agree with you that the dezentrality should be hidden as much as possible - but first: how do you explain to such a person all the other communities on the community tab? Second: If the frontend is designed well (almost as it currently is, just with the different default setting I suggested), you can browse through communities of other instances AS IF they were on your own instance. The thing that the choice of the instance decides should be technical stuff, moderation standards and the instances (ergo the communities) you see.

More generalised communities like lemmy.world means we keep trying to build a centralised alternative to Reddit.

No. You are turning the whole idea of the fediverse upside down. The dezentrality is there for tech and architecture but not for content. What YOU suggests points to a gated community just as big techs wants it. Sure, choosing an instance should maybe be jumped over when joining the threadiverse but the aspect of dezentrality should, even if it only abstracted, be an aspect of the user experience from the beginning. Maybe then people realize what instances actually are after a while but I'm not a fan of creating first a "sandbox" where they can experience the threadiverse as if it where a centralized platform to later join the "real" threadiverse and learn everything about dezentralization, choosing your instance etc because too often they stay there.

The problem about lemmy.world is that it is too big - but how should other instances grow if all the user focus is directed to internal communities?

The local feed is what differentiates an instance. The quality of which is a direct indicator of the instance’s quality. Hence the most important feed

The all-feed does so too given which instances they mute. I think currently Lemmy does not have really good moderation tools but that doesn't change the fact that the quality of All is also determined by the instance you are on.

The ultimate end user doesn’t even need to know what Lemmy is.

So if they start on an Arsenal lemmy instance they think about lemmy as a social network about Arsenal? And you would be ok with that and even consider it a user-behavior that should be encouraged? I'm sorry if I sound too harsh but that's just not I have in mind there.

Ok, but the ones with the most users are all general-purpose. Why do we need less general-purpose instances? The concern of instances is technical, which content you follow should happen in communities. That's the whole idea of the fediverse: you chose an instance and with that, environmental settings and then discover the Fediverse with it.

It would be fine. Thing is there aren't that many content-specific instances. The Arsenal-Lemmy-Server is a bad example to generalize upon

This was also complained about in this post: https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-alternatives-lemmy-3335429/ and probably mirrors experiences of other lemmy-users, especailly new-comers.

One paragraph reads: "Sure, there are categorization tools like Lemmy map that let you look up instances, but the Matrix-like grid will certainly not make things any easier for the average user. Even after logging into Lemmyworld, it took me a while to figure out that the local tab restricts all conversations to discussions on the Lemmyworld server. Switching the tab to all and catching up on discussions happening in the broader multiverse of Reddit alternatives is also possible. Still, there’s no visual identifier that guides you toward it."

This was also my first impression of Lemmy and why I almost dropped it: I thought I could only interact with the communities on my server, which was very frustrating until I saw the filter for "all" and that I could join them just like that. Then it was fine.

This also includes changing the default for finding communities from "local" to "all". There it really doesn't make any sense to me.

I think its nice to see which people are actually on your instance and what they are chatting about :D But its definitely an advanced feature, which makes it even more confusing to me why its the default value in the feed and the tab for finding new communities.

Very well. Then subscribed should be default. But in the community tab, default should definitely be "All". I think here it would be even more important.

If you are e.g. on lemmy.world, random news will also fill your feed with "Local". Content-specific lemmy-instances are not the rule. The person you describe would sign up for an Arsenal-community and then yes, All as default would be confusing, but Local also. It should be Subscribed as default and All as next choice.

It doesn't. I just think it encourages bad network dynamics. But you are right, its only a minor issue

Ok got it

Right right, but especially for the biggest instance I think it would be the right thing to do everything to encourage distributing user-engagement throughout the threadiverse.

That's a good point. I hope it will change in the future though. On mastodon it also isn't like that I think

Right, but for me, choosing an instance is a matter of moderation, maybe tech-stack/performance and data privacy (maybe some other stuff too) but not the content hosted ON the instance. I mean, thats the whole idea of the fediverse. You choose the social network structure that you like and travel the fediverse with that. I don't like this overly tribel-thinking.

Look in the cross-post

They aren't strictly chronological thought. Some basic filtering/sorting algorithm is what makes Lemmy much better in comparison to Mastodon imo

Another opinion would be that the Fediverse is currently so small that Meta doesn't really care about it. Its a nice feature with which they can set themselves apart from Bluesky and apear as the good guys to the public and regulators. I don't necessarily think Meta has a plan to destroy the Fediverse or suck all energy out of it. Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to bring micro-blogging to billions of users. Mastodon is only penuts there.