I don't think that'd work, with Lemmy being a federated model, not a fully decentralized one.

How do you handle the actual login? Does that mean every server has access to your password hash? Or do you overhaul the account system to use something like a private and public key, with the user needing to store and transfer the private key to every device they use?

And what happens if two people register with the same username on two instances that aren't federating? Do they somehow need to still communicate with all other instances in the network they operate in, to prevent that from happening? Because the alternative I see is the login being random in some way or tied to the instance, in which case you still lose the impression of a single service.

If I'm not mistaken, right now anybody could host a non-federating Lemmy instance, if they just wanted a small private community in this style. To my understanding, that's the idea behind federation, and a founding concept of Lemmy - it's not a giant service distributed across trusted servers, but a network of smaller communities that communicate with limited trust.

I subscribe to this view.

After seeing this post, I needed to check what server am I on right now anyway, didn't even remember, so I guess that's a good thing.

Some instances are running on better servers than others, have staff that fix issues quicker and attend to updates sooner.

For example, .world is still on v18 while the rest of the threadiverse has mostly moved on to v19.

Some instances defederate certain other instances, so in some cases you might end up finding that a community you subbed to gets disappeared by the admins of your instance (lemmy.ml did this to ani.social a while back). Whether there are valid reasons goes case by case, sopuli.xyz for example blocks instances that are for porn, and I like it that way.

Though outward federation is a bit borked on there atm, so I'm using my alts...

But really, it doesn't matter that much. If the grass looks greener, you can hop over the fence and see for yourself, and then hop right back if it turns out it wasn't.

I only moved from World because I wanted a smaller instance (and maybe because of stability). And from thelemmy.club because it blocked the Hackintosh community. And from lemmy.ml, which was my first one I moved because I heard the alligations that the admin was pro-chinese government.

Moderation and politics. Many in Lemmy don't like ML's stance on issues, including banning and moderating dissenting opinions. World won't defederate from Threads. Etc. Despite no major user difference, Lemmy is a much more "active" vs passive community in reinforcing their beliefs in what's right. It's why many migrated here to begin with.

slrpnk.net 🤝 pawb.social

federated via apathy

Everyone forgets about pawb.social too. Even furries seem to forget it exists lol.

Mostly the people running and modding it are insane.

They started defederating with piracy and trans instances and kept pushing a Discord server so I took off.

Oh and also Beehaw defederated with lemmy.world, and I wanted to see that content.

Second edit because I was reminded lemmy.world is still planning to federate with Threads, which I also wasn't okay with.

Ah yes it’s the next generations fault. What a unique take on the situation.

Yup. The platform should feel alive.

I remember on Reddit when people were trying the limits and quirks of the algorithm, and you would wake up one day and your feed was filled with something totally unrelated. A few hours later and it went back to normal.

ML was the first instance, they created an account there first and jumped from instance to instance until they ended up where they are, leaving the original instance completely neglected. It's quite a literal interpretation of the meme format, which you don't often see.

I think I'll stay here if there are no problems. That's why I used the word "might"

You seem like you enjoy having fun. I like that.

What the hell is happening

Hexbear will always stay winning it's impossible for anyone to stop us