I have a fair amount of experience with data visualization, analysis etc and thought it would be a fun project to try to visualize the Lemmy network, specifically which instances have strong links to one another via subscriptions from users in one to communities in the other.

How/where can I get that data?

EDIT: It sounds like many people would find this a violation of their data privacy and I simply shouldn’t do it. I had thought this kind of data was intended to be entirely accessible by design, but I learned something new!

    • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
      123·
      1 year ago

      Yes, still doesn’t make people fine with it. People defederate over stuff like that on mastodon. It’s often seen as violating peoples privacy.

          • mookulator@mander.xyzOP
            97·
            1 year ago

            What do you mean? I thought it was an explicit feature of this place that literally all of it was public and nobody owns any of the data. Isn’t it just sitting there in the public domain?

            If people know that’s how it works, they can’t get mad if someone does access the data. Especially for innocuous curiosities like this.

            • Dave@lemmy.nz
              10·
              1 year ago

              The content of lemmy is in public, but is not in the public domain. They are different concepts.

            • PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              51·
              1 year ago

              I think the more commonly held belief is that the data, while unfortunately available right now, was going to become more secure in the near future; but the exodus from reddit happened too soon. So now there is a lot of that data, and the better management and protection of it hasn’t had time enough to happen.

              In comes you, seeing the opportunity, and you seek to exploit it.

              • mookulator@mander.xyzOP
                1·
                1 year ago

                I didn’t know that about the plans. I thought it was by design. Thanks I won’t do this project then

                • PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Well, I am not any official representative of Lemmy. My belief in what the plans are or were are based on things I’ve read with also no citation. Best if you were to find out from the Lemmy development team and from Lemmy instance hosters. They’re the ones with the authority, history, and investment that can accurately tell you what’s what.