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Is Lemmy.world centralization worth fighting against? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Probably a very polarizing question.

On the one hand, having most of the users and communities on LW causes technical issues (see this post), and also gives the LW staff too much power over Lemmy as a whole.

On the other hand, with 18k MAU on LW out of 47k (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/), every community listed there has a much higher chance of visibility compared to an alternative hosted on another instance

History of LW controversial decisions

when they promoted Discord as an official communication channel (https://lemmy.world/post/3478399 - since then they created a Matrix chat)
when they blocked the piracy communities (https://lemmy.world/post/13320356 )
when they announced they might move from Lemmy to Sublinks (some comments from LW admins were quite controversial: https://lemmy.world/post/13899357 )
when they forced the media bias fact checker bot and discarded user feedback (https://lemmy.world/post/18775630 - to be fair, they since then removed it from [email protected] , it's still in [email protected] )
when they realized centralization of communities on LW was impacting the ability of other instances to stay up to date (https://lemmy.world/post/13967373 )
when they updated their rules following a power trip overtake of a community (https://feddit.org/post/2308651 )

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

lemmy.world has middling to bad moderation.

lemmy.world also has at least a few divisive mods who are close friends of the lemmy.world admins and are known to retain their positions for that reason.

lemmy.world is by far the largest instance.

taken alone, none of these are a problem. together i find that concerning and exactly the kind of reason the fediverse was built to avoid.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Are there bad moderators on LW? Do you have examples? I feel like they're maybe a little stretched thin on trying to keep up with things, and so sometimes make snap decisions, but lemmy.ml is the only place I've actually seen moderation that I would describe as deliberately bad.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

they are certainly stretched thin, which i would categorize more as an attackable problem than an excuse for poor performance.

i do have a few examples off the top of my head tho

!unpopularopinion was left uterly unmoderated for months. rage bait and even some downright nazi shit was almost constant on there. any community in that situation should have been immediately shut down by admins but was not.
!world mods have a nasty habit of butting in with mod flared comments on user reports without taking action. they defend this as “adding context” when the “context” involved is highly subjective, partisan, and verging on defense of harrassment, and not at all fitting the diversity of content that constitutes a “world news” community.
this might be more of a general lemmy problem but there doesn’t seem to be auto-flagging going on for common sense harrasment language? like i see slurs against races, ethnicities, and the mentally disabled almost daily and they don’t get removed for hours until a user reports it sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

this might be more of a general lemmy problem but there doesn’t seem to be auto-flagging going on for common sense harrasment language

Indeed, a general Lemmy problem.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

good to know

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I keep hearing about bad moderation, so I guess it's indeed an issue.

It is really a compromise, there is no ideal situation. Should we initiate something and ask people to leave LW due to bad moderation? That would probably be seen as unnecessary drama.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

i don’t think compounding problems imply a single compound solution.

instead, tackle each problem directly.

encourage account migration to combat overcentralization
encourage installment of more mods to combat ineffectual moderation
call for transparency in moderator selection to combat cronyism

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I see

encourage account migration to combat overcentralization

My gut feeling is that most of the people on LW are comfortable there, and wouldn't see the point in decentralization. That happened in the past with the removal of privacy communities, or the fact that LW is still federated with Threads, still they have 18k MAU

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

and that’s absolutely fair. i think another group though are uncomfortable and are simply unaware that they can move.

for example, i saw a conversation where some folks were expressing uncomfortability that .world is federated with .ml. someone else brought up switching to an instance that was defederated with .ml (happened to be mine, shoutout .cafe) and they were all like “yo! dope let me do that”

so it’s almost a matter of education/spreading awareness for some at least

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Definitely. I feel like every other week I stumble upon someone who doesn't know they can switch instances in literally 3 clicks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I guess I'm your person this week. I thought you had to create a new account to switch instances. The only time I've moved so far was from kbin.social to lemm.ee so I definitely had to but it's nice to know that if I want to move again I can keep the same account.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

To be completely correct you will have to create a new account, but you can export and import your subscriptions and block lists from the new account to the new one in a few clicks