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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Of course, but the important part is you have choice and instances will keep each other in check because you can always switch. With a centralized system like Reddit there’s only one provider and if you don’t use them you’re locked out of the system entirely. This gives them a monopoly on the platform and the power to do anti user bullshit.

    Email is also a protocol with distributed servers and compared to that I think each fediverse instance has far less lock in. With email I can switch providers but it’s a big hassle to have to change all my accounts and tell people to use the new address and set up forwarding etc. With my Lemmy account I don’t really care that much about my user history since it’s all anonymous anyways and it’s not connected to anything that’s central to my life so if I have to switch instances it’s not a big deal. It would be nice to have some kind of account linking to show that the different instance accounts belong to the same person, and that should definitely be possible to implement, but honestly it’s not even that big of a deal to me.



  • The fediverse is not a single database or server. It’s a protocol and standard that’s distributed by design. The fediverse as a whole cannot be centrally monetized, just like email can’t be monetized. A single provider could potentially choose to try to monetize either by requiring a subscription or showing ads, exactly like email providers do, but if you ever feel like they’ve stopped providing a good service you can just switch to another instance just like you can switch to another email provider.

    Unlike a centralized service like Reddit, you’re not locked into a monopoly. Switching instances does not lock you out of the system as a whole, just like you can still receive email if you switch to another provider. With Reddit you can only access the platform through Reddit because it’s a closed source centralized monopoly.

    One thing the fediverse seems to lack as far as I can tell is a way to link accounts, like how you can set up forwarding with email, which helps you switch providers. But the protocol and standard is still being developed so maybe that’s something that can happen in the future