this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
1992 points (99.2% liked)
Fediverse
28278 readers
1344 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think the most enjoyable feature is that there is no algorithm in Fediverse. And decentralization means that if you host your own server for Pixelfed (instagram equivalent) for example, your data will go offline at the moment you disconnect your server from the internet.
Lemmy is great alternative for Reddit especially if you're into tech.
What do you mean by "no algorithm"? There must be something controlling the order of "hot" vs "new"? Or do you mean the kind of algorithm that shows you suggested communities?
And, as far as I can see, neutral. Doesn’t put you in a bubble like other social networks do, because it’s not trying to milk you for engagement.
You can also follow hashtags, block hashtags, and block words/phrases.
The Local Timeline shows posts from everyone on your instance. The Federated Timeline is a fire hose. It shows all posts in chronological order (as received by your instance).
I think there's a lot of value to the algorithm, but it needs to be based on real engagement rather than arbitrary bullshit that a soulless corporation wants to promote.
I subscribe to a lot of people, but not all of their content is worth seeing. Having it curated down to just the stuff that's actually popular can be nice. It's definitely tricky to make that work in a fair and useful way though.
Some people are building systems on top of Mastodon, for example https://fedistats.cc/trends In the end something like "plug in your own algorithm" would be great.
The nice thing is, if an instance wanted to put in the effort they could totally make an algorithm. We will have to grow a lot before it's worth the bother to make a good one, but it's totally possible.
And thanks to activityPub there is interoperability between services. I only have a Mastodon account, but I can follow people on pixelfed without problem. It moves the focus back onto communicating rather than being on the platform