Link aggregators have a problem on the fediverse. The approach is server-centric, which has positives, but it also has major negatives.
The server-centric approach is where a community belongs to a certain server and everything in the world revolves around that server.
The problem is that it's a centralized formula that centralizes power in a the hands of a whichever servers attract the most users, and potentially breaks up what might be a broader community, and makes for a central point of failure.
Right now, if [email protected] and [email protected] talk on [email protected] then a lot of things can happen to break that communication. if c.com defederates b.com then the communication will not happen. If c.com breaks then the communication will not happen. If c.com shuts down then the communication will not happen. If c.com's instance gets taken over by management that doesn't want person1 and person2 to talk, then the communication will not happen.
Another problem is that [email protected] and [email protected] might never meet, because they might be on [email protected] and [email protected]. This means that a community that could reach critical mass to be a common meeting place would not because it's split into a bunch of smaller communities.
Mastodon has servers going up and down all the time, and part of the reason it's able to continue functioning as a decentralized network is that as long as you're following people on a wide variety of servers then one server going down will stop some users from talking but not all of them so the system can continue to operate as a whole. By contrast, I'm posting this to one server, and it may be seen by people on a wide variety of servers, but if the one server I'm posting this to goes down the community is destroyed.
There are a few ways to solve the problem...
one method could work as something like a specific "federated network community". There would be a local community, and the local community would federate (via local mods, I presume) with communities on other instances creating a specific metacommunity of communities on many instances that could federate with other activitypub enabled communities, and if any of the federated communities go down the local community remains. If any servers posed problems they could cease being followed, and in the worst case a community could defederate totally from a server (at a community level rather than a server level) In that case, [email protected] and [email protected] could be automatically linked up once both connect to [email protected] (I'm thinking automatic linking could be a feature mods could turn off and on for highly curated communities), and if c.com shuts down or defederates with one of the two, [email protected] and [email protected] would continue to be able to talk through their federated network.
Another method would be something more like hashtags for root stories, but I don't know how server-server links would be accomplished under a platform like lemmy, kbin, or lotide. I don't know how hashtags migrate on mastodon type software and how that migrates. In that case, it might be something like peertube where a network is established by admins (or users, I don't know) connecting to other servers manually.
Finally, I think you could implement the metacommunity without changing the entire fediverse by having the software auto-aggregate metacommunities. You could create a metacommunity community1 on a.com that would then automatically aggregate all posts on communities called community1 on all known servers. The potential downside of this is you could end up with a lot of noise with 100 posts of the same story, I haven't thought much about how you could handle duplicates so you could participate but wouldn't have 100 similar posts. In this case with respect to how to handle new posts, each metacommunity would be a local community and new individual posts would be posted locally and federated to users on other metacommunities. If metacommunities of this sort became the norm, then the duplicates problem may be solved organically because individuals using metacommunities would see the posts on other metacommunities and wouldn't bother reposting the same story, much like how people see a story and don't repost in individual communities.
One big problem is scaling, doing something like this would definitely be a non-trivial in terms of load per community. Right now if one person signs up to one community, they get a lot of posts from one server. Under a metacommunity idea like this, if one person signs up to one community, they get a lot of posts from many, many servers. lemmy.world has 5967 total instances connected to it, and 2155 instances running lemmy, lotide, kbin, mbin, or friendica that could contain similar types of community, that's a lot of communities to follow for the equivalent of one single community, especially if some of the communities in the metacommunity have a lot of traffic in that community. You'd have to look at every known server to first see if it exists and second if it has a community appropriate for the metacommunity, and the metacommunity would have to routinely scan for dead hosts to remove from the metacommunity and live hosts that may start to see an appropriate metacommunity has been created.
I'm sure there are other solutions, but I'm just thinking of how things work within my current understanding.
Of course, for some people, the problem is one they don't want solved because it isn't a problem in their view (and that's a legit view even if it's one I'm not really amenable to). Some people prefer smaller communities, or want tighter control over their communities. For servers or communities that don't want to be brought into a metacommunity, it seems like some sort of flag to opt-out (or opt-in as the case may be) should be designed in -- I'm thinking something in the community description like a textflag NOMC or YESMC that server software would be designed to respect.
With respect to moderation, It seems to me that you could have a variety of strategies -- you could have a sort of default accept all moderation where if one instance moderates a post other instances take on the same action, or whitelist moderation where if one instance or one set of moderators on a whitelist take an action then other instances take the same action, or a sort of republican moderation where if a certain number of instances take an action then other instances take the same action, and probably an option for individual metacommunities to only accept moderation from the local community the original post came from. I suspect you'd want a choice in the matter per metacommunity instance on a server.
I think that was resolved in getaether.net, but unfortunately, development stalled and the lone maintainer isn’t active anymore. He only hosts the entry servers, but that’s it.
You could look at his solution, but honestly, fragmentation is part of federated networks. If it were distributed networks/P2P, like Aether, then fragmentation could possibly be much less of an issue as users would all be on the same network and posting to a community would send it to all peers, that hosts it for all others.
[Professor Raina MacIntyre] published her first book, Dark Winter - An insider’s guide to pandemics and biosecurity in 2022, which conveys her knowledge and concerns about biosecurity in lay language for non-expert readers.
Professor Raina MacIntyre (MBBS Hons 1, FRACP, FAFPHM, M App Epid, PhD).... heads the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute, which conducts research in epidemiology, vaccinology, bioterrorism prevention, mathematical modelling, genetic epidemiology, public health and clinical trials in infectious diseases.
Area of Expertise
Emerging infectious diseases, infection, biosecurity, biodefense, influenza, vaccines, adult vaccination, elderly vaccination, epidemiology, outbreaks, epidemic control, pandemics, travel and border control, HPV, pneumococcal disease, bioterrorism, smallpox, monkeypox, anthrax, Ebola, viral haemorrhagic fevers, MERS coronavirus, COVID-19, health security, health intelligence, modelling, clinical trials, study design, big data, precision harm, artificial intelligence for epidemic detection.
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#OnThisDay, January 6, in 1994, U.S. Figure Skating Champion Nancy Kerrigan was bludgeoned with a police baton on her right lower thigh by an assailant hired by the husband of her rival, Tonya Harding (depicted in I, Tonya, 2017, starring Margot Robbie)
I saw that! January 2nd I think?? Coincidentally, I probably signed up around the same time but didn't experience any server issues or anything. May have took a bit to import my Goodreads library but it was pretty smooth sailing overall 📚 ☕ 🤓
@GamingNews@n0madz@bookstodon They always have a bit of a sign up frenzy on new years as there is some challenges that start then and people got subscriptions as gifts and whatnot.
But it was even more that their projections this year. Next newsletter will be interesting.
We just passed the halfway point of our fundraising goal for Banned Books Back! Moms for Liberty, eat your hearts out! 😏
To recap, our collective received a serendipitous donation of children's books that had been removed from Florida schools as part of an ongoing effort to censor titles depicting queer joy, civil rights history, immigrant stories, and more. Right now, our collective is harboring dozens of boxes of these "dangerous" titles — but not for long. Later this month, we'll be calling on our local community to help package bundles and send these Banned Books... Back!
Thank you so much to the folks who have boosted this effort, including but not limited to Autostraddle, The Washington Post, LGBTQ Nation, so many rad bookseller buddies, and the 270+ folks who've donated. 💓
According to Jon Bakos on Bluesky, 🍉 (to show Palestinian solidarity) is the Political Word of the Year in the American Dialect Society voting. #Woty2023
The downside is it makes Google the de facto owner of all of your online information. You could never use a Google product, but because they have such a large market share they’ll essentially force every site and platform to use their solution.
So, having played some #geometrydash 2.2 for a while, I'm starting to warm up to the swing. I'm still not a massive fan and way prefer the ship (which gives you more control), but the swing's long sweeps can help give sections with it a large, grand vibe (e.g., the swing section in Dastardly). Maybe my distaste is just a skill issue. Idk.
Zit er iemand op Goodreads, of weet er iemand een goed alternatief?
Achtergrond: ik heb me dus voorgenomen om wat meer te lezen. (Ben begonnen aan 'La Vieille' van Georges Simenon. Mijn tweede voornemen is om mijn verroest Frans wat WD40 te geven.)
Ben op zoek naar allerlei leestips, vandaar. ik lees uitsluitend fictie, en van het soort waar personen centraal staan. My all time favourite is El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha. (dat is trouwens mijn leestip aan jullie!)
#domicide must be recognised as an international crime
The massive, arbitrary destruction of civilian housing in violent conflict should be recognised as a crime under international law, the UN’s independent housing rights expert told the General Assembly today [28 October 2022].
"I do believe that #Israel's actions amount to domicide, and may now very well constitute acts of genocide as well. The attacks by Israel have destroyed not just homes, but hospitals… historic streets, public buildings holding important records and archives… the main public library, all four of Gaza's universities, #Gaza's old city, the ancient port of Gaza, and many museums including the newly opened #Rafah Museum of Palestinian Heritage. This utter annihilation of Gaza as a place erases the past, present and future of the Palestinians."
[cont’d] The obliteration of Gaza’s multi-civilizational treasures [Ibtisam Mahdi]
[…] #Israel’s war has brought ruin to thousands of years of rich heritage in #Gaza, with Palestinian experts decrying the destruction as a cultural genocide.
Using #language to counter bias favoring masculine-specific representations:
• gender-unmarked forms (neutralization strategy, e.g., “l'enfant”) are not fully effective in neutralizing the masculine bias.
• contracted double forms (re-feminization strategy, e.g., “un·e enfant”) are more effective in promoting gender balance compared to gender-unmarked forms.
Love is not supposed to be beautiful. It’s supposed to be a raw, gritty struggle that forces you to face the most vulnerable parts of yourself, so that when the good times come, you can savor and enjoy them, fully appreciate what they’re worth. Otherwise, you take it all for granted. —Lana Myers