1y ago

Will Lemmy soon drive Innovation in the Fediverse?

Currently lemmy is like the speedboat next to the heavy steam boat of Mastodon etc. While lemmy is still dynamic and flexible and can introduce new features easily without scaring off its established user base, mastodon can not do such experiments so easily. Now, if lemmy gains more momentum in the fediverse and establishes features, which other services don't have, it could really push innovation in the Fediverse further. What do you think?

31 comments

Lemmy does not have basic features, to the point that one of the big instances is considering moving off lemmy.
I think we have a lot more following to do before we can lead with new features.
- Which instance, and which features do they feel are missing?
  
  You've had answers from others but basically moderation tools are non-existent. When you report something, there's no way to pick to send to admins or community moderators, so if there's an issue with a community the moderators can just resolve reports before the admins see them.
  There is no site-wide moderator role, so if you want someone able to take action when CSAM (etc) is posted on a remote community you have to make them admin and also give them access to approve accounts or change the name of the website, etc.
  The only actions available are to temporarily or permanently ban a user. You can't restrict new users from posting 100 posts in the first 10 mins or anything like that.
  There is not even a way to report a user. If someone makes an account on one instance and starts spamming on a different one, there is no way to report it to the user's instance admins. The user's instance admins are the only ones that can ban a spammer in a way that federates to other instances, so if you can't report it to them then each of the 1000+ instances needs to each ban them. (in reality, admins will normally message each other or post in a spam matrix channel, but the simple option to report a user should exist)
  
  Beehaw. And effective moderation tools.
  
  Not that instance, but Lemmy is missing a lot of moderation and federation tools. Right now you only have sledgehammers to deal with tiny nails, in regards to tooling.
- Can do both. e.g lemmy had full text search for a long while before masto
  
  That is such a basic feature that it should not even have to be mentioned.
  
  As did Pleroma and several other fedi servers — that’s not really innovation, it’s something simple that Mastodon devs deliberately avoided implementing.

Lemmy is under constant attack by unknown malicious entities. However, all that is doing is accelerating Lemmy's evolution. What does not kill you, makes you stronger.
- Who do you think these malicious entities are? My guess is Elon and Spez.
  
  Scriptkiddies
  
  My guess would be the suck and spez

As others have stated there’s some basic things that need to be addressed first and who knows if they will. I believe Kbin is in a potential unique position to get things right and drive innovation. There’s the one dev but others have offered to help and once things are more stable and mature it will get better. I actually disagree somewhat with Mastodon, if you look at its public roadmap it’s planning on taking measures that will have a significant impact, some of them are features longtime users have fought against. There’s plenty of growth to be had and innovation. I’m so excited on the future of the Fedi
- Interesting. Where can I view this roadmap?
  
  On joinmastodon.com
  
  Here you go https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap

It will if/when the userbase grows significantly. Look at the explosion of mobile apps the past few months. However, it ultimately depends on the lemmy devs, and how much time/effort they are willing to spend to drive innovation. The unfortunate reality is that commercialization and competition also drive innovation, and the fediverse is largely driven by passion and effort by people who have the capacity to do it without the expectation of financial gain.

Not necessarily lemmy, but the fediverse will drive innovation in social media.

It's weird that everyone keeps looking at this thru the eyes of capitalism. We don't need neck-break-speed feature updates, we don't need to appease our shareholders. If one platform grows on the Fediverse the others don't get "left in the dust".
We're not in competition, we are a community.

I see the fediverse as the next big evolution of social media (a return back to social networking again), and considering I wasn't not really that big into social media before, and I like talking to people more than talking at people, so I want to gamble on being an early adopter here and see if it pays off.

31 comments