this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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This is a really good idea. Maybe someone can make a site called “Too powerful” that lists the bloated instances or something.
However: I’m not super deep into lemmy architecture, but what would stop the instance ops from creating a “sister instance” the the same rules and owners?
I think that should be considered willful subversion of the fediverse "tenates" which wouldn't be condoned. Sure, people could always do it in secret, but if they were ever exposed it would be grounds for defederation.
Designing said tenates would take lots of open discussion from the community, but I do think it is important if we're going to maintain a working fediverse. Corporations like Google and msft have embraced/extended/extinguished open platforms in the past, and it looks like meta is trying the same thing again. If we say "the platform is open, everything is allowed, anyone is welcome, the fediverse will sort itself out" then it will inevitably be dismantled by organized attacks on the platform.
The fediverse is both the technical architecture, and the decentralized culture of the people using it.
Hopefully we’ve collectively seen EEE enough to guard against it this time
I hope so too, but...I wouldn't count on it. It's really interesting thinking about the nature of the internet/fediverse as it relates to human civilization. It's apparent why holy texts and totalitarian monarchies were beneficial for past societies to whip people into line and make things work. The fediverse doesn't have a central govt, it feels more libertarian right now. It's hearding cats. I think we need a fediverse version of "the federalist papers" to define how instances should cooperate to sustain itself.
The reality is, the internet was already federated. From the birth of the WWW everyone was able to make their own website and connect to a decentralized network. And look at what happened: corporations took over, everything became centralized, and users became the products.
If we sit idly by and think the fediverse will always sustain itself, I'm convinced the day will come when it won't.