Correct me if I’m wrong. I read ActivityPub standards and dug a little into lemmy sources to understand how federation works. And I’m a bit disappointed. Every server just has a cache and the ability to fetch something from another known server. So if you start your own instance, there is no profit for the whole network until you have a significant piece of auditory (e.g. private instances or servers with no users). Are there any “balancers” to utilize these empty instances? Should we promote (or create in the first place) a way how to passively help lemmy with such fast growth?

  • hal@lemmy.oneEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Matrix suffers extremely of this issue. It feels like 95% or more are on matrix.org instance. And all major chat rooms are hosted there too.

    I think something like a weekly cap for new registrations as an option would be good. With a hint to other instances.

    It’s kinda the same issue that some games have, like MMOs. People tend to make new accounts on the biggest and overloaded servers because there is the most activity even though stability could be an issue, or login queues.

    But that doesn’t make sense on matrix or Lemmy. Because you can still access all content no matter where you are.

    • Averrin@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      > Because you can still access all content no matter where you are.

      If you know how and want to do it. Unfortunately, it isn’t the way how most people think.

      • Apolinario Mabussy@lemmy.calvss.comEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        And fortunately, there’s still time for people’s minds to change. Federation and decentralization are things that aren’t really advertised or mainstream yet so people still don’t have a clue what it is. However, we do know how those things work, so I guess it’s kind of up to us to help people know about how said things work.

        • Averrin@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’d like to help with this improvement. Do you know any plans for it? Honestly, looks like that there is no “lemmy committee” and even lemmy’s developers cannot organize something like this. Any ideas?

          • zergling_man@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Nothing good can come out of a federation committee. Invite whoever you want wherever you want and give a little bias to smaller instances, and it should balance itself out.

            • Averrin@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              02·
              1 year ago

              I dont suggest adding a centralization =) I see two possible and actionable directions:

              1. Create tech solution to balance load through available resources
              2. Spread the word that there are better ways to spend your money and passion helping lemmy. I know, my “engineering manager” bias tends to see process problems in places where are no problems. But I dont want to see how the awesome idea is dying because of lack of basic management and foreseeing.
              • ericjmorey@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                I’m confused about what you want. Why should I care about lemmy.ml being over run because they didn’t put enough resources into their instance?

                • Averrin@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                  03·
                  1 year ago

                  Because we are here because of content, made by users. I’m thinking about whole “lemmy-verse”. If users encounter issues, they just stop using the service. You as an instance owner can choose to not participate. But if somebody already thinks rhat they helps, why not use it?