I think it would be cool if something like “meta-communities” existed. Fully adjustable, fully optional. Less duplicates.
You’d sub to one meta c/memes or c/news and see a combined feed of all known instance’s versions. Post to whichever you want, show up in the meta (if you want).
If you still want to block from the meta sub or individually sub to c/memes on ABC instance, you could do that. Moderation would be subject to the instance the user posted on, subject to broader instance admin’s defederations and stuff.
Idk just a quick idea. Decentralization is good, but a little bit of… aggregation like this could go a long way without actually centralizing power. Could help communities (big and small niche) to grow.
So, think through how this looks in the long run. Hell, just think about what this prioritizes.
You have five communities covering the same topic. There’s, what? 500? 1000? 2000 people active in them? Enough that there is a steady stream of posts and comments in all of them. They’re all housed on separate websites, and those websites maybe have different goals and different rules. So, people start lumping them together in aggregate feeds.
What does that look like? In practice, how do users treat this?
They treat it as if they’re all one community. As if they’re all in one place. All managed by one cohesive set of rules (or, realistically, most people treat all spaces as if none of them have rules, and then put up a stink when they’re met with the consequences of this).
Then, they start expecting to not see duplicates. So, which community’s posts do they see when there are multiples? Oh, that’s easy: all of them! They will start expecting comments to be merged. So, now you have people treating all of the communities not only as if they’re interchangeable, but as if they’re all one.
This is a backdoor to not just homogenization, but to quiet hostile takeovers of smaller communities by larger ones. All because users are too damn entitled to just pick one that most closely meets their needs and contribute to it.
We don’t need meta-communities. We need people to get over their fucking FOMO.
This why lemmy and federation instances are so missing and empty. We don’t even have the option to make custom subscription lists or I’d have manually done that. It’s so badly needed
This is a fantastic idea. I really love the decentralization of Lemmy, but I do feel the side effects of having many copies of the same subject on different instances.
And to your point, I’d love for niche communities to have a larger audience. I need somewhere to post and read about project zomboid.
I think it would be cool if something like “meta-communities” existed. Fully adjustable, fully optional. Less duplicates.
You’d sub to one meta c/memes or c/news and see a combined feed of all known instance’s versions. Post to whichever you want, show up in the meta (if you want).
If you still want to block from the meta sub or individually sub to c/memes on ABC instance, you could do that. Moderation would be subject to the instance the user posted on, subject to broader instance admin’s defederations and stuff.
Idk just a quick idea. Decentralization is good, but a little bit of… aggregation like this could go a long way without actually centralizing power. Could help communities (big and small niche) to grow.
Edit: shit idea, see Kichae’s reply
So, think through how this looks in the long run. Hell, just think about what this prioritizes.
You have five communities covering the same topic. There’s, what? 500? 1000? 2000 people active in them? Enough that there is a steady stream of posts and comments in all of them. They’re all housed on separate websites, and those websites maybe have different goals and different rules. So, people start lumping them together in aggregate feeds.
What does that look like? In practice, how do users treat this?
They treat it as if they’re all one community. As if they’re all in one place. All managed by one cohesive set of rules (or, realistically, most people treat all spaces as if none of them have rules, and then put up a stink when they’re met with the consequences of this).
Then, they start expecting to not see duplicates. So, which community’s posts do they see when there are multiples? Oh, that’s easy: all of them! They will start expecting comments to be merged. So, now you have people treating all of the communities not only as if they’re interchangeable, but as if they’re all one.
This is a backdoor to not just homogenization, but to quiet hostile takeovers of smaller communities by larger ones. All because users are too damn entitled to just pick one that most closely meets their needs and contribute to it.
We don’t need meta-communities. We need people to get over their fucking FOMO.
Those are actually all really good points. Nevermind about my idea then…
I’ve been saying this over a year ago:
https://lemmy.world/comment/708523
This why lemmy and federation instances are so missing and empty. We don’t even have the option to make custom subscription lists or I’d have manually done that. It’s so badly needed
Isn’t RSS what you’re describing?
deleted by creator
This is a fantastic idea. I really love the decentralization of Lemmy, but I do feel the side effects of having many copies of the same subject on different instances.
And to your point, I’d love for niche communities to have a larger audience. I need somewhere to post and read about project zomboid.
Sounds like a whole app idea.