Hey fellow inhabitants of the Fediverse, particularly those lurking on Lemmy,
I've been thinking a lot lately about the nature of information, discourse, and where genuine human connection can still thrive online. It leads me back to platforms like this one.
We often talk about censorship in terms of direct bans or content removal, which is obviously a critical concern. But what about the more insidious forms of control? I'm talking about the subtle fiddling of algorithms, the deliberate hiding of certain content without outright deletion, the 'shadowbanning' that makes you feel like you're shouting into a void. How resistant is the decentralized nature of Lemmy, and the wider fediverse, to those kinds of pressures? It feels like the very architecture here might offer a unique defense, but I'm curious about the community's thoughts.
I know we're not exactly bursting at the seams with users, and frankly, if you're not already clued into how something like Lemmy works, you're probably never finding it through a casual search – SEO seems like a foreign concept here, battling potential duplicate content issues across instances. Is this quiet corner its strength, or its eventual downfall if the 'outside' world becomes too noisy?
Speaking of noise, it feels like nearly 90% of the content generated on the broader internet these days is starting to feel like it's churned out by LLMs. Autogenerated articles, comments, even entire 'conversations' that ring hollow. Is the Fediverse, specifically, a safe haven from that rising tide of artificial content? Does the human-centric, community-driven nature of these instances inherently push back against such automation?
I've looked into ActivityPub and other federation tools in the past, and my observation has often been that they've been adopted primarily by marginalized groups in society, seeking refuge from mainstream platforms. While that's incredibly valuable and a testament to their utility, what could truly happen to extend this concept, to genuinely get more people involved without compromising the very principles that make it appealing – decentralization, human curation, and resilience against algorithmic manipulation?
Just throwing it out there. Would appreciate any insights or theories.
I run multiple instances and work at several projects involving privacy and social resilience.
It is pretty astonishing how much one can be free of disinformation if they keep a disciplined attitude towards content.
Lemmy for example works well if you're aware that you need to exclude and or report harmful content, semi regularly search new communities and take the leap to leave those who are not your cup of tea.
The fediverse is a great teacher of anarcho syndicalism since it is essentially free of censorship in a totalitarian sense but allows people, communities, servers and even groups (fediseer) to exclude what they deem harmful. It isnt the case in any other place, just here.
It would of course be easier if there were simple explanations of the concepts but then again, progressive ideas arent in the broader society's interest and therefore need to be taught slowly.
I think having the option to make your phone or instance guess content for further radicalization or just information based on your configuration could be beneficial. Then again, its not without dangers.
Hi thanks.
Regarding running your own instance, is there any issues/security vulnerabilities you've noticed? I remember reading the mastodon docs and even things like pleroma tend to use a lot of RAM/CPU and disk space... I know lemmy is said to be lightweight, but what complications does it bring down the road? I even remember matrix being a HOG.
Of course it depends highly on your configuration. Mastodon, lemmy, matrix and peertube themselves have not ever been a security problem in the years I run them. Of course, you can run into problems with all surrounding stuff like firefall, updates, installation methods, admin accounts, ssh, etc. I can recommend hosting a fedi instance for people who are experienced in hosting public services. Otherwise i suggest asking a friend who is experienced to host the server or buying the managed server as a service and just doing the fedi service alone. You can of course learn if from scratch but that involves many days of reading, trial and error and vigilance.
In terms of space and resources, I run many services on two threads and 8 gigs of ram, both are not even half utilized. Diskspace is a little more precarious. You should plan for at least 10 gigs per service on lemmy and mastodon and also have auto delete on for a private instance. A public instance goes bonkers because of the pictures and videos that are uploaded. You can store these on object storage i guess. Peertube is fine as long as you dont upload and only show curated federated content. But videos, especially long ones will likely need many gigabytes of space.
And last points: make backups and dont host public services on private networks.