I have seen many comments saying that lemmy.world sucks, and sh.itjust.works is good. I have seen that lemmy.world apparently has a very poor reputation among other instances. Why? After a quick look, sh.itjust.works doesn’t look much different to me. Can anyone explain?
Edit: many good replies. the conclusion I’m drawing is that for my purposes it doesn’t really matter. I appreciate everyone who responded
The two main reasons people attack LW is:
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people who criticise it because it is by far the largest instance, and thereby means lemmy isn’t as decentralised as it could be, I think this is a fair point, because it has caused federation issues with for example aussie.zone in the past.
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Tankies who get mad the average lemmy.world user does not share their admiration for China, Russia, North Korea, Stalin, and Mao. Thereby accusing the whole instance of being “libs” and “bigots”.
I’ll add 2 more that resonate with me:
- Discussions of distributing copyright material is banned. (Not actually sharing, obviously that is illegal, but they’ve banned the mere discussion of it.)
- They have not defederated from Meta’s Threads
Fwiw, LW seems ready to defederate from Threads at a moment’s notice (post), but atm it doesn’t matter since Threads isn’t federating with Lemmy anyway.
Though it’s still an excellent point to wonder why they haven’t done it preemptively, like pretty much every other instance I’ve heard of (even lemm.ee’s [blocked instance list[(https://lemm.ee/instances) that is shockingly short has that one). Perhaps bc the decision to defederate from any instance, and especially that one, has generated such negative feedback (as the post linked above mentions), they are hesitant to do anything at all, especially again while it does not matter right now.
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Here’s the description by both:
sh.itjust.works:
A bilingual (EN/FR) general-purpose instance located in eastern Canada! Powered by 99% renewable energy! Everyone is welcome eh.
Lemmy.World:
A generic Lemmy server for everyone to use. (…) Lemmy.World is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use
The comments about instances being “good” or “bad” is just plain ol’ tribalism.
Users get attacked for the instances they registered to, even if they were unaware of instance politics when they actually registered. That sucks!
Lemmy world has more users and therefore more likely to have more jerks when the jerk to not jerk ratio within an instance is the same.
There are/were a few instances where staying with their registration is worthy of assuming the worst about them.
Stop calling jerks jerks, you’re being a jerk! /s
The extra jerks on Lemmy world create more content so the mean jerk time is greater
If they were spread between other instances they would have the same total jerk time.
sh.itjust.works has a much funnier name.
can’t argue with that!
I agree with you. IMO, it’s not that different.
The big difference is between the tankie LARPer instances (lemmygrad, hexbear, parts of lemmy.ml) and the rest of the major instances.
.world is the instance where most new users default to so and it has the highest user base and that includes a lot of trolls or just bad faith actors. Also, a lot of .world is based from reddit users who left and they brought that kind of mindset along. Some people don’t like that either.
What does it matter which users are on which server, since we all get the same content anyways, aside from defederation?
we all get the same content anyways, aside from defederation?
We don’t, though. We get whatever content people on our chosen instance have subscribed to. Even without blanket server bans, there are Lemmy-based websites that your host has never heard of, hosting content you do not have access to. Someone from your server has to introduce those sites, and subscribe to the communities on those sites, for your server to have their content.
The fediverse is subscription based. Shit doesn’t get sent around unless it’s specifically asked for.
some instances pre-subscribe to new servers/communities across the verse using bots to ‘pre-load’ the /all/new for new users to be able to see locally to subscribe to
They still need to know about the servers, though. There’s no centralized index of servers. If you set up a lemmy-based website today, and you do nothing to make contact with the rest of the network, the network’s not going to find out about you.
There’s no home to phone to.
There’s no canonical whole that we all have access to.
Check out https://lemmyverse.net
thats kind of on the admins though.
definitely a pitfall for users joining a shitty instance
Being subscription based is what makes it feasible for smaller instances to exist on the fediverse. If every instance had to be a full mirror of the network only a few small groups could afford to host instances.
It also points to what the best use of a federated content sharing network is, and it’s not “create something that looks like it has unfettered access to some canonical whole”. It’s small networks of users with related interests having the majority of their discussions with each other, while also being able to pull content from other interest groups they may be interested in.
Like, a… to re-use a random example I pulled out of my ass in some other thread… Mazda enthusiast forum, where most people are talking about their Mazdas, but also one person’s really into the New York Yankees, and another also cares about their Dodge truck. The usage case is 80% local discussion, 20% off-site.
The currently attempted model is “everything is general interest, and you have to search for your niche, and it could be anywhere”, because that’s how it works on Twitter, or even on Reddit (subreddit squatting, subreddit splits, and early millennial internet humour come to mind). But it’s all being done to disguise what the fediverse is, and make it look like what already exists, rather than trying to usher in something different. And it just… can’t compete that way.
it really doesn’t. those that make it about server handles are the reason movements fail, like get over yourself, ppl! hexbear came @ me pretty hard for my instance. fuck em.
hexbear is true garbage.
Your account may be banned by the admins if they don’t like you. If it’s on your home instance, you lose the entire account. That’s why it’s important to create your account on a trustworthy instance (or host your own).
It doesn’t, except for the ones who like to browse local. And the .world admins have quite a few blocked instances. They seem to be a bit too liberal in defederating to my tastes. I feel as if it runs against the concept of federation itself.
I feel as if it runs against the concept of federation itself.
So, you believe that operating a website using Lemmy obligates you to host content from other sites that you don’t want to have a relationship with?
Because the concept of ‘federation’ does not come with the expectation that you abandon editorial control over what you host. That’s an expectation you’re projecting on it.
No one is obligated to do anything. The admins run the site and they can moderate how they feel. As a user, I can join their site or another one if I choose to.
My opinion of defederating is that it should only be used as a last resort. Taking a liberal approach to defederation means that a small amount of bad faith actors can completely shut down an instance and make it a pariah on the fediverse.
I think that having a choice about what instance you join and whether it’s liberal or conserative about defederating is the beauty of federation. someone might want to be on an instance that’s quick on the trigger about banning for transphobia, racism, etc, because they’re going through some shit in their lives, and later want to experience the greater variety of an instance where banning takes more consideration.
Like, I think you’re right about what you want for you, but people wanting different things and being able to get it is pretty great.
I agree, it’s a useful feature for certain people. I’m just not a big fan of site admins making the decision for you. It should only be used as a last resort IMO or to protect yourself against illegal content, CP for example. Normalizing defederation between instances can be abused by a small amount of bad faith actors. If you as a person don’t like a certain culture on an instance or community, just block it yourself.
They are just two different servers. Lemmy.World is one of the really big ones. I had an account there but because of the size there were a lot of performance issues. I would recommend you join one of the smaller servers like sh.itjust.works. You have access to almost all the same information on the Fediverse.
shit has the same or better level of infrastructure for a smaller user base
I have seen that lemmy.world apparently has a very poor reputation among other instances.
It’s the largest by far, with five times the monthly active population of #2. One of the main things people want out of federated systems is decentralization, and having one huge dominant server goes against that goal.
I should note .world wasn’t the biggest when I signed up. I picked it because mastodon.world was a known quantity, which led me to believe the same team would run a stable server.
Basically none. Both are mainstream instances, not practicing any extreme moderation policy.
You might have confused lemmy.world with lemmy.ml which does have some communities with bad reputation.
I have accounts on both. Sh.itjust.works has a piracy community that .world blocks and is still federated with Hexbear for some reason. .world has old.lemmy.world if you liked the old reddit UI.
Otherwise, not that different.
Lemmy.dbzer0.com has the best piracy community :D
Damn. I was considering making a sjw account to see if the better performance claims are true but hexbear is a dealbreaker. Never going back to that crazy cult site. I know I could block it but they’d still see my posts and comments.
Also note that “blocking” it doesn’t actually “block” much of anything at all - it stops you from seeing the communities located on that instance, but the users will still appear in posts all across the Fediverse, sending their harassing messages to you, pinging your Notifications every time they reply to you, downvoting your own comments, etc. The instance block function is horribly misnamed.
If you want to avoid this kind of thing, I second that recommendation to try Lemmy.cafe - it is the only Lemmy instance that defederates from the Big 3: hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and Lemmy.ml. The latter one is like 1000x easier to deal with than hexbear, yet still nearly all of the most batshit insane comments I’ve received on Lemmy after defederating from the other two have come from it - and for similar reasons that they get used to how things work inside their echo chamber, and then behave the same way when they venture outside of it - so I consider having defederated from it too worthwhile overall. Although you will miss out on some content such as !Firefox@lemmy.ml that way.
You just wanted a pepsi! And they wouldn’t give it to you!
To those who promotes lemmy.cafe as a solution,
No shame that the instance doesnt block far rights and pedo instances ?Start considerate your self at a moment,
Not every leftists are for imperialisms… True leftists are humanists, and want the right for people to get autodetermination,
At a moment, stop being ridiculous,
So far my experience with sh.itjust.works has been shit. I was banned from a community there for “vibes”.
Which community?
https://sh.itjust.works/c/noncredibledefense. They could bother to give me a reason.
Most servers don’t micromanage community moderation. That sort of thing could happen almost anywhere.
Many libs, racists, and bigots on both
Thanks for adding yourself to my block list :)
lmao you should add me too, I hate having libs, racists, and bigots reading my posts
A pleasure.
He really showed u bro!
Hell yeah,
There is really no shame here on this topic or /c,If You are a leftist, or againt biggotry or anykinds, you will be associate to HB or LG,
They have really no shames theses rightists
