Genuine inquiry . Maybe I am not experienced enough with the various federated platforms but I am an avid user of matrix, and have dabbled in lemmy. From what I have seen is federation is on the path to decentralization but not fully there. It creates fiefdom, little kingdoms . Great yes you may find one that suites you better, but users now can end up isolated to their island, switch island sure but now you are isolated for the previous island and maybe others. Its stupid. On matrix you need to know the other island(server) to even find its rooms(communities). Some rooms block users from one server while others block users of other servers. You either have to run multiple accounts or accept the limits. Add in you are at the mercy of your home server, you can lose your account have it immitated, and more. The performance is horrible not sure why, but content is slow to update and spread. Matrix has the problem because of its design most people are on the matrix.org server and so the point of federation is largely lost. They are moving to p2p where it seems the solutions for federation now dont apply.

Anyway why is federation not stupid? Are these problems only with Matrix? Cause I look at lemmy and it seems far worse.

  • @lemm1ngsOP
    7•3 years ago

    Thanks for your excellent response. I find it a bit contradictory you assert federations is not to get stuck in echo chambers but also to make little groups. Not that I am against either. For me federation is more about censorship resistance. To that end I think of regimes that shut down the internet or block things like whatsapp or even signal when the ‘citizenry’ become an organized problem. Which is why things like the matrix p2p effort is important to me. Devices that can self organize into a continually changing platform is very powerful. I also see in federation control of data but that is less important for me than censorship resistance.

    There must be many ways this can all be done, discoverability shouldn’t be a problem.

    I know some are trying to build forums on matrix. I wonder if the lemmy devs have considered intergrating with matrix. Matrix seems to be on an exponential curve now with their 30million investment and the german health system selecting them