cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/24088740
Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have. There currently is not financial incentive like the ones that have led centralized platforms to enshittify. But there might be in the future. Does decentralization protect against that tendency in some way?
Lemmy and Mastodon do give me the hope, that when one platform turns to shit, there will be people creating a platform that - for the time being - is not.
I’ve only been on this platform for a little less than a year, but my guess is it will be brought down by petty infighting, not financial incentives. World and a few other instances have already decided to defederate from hexbear, and there’s enough tension between World and ml that defederation seems like a real possibility. While the goal may be a decentralized platform, the largest communities are on these two instances, and it they break apart their might not be enough content to keep new users’ interest.
Even if Lemmy gets past the infighting between the liberal Reddit refugees of World and the, “old Lemmy,”" communists of ml, users seem to tie their identity very heavily towards their instance. I’m worried that in the long term, that will drive people away from committing to cross-instance communities; even now, I hear people brag about how they’ve blocked entire instances because they’re full of, “centrists,” or, “tankies.” I think the downside of federation is that it leads to tribalism, and enough of it could kill the momentum Lemmy needs to grow.
I don’t mean to sound down on Lemmy; it’s the most interesting platform I’ve seen in years, and I’m curious to see how it develops. But at this point, I’ve abandoned Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and MySpace; I’ve learned that social media accounts are not permanent parts of your life. I’m having a lot of fun with Lemmy, but I don’t expect to be using it in 5 years.
So far being a sh.ithead is working out pretty well.
Yeah, if I were ever to switch instances, that would probably be my next move. It’s still really small, though. Green Text seems like the only decently sized community.
!games@sh.itjust.works
!whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
Fair enough, but the point is that the instance would still be cut off from a large portion of most users’ content if it were to defederate from ml or world. And while tankies and centrists libs are the schism developing right now, it seems like that’s a symptom of tribalism people have around instances, which I think could undermine the entire principle of federation in the first place.
sh.itjust.works seems to be doing well, playing nice with world, ml, hexbear, and grad, I just worry that a culture cliqueish I’ve seen so far could keep fracturing Lemmy so it can’t develop a sustainable user base. But as I said, I haven’t been on the platform that long, and this is just my guess of what Lemmy’s version of enshittification might look like after being here a short time.
There are quite a few communities outside of LW and ml:
Most of the instances are not going to defederate from LW, but if they were, the remaining ones would still survive
So? We’re federated.
Right, and as long as I’m wrong about petty tribalism fracturing Lemmy, that’s good. But if your insurance winds up cut off from World or ml because of petty infighting, that will be a problem
make your own instance then.
I don’t have the time or interest to do that, and it wouldn’t fix the underlying problem of tribalism that I’m concerned about.
Then abandon the platform as doomed.
Those are your options. Open one or more accounts on one or more existing instances as an ordinary user, run your own single-user instance to federate and defederate from who you want to, or GTFO.
I’ve seen people grousing about this topic since I’ve been here “uuh uuh what if too many defederations because tankies? uuh uuh…”
This happens on or to other platforms already. Either you get the “r/popularthing” vs “r/actualpopularthing” dichotomies where if you vote red you go to one and if you vote blue you go to the other, or if you’re politically extreme enough to be a problem for ad revenue you get kicked off the platform entirely and end up on the likes of Voat. Engagement algorithms already sort people into information silos, so each platform is already actually two or more that intersect only at right angles in the fifth dimension.
If pinching off the occasional Maoist or Nazi instance means I see slightly fewer reposts of the same news articles and memes everyone else reposts, I’m willing to accept those terms.
Something I think would be healthy for the Fediverse is for instances to be a bit more interest-focused rather than attempting to be general-purpose. I think that would knit a tougher non-political fabric with which to hold the fediverse together, then we can just pinch off the problematic extremists.