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Why can't magazines/communities aggregate content from other instances? (kbin.social)
submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by to c/fediverse@kbin.social
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When I look at https://lemmy.ml/c/startrek vs https://kbin.social/m/startrek I see two entirely different lists of posts. Why? It's the same topic, just on different instances. How can we have communities about topics without having them siloed into their own instance-based communities? Is this just related to that 0.18 issue with Lemmy/kbin not talking nicely, or is this how the Fediverse is?

Is it (at least theoretically) possible for me to post an article on https://kbin.social/m/startrek and have it automatically show up on https://lemmy.ml/c/startrek, or are they always going to be two separate communities?

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[–] 4 points 3 years ago (7 children)

The redundancy that is being complained about is a problem, but it's also one of the fediverse's greatest assets. What happens when a group of discussion is forced or becomes more dominant in just one place and something happens to that place (whether it be corruption, data loss, just cut off from other places)? I think rather than creating a desire or necessity to congregate in one place, having tools for similar groups to distribute topics among themselves is a much better solution for everyone.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    If we can decentralize users, we can surely decentralize content, can't we? I don't want content to be restricted to one instance, and that's my problem. I was looking to have the same community and its content to be on all instances at the same time, removing the power of one instance to shut out the Fediverse and control all access to the content. If !startrek@startrek.website decides to shut down all traffic to/from kbin, for example, then that would leave kbin users in the dark as it currently stands, right?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    The old content would not disappear. Federated content is in fact stored on every server, and is not fetched from the "main" server every time someone wants to interact with it. Only changes are transmitted to and fro. Defederation entails the ceasing of this synchronization.

    If startrek.website had genuine reasons for shutting your instance out, you probably don't want to stick around on it either.

    If it didn't, that will mean people likely wont want to stick around on it.

    The third option is something like what happened with beehaw, where an instance was unable to deal with the moderation load of large outside instances. In these cases, the defederation is likely to be temporary.

    Either way, the content moves around a little... Establishes new homes on new instances... And you're back to business as usual after a bit of turmoil. A lot less of it than with a commercial centralized services going down though.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

    Oooh, okay. So if I subscribe to !startrek@startrek.website, then kbin would store that data, and I would be able to point everyone to !startrek@kbin.social and we'd all be able to pick up where we left off? Still an issue of getting users to change where they're posting to, but that's better than I thought, at least.

    Also, I imagine the problem with how difficult it is to migrate away from commercial centralized services is that it's hard to spin up a new version of that site with the code and database. Being quick to spin up a new kbin instance or Lemmy instance helps immensely, though the issue of directing the users to those new instances would be just as difficult.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    In a federated system, once up and running, "jumping ship" is much, much easier. Changing entire sites goes from new accounts, apps, and people, to just seeing where the users go, and following.

    A community is its users, and in the fediverse, when a site goes bad, the users don't have to go with it.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    I would argue that a community is the content and its users. People don't use a new site/instance unless it's active with content to their quality standards (it's why so many people refuse to use new options that the far-right creates). The only exception is when there are major events like Musk purchasing Twitter to get Mastodon going, or the API changes leading to kbin/lemmy getting more popular. As an example: I'm still using https://reddit.com/r/worldnews because they have the daily update thread on Ukraine, but !worldnews doesn't.

    You are very right with the apps, though. Creating a new account is easy, but having to install new apps and set them up is a royal pain. Another pain point is having to learn an entirely new interface, whereas I can spin up my own instance of kbin after using it for a couple of years and feel comfortable with the interface of the new instance, as opposed to going from Twitter to Mastodon which is quite the adjustment.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    There's one more benefit.

    In a federation, you can join the new less shitty version, AND stay in the old one going downhill.

    You can vote for the new thing, without giving up on the old. You simply switch which one you post to.

    Imagine if you could have Reddit and Lemmy, in the same app, seamlessly intermingling, but actively reduce how much you contribute to reddit, while actively increasing how much you contribute to lemmy.

    You could contribute to that change and improvement, with ZERO trade-offs. How many more people would support the next thing, if they could adopt the new without discarding the old?

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