It appears to me that the current state of Lemmy is similar to other platforms when they were smaller and more insular, and that insularity is somewhat protecting it.
I browse Lemmy, and it feels a bit like other platforms did back in 2009, before they became overwhelmed and enshitified.
If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar “landed gentry” moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.
If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?
If I’m not happy with how /r/knives is run on Reddit, I can make /r/knife to compete with it.
It shows part of the comment. I think there’s a limit on length, and it does not show media. The mod log is a good idea, but there’s room for improvement.
I never said Lemmy will fail, and that is not my position.
Ah, gotcha. Thank you for that. I understand your example. My response is, irrespective of /r/knives or /r/knife if Reddit bans the word “luigi” both subreddits are affected. That isn’t the case with Lemmy where if one instance bans a word, other instances don’t have to follow suit.
This is good information. I didn’t know about the limit length. I did some Google searches and could only find references to the 10,000 character Lemmy post limit, but nothing about the limit of modlog entires. Any idea what it is?
You make a good point on media. I didn’t know that either.
I will say that for any modlog entry I’ve seen of a removed comment I largely agree with the moderator’s actions about 95% of the time. I’m guessing a character limit would have to be VERY short for it to not capture the gist of an offending comment though. I’m prepared to retract that if you tell me its extremely small.
Apologies if I mistook your statements. I saw you referring to Lemmy as a whole, and the need for a Fediverse wide fix being your opinion to be necessary for Lemmy to not be eventually destroyed as a whole. If you have a more nuanced opinion on the points we’re discussing, I’m open to hearing it.
Several people have responded with things like this, but OP didn’t ask about that scenario. Of course federation solves that problem.
I think it’s more likely that Lemmy will stay niche than grow large enough to have an eternal September problem. If it does grow large, I think the risk is more a degraded experience than destruction.
They said:
“If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own ‘eternal September’, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?”
I think the Luigi example applies to the “exploited” portion of OPs post.