Cross posting this here for visibility as it’s easy to not see the edit. They are adding thoughts and resources to the post as they evolve so maybe keep an eye out for future edits.
I think the questions they have are very reasonable & they have welcomed cis people to discuss on the post (but not elsewhere on the subreddit)
I’m new to Lemmy and doing what I can. Long time member of the subreddit. Maybe some of you all are better than me at discussing these topics with them?
Thank you all for your help so far 🫶
Yes. A Lemmy insurance doesn’t federate all content to all users. It federates only a single copy of any content to each instance that has users that subscribe to that content, and those instances put it on the timeline of their members that subscribe to it.
The federation design can handle a lot more traffic than the trans community on reddit can generate.
It’s better and worse than reddits tools. There are more active mods and admins that have less tolerance for bigotry, meaning that bigots get stomped on more reliably than on reddit. But creating new accounts is easy and locking down communities isn’t as granular as it is on reddit.
Federation also allows an admin to restrict access to other instances that don’t deal with trolls, or even to operate on a white list basis. We’re thinking of spinning up a white list only instance to insulate sensitive groups from the wider fediverse, whilst allowing our members to access it.
Admins have access to the database for their instances, but that’s true of reddit too. The difference is lemmy admins aren’t selling that data off. And some instances (like blahaj) don’t require an email address to register, and allow the use of VPNs. Privacy is best achieved by not providing identifying data in the first place and many instances work to enable that option.
Nothing. That’s the biggest issue IMO. Content that federates will still be available on the instances it has federated to, but even then, the loss of the hosting instance makes it hard to coordinate a replacement.
I have hope that as the fediverse matures, this will improve and user and community mobility will protect against this.
The only thing I can say here is that it’s less an issue than the possibility of reddit just banning a sub, because at least most of the content is recoverable on lemmy.
This is so encouraging imo thank you