this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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Proposal to create a collective to own the topic-based Lemmy instances (raphael.lullis.net)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I have a number of Lemmy instances meant for discussion groups around specific topics. They are not being as used as I expected/hoped. I would like to set them up in a way that they can be owned by a consortium of different admins so that they are collectively owned. My only requirement: these instances should remain closed for registrations and used only to create communities.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Objection! Hehe... No, wait. Really, I see a problem...

If registration are closed, mods would be exclusively from outside. And, since reports are not federated, this communities would be prone to difficulties for moderation. Unless reports are correctly federated, I don't think this is a good idea. And, even if you were to open registrations only for mods, we would have only moved the inconvenience to this (who wants to have so many accounts, really?)

There's also the problem with centralization of domain names under you. I don't know you, and perhaps you're well intended.. So, it's fine for the most part, let's just assume that's okay. Now, what happens if you had an accident or decided to go live in a farm? Without domain name renewals, etc. all communities would be in trouble. There's centralization in the shape of a single point of failure.

I can't see this happening even if the domain names are cool.

And, leaving disadvantages aside. What's the point on this? Can you name any advantage?? I agree that it would be more ordered and I like that. But it's quite subjective, and hardly anything huge to really break the inertia or status quo of things as they're now...

Thanks for the intentions. Let's focus on some new ideas, they'll come...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

If registration are closed, mods would be exclusively from outside. And, since reports are not federated, this communities would be prone to difficulties for moderation. Unless reports are correctly federated, I don’t think this is a good idea.

It wouldn't be that difficult to write a little bot that can keep track of each moderator is on each community, and make the report on the instance of the moderator directly.

centralization of domain names under you.

The idea is to have the domains under the control of this collective.

Can you name any advantage??

  • Less concerns about political fights among "user" instances affecting communication among communities
  • Less tribalism regarding "what community is the canonical one". Users and admins are of course completely free to create their own communities, but for the majority at large they could just look at the topic-based instance and think "ok, that one will be a good entry point".
  • Less load on all servers. LW has a good chunk of the most active communities, so all activity from other users end up going through that. More instances with cleaner separation => better load balancing.
  • Easier content discovery: no matter if users go to a small or big instance, they can be pointed to the different servers to browse according to their interests.

hardly anything huge to really break the inertia or status quo of things as they’re now…

As it is right now, yes. But I am working for a potential future where we can migrate 10, 20, 50 times more users than we already have. Consider that I am also working on a tool to help people migrate from Reddit and in making some modifications on the Voyager app to integrate automatic migration from Reddit to Lemmy. If the gates finally open, this will be very much needed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I was the only one who could create communities on them.

Typically the only one who can create magazines/communities are local users of the instance. With registration closed, that means only you (or the new instance owner) would be able to do this.

Though one can get around this with some bot magic ( lemmit.online had a magazine that was dedicated to new sub/magazine requests - once someone made the request, the bot would create and own the magazine but add the requestor as the moderator )

Do you intend to have open magazine creation on these instances or would that still be restricted to the owners of the consortium?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

My idea would be to have a community request functionality. I am halfway there with fediverser. People can request communities to be created in a given instance, but it still missing the part where members can provide the data (name, description, icon, logo, etc).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They are not being as used as I expected/hoped.

Have you considered it's because of this?:

My only requirement: these instances should remain closed for registrations and used only to create communities.

I wouldn't run an instance that didn't allow users to sign up as it would impede growth and uptake.

It also would have the interesting effect of pushing a lot of the load onto other instances, which doesn't seem true to the Fediverse spirit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, surely, but this constraint is there by design. The point of these users is not to attract users, but to have thematic communities that can be followed by users elsewhere on the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I think this makes a lot of sense. We don't want the instance hosting, say, football communities to be defederated anywhere on account of its users behaving poorly. In general there's just no reasons to have the users in the same place as the community.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

ITT: People who don't understand IAM or how to build a healthy federated structure. There should be identity services and instances just to host content separately. This way a spammer from a service won't de-federate content from everyone else and there could be easier moderation splitting the task between users and the comms.

lol I think you are right about this. You'll never get these lemmitors to see it i guess.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

there could be easier moderation splitting the task between users and the comms.

On the other hand, for some communities moderation of the communities and the members are specific and should not be generalized.

Beehaw is an example that comes to mind, lemmy.ml as well

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Even though the community is contained the cloud resources should still be split in two between identity and operations to be in alignment with all the industry best practices and potential for scalability. Remember the unix philosophy is do one thing well.

Beehaw should operate their own Beehaw fediverse IDP (Identity provider) for the users to sign in with, that would manage their tos agreements, privacy policies and user based security. Separately they should operate their Lemmy server which hosts pictures and links organized by communities. They could just use a single IDP for their instance and have the same experience as now only better with better architecture.

Source: I am a cloud services architect.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'm familiar with IAM concepts, and indeed having a separate IdP and content instances would be a better architecture.

However the reality is that the platforms (Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed) are being developed by very small teams (Piefed is a 2 or 3 people team, and Lemmy might be around 5).

Lemmy is focusing on features delivery (https://join-lemmy.org/news/2024-09-11_-_New_NLnet_funding_for_Lemmy), which could help the platform grow more than a new IAM architecture.

There will probably be a point in time where performance will require a rework, but at the moment, it does not seem to be a priority

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

But nothing needs to be done to meet this OPs desires for community only instances that are well federated with other instances (IE at least one user is subscribed to each community on each instance). This way those admins just manage those communities and Beehaw and Lemmy.ml can run their combined servers.

The users and the subscribed to communities cause nearly all the load on the servers too, it is a way to keep costs down.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Who would manage all of those community instances?

The current setup works well with the limited number of admins and mods we have overall. I'm regularly looking for mods on communities I mod, there isn't so many of them (e.g. [email protected] )

Also, with the federation currently being broken, mods would need to have an account on each community to be able to get the reports: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4744

Regarding costs, the cost of these community instances suggested by OP is around 6500€ per year, so 540€ per month (https://lemmy.world/comment/12595221)

It currently costs 80€ per month to host lemmy.ml, which is the 4th most active instance with 2300 monthly active users

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I mean that is what is is asking, he is looking for a team of people to manage the instances in this post. That is what this post is about, he is looking for a team of people to run them as admins while maintaining his (imo correct) vision for how it should be structured.

I forgot to mention the biggest fact- the users are where all the risk are. If people are just posting pictures to your instance of communities you have minimized risk as you can just gatekeep what is posted. Once you allow users in who can then post on other federated communities you take on a lot more risk.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Looks more like you are interested in more influence power, and control for yourself.

What qualifies you to be in a leadership position that directly affects content control?

Your instances are not being used the way you wanted, so you propose structural and organizational changes that, suprise, benefit your administrative influence from your instances.

You're so focused on the details of your solution, you don't seem to be holding or acknowledging any objective perspectives.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

benefit your administrative influence from your instances

They are not going to be "my" instances.

acknowledging any objective perspectives.

Oh, I thought it was pretty clear: my objective with these instances have been to build the infrastructure necessary to get people out of Reddit. I want to gain from the growth of the network, where I expect to profit from getting customers on my hosting business.

I don't need/want to make money out of these instances, I am just commoditizing the complements.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Why?

That just locks communities off. Wh ich you could readily do before Lemmy, just host a forum. Discourse is a pretty damn cool software for it. Close registrations, close visibility, and allow users in on a per-user basis. That's also a lot how Tildes works, and I remember people here don't like that very much.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

From your response, it seems that you did not read the blog post. The instances are still going to be connected to the Fediverse, the idea is just to keep user registration closed. Users from other instances will continue to be able to follow and interact with it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Now it makes even less sense.

So instead of one admin being able to take it all down we have multiple, and we also don't allow local users. But we have multiple admins, so these instances would be uniquely able to process very large numbers of users on account of having more than one admin? There's still the problem of course of how to handle someone being an admin on a technical level, and I don't see a solution to that. Could go and notarize shared ownership of a bare metal server I suppose?

But still, what's the point? It doesn't improve anything, in fact it actively makes it worse. If you want communities to be resistant to server removal, you'd need a way to... federate the community. So that even if the original instance is gone, everyone keeps interacting with their local federated community-copy and these keep federating to each other (copy). As in, there's no original any more, but good luck keeping all of that consistent. 😅 In particular because that still doesn't solve the problem because now you got people able to either moderate each others copy (good luck with that power trip bonanza) and no central admin to remove the mods, or they cannot moderate each other, in which case good luck figured out how to block on a per-post basis depending on laws in your particular country getting the content federated over.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Dear Lord, I had no idea one could be so lost and still be so confident when making an argument.

I am not trying to be mean, it's just that you are arguing against things that are completely made up.

So instead of one admin being able to take it all down we have multiple

Shared ownership is a policy to prevent single-points-of-failure. Every large-ish instance has multiple admins. This is even a requirement in the Mastodon Covenant: your instance is only listed on the joinmastodon site if the instance has at least two people who can independently access the admin panel.

Could go and notarize shared ownership of a bare metal server I suppose?

You don't need any of that. As long as the collective has control over the domains and that backups are created and available for everyone, admins could simply move the instance to a new place with a new deployment and a DNS change.

It does not mean that every admin needs to have direct access to the server, and it does not mean that the server will go down if one of them goes rogue. Every minimally competent organization has security processes in place to avoid that.

But we have multiple admins, so these instances would be uniquely able to process very large numbers of users on account of having more than one admin?

I can't even imagine how you go to this non-sequitur. The idea of having multiple admins is only to ensure that these instances are not under control of a single individual and would not be represent a systemic risk to the overall Fediverse.

If you want communities to be resistant to server removal

Another non-sequitur.

So that even if the original instance is gone, everyone keeps interacting with their local federated community-copy

How is that working out for the communities on feddit.de, and the many other instances that disappeared in the last year? Did you notice they are gone?

In particular because that still doesn’t solve the problem because now you got people able to either moderate each others copy

Another non-sequitur. Are you sure you have a clear understanding of how federation works?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah, sorry if that wasn't clear, the entire second half was theoretical about a better way of doing this.

A type of federation where there is no "home" for a community any more. It exists equally on all servers, so any being removed would have ~0 effect.

I mentioned that basically because I feel that's a much better solution to the problem than shared ownership + locked registrations. Sorry if that wasn't clear, not my primary language.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

A type of federation where there is no "home" for a community any more.

This is not federation anymore, but an entirely different architecture. Nostr works like this, but it also has its flaws.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

What flaws?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

  • Your key is your identity. If it's lost or stolen, you can not revoke it. That alone will make it virtually impossible to be used as an official application protocol for any organization.

  • Usability is even worse than anything on ActivityPub

  • Moderation is entirely punted to the end user.

  • (not technical, but relevant) it is completely dominated by Bitcoin maxis

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That’s not true it’s not entirely punted to the end user. It starts with the relay operators just like it does instances. All of the same moderation tools that users have on instances and with clients Nostr users have too, so I’m not really sure about that comment. Also, maybe it’s because I’m a US citizen but I don’t get what so problematic about individualism and allowing users the ability to drive their own experiences. You mention the keys that’s still under user control as if instances have not gone down with users identities, content and social graphs Usability worse than anything on AP that’s very broad. Go point for point with comparisons You can filter out any content related to Bitcoin.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you have examples of relays differentiating themselves based on moderation policies, it would be appreciated. Not just "we are extreme free speech holders" vs "we pay attention to some laws here". What nostr relay is actually running a strict filter, or do any type of analysis on the message content beyond "payment only"?

as if instances have not gone down with users identities.

If instances go down, there are still lots of possible backups: someone can recover the domain name and regenerate keys (or even recover a database copy). If someone loses a private key, there is no turning back. The fact that (some) poorly managed system are not recoverable does not mean that it is as fragile as something as nostr that gives up completely on making it.

allowing users the ability to drive their own experiences.

The same can be achieved on ActivityPub, no new protocol is needed for that.

Also, this is not matter of individualism, but of UX. It's "nice" when users have the ability to make decisions on their own, but it is terrible when they have to make all decisions on their own to get started.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Nos.social is one, there is https://github.com/atrifat/nostr-filter-relay amongst other tools integrated into some relays.

You said that like that’s been reality, I’m not going based on simply what’s possible but what’s happened when instances suddenly shutdown

If the same came be achieved why hasn’t it been? It is a matter of individualism. People often see instances as communities, I don’t agree with this assessment with the exception of coop and special interest instances.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Are you sure you have a clear understanding of how federation works?

I'm not sure they do, I was confused by their comment as well.

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