this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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The biggest problem with lemmy and decentralization right now is that for optimal performance you need to spread out the load relatively evenly between instances. The problem is that users tend to go where other users are (otherwise why go there) and that naturally leads to clumping on one or few instances which causes it to overload.
The way to solve it is to avoid having generic "anything goes" instances and instead have instances be focused on a specific topic. For example, have gaming instance, a personal finance/investing instance, all things home ownership and improvement instance, etc. You can have multiple communities per instance as long as they stay within the same general topic. This way users will naturally spread out by subscribing to different instances based on topics they're interested in. And that will solve the performance issue we're seeing with lemmy.world or other popular instances.
I'm pretty much brand new to lemmy but the thought of having to switch instances to see cooking conversations after conversing about Raspberry Pi projects in a different instance just seems unwieldy. But I guess as long as my instances are all federating with each other I don't need to switch instances. I'm a technical guy but this needs to be easier for joe sixpack or it's not going to catch on. And if it doesn't catch on there's going to be less interesting content...
Correct, as long as the instance your account is in federated with all other instances you're subscribed to, you don't have to switch accounts.
Now, defederation is another issue if you want to see the widest possible amount of content. What's going to happen is ideologically opposed instances are going to defederate each other, so left-wing instances are going to defederate right-wing ones and vice versa. So if you're a user who wants to see the content from both sides, you'll have to create multiple accounts in each "cluster" of federated instances. It's kind of annoying to be honest, it makes it hard to discover communities just because your instance admin decided to defederate from them and encourages echo chambers, but it it's the best we've got.
Another way to solve the issue is to have users and communities be instance-independent where the instances only provide storage for communities and users they want to support.
Where would user information be stored?
Would this require you to switch between instances to view all the content you wish to follow? That doesn't seem very appealing as a user.
No, you can see all the content from all instances you're subscribed to, as long your instance admin hasn't defederated from them.
Right, I think this was the potential concern I was vaguely remembering.
I am subscribed to Ukraine on sopuli.xyz and memes in lemmy.ml and a few others on Lemmy.world and they all show up in my feed, so I'm now more confused. Am I viewing several instances or not? Lmao
You are as long as they agree to federate with each other (which they obviously are if they're in your feed)
So what is the point of congregating on a general purpose instance? I ask this because of the snippet from the root comment:
If everything is visible from any (federated) instance, why not switch once you encounter slow down? In my comment, I was just clarifying that I understood the premise.
I also see these when sorting by All in lemmy.world, for instance (no pun intended). I'm just making sure I am not confused. Sorry if I confused you in the process!
This wouldnt be as much of as issue if Lemmy had better support for connecting with other instances and their communities.
I wonder if specialised instances are easier to administer? If the admins are familiar with the instances specific subject matter, jargon and memes, it might make their job easier perhaps?
I agree