I just don’t get how Lemmy is going to act as a proper replacement for Reddit.
I understand the basic concept of Lemmy and the Fediverse, and people are touting the concept of it being federated and not centrally controlled, but it is an absolute mess and nobody seems to have an idea about what to do with it.
How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.
Outside of the underlying framework, there’s no ‘guidelines’ or consistency. The servers have random names, and the main Lemmy.ml is telling people to register elsewhere.
How is this going to bring in a wider audience if people are being directed to lemmy.fmhy.ml, sopuli.xyz, or sh.itjust.works?
What is the purpose of the Fediverse when forums for niche interests already exist on the internet?
Does it make sense to have something like a ‘sports’ server that has communities for soccer, NFL, basketball, MMA? But then how do you get a consistent naming scheme that lets people know it’s part of the fediverse?
Maybe Lemmy could work as a replacement, but it seems like it needs a ‘flagship’ server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.
If this doesn’t happen, then I can’t see how this doesn’t just fizzle out.
P.S. I’ve also compared two different Lemmy servers and looked at the same post in a community, and there are different numbers of comments on each where they haven’t synced up…
I also wanted to post this to the main Lemmy community, but as I had to register via a different server, I’m not able to access that community from the server I’m using for some reason…
I don’t think a “main” instance is something we want. If one instance completely takes over the whole federation, we will have another reddit debacle in a few years.
While Decentralization is not a silver bullet against monopoly (just look at what gmail did to e-mails), centralization seems to always kill independence once platforms reach a critical mass
To be honest, I think a main server isn’t just required to build a decent user base, I think it’s inevitable no matter what.
That being said, the benefit I see from Lemmy is that if people are unhappy with the main server, it’s an easy switch to something else. And not completely migrating to an entirely different platform.
Why would a main server be required if users can fluently interact across Instances? (which, imo, is an area where lemmy has the most margin for improvements)