I’m honestly on the side of “This is fediverse 1.0” right now. Its obvious to me that there are some fundamental issues with the design of both activity hub and lemmy that aren’t clearly fixable in the current version of things. I also think that its ‘somewhat’ fine. I think of this as an opportunity to find those pinch points and hot spots, patch and glue in fixes, and then when its time for activity hub “2.0” or whatever, we can resolve them at a design level. Fixing the issues around discovery, toxic engagement, de-federation; they are tough issues to solve for and its clear that to some extent, the design of the system is to blame. However, its not worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. We should stick with the current system for as long as it take before it becomes very uncomfortable, mainly to continue to find issues and blemmishes. This will heavily inform “the next big thing” that comes from the fediverse.
Basically, do nothing other than have discussions like these. Collect the notes, have informed conversations, and maybe experiment a bit on fixes. But don’t worry about getting it all perfect and right. Just try. We can incorporate the good ideas into a new version down the line.
On Lemmy we can see things by a number of different sorting algorithms. It’s actually a major improvement over Reddit in that regard. I like sorting by top, hourly. I would describe it has having higher kurtosis with lower total volume. The stuff at the top is fresh so if you check every hour or so you get the best of that hour. however if you find yourself scrolling, you’ll get into novel territory very fast. It’s far better than any alg reddit offered.
Yeah its been a journey. My cakeday for the an account I made on ml would be about now, and I think its around a month till this account is officially a year old.
Its an odd time to be on a platform like lemmy.
We’re seeing an almost complete adulteration of what we might call the internet 2.0 era sites into walled gardens of exclusion. Effectively, the stealing, en-masse of almost two decades of user generated content. The walls and gates of the gardens we planted get higher everyday; the enshittification of all things.
And yet here we are. On a self-hosted, federated, unbought, unbroken, and unbent platform. Obviously its not all roses, but for what its worth, both the users and developers have created something incredibly special: A ray of hope in a time where it seems like the world has only been changing for the worse. And while the instances have their differencs, we should be looking to embrace those differences as much as possible, because this is what truly gives the fediverse strength. If its Kbin or Lemmy or Mastadon; or .ml or .world or .blahaj.zone.
The point of the fediverse isn’t consolidation or control, but distribution and access. There is so much more possible simply because enough of us were willing to make the journey over here. We’re providing the future with an alternative that isn’t tracking them, trying to manipulate them with an algorithm, or to turn them into commodities. There is power in that.
So happy cakeday. Happy cake season to those who were messing around with a browser plug-in about this time last year, trying to delete their reddit history. Happy cakeday to the developers, to those who post, and to the commenters. And most of all, happy cake day to you dear lemming reading this. You make this place happen.