• Lemmy.one, my instance of choice, has been down since Thursday - just a reminder that smaller instance isn’t always the solution. Having a few solid account choices on multiple instances is the way to go.

  • A reminder to move to smaller instances for a better experience

    A reminder that this constant advice people blindly parrot to install and flock to smaller instance has now created something like 1000 new servers in 50 days that are poorly run and already going offline as quickly as they went online.

    Github Issue 2910 is the kind of PostgreSQL problems that the developers ignored for months and people still defend the developer choices to have the code doing real-time counting of every single comment and post for numbers nobody needs to needs done in real-time.

    PostgreSQL is voodoo to this project, they do everything they can to avoid going to !postgresql@lemmy.ml community and asking for help, learning 101 about how to fix their SQL TRIGGER logic like Github Issue 2910 spelled out June 4.

    • I know you are salty about how you are getting treated over at GitHub, but you should look at it objectively, Blaze is clearly advocating that people join top instances that’s not lemmy.world or lemmy.ml, not nobody instances that only have 1-2 users. They certainly aren’t going offline as quickly as they come online.

      • I know you are salty about how you are getting treated over at GitHub

        No, it isn’t about my personal treatment. It’s about the cultist attitude you have towards Lemmy and the leaders without any ability to see what they are doing behind the scenes with the code. I know cults and religious faith is how many people enjoy the world.

        A 2-line SQL TRIGGER removal takes about minutes to fix. It was crashing the entire site constantly. They sat by and asked for donations of money.

        • No, it’s everything to do about your personal treatment, stop deceiving yourself. Just because you claim you have autism doesn’t immediately grant you the right to be entitled. You don’t get your way so you spam create multiple issues to call out the developers, and you expect people to believe it isn’t personal for you?

          If you aren’t happy with the Lemmy developers, fork the project, run your own fork, convince others to use your fork. It’s a FOSS world, no one has to do what you say, even if you claim to be autistic.

          • Just because you claim you have autism doesn’t immediately grant you the right to be entitled.

            Entitled to what? free money? discount at the car wash? I see you like claiming things that I never said, who talked about deserving things or being entitled?

            perhaps you do not grasp that autism impacts my writing and the level of pain I have in communicating, even this very comment. It causes me huge pain and suffering to have my brain touch the keyboard and compose English sentences.

            Maybe you lack compassion for my suffering and you are a bully.

            • Entitled to what? free money? discount at the car wash? I see you like claiming things that I never said, who talked about deserving things or being entitled?

              No, I never claimed that you said you were entitled. I claimed that you like using your autism as an excuse.

              perhaps you do not grasp that autism impacts my writing and the level of pain I have in communicating, even this very comment. It causes me huge pain and suffering to have my brain touch the keyboard and compose English sentences.

              See? Why make yourself suffer?

              Maybe you lack compassion for my suffering and you are a bully.

              Why do you deserve my compassion? You are literally hurting yourself by participating in discussions even when you claim, in your own words, “autism impacts my writing and the level of pain I have in communicating, even this very comment. It causes me huge pain and suffering to have my brain touch the keyboard and compose English sentences.”. If it hurts so much, get offline.

              • I claimed that you like using your autism as an excuse.

                you used the word entitled, or are you confused? Now you are saying it is an excuse?

                It’s a fact, it impacts my every word I’m typing on this keyboard, every single English word I speak, read, write, type, hear. It causes bullies and hate-filled people who hate human beings to flock to you to try to “correct” everything about your existence and behavior. Like you are doing.

                Do you know the history of Autism in Nazi Europe where it started to get documented? Do you know how humans treat those with mental differences? Is it all your game to imply that love and kindness is shown towards those who speak and behave oddly?

              • If it hurts so much, get offline.

                that is all you car about, not having to encounter words you disagree with, to drive off human person you don’t like. It’s sad to see the popularity of people like you, Donald Trump likes to harm others and gets big crowds too.

                • If you willingly hurt yourself, or your brain, conversing online, then you shouldn’t be using it as an excuse to get your point across. The advice was given, if it hurts, stop doing it, is that really that hard to explain?

          • convince others to use your fork.

            Reddit convinced people to use Reddit. Elon Musk convinces people to stay on Twitter. Donald Trump convinces people to vote for him.

            Just maybe the audience level of knowledge about the topics of media is the problem. You. Maybe you are actually attracted to Lemmy because it crashes, just like people flock to Donald Trump because he does bad things. And people flock to HDTV news instead of reading a book on a subject.

            It’s odd but not unexpected that you think the problem is code and does not involve the audience being attracted to certain characteristics. I hear McDondl’s has a lot of customers.

          • Then go fix it and open a PR

            Do you think I am the one who created the mistake or something? That I have access to the servers to install it?

            It’s so odd to me that you respond this way, as if it was my coding mistake. It isn’t even me who opened issue, that is GitHub “makotech222” - is that your answer to them?

            • I don’t believe they’re insinuating that you were the one that created the mistake. Rather, that you seem to be knowledgeable of the specific problem and may be the one most capable of fixing it. The two line fix may be obvious to you, but may not to the main Lemmy devs. Until phriskey got involved, a lot of db tuning was being avoided (they’re responsible for most of the big db improvements this version).

          • I think 0.18.3 fixed some of it, but there are likely some more performance issues related to PostgreSQL lurking in Lemmy.

            A TRIGGER in SQL is a logic that executes based on other activity.

            Lemmy uses them so that when you create a new comment or post, it executes code to insert tracking record for votes and comments on a post. One of the things Lemmy does is called site_aggregates, and there was a bug where it was updating the counts for 1500 servers instead of just the one server. That got fixed in 0.18.3

            Deleting accounts in lemmy was causes crashes. I’m not sure if that has been entirely resolved. These things are all kind of hidden in the background of the code, so a lot of developers overlooked that there were problems in them.

            • Isn’t there a logstream they could tap into to have a separate async tally going on instead of doing it synchronously? Probably a lot of things could be delegated to an async job performed when server load allows?

              • I’ve had to really adjust my thinking with this project. They want to do things a very particular way and it goes back 4 years, and a lot of the mistakes are just now getting noticed/attention. For example, comments were not deleting on all the servers, I was testing that after comparing server copies of the same communities and found they were not the same. It just didn’t seem to have a lot of people spot-checking it for mistakes. I am learn to just “go with the flow” and face that it’s more like how musicians would approach design and running a project. Media-focused systems can be that way.

    • A reminder that this constant advice people blindly parrot to install and flock to smaller instance has now created something like 1000 new servers in 50 days that are poorly run and already going offline as quickly as they went online.

      I am always advocating for any of the top 25 instances that are not Lemmy.world or Lemmy.ml

      For the rest of your post, I don’t know what that has to do with people aggreating on LW.

      • For the rest of your post, I don’t know what that has to do with people aggreating on LW.

        aggregation refers to the lemmy database tables, site_ aggregates, community, person. The SQL TRIGGER logic lemmy_server uses that has been the source of so many crashes the past 60+ days.

          • Shit dude, you still going on about the GitHub issues?

            Is it your cult loyalty to the pro-China project leaders speaking? The authoritarianism that you honor? Do you have blind faith in machine code and are unable to see the level of effort they make to avoid the performance critical code in the application?

            Did their words “high performance” on GitHub mesmerise you into believing it without actually installing the Rust code and looking at their performance your own self?

            • Sorry to tell you this, but you need to stop being overly obsessed over the Lemmy project. It is not healthy for you. Go do something better with your life. With the amount of enthusiasm you are showing, I bet you can find the cure for cancer.

              •  Piers   ( @Piers@beehaw.org ) 
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                This is the appropriate time and place to discuss the codebase and project management approach of the Lemmy FOSS project. If you don’t like hearing people you disagree with talk about those things, you should be going to do something else rather than rudely trying to make them shut up. Even from the perspective that you just want to challenge this user about the appropriateness of how they are expressing their opinions and frustrations, you are going too far and behaving inappropriately yourself with all the personal attacks. Just leave it alone and if they are saying things that you feel need to be addressed just report and move on.

                • If you don’t like hearing people you disagree with talk about those things, you should be going to do something else rather than rudely trying to make them shut up. Even from the perspective that you just want to challenge this user about the appropriateness of how they are expressing their opinions and frustrations,

                  I have nothing against anyone who wants to bring up issues, but the way one brings up the issues should be taken into account. Anyone who tries to get their point across by spamming GitHub issues automatically loses points in my book.

                  Is this acceptable in your book? Are you defending this action? It certainly is not acceptable in mine, and the reason why I called the user out on it.

                  I understand if you take offense at the way I came across the user in question, but when they repeatedly bring up their pain as a response, it is only logical that I ask them to refrain from actions that cause them pain. It’s one thing to have to go through pain for basic life-sustaining tasks, like eating, drinking, or even physiotherapy, but if your brain hurts typing on a social media forum, which you repeatedly refuse to cease, then you have no sympathy from me. Lemmy, or even Reddit for that matter is not a basic living requirement.

                  you are going too far and behaving inappropriately yourself with all the personal attacks.

                  What personal attacks?

                  Just leave it alone and if they are saying things that you feel need to be addressed just report and move on.

                  Likewise, if you have an issue with what I said, go ahead, report and move on. If I broke any instance rules, I’m sure the responsible admins will be swift in delivering the appropriate response.

              • I bet you can find the cure for cancer.

                If the cure to cancer were found, like a virus to prevent deaths from COVID-19, sites like Twitter and Lemmy would spread lies and disinformation and tell people to avoid authentic facts and science.

                Is it the pro-China stance of the developers that gives you blind faith in how their SQL TRIGGER code works or Rust logic?

                Sorry to tell you this,

                I doubt your sincerity and think this is a social tactic you use, lies. Insincerity.

                It is not healthy for you

                The lies coming out of Elon Musk’s Twitter and the lies from Cambridge Analtica on Facebook make me ill. The constant people I meet in the USA who praise oil consumption and deny climate change science makes me sick. I didn’t stubble into Lemmy because I was healthy with crowds of people who flock to anything in “meme format” and praise authoritarian politicians and businessmen.

                Based on how humanity behaved during the pandemic, with all the denial of a virus that a microscope can deonstate as fact, I don’t think it is possible to be healthy unless you choose to self-deceive and believe the memes and advertisements.

                • If the cure to cancer were found, like a virus to prevent deaths from COVID-19, sites like Twitter and Lemmy would spread lies and disinformation and tell people to avoid authentic facts and science.

                  Maybe, maybe not. It’s up to the reader to differentiate between facts and tales. I don’t see how that is relevant.

                  Is it the pro-China stance of the developers that gives you blind faith in how their SQL TRIGGER code works or Rust logic?

                  No, I believe the project is in need of a lot of polish. However, the way you act, makes me hope the polish does not come from you.

                  I doubt your sincerity and think this is a social tactic you use, lies. Insincerity.

                  Okay.

                  The lies coming out of Elon Musk’s Twitter and the lies from Cambridge Analtica on Facebook make me ill. The constant people I meet in the USA who praise oil consumption and deny climate change science makes me sick. I didn’t stubble into Lemmy because I was healthy with crowds of people who flock to anything in “meme format” and praise authoritarian politicians and businessmen.

                  Have you considered turning off your computer, and looking out the window? Looks like the problems you are facing can be solved rather easily. There is neither Twitter nor Facebook out the window.

                • If the cure to cancer were found, like a virus to prevent deaths from COVID-19, sites like Twitter and Lemmy would spread lies and disinformation and tell people to avoid authentic facts and science.

                  They would try, but they would fail. COVID-19 is history now, because of vaccination, despite the best efforts of anti-vax death cultists to stop it.

    •  Dubious_Fart   ( @Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml ) 
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      A reminder that this constant advice people blindly parrot to install and flock to smaller instance has now created something like 1000 new servers in 50 days that are poorly run and already going offline as quickly as they went online.

      And this will always… always be the biggest problem in the FOSS community.

      “I dont like X, so I’m going to leave and make my own version of X”

      So userbases get spread thin, manpower gets spread thin, developers get spread thin, and the user experiences degrades for everyone until it pushes them back to the bullshit websites and products.

  • Quoting myself from a previous post:

    First of all, it’s really fine to stay on LW for now, no need to rush anything. But if at some point you have some time for this, then read the following.

    So, to pick your instance, you can have a look at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list, filter by “1m” to see what are the most popular ones. As you can see, with a 27433 monthly users, Lemmy.world is by far the most popular, which is why you might experience some issues from time to time.

    You should have a look at the next instances on the list. Short story: lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.one, sopuli.xyz and reddthat.com are solid choices.

    You are looking at instances with quite a lot of people (the more people help with filling your “All” feed), just not the most populous one (lemmy.world), the original one (lemmy.ml), and instances that are too specific, either due to country or specific focus.

    Long story:

    spoiler
    • lemmy.ml is the original insance, also quite crowded, not really the best choice
    • lemm.ee can be nice, you can have a look at it and see how fast it is for you. The admin communicates a lot and is very helpful.
    • sh.itjust.works had some rough time in the last few days. You might also not like the name, that’s okay.
    • beehaw.org does not federate with the big instances, so if you go there, you will be in their own space. It can a valid choice, but please have a look at their guidelines first, they tend to moderate a lot. Can work for you, or not.
    • feddit.de, lemmy.ca, discuss.tchncs.de, feddit.uk, aussie.zone are country specific instances, so probably not interesting to you if you are not from there
    • lemmynsfw is a NSFW instance, probably not the one you want to move to
    • programming.dev is an instance focused on programming
    • lemmy.blahaj.zone is a pro queer instance

    .

    To migrate your settings (including subscriptions and blocked instances), you can use that script: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim

    •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
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      I think there is a huge misconception many people have that a larger instance is more likely to stay around, but due to the nonlinear costs involved in hosting fediverse instances this is not true.

      Basically there is a sweet-spot around a few thousand (~2500) members where costs are low enough for a single admin paying things out of their own pocket long term is possible, but also enough members willing to occasionally donate or contribute otherwise to cover costs.

      • To be honest, I know it’s a controversial view, but I would almost like to see Ruud and the LW admins block registrations for a while, along with a communication “Have a look at those other instances, they are well managed, you can access all of Lemmy just as well from there”

        • I’m not looking forward to 5 years from now, where instances like this are the mastodon.social of federated reddit-likes. As much as they should block registrations, I don’t think they will. …but I have a hat on stand by, just in case I need to eat it.

          • I think they’re stuck in a vicious circle, their server costs scale with size but new users are way more likely to donate. Users that have already donated feel like they’ve done their bit for a while, and that’s if they’re still around and engaged in a few weeks. Very few people want to donate monthly, subscription style.

            My personal controversial view is people should put more faith in well-run self-hosted instances. It’s a much more sustainable way to run a Fediverse server and self-hosted doesn’t have to mean amateur hour. Just because an instance is cloud hosted doesn’t mean it’s well configured or secure either.

            I have way more resources at my disposal than the vast majority of cloud hosted instances, for a tiny fraction of the cost. lemm.ee for example is very well run but has to put up with a 100kb image size limit because of cost-driven space constrains.

            Self hosting is also closer to the spirit of what decentralization is supposed to mean - your server ultimately belongs to your host.

    •  CMahaff   ( @CMahaff@lemmy.ml ) 
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      LASIM author here, ironically on my own alt: Just an FYI that support for Lemmy 0.18.3 is not yet out, but keep an eye out for it soon (I have it working on a branch but I need to test it more before release).

      This is the first breaking API change since it’s creation, so here are the limitations:

      • Old version (0.1.2) will only support API 0.18.1 and 0.18.2
      • New version (0.2.0) will only support 0.18.3 (and above until there are more breaking API changes)
      • Profiles downloaded with 0.1.2 (and below) will automatically be converted to work with 0.2.0.

      So that all means:

      • You can use the old LASIM to migrate between 0.18.2 Lemmy instances
      • You can use the new LASIM to migrate between 0.18.3 Lemmy instances
      • You can use the old LASIM to download from an 0.18.2 instance then use the new LASIM to upload to a 0.18.3 instance
      • You cannot use the new LASIN to download from a 0.18.3 instance and then the old LASIM to upload to a 0.18.2 instance (unless you are comfortable doing some manual work editing the JSON file so “old LASIM” understands it).

      This will be true of every release with breaking API changes.

      EDIT: PR is out. Once it builds, I’ll publish a new release! https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/pull/21

      EDIT 2: Release is published! https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/releases/tag/v0.2.0

  • The DB migration at the end of this upgrade is significant, I was surprised how long it took when I upgraded my instance. Lots of room for things to go wrong considering the size of their DB.

  • Just make a second account, the one I run, lemmy.myserv.one is so underutilized its a joke. Smaller instances like mine basically have to beg for users and the server goes unused while bigger instances struggle under the constant traffic.

    •  CoderKat   ( @CoderKat@lemm.ee ) 
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      Because using random tiny servers is worse in other ways. With all due respect, nobody knows you and they don’t know how committed you are or how much time you have. When your server gets DDoSed or hits a bug causing data loss, what will you do? Do you have the technological know-how to recover and quickly? If your server suddenly grew and it became more expensive to run, how does anyone know if you will keep paying the bills? If Lemmy has a bad zero day, will you upgrade quickly?

      There’s no need to answer these questions. I’m not actually asking you personally. But these are the kinds of questions that users have to worry about from random, small, unproven instances.

      (Also, Lemmy does not favour small instances because the “all” feed, searching, and going to new communities are all better the more diverse users you have.)

      • Yes obviously the barrier to entry is high. But nobody knows for the big servers either since they are basically just small instances that happened to get big. Thats why lemmy.fmhy.ml just died one day due to domain seizure. End of the day all you can do is look at how long a server has been around and if it has be online a reasonable amount of time. That kind of reputation just increases slowly and nobody can make it happen faster.

      • Ultimately I am the one paying the bill currently so if I die nobody elses credit card is being charged.

        In terms of other admins, this is actually happening. Some smaller instances like mine are in the process of setting up a sharing admin work between instances so that if someone is on holiday, the instance still has an admin who can login. This was only just started and is in the process. We have to create a lot of documentation and basic stuff to get it fully functional where another admin can login and fix something. Its not at that stage yet and will be a couple more weeks before it is. We did a test last night where another instance admin (boulder.ly) could connect to my instance via ssh but without documentation on what to do and check anything more than the basics of rebooting or restarting something isnt going to happen. Eventually we will get it to what to do if site has a critical vulnerability or is being attacked but not ready yet. Its a work in progress unfortunately.

        P

      • I think without some kind of “incorporation” (or whatever the tech/FOSS equivalent of that is), most of these kinds of thing will be vulnerable to issues with the owner’s payment methods failing. Even with donation options available it’s almost always still being used to pay to the server owner in parallel to them paying server / domain costs out of pocket (and then reimbursing themselves with the donations)

        That said, I have to assume there’s some way to set up some kind of automated payment option where community donations actually fill a fund that is used to pay costs directly in case the maintainer drops off the face of the earth.

        • It mostly depends on the legal framework of each countries. I know in Europe a lot of FOSS non-profits are registered as such, with legal status, even sometimes tax deduction for donations.

          I guess that will come in the coming months for some.

    •  aleph   ( @aleph@lemm.ee ) 
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      💯 checking out the admin of a Fediverse instance you want to join is a good idea. Do they communicate with their users? Do they seem responsible ? Do they have any previous experience as a network admin? Lemm.ee was an obvious yes on all counts.

      The admin for vlemmy.net was the complete opposite and look how that turned out.

  • when I start writing this comment, the post is 47 minutes old. if I understand the linked page properly, lemmy.world has been functional (all green checkmarks) for the past 10 minutes which is the furthest back the data goes. All the other instances are all green except for lemmy.one which is all red. I am assuming that 47 minutes ago, lemmy.world had red boxes?

    Maybe a different link would have explained the point better but I don’t really see how a 30 minute (??) server outage during an upgrade is compelling to avoid a large instance. Are you suggesting it’s better to use a server whos admins don’t upgrade? If not, is there really any size of server that would meaningfully avoid this kind of occasional disruption? Seems to me that the dynamism of the environment will inevitably lead to various problems. That’s part of the experience. TBH threadiverse uptime on the whole is pretty impressive for such a ragtag groups of admins and devs.

    I have accounts on some smaller servers but they have their drawbacks too. Using a bigger server is more convenient because the people and content is already there. It’s easier. I didn’t plan to use lemmy.world but I ended up making account there to use sometimes.

    I think in a year or so the situation might be different. I see the ideological point and I would like it to be true. Maybe the technology will catch up. I think it would be nice to be able to programmatically seed content, but maybe that would be obnoxious to admins.

    • I didn’t track the timing too closely, but in the last few weeks there have been quite long disruption of service due to DDoS attacks on the largest instances.

      I am personally quite tolerant towards Lemmy as a platform in its very infancy, but some other users might want to quit it due to this kind of annoyances, hence my comment about moving to a smaller instance.

      the people and content is already there. It’s easier

      What do you mean? You can access all of the content in the Threadiverse from whatever instance, modulo defederation, but Lemmy.world defederates quite a few instances too, so that’s valid for both big and small instances. If you are talking about the “All” feed, which will indeed be empty if you are in a 10 people instances (communities need to be subscribed by an instance member for the instance to get the community content), then it’s a valid issue, and that’s why I suggest people to move to one of the 24 biggest instances that are not LW or Lemmy.ml

      Lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, sopuli.xyz, reddthat.com, lemmy.one, your country instance (if it’s big enough). I’m on sopuli since a while now, and I’m very happy with the experience. 680 monthly active users, so the All feed is pretty much identical to the one on Lemmy.world, except the vey niche community I either don’t care about or would already know by myself.

      The biggest issue I see with having everyone on LW is that at some point the costs will be too high for the admins. It’s quite a big risk, and that why I’m advocating to use smaller instances.

      • @Blaze as I understand it, if you are user on a small server, you only see content from communities that others on your sever have previously subbed to previously, or if you do so yourself. And then you only seen content from the moment of subscription on. There is no way to see back prior.

        So if you want to use a community like !fediverse it’s OK because its popular and there will be prior subs. but if you are interested in !rockingchairrepair you will miss all prior discussion. Am I incorrect?

        Also in practice, from my experiments, there seem to be inconsistencies in how even this works.

        • When I mean a small server, I mean one of the top 20, which at least a few hundred users.

          As I said elsewhere, with a few hundreds users, the chance of you stumbling upon a community that nobody else subscribes to is that either the community is dead, or it just started, or indeed it is very niche.

          The only case where you want discussions from the start is the last case, which is very less likely to happen once your instance reaches a few thousands users (which is the scenario most of the people hope once we spread more evenly).

  • As I said elsewhere

    There are certain things that are memory intensive and CPU intensive. If you have 10k on one server doing that it really adds up. However having them across a wide range of smaller servers, its not such a big deal.

    As a user, you literally lose out on nothing not being on lemmy.world. You can partake in all the same conversations, communities and everything. In fact when lemmy.world is down, you can still see everything and when it comes back up, your posts will synchronize. There’s genuinely no upside to being on lemmy.world. That’s the way the system was designed.

    Not sure people will listen though. I will always talk up the amazing admin I have on lemmy.tf, but it’s also worth mentioning that I have a bunch of communities hosted on other instances and each and every one of them is amazing.

  • I was on lemmy.world and had a really bad experience. The I moved to aussie.zone and its better than reddit. Never down, commenting, posts everything feels so fast and snappy.

    •  1984   ( @1984@lemmy.today ) 
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      This is why I love small instances as well. I’m on Lemmy.today and it flies.

      People seem to be super worried about an instance disappearing for some reason. It has happened to like 3 instances, we are soon 1400 instances.

      Also if it would happen, how hard is it to move to another and click subscribe on communities? Takes like 20 minutes if you have many of them.

      I really think all this fear is silly. Enjoy Lemmy the way it was meant to be used. Use small instances.

  • Of course I have one or two other accounts, but I personally like Lemmy.world. They serve as a necessary stress test that shows the devs and admins how to optimize further, and I just like learning admin practices at this scale of a userbase from a work perspective. Plus I don’t want to be on an instance so small they can’t or don’t know how to handle compliance stuff and evaporate if something like that comes up. Not saying I know how to handle all of those situations, that’s the job of someone else at work.

    • I think that’s one of the issues that the rest of the instances are facing to appear as trustful as LW. LW admins have a long established reputation and experience managing Fediverse services, and provide very good transparency and a large team.

      Other instances are usually nowhere close to that (some will be in the future I hope). The question I usually raise when someone start promoting their instance is “how many admins do you have?´What happens if you run under a bus tomorrow (hopefully you’ll stay safe of course)? Is there a back up plan in place?”

    •  CoderKat   ( @CoderKat@lemm.ee ) 
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      I don’t understand the appeal of no downvotes. Do you really think it’s a good thing that trolls, bigots, dangerously wrong answers, general assholes, spam, etc can’t be downvoted? I won’t pretend downvotes aren’t misused sometimes, but their existence is critical for quality control.

      Edit: wait, I just saw you post in another thread as an “enlightened centrist”, so I guess that explains it.

      •  1984   ( @1984@lemmy.today ) 
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        I saw it being misused on reddit a lot so I like it. It was common for people to use it as a “i disagree” button, which created a big echo chamber. I read that many people felt that there was no point even posting to a discussion since they knew they would be downvoted.

        I think reddit really turned to shit, and I was hoping Lemmy could take another direction here. You can still upvote to support your opinions riding to the top without needing to downvote someone.

        I understand this is a hot topic for many though. I guess it depends on what your previous experiences at reddit has been.

        And also you mention the word quality control. I’m not sure the majority is some kind of a quality control. I rather hear people’s opinions and make up my own mind. It would feel weird to have other people push down comments I may want to read.

        • I can’t seem to find the source right now (so take this with a grain of salt), but someone did check the Lemmy codebase to look into this scenario - if an instance has downvotes disabled, it won’t propagate incoming downvotes.

          I know that on my instance which does have downvotes enabled, if I check out any post from Beehaw (who does have downvotes disabled) there are zero downvotes on any comments as far as I can see.

          Now I’m assuming this would only apply on communities hosted on that (or any downvote-disabled) instance, using my previous example if someone from Beehaw were to comment on a community originating lemmy.ml, I believe they could still have their comments downvoted since lemmy.ml would be “hosting” the comment, so to speak.