Decentralization is obviously the big thing about the Fediverse but is it TOO decentralized to gain traction?
There is no reason why they have to be fully separate domains in the same branch. You can set up a system of fully independent moderation and extreme levels of customization while having them all on one site with a front page that allows everyone to see whats popular.
A front page wouldn’t prevent individual subgroups from requiring approval to join, it wouldn’t prevent subgroups from banning those it doesn’t want. It doesn’t prevent users from blocking subgroups that it doesn’t want to see on the front page.
What would be most useful is that now someone could create an account on the Reddit, Twitter, Facebook(?) alternatives and give them access to every community, and then allow each community to set its own rules, and customize its own to be unique while having a unified product to “sell” and get people to move.
Hot take? Blue Sky should be worked with to join the Fediverse as the twitter alternative and Mastodon should work to be the Facebook alternative
TLDR: One front page and general site for Lemmy, Mastodon…and to sign up and see whats popular and then have fully independent subgroups.
Gateways that ease the pain of entrance to the fediverse are a good thing. A single, centralised gateway that defacto controls all access to the fediverse is exactly what I’m trying to get away from
Just to be clear each site, Lemmy, Mastodon… Would have it’s own front page under this idea.
Most platforms have their “join lemmy” or “join Mastodon” equivalents already
I know but having a reddit style front page or trending like Twitter would look more engagefull.
I kinda like the fediverse as is. We keep slowly growing our services. We don’t need to be social media.
We can be social sure but without the need to be ever growing. I would rather us concentrate on the people and giving us power rather than huge orgs that are going to do huge org things.
Then make the “one true frontpage” for Lemmy or whatever (implement ActivityPub, maybe borrowing some code from the Lemmy codebase itself, or kindof making a fork of Lemmy), and if it’s good, it’ll be used. If not, it won’t.
But then, it might well fall victim to this phenomenon:
Lemmy has lots of competing “front pages.” How will one more change anything? A more generic domain name or something?
Lemmy.com Mastodon.com … If those were the front pages that curated the top 25 posts and top 25 sub groups in the last 24 hours and it was a space where you could search for the groups you fit into or are interested in. No more confusing mess.
The top 25 posts in the least 24 hours would probably mostly show politics, news and tech memes, which aren’t the most attractive content for potential new joiners.
I personally block this type of content, and I’m probably not alone.
It would give an enormous power to who controls this “front page”. This page could restrict any user arbitrarily, lock them out, spy on them, etc. And because this page would be unique, they would have no alternative. This is exactly why federation is a key to freedom.
That can be worked out, have power shared by say 10 people who have to agree to any changes they make to it. or use AI (I know not ideal).
You know what’s exactly as decentralized as fediverse? Email. Do you know anyone who doesn’t use email?
Email is a utility 💀 not a social platform
