NodeBB I think counts more like a standard forum while still being federated?

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Centralizing platforms aren’t necessarily seamless either. Having the same general contents propagating around, but different sites to seeing them, allows for creating the ideal experience to a given user, and each user expecting different things for an ideal experience.

Like in my case, I’m in Mbin, which would look like the least feature-complete of the fediverse softwares at first glance. But besides actually having what it takes to make a functional forum, it can bring together microblog and thread posts, and the lack of visual noise in the UI while the UI also being overall text-oriented help me focus. Plus it’s very responsive to scripts when a feature isn’t natively available. And I can connect to other sites thanks to RSS-tracking and protocol-bridging bots.

And from it, jumping to other forums such Twitter, Retropie and GOG’s becomes seamless too.

For me, that is an example of seamlessness.

If centralized but well moderated forums are what matter, paraphrasing the end of the opening post, wouldn’t it be better to leave Lemmy / the fediverse though? (fediverse’s not well moderated though? Doesn’t seem so…)

No need to open a comment with an offense btw.

But in the type of participants, federation allows that a la carte. Within what each instance’s willing to handle, you can find anything from commies to journalists to weebs to reviewers to MAGA folk to porn artists to IT technicians to pirates to whatever else. The list can go quite far from what I’ve observed in the ~4 years I’ve been around.

Similarly, I don’t have the time from my teenager years anymore. But still wanting to keep tabs with other places, if they have RSS feeds, I can at least get them to appear in my feed here, and then jump over to comment/react. Best of both worlds indeed. 🤝

Defederation would be more akin to a country cutting ties with another in international relationships, when this other country keeps causing trouble, or when making concessions for its problems makes the problems spill over or the bureaucratic cost to become too high. There’s still, in this analogy, another 200-ish countries to have relationships with.

In the oxygenating analogy, instead of just one waterwheel, oxygen-blowing tube, small waterfall, or the sort, it’s multiple ones. And if one source starts pumping CO2, motor oil, sucking up liquid instead of giving oxygen/oxygenated air to the aquarium, or whatever, this source can be cut without stopping the oxygenating.

And the nature of the protocol and the services that use it also allow people to come over from elsewhere. What I meant, far from “creating users”, is to open venues which people can find the platforms of the network, and for the people already in the network to have access to places otherwise barren, and that by interacting with, they can bump into relevance.

On linking externally, from my experience, it’s not uncommon for example in places like Pixiv for creators to link their socials, fediverse ones like Mastodon and Misskey included. You can also connect to other protocols such as Bluesky through bridges. Commercial projects such as Threads and Wordpress also have optional ActivityPub integration which would allow more people to join in or at least be aware of. And the services using the protocol are also niche-based but rarely alienating their userbases regarding other places in the network.

And on bigger forums having a larger audience, they usually do so by being so big they cannibalize competition (even if potentially not intentionally) while keeping their userbases in a walled garden. But when alternatives die out, and what’s left enshittify, people have nowhere to run. But when Reddit started going from bad to worse, a lot of people found here as an alternative. Similarly, Twitter’s at least kinda shitty since always, and very few altenatives stuck around, Mastodon being one of them.

And from what I can notice, the centralizing platforms, even the bigger ones, are either shrinking (e.g. Reddit), already shrunk (e.g. Facebook), or show indications that they may be shrinking (e.g. Discord allowing search engine indexing, and Meta allowing to sign up on Threads with their other services). And places that stay strong despite being centralizing usually offer more than just the forum experience or adjacents.

But once more, unless I’ve missed it, defederation is very sporadic. And when used, it is usually done so to keep the instance healthy within their culture.

In case the OP isn’t a troll…

Do you know why aquariums need to keep oxygenated? That’s because the type of life that is put there usually needs the oxygen dilluted in the water to be able to breath. If oxygen is lacking, what’s effectively swamp water starts forming, water where few life forms can thrive.

Multiple forums I’ve seen become a metaphorical swamp water because there was barely any renewal in userbase, all the while the original userbase grew tired.

Moderation’s also a hit or a miss, and when a forum’s slowing to a halt, even a good moderation can make things worse.

OP’s discourse also makes it seem like defederation is being used rampantly and without care across the fediverse. But from my experience at least, usually it’s a last measure act, even when communities are ideological opposites.

People are invited to fill whichever niche they find lacking.

“Then they came for me”

While changing people’s views when they’re antagonistic to the ideas shown is an uphill battle, it may help still to those quietly reading the comments.

Also tried checking the post but every Redlib instance I tried is broken, like Reddit itself broke something. RIP.

Mbin. Totally not biased. 🫣

On UI: dunno if it’s a me thing, but it would seem to me as that every site’s bad until you get used to it. Piefed for example I find kinda bloated but once I learned where to look, it became much easier to use.

On avoiding content: yeah, requires some patience people usually don’t have to block everyone and every place that lowers the quality of the user’s feed.

On slower feeds: maybe an autism thing, or maybe because in Mbin, I consume both threads and microblogs, but I feel the opposite, too much to see, enough that I am forced to curate.

On seeing posts again: a bit of a tangent, but both Lemmy and Piefed have post-hiding features. The option is “hidden” in the 3 dots menu of each post, which would imply people are forgetting these 3 dots mean “more options”? Perhaps in this line, having a “more” button like on Mbin would be better?

On porn: FediNSFW. 🕵‍♂

On being complicated: migrating and integrating usually is, but if you do, you need to bear with it.

Would make those comments there if I still had access to my account. Oh well.

Too long and seemingly structurally disconnect, so mind started to slip, but from the points I was able to catch, sounds like those anonymous boards of old I hear about. Iirc there has been an implementation of that in the fediverse already, though it’s been some months so can’t remember the name.

Unsure tbf, though something comes to mind.

Maybe “we don’t want to accept conservatives”? I know of a guy, tech journalist with conservative views who tried Mastodon before but got banned twice, and then migrated to a Nostr-first instance with ActivityPub support, where he hasn’t been banned even after months. If his case is an example, maybe people on the other protocol are more accepting of different views?

Also integrating microblog features to threads, like following the poster and boosting posts and comments, is great imo. And I can post microblogs to communities without @ the community, which makes the posts cleaner. And can post to Bluesky too through a bridging service for microblogging.

Also forgot to mention another instance (or rather software), Misskey. That one I like for following people through RSS since it allows the technology for external accounts. But then I set a script for redirecting the Misskey posts to Mbin or Mastodon’s (hardcoded) search links. Mastodon’s also good for RSS, specifically hashtags’ in its case, but needs an ever-growing list of matched links in the redirect script.

Mbin I prefer because it integrates decently enough thread posts and microblogs while, unlike alternatived, not being visually bloated or as slow to interact.

And when it lacks some feature, it’s one of the better and more responsive ones to either emulate or redirect to an instance that supports the given feature, either by Ublock Origin filters, Violentmonkey scripts, etc.

I stick to Mbin when possible. Mastodon or crust.piefed.social for generating RSS bots. Mastodon also if I want to post heavier files in size. NeoDB if I want to post reviews. Lemmy if I want to post stuff for nicher instances and I happen to have an alt on, or if I want to crosspost posts no longer available externally but available locally.