2y ago

Who owns the Fediverse? I mean who owns and runs the hardware that runs this system?

I've been talking to many people about the controversy with Reddit, why I left it and why I went onto Lemmy, Kbin and Mastadon instead. Some of my friends have commented that the control is still a problem as other platforms and it is all dependent on who owns the software, who owns the hardware, who are the admins, who are the moderators and which community or group has the most influence.

Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?

So .. for the ELI5 version of the question ... Who owns the fediverse?

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131 comments

Well the main developers of lemmy and admins of lemmy.ml are communists, if I recall correctly.
But there are already far-right instances.
The answer basically boils down to "Nobody, however it is important to know who runs the largest instances, as they will wield a fair amount of influence"
- It doesn't matter who the devs are because the code is open source. The beauty of the fediverse is that nobody controls it.
  
  Open source just means that they're not doing stuff behind your back that you're not unaware of like collecting your data. I don't think that means that the mods of a specific instance can't arbitrarily ban users or delete comments and fuck with communities within their instance.
  
  Open Source means I can take the code and deploy my own instance without permission from anyone.
  
  And you could fork the code, if the original project goes in a direction that isn't popular. Q.v. LibreOffice and OpenOffice, NextCloud and OwnCloud.
  The power of open source/copyleft is that it can't be owned as such.
  There are a couple of caveats, if there aren't enough developers on the forked project, it will wither. Also, there tends to be lots of fragmentation, as different visions take things in different directions (not a singular project, but what's your favourite Linux distribution?).
  Having said all that, each instance is running on someone's hardware, and whoever is paying the bills has a lot of sway for that instance. As you say, since it's open source, there is nothing really stopping you as an individual being that person. A small instance with a user count of 1 is going to be fairly cheap to run. Personally it's another thing to keep up to date. Maybe with a Docky loader…
  
  A fork of Lemmy won't "wither" like some other things, because all of this stuff uses the ActivityPub protocol and is compatible anyways. It could be abandoned and still probably work for a long time.
  It's why KBin and Lemmy can work together, even though they are completely different.
  
  That would be exactly what I mean by "wither". Lack of developers means a lack of updates.
  OpenOffice updates are orders of magnitude less impactful than LibreOffice. Pretty much all the developers went with LibreOffice. OpenOffice still works, it's still available, but it is much less vibrant. Much less, alive? Like it's "withered".
  You could absolutely fork Lemmy, and of Lemmy improves it's sorting, adds other features, tweaks, improvements, etc. your fork wouldn't include those. If there was enough developer interest, your fork could parallel those changes, or it could even go in a different direction. Without developers though, it would just be stagnant.
  
  Lemmy has two developers. Many AP projects run with just one developer. If someone's project lacks one developer, that's their choice to end the project. It's not "withering due to a lack of developers." It's being closed entirely.
  
  you can also read it duh
  
  If you can figure it out. Lemmy at this point is probably still straightforward, but for example go try to compile Android. Just compile it. Last time I tried was 2018, but I spent two full days trying before I gave up. And Android is open source.
  There are ways to obscure and gate the codebase even if it is open source.
  
  That's true, I'm just not sure how it's applicable to the current conversation? I don't think anyone is making the argument that open source projects are easy?
  
  You really need to seperate the development of Lemmy from administrating a Lemmy instance. The political views of the devs don't matter at all. You don't support these by using Lemmy.
- Well the main developers of lemmy and admins of lemmy.ml are communists,
  doubt, but even if yes, their are making a free and open alternative to a money grabbing closed source capitalist owned platform, make sense their political spectrum is leftist, but i also agree they need moderators other them themselves
  
  They definitely are. https://lemmy.ml/post/55143
  "While @dessalines and I are communists"
  @nutomic@lemmy.ml
  I believe the .ml domain was chosen specifically to signify Marxism-Leninism.
  Though I said this as a statement of fact, to answer the question. As a Marxist-Leninist myself I did not mean to imply anything by it.
  
  At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter in my opinion. People are open to their viewpoints and the good thing about this platform is that the creators viewpoints don't bring down the individual lemmy instances.
  My fear though with these Lemmy instances is that some of them will become dominant, such as maybe this Lemmy.ca instance for Canadian content. It can end up with the same kind of problems reddit faced where communities become echo chambers of one person's viewpoint and it is hard to move to alternative spots.
  Especially when it comes to topics of "hate" and "discrimination", many people lump a lot of stuff under the "hate speech" category whereas many people would view it as normal non-discriminatory speech. It would be nice to see a place that can support viewpoints that lean far-left, left, center, right, and far right but based on the current rules/dialogue here I fear this community will likely only be more supportive of left sided conversation and will deam differing opinions as "hateful" like we see on Reddit.
  
  It would be nice to see a place that can support viewpoints that lean far-left, left, center, right, and far right but based on the current rules/dialogue here I fear this community will likely only be more supportive of left sided conversation and will deam differing opinions as “hateful” like we see on Reddit.
  Yes, if you hold and communicate far-right views you're going to have a rough time in a community that leans left-of-center. You'll be called hateful, a bigot, an asshole, and you're likely to be censored before too long.
  Likewise, if you have and express views that aren't on the right, or exist as a person who's not "moral" within the views of the far right (are 2SLGBTQIA+, a person of colour, etc), you're likely to find that the community you've joined is a threat to your safety.
  I'm all for echo-chambers, personally, with some degree of variation of course. But it's perfectly acceptable to look at the political ideology of someone and say that their opinions and views are unacceptable and dangerous, and that they will find themselves unwelcome in a community who's directly negatively impacted by such views.
  
  The problem I see with echo chambers is that people start to believe their views are normal, but often times they are the extreme minority. It can allow unproductive and toxic ideas in society to spread like a virus that undermines things.
  For example, there are groups of people out there who believe the government is trying to give you microchips in vaccines and that they cause autism. The reason people often end up believing these kinds of things is because they get pushed out of regular communities when they start to get attacked and censored for "wrong-think". Instead of being able to engage in some rational conversations with more rational people they get pushed out if they question things. This often results in them finding a fringe echo chamber of people who are already far deep into this weird viewpoint. Their viewpoints now start to seem to make more sense because everyone around them also feels the same way. They no longer feel like they could be wrong in how they think. Now not only do they get more hardened in their beliefs, but now they also HATE that group that kicked them out.
  So in my opinion these echo chambers often lead to more division and more hatred in society. I think when people are forced to absorb more opinions and a differing set of viewpoints they become a smarter, more intelligent thinker.
  I'm not sure if you've seen this shift, but for most of my life I've held more liberal values. Nowadays I find I need to call myself a more "traditional liberal" as a lot of current liberal ideologies have shifted to become more far-left. It seems like the division between being liberal and conservative has immensely widened and previously liberal people can often get called conservative despite their views not having changed over the years. Often the vocal minority in a community is able to force people to adhere to their more radical viewpoints or they kick them out of the community.
  Overall I just think echo chambers often can just be called a "cult". Because that's usually how they operate. Anybody who refuses to accept one narrow viewpoint of the world is cut out of the cult.
  
  For example, there are groups of people out there who believe the government is trying to give you microchips in vaccines and that they cause autism.
  They don't. They follow a political ideology that tells them to ignore facts. Studies have shown they're truthful and able to discern facts if incentivised (paid) for doing so correctly.
  Instead of being able to engage in some rational conversations with more rational people they get pushed out if they question things.
  I can't speak for your echo chambers, but in my own, those who are simply questioning things are reasoned against, and only when one acts in bad faith does one receive bad acting in return. I have no duty to educate those who have no desire to be educated.
  Now not only do they get more hardened in their beliefs, but now they also HATE that group that kicked them out.
  If they don't support human rights just because some people were mean to them, then they never supported them in the first place. Bad people can be bad in their own spaces.
  I think when people are forced to absorb more opinions and a differing set of viewpoints they become a smarter, more intelligent thinker.
  I agree with this broadly, but every community has their own overton windows and their own safe space. I'm not looking to combat right wing fascism every day when I'm just vibing in my space.
  Nowadays I find I need to call myself a more “traditional liberal” as a lot of current liberal ideologies have shifted to become more far-left.
  Liberalism is a conservative ideology that upholds capitalism. If you're on the left, i.e. against the structural hierarchies, which is what the term was used to describe back when it was coined before the French revolution, you're not liberal.
  Overall I just think echo chambers often can just be called a “cult”
  You can make this argument for literally any social grouping. A family can just be called a "cult", and all too often actually are. A religious order, a fraternity, a group of drinking buddies, a workplace. "Cults" aren't measured by the social structure, they're measured by their impact and the level of control they take over the members within.

131 comments