1399
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
1399 points (95.6% liked)
Fediverse
28243 readers
226 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
What opposition? I see folks complaining about excessive size of individual instances (mostly out of concern that power imbalances could develop), but basically nothing against the growth of the network as a whole.
I think the "infinite growth" here is referring to our expectations of some systems we use growing infinitely, even when the system itself is bounded by finite terms, such as population or hype.
For example, US Social Security works on the assumption that there are more people working and inputting money into it (via payroll taxes) than retired people taking money out. That assumption requires a growing (or at least very stable) working population, as a shrinking working population means that there will be more people taking money out than there are people putting money in. This growth, inevitably, will have to stop at some point. However, many retired people expect, and in some cases financially rely on, Social Security giving them money.
A large portion of the Fediverse have expressed their disdain for such systems, and molave here is finding it ironic that they'd expect this platform to infinitely grow, as well. The initial hype from the whole Reddit shenanigans are dying off, and the platform will soon stabilize, at least until Reddit pisses off its users again.
Despite popular misconception, growth is logistic, not exponential. Nevertheless, Lemmy is so close to the beginning of its growth cycle that it should look exponential for a long time yet.