It’s no more confusing than using email, and everybody managed to figure that out. You don’t need to know how the nitty gritty of it works. The network effects is a far bigger issue, as you point out, centralized platforms simply have far more content on them.
It’s far more complicated than email, at least I can send an email to any valid address from any other address by default ( mostly ) - Lemmy / Fediverse is like needing multiple email addresses that each one can only email some of the others, and you might not even get the response someone sent you unless the content is literally carried back to you.
I have multiple accounts on multiple instances, and sometimes I come across posts I read with one account, but my comments or the responses to those comments just aren’t there, so you only get a portion of what is out there.
Qualifying your analogy with (mostly) kinda makes it fall apart for me. Because the fediverse also works like how you described email (mostly). There might be a few extra exceptions due to relative immaturity of the protocol is all.
The whole point of ActivityPub is that you don’t need multiple accounts on different servers. You can use your Lemmy account to talk to people on Mastodon, browse PixelFed, watch PeerTube. Yes, there is sometimes lag in content propagating, and so on, but it’s clearly not a show stopper. My experience using Lemmy and Mastodon is the opposite of terrible.
You don’t get me. My instance isn’t Federated with lemmy.world and other large instances. I just don’t see the majority of comments or content you do on this account.
And I don’t see that as a problem. I don’t think Fediverse needs to be fully connected the way a centralized platform is. The fact that different instances can choose whom they federate with is a feature not a bug. Fediverse favors creating smaller communities that are smaller and more personal, instead of just being one giant cesspool. It’s a different way to interact with people.
It’s no more confusing than using email, and everybody managed to figure that out. You don’t need to know how the nitty gritty of it works. The network effects is a far bigger issue, as you point out, centralized platforms simply have far more content on them.
It’s far more complicated than email, at least I can send an email to any valid address from any other address by default ( mostly ) - Lemmy / Fediverse is like needing multiple email addresses that each one can only email some of the others, and you might not even get the response someone sent you unless the content is literally carried back to you.
I have multiple accounts on multiple instances, and sometimes I come across posts I read with one account, but my comments or the responses to those comments just aren’t there, so you only get a portion of what is out there.
It’s kinda a terrible experience in that way.
Qualifying your analogy with (mostly) kinda makes it fall apart for me. Because the fediverse also works like how you described email (mostly). There might be a few extra exceptions due to relative immaturity of the protocol is all.
The whole point of ActivityPub is that you don’t need multiple accounts on different servers. You can use your Lemmy account to talk to people on Mastodon, browse PixelFed, watch PeerTube. Yes, there is sometimes lag in content propagating, and so on, but it’s clearly not a show stopper. My experience using Lemmy and Mastodon is the opposite of terrible.
You don’t get me. My instance isn’t Federated with lemmy.world and other large instances. I just don’t see the majority of comments or content you do on this account.
And I don’t see that as a problem. I don’t think Fediverse needs to be fully connected the way a centralized platform is. The fact that different instances can choose whom they federate with is a feature not a bug. Fediverse favors creating smaller communities that are smaller and more personal, instead of just being one giant cesspool. It’s a different way to interact with people.