this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Fediverse

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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.

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[–] beigeoat@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago

The answer to your question is good moderation and moderation tools.

[–] resurrexia@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Okay but are eyebrow transplants really a thing???

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We have a bigger problem and it's popularity. Some instances will want to become as big as possible, for resell value.

So they will be encouraged to let the maximum of people registering a new account, including bots and spammers. Because they make the numbers and they start the snowball effect.

Didn't you all looked a the most populated instances/magazine when you registered magz, and you didn't care about the mags with zero activity? Well, you are encouraging the process in a way.

People will be reluctant to defederate or to ban popular magazines from other subs. So the float of spammers is unlikely to stop, because the person who makes the decision, the admin of the instance, will welcome them. And you won't ban the instance or the mag.

We have to become more like a club.

[–] 0xtero@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Some instances will want to become as big as possible, for resell value.

What’s the resell value of an instance?

[–] akai@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

About tree fiddy

[–] effingjoe@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the person you replied to is still stuck in the mindset of a siloed product, like reddit. Federation across instances means that there's little commercial value in any specific instance, in my view. If any specific instance was sold, and an attempt to monetize arose, I suspect people would simply abandon it for a new instance.

As an aside, lemmy/kbin need to implement a way to export/import follow lists.

[–] Teppic@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And notably after moving instance they would still have the same access to all the same posts, comments and content.

On the export comment I agree too. Mastodon even lets you port your whole profile.

[–] bvanevery@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Other people's posts / content. What about the user's own content? Sure plenty of people don't care, but there is a working set of people who do produce content online, who care about the visibility and longevity of their output.

[–] Teppic@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

On Mastodon your followers stay with you if you move instances. I expect in time this will also be true here.

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The value of an instance is a function of the number of his registered users.

Facebook bought Instagram for the price of ~$30 per user.

[–] 0xtero@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Facebook bought Instagram for the price of ~$30 per user.

Yeah, sure for ad revenue.
Fediverse hasn't been monetized though, so there's no expected ad revenue. Patreons and other donations are not revenue.

You are basically just buying a bunch of hosting costs

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The emails revealed that Zuckerberg wanted to buy Instagram as it was becoming a threat to Facebook.

"Facebook, by its own admission saw Instagram as a threat that could potentially siphon business away from Facebook," Nadler said during the hearing on Wednesday.

"So rather than compete with it, Facebook bought it. This is exactly the type of anti-competitive acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent," Nadler added.

Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, a shocking sum at that time for a company with 13 employees,

Facebook bought the adoption, they bought the users.

[–] Teppic@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

You miss-represent the fediverse. Users aren't locked in. If someone buys one instance and you don't like it, you move. You still have all the same access, all the same content. An instance is only an access point, in many ways it is like an ISP, and people jump service providers all the time.

[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you understand what siphoning business means? What business do you think Facebook is in? It wasn't users. It was ads.

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is only one metric for a social network, the number of users.

Youtube channel? subscribers

Twitch channel? subscribers

Twitter? Followers

That's about who gathers the most people, end of the line. If an instance managed to become a pole of gravity then it will be worth money.

And before you tell me that you can subscribe to a different instance, well, you can also subscribe to a different social network.

but fine, we disagree.

[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

An instance isn't the social network though. The fediverse is. You're missing the whole point.

[–] bvanevery@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Well I can see one thing that kinda belies your point of view at present. Stability. Some people have presciently worried that their instance can implode, taking all content a user has made with it. Larger instances that are more stable, that have more backup infrastructure and ongoing commitment to operations, could out-compete smaller instances. Why this might arise, could be a historical accident of successful crowdfunding campaigns or something. I'm not sure how someone might do a better job of securing more server resources than others. Obviously a deep pocketed corporation who wants to influence the Fediverse, could do that.

[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your closing suggestion doesn't actually affect the process. Admins still run the joint. The admin just needs to care. Admins can even make it invite only if they wanted. Do you have any source for this marketplace of instances?

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

So what will you do about an instance called "rofl.lol", which is huge, which has a lot of fans locally who want to keep interacting with it and which also allows spammers? Will you keep federating or will you defederate it?

If you don't defederate this will become and endless whack-a-mole of bans with a drop of quality.

Do you have any source for this marketplace of instances?

I never talked about a marketplace of instances.

[–] xc2215x@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Report the account.

[–] brainfreeze@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know if this is quite the same thing, but @kersploosh was waging a war on bot accounts. Maybe they have some inside or can come up with something in conjunction with the admins.

Edit: that's @kersploosh @sh.itjust.works in case the one here is someone else.

[–] kersploosh@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

That's me! Unfortunately, I don't have any clever solutions to active spamming other than responsive moderation, and better mod tools whenever they become available.

I was notifying instance admins of suspicious user totals that looked like swarms of auto-created bot accounts. Last time I checked, half a dozen admins that I contacted have deleted about 250,000 suspicious dormant accounts. It's not a solution to the problem, but it's something.

[–] Swyperider@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Hopefully several instance owners collaborate on a shared blocklist that will help combat this kind of spam and implement that back into their instances.

Lemmy at least does have a slur filter in place to block certain words that could be expanded to block spam like this. I don't know if kbin has something like that or not.

[–] Verbose2812@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

report the posts, the moderators will ban the profiles.

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do kbin and lemmy allow you to report accounts to the instance admins? I’m still used to Mastodon, where you report spam to the instance admins and they boot the accounts. That wold solve the problem at the source rather than make magazine/community mods have to play whack-a-mole.

[–] techno156@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Kbin has a report function, although I don't know if reports Federate. They might not.

Lemmy does do reporting, although it's not clear whether it's just moderators, or whether the admins will also receive them.