It appears to me that the current state of Lemmy is similar to other platforms when they were smaller and more insular, and that insularity is somewhat protecting it.

I browse Lemmy, and it feels a bit like other platforms did back in 2009, before they became overwhelmed and enshitified.

If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar “landed gentry” moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.

If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?

  • MudMan@fedia.io
    1·
    7 hours ago

    I just don’t think that’s a reasonable view, and it’s certainly a marginal one in the community. Nobody is out there claiming that the core feature of Fedi apps is self-hosting a tiny social network for your friends, disconnected from every other piece. The selling point is supposed to be that your tiny, self-hosted instance is still connected to this distributed, crowdsourced larger network.

    Building a social network sure is hard and requires a building a lot of software, but unlike other pieces of software, social networks carry a LOT of additional costs to run at scale and make no sense to run without the scale. You can host Jellyfin for your small group of friends. Maybe a chat server or a list service, not a forum or a link aggregator.

    In any case, even if you are an outlier and see that as a valid use case, that’s definitely not a majority view, and the Fedi community has both ambitions to get larger and an expectation that this will be done with effective moderation baked into the service. You and I agree on the existence of that problem, we just disagree on the resulting state after it surface.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      1·
      25 minutes ago

      I just don’t think that’s a reasonable view, and it’s certainly a marginal one in the community.

      You’re welcome to hold that opinion.

      You and I agree on the existence of that problem,

      I agree.

      we just disagree on the resulting state after it surface.

      I’m not making any strong claims to the resulting state afterward. I can’t predict the future with any level of confidence. However, I’m saying there are future scenarios where my position can exist at an extreme. This itself is a benefit over the competition.

      I appreciate the time you’ve taken to discuss this. I think we can leave the conversation here and part on good terms. I see your position as a valid possible future too.