Abstract

This paper examines the potential of the Fediverse, a federated network of social media and content platforms, to counter the centralization and dominance of commercial platforms on the social Web. We gather evidence from the technology powering the Fediverse (especially the ActivityPub protocol), current statistical data regarding Fediverse user distribution over instances, and the status of two older, similar, decentralized technologies: e-mail and the Web. Our findings suggest that Fediverse will face significant challenges in fulfilling its decentralization promises, potentially hindering its ability to positively impact the social Web on a large scale.

Some challenges mentioned in the paper:

Discoverability as there is no central or unified index
Complicated moderation efforts due to its decentralized nature
Interoperability between instances of different types (e.g., Lemmy and Funkwhale)
Concentration on a small number of large instances
The risk of commercial capture by Big Tech

What are your thoughts on this? And how could we make the Fediverse a better place for all to stay?

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[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So the community (users) can move, but I just realized that when an instance shuts down the community (posts) limps on, preventing the community (posts) from actually dying and the community (users) from moving on.

For instance, if you asked me, a lemmy.world user about moviesandtv@lemmy.film I would see, https://lemmy.world/c/moviesandtv@lemmy.film

But if you ask a sh.itjust.works user they see, https://sh.itjust.works/c/moviesandtv@lemmy.film

And lemmy.ml users see, https://lemmy.ml/c/moviesandtv@lemmy.film

We all see different versions of the same community (posts).

I think https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4619 would fix this.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

So the community (users) can move, but I just realized that when an instance shuts down the community (posts) limps on, preventing the community (posts) from actually dying and the community (users) from moving on.

Indeed. And it becomes a pain to contact the members of the now dead community as federation is broken. I've been there, it's really a pain.