this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025

75 points (97.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

32590 readers

1480 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world

TheSaneWriter@lemm.ee

Asudox@lemmy.world

lemmy_bot@lemmy.world

beefbaby182@lemmy.world

ModeratorCan@lemmy.world

neidu3@sh.itjust.works

asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev

candyman337@lemmy.world

candyman337@sh.itjust.works

How is federated social media better? (pawb.social)

submitted 14 hours ago by Inkstainthebat@pawb.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

48 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I found myself chatting with my dad and brought up the topic. I couldn't come up with any actual advantages a federated platforms had. The main reason I use any federated platforms is because they're either not as enshittified as the alternatives or run by huge dickwads. Since it mostly fits those criteria, I'm on Bluesky too, but once that goes I'll either switch to another un-shittified platform or Mastodon.

But on its own, what advantage does a federated social media have?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sanderium@lemmy.zip 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

Pro:

Interplatform Interaction(Activity Pub): Instances if the same platform and the Instances themselves can communicate (message, post, upvote, etc) with each other if they are federated.
Decentralized: Community managed instances means no commertial interest, no single point of failure and the option of having your own rules. Intances with bad rules or intentions do not get federated (can't interact with each other).
Free Open Source Software: Transparency and community contributions, If a project is abandoned it can always come back in the form a fork..
Privacy: No data collection, no data selling from the platform/intances themselves.
No advertisements
No shitty UI

Con:

Decentralized: People do not expect to have to choose a instance(server), and assume they are missing out on the other servers joining a particular one. And since its community supported the uptime and longevity of instances may be cut short.
Free Open Source Software: Community volunteers to delevop the platforms on their free time means that sometimes development can be slow or even the project is abandoned.
Cost on missing out on already established Big Tech platforms

[–] Sandbar_Trekker@lemmy.today 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I agree with your comment except that I think you've got the privacy part wrong there. Any company can come in and scrape all the information they want, including upvote and downvote info.

In addition, if you try to delete a comment, it's very likely that it won't be deleted by every instance who federates with yours.

[–] sanderium@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes, correct. I've should have mentioned that no tracking from the platform/instances themselves. Thank you by the way.

[–] katze@lemmy.cafe 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

What stops your instance from fingerprinting its users and selling that data? Even without explicit calls to google analytics or similar tools, you can do a lot with http requests and regular browser headers. I’m not saying that lemmy.zip does this, but lemmy isn’t free of tracking by design, is it?

[–] sanderium@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago

I guess more technical people would notice and expose the instance? Not an expert on any of this but I suppose you are right saying that it would be absolutely free of tracking.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

IMO it's ban/block evasion which is the biggest con to decentralization. It's a problem on centralized platforms but the many servers design makes it easier on fediverse.

It's not a huge deal to me because I don't block many things but might be a consideration for people with a sensitive disposition.