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Comment by safety1st | Hacker News Reader

What do we need a "winning" instance for? In a federated world what does that even mean? What is this (online? HN?) cultural obsession with winner-take-all? The whole point of federation is that you don't need winner-take-all which is in fact unhealthy.

If you have a community on Reddit which you want to migrate you just need to find a stable instance with admin policies you consider reasonable. If it's a big community with really active moderators you might even want to start your own instance. If Lemmy needs anything it's probably a managed hosting provider like masto.host that could make it easy for large communities to run their own servers.

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Example: Right now you have a bunch of /r/linux lemmy subreddits with their own posts and threads that are independent of each other. You can make a thread on /r/linux on the lemmy.example.com instance and will not appear at /r/linux on lemmy.example.net

This kind of fragmentation is pretty bad in terms of UX.

If I want to read information about linux I need to follow HN, lobste.rs, LWN, and maybe other sites. All of them independent. All of them with different conversations. All of them with different accounts, meaning that many identities.

The fediverse is not like that: with a single account you can subscribe to all discussions, participate anywhere. Fragmentation is only when you don't participate: once in, all discussions appear on your instance, everything is reachable.

> You can make a thread on /r/linux on the lemmy.example.com instance and will not appear at /r/linux on lemmy.example.net

That's not how this works. You control what appears, not the instance.

Can you, for example, subscribe to /r/linux on “all” Lemmy servers?

Likewise, can you have a reasonable expectation that others would do the same — so it doesn’t matter which server you post your questions on?

> Can you, for example, subscribe to /r/linux on “all” Lemmy servers?

Yes, by design. You do have to search for all that exist, but you can follow them all from your own instance, provided your instance and the remote instance allow federation.

> Likewise, can you have a reasonable expectation that others would do the same — so it doesn’t matter which server you post your questions on?

I don't know yet the usages on the Threadiverse, but it is expected that people at least know the multiple communities that exist. The discussion about merging happens constantly, with pros and cons, and no easy decision for anyone

Lemmy needs a better experience for first time users. For instance, one should be forwarded to the front page of a random instance and see r/all type content (and given the ability to sign up).

Why not create it? Everything is open. Lemmy is not a monolithic entity like Reddit. It would be nice if the developers created something like this but it doesn't have to be them.

I thought about creating something like r/all, but you can get something similar on any instance if you filter by posts + All: https://lemmy.sdf.org/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&page=1&... . This will be restricted to whoever that instance federates with of course.

As I posted elsewhere https://wefwef.app does this sort of.

Just a note, this app has been renamed Voyager https://vger.app/

To me, the crux of it is that identities are not portable. AFAIK, I can't take my identity and posts and move them a different instance if the one I chose happens to become evil or bankrupt.

Sure, I could start my own instance, but that's a high bar.

Identities are also much lower stake. You don't have a giant pile of karma to drag around. You'll lose out on your subs and I guess your personal connection to your comments but that's it.

> HN?) cultural obsession with winner-take-all? The whole point of federation is that you don't need winner-take-all which is in fact unhealthy.

Too many choices when you want to lazily scroll a reddit equivalent defeats the purpose.

If I need an account on four Lemmy services to don't missing out all the available content of a "sub", then it can't substitute Reddit.

You need only one account, anywhere, and then you can subscribe to any discussion on any instance.

If you want to understand what the fediverse is about, here's a nice link: https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_the_Fediverse%3F

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