Bloodbeech Forest

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I don’t think of the threadiverse as a link aggregation platform but as a network of communities engaging in threaded discussion. The federated model is an answer to the problem of platform lock-in, the network effect, and the lack of autonomy communities have on proprietary/commercial/centralised platforms.

    Each instance separately may fill the role of link aggregator but mainly for that community (instance), with that community’s values and moderation policies. The ability for an instance to federate with other instances with compatible policies is the benefit here.

    It may actually help if you view an instance as the community, with its “communities” as its topics.




  • Some things I think are needed first:

    • greatly improved UX for handling links to content hosted on other instances: you shouldn’t have to use the inconspicuous search function to access it via your instance,
    • community collections: aggregating communities by topic each with a clear overview, their own feed and a nice, convenient way to create and view crossposts between them,
    • more polished and stable app(s),
    • ease of migrating between instances (massive bonus if we can have portable identities),
    • a change in how we present the core idea behind the federation model: it’s not about aggregation (this misconception leads to frustration over “fragmentation”), it’s about community self-governance/autonomy and error-correction (as in making it easier for communities to migrate if authority is abused).