this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025

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293

What safeguards does Lemmy have that allow it to maintain integrity if it sees a sudden rise in popularity? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 20 hours ago by Vegan_Joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

89 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

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[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 18 points 20 hours ago

I think the difference here is there is not some weird, ephemeral person deciding. For example, at the bad place, it could have been a shitty admin, a good admin or actually spez deciding the rules for everyone.

Here we have instances that make up their own rules on who to federate with (who you see), and whether or not you're banned (who sees you). Also, the admins of your instance can redo moderation order anyway they see fit. It really will be an instance controlled vibe.

The real thing to be worried about is that if certain instances get too big. They have the most users and can control who sees what across the fediverse. For example, if a super large instance doesn't want any posts on any volatile or controversial topic to be seen (immigration, Nazi salutes, transgender, etc.), they could just have it not show up on their instance and the biggest part of the fediverse would never see it and have no way of knowing they didn't see it.

[–] nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 11 points 18 hours ago

If people get fed up, they just create another community under the same name somewhere else. This happened with 196 recently.

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 6 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

I don't know how it'd work but I'd be interested in something to deal with spam/scams. That annoying "Fediverse chick" thing, sure i blocked her, as can other individuals. And I guess the account could be flagged to whatever instance the account is registered to? But if it became a frequent problem, with bot account spamming people, it would be handy to have a way a tracking what accounts are getting blocked by lots of people.

Even if I wouldn't want to autoblock accounts just because they're unpopular, I might want to stop or mark as 'caution' private messages from "problem" accounts.

[–] Korrok@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 16 hours ago

oh yeah, I also got her dm, I wondered what was that about

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[+] Zak@lemmy.world -10 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

None. Someone is going to say federation helps here, but the effect is the same as creating an alternative to a popular subreddit under another name.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

None. Someone is going to say federation helps here, but the effect is the same as creating an alternative to a popular subreddit under another name.

Which mechanism in Lemmy allows one person in power to decide a single word is a reason to ban a person from every instance in the Fediverse? Since there isn't one, that is a way that Lemmy is more insulated from institutional abuse.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I agree, but the server owner imposing unpopular rules is not one of the two problems the OP asks about. Those are:

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?

Decentralization with federated servers does not address those problems.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

The first to create a community control it.

If the community becomes toxic, its easy to create an identically named community on another instance. A perfect example: when I joined lemmy I subscribed to the "news" community on lemmy.ml. When I saw how it was run, I unsubscribed and instead subscribed to "news" on lemmy.world.

censorship,

Modlog documents all actions including moderator censorship. Nothing like that exists at reddit. If there is censorship happening, its in full view of the users on lemmy.

and controlling a narrative.

Again Modlog, if a moderator is removing dissenting opinion.

If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?

Beehaw is an example of a Lemmy instance immune to "Eternal September". They disabled their easy signups, and defederated from instances that allow easy signups. I don't particularly agree with their extreme approach, but its what was important to them and it was effective. This is a powerful use of Lemmy and the Fediverse.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 1 points 10 hours ago

To be pedantic, transparency mod bots exists on reddit and server admins can redact the log here.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

its easy to create an identically named community on another instance

It's easy to create a differently named community on systems that don't have this sort of server-based namespacing.

Modlog documents all actions including moderator censorship.

The part that's missing is the original content mods removed. If I'm an abusive moderator and I want to censor someone, I'm not going to put "I don't like your opinion" in the removal/ban reason; I'm going to put something that sounds reasonable like "racism" or "harassment".

Beehaw is an example of a Lemmy instance immune to “Eternal September”

Time will tell. Either way, that's not a solution for Lemmy as a whole.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

It’s easy to create a differently named community on systems that don’t have this sort of server-based namespacing.

I'm not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

The part that’s missing is the original content mods removed. If I’m an abusive moderator and I want to censor someone, I’m not going to put “I don’t like your opinion” in the removal/ban reason; I’m going to put something that sounds reasonable like “racism” or “harassment”.

The modlog entries I've read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban. If I see something that isn't racism being labeled as racism, I'd suspect the community was corrupt. I do get curious when I see a banned comment from a moderator. 95% of the time I agree with the moderator's decision.

Time will tell. Either way, that’s not a solution for Lemmy as a whole.

If you're saying there isn't a single solution for the entirety of Lemmy (or the Fediverse for that matter) I'll agree with you. Where I'll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail. With each instance having its own control we'll see multiple approaches that suit each group of users.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I’m not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

If I'm not happy with how /r/knives is run on Reddit, I can make /r/knife to compete with it.

The modlog entries I’ve read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban.

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.

Where I’ll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail.

I never said Lemmy will fail, and that is not my position.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I’m not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

If I’m not happy with how /r/knives is run on Reddit, I can make /r/knife to compete with it.

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.

The modlog entries I’ve read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban.

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.

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.

Where I’ll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail.

I never said Lemmy will fail, and that is not my position.

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.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

if Reddit bans the word “luigi” both subreddits are affected

Several people have responded with things like this, but OP didn't ask about that scenario. Of course federation solves that problem.

the need for a Fediverse wide fix being your opinion to be necessary for Lemmy to not be eventually destroyed as a whole

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.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

if Reddit bans the word “luigi” both subreddits are affected

Several people have responded with things like this, but OP didn’t ask about that scenario. Of course federation solves that problem.

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.

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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Yep. People around here love to attribute some magic powers to decentralization it definitely does not have. The assumption that crappy behavior is somehow localized to a specific instance is bizarre, nothing is keeping people from spamming accounts on instances with free signups. If anything, the decentralization makes it significantly harder to scale up moderation, on top of all the added costs of hosting volunteer social media servers.

That said, I'm not concerned at this point. There is nowhere near enough growth happening to make this be a problem for a long time. Masto worried about it legitimately for like twenty minutes back in some of the first few exodus incidents, before all the normies got alienated and landed on Bluesky.

Don't get me wrong, I like it here, it feels all retro and kinda like 90s forums, but "what if it gets so popular it's swamped with bad actors" is VERY low in my list of priorities. We have like two spammers and they've become local mascots. Mass malicious engagement is NOT the concern at the moment.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 8 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The assumption that crappy behavior is somehow localized to a specific instance is bizarre, nothing is keeping people from spamming accounts on instances with free signups.

I disagree. If that is your primary concern, look at what Beehaw (another Lemmy instance) did. They closed their signups to prevent the bad actor spam accounts on their own instances, and they defederate from instance that allow the easy signups.

Its extreme, yes. It limits conversation from the wider fediverse, yes. However it does mitigate the exact problem you're citing. I personally prefer to deal with the spammers for the wider audience, but I don't fault Beehaw for their actions and choices.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

No, see, you're assuming that this is a problem for one instance. Which makes sense because there's nobody here and not much incentive to target people who are.

If you're the size of a Twitter (and that's a couple hundred million accounts) or a Facebook (about ten times that), then there are more than enough people to be targeted by more than enough bad actors to swamp EVERY instance with more spam sign-ins than Beehaw ever had, legitimate or not.

And you have nothing to stop bad actors from spinning up entire instances, which you then have to moderate individually, too.

You can't defederate from every instance that gets hostile accounts because the logical thing if you're a malicious actor is to automate signups to ALL available instances. Spam is spam is spam. You do it at scale. And you can't shut down all signups on all instances if you want to provide the service at scale.

There is no systemic solution to malicious use. If there was, commercial social media would have deployed it to save money, at least when they were still holding to the pretense that they moderate things to meet regulations. Moderation is hard and expensive, and there are no meaningful federation-wide tools to manage it in place. I don't even know if there can be. The idea that defederation and closing signups will be enough at scale is clearly not accurate. I don't even think most of the big players in making federation apps would disagree with that. I think the hope is the tools will grow as the needs for them do. I'm not super sure of how well that will go, but I'm also not sure things will get big enough for that to matter at any point soon.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

then there are more than enough people to be targeted by more than enough bad actors to swamp EVERY instance with more spam sign-ins than Beehaw ever had, legitimate or not.

I don't see how your statement applies to a Beehaw type response. Who cares how many bad actors there are if you're allowing zero signups at your own instance, and you are defederating from instances that do? I don't know the bowels of Lemmy code well enough to know if there is an "instance federation allowlist" opt-in as opposed to a "defederate from X instance" opt-out. If the former doesn't exist yet, then it would likely be added to Lemmy code to combat the exact example you give of an infinite number of spam instances being spun up.

Moderation is hard and expensive,

I agree with this.

and there are no meaningful federation-wide tools to manage it in place.

I'm arguing there doesn't haven't to be federation-wide tool. There are instance level tools that give enough control depending on how extreme a response the instance wants to enact.

There is no systemic solution to malicious use.

I agree. I argue a systemic solution isn't a requirement. You're looking for one thing that solves the problem for the entire Fediverse. That's a rather un-fediverse concept. The point of the fediverse is decentralization allowing instances to enact their own rules that work for them.

I don't know how old you are, but decades before giant social media existed, internet forums were a common community posting system. This is an old and known problem. There are a number of approaches that apply from those days to modern Lemmy instances. Yes, many of these would require raising the walls of the garden, but again, these approaches exist. Is it perfect? No, but if thats what it takes, then that will be the result, and the tools exist in Lemmy to do that.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I am old enough to remember that IRC had more in common with 4chan than modern social media and that moderation of atomized, non-interoperable forums was either just as bad or handled at much smaller scales by people with commercial interests.

You care about how many bad actors there are if they are enough to be in every instance. Again, you're presuming that bad actors will choose a specific instance to populate. You can't defederate from every instance that allows people to sign up or you end up with a group chat instead of a social network.

That's the Fedi-wide problem to solve if it ever gets truly popular. If I put together a bot farm or a sweatshop tomorrow that targets every instance of every Fedi app with multiple spam signups per minute how would you stop that? Especially if I'm not immediately posting spam and instead generating bad content slowly over time.

What if instead of one person doing it it was thousands? How high are the garden walls at that point? Is there anybody left inside them?

"There are tools to do that" is a bold assertion, but nobody has been able to explain to me what those tools are or how they'd work at scale. I'm all ears. Even if I don't think it'll be needed I'd love to know what the plan is, if there is one.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You can’t defederate from every instance that allows people to sign up or you end up with a group chat instead of a social network.

You can. Beehaw did. Perhaps that is the future of Lemmy. I don't know.

“There are tools to do that” is a bold assertion, but nobody has been able to explain to me what those tools are or how they’d work at scale. I’m all ears. Even if I don’t think it’ll be needed I’d love to know what the plan is, if there is one.

Beehaw did. I think you're still looking for a solution that allows the full Fediverse-wide system of communication with control of bad actors. I'll agree that doesn't exist and likely won't. I'm arguing that it doesn't need to for certain use cases of Lemmy to operate.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You're still thinking about it as an asymmetrical problem. Taking one portion that has a problem and isolating that from the rest. I'm saying if every part has the same problem that doesn't solve it AND it means the entire network is no longer interoperable, which was the entire point from the start.

What you're ultimately saying is that you can have a small interoperable network or a large centralized network, but not both. Which, if you're right, begs the question of why try to decentralize and federate in the first place if you don't have a solution to secure that arrangement.

And, to be clear, even in that scenario now you have an isolated, self-run social network that has exactly the same moderation issues and running costs as Reddit or any other alternative.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

You’re still thinking about it as an asymmetrical problem. Taking one portion that has a problem and isolating that from the rest.

I am. I don't believe there is one version of success nor one version of failure. That's one of the beauties of the Fediverse. While there can be fully integrated interaction between instances, there doesn't have to be.

I’m saying if every part has the same problem that doesn’t solve it AND it means the entire network is no longer interoperable, which was the entire point from the start.

Bolding is mine. That is an opinion, but not a fact. I'll agree it was one of the biggest features, but it is by no means the only reason for Lemmy or the Fediverse's existence.

What you’re ultimately saying is that you can have a small interoperable network or a large centralized network, but not both.

I'm citing those as the two extremes but I'm not saying those are the only two options.

Which, if you’re right, begs the question of why try to decentralize and federate in the first place if you don’t have a solution to secure that arrangement.

I reject that premise. If decentralization and federation were inexorably linked to Lemmy (and the Fediverse as a whole), the authors of Lemmy would not have built in the functionality to defederate, nor to block other instances. They did though. This tells us that while they envisioned the benefits of sharing, they also recognized those that wouldn't want to and endorsed it with methods to cut out the sharing.

And, to be clear, even in that scenario now you have an isolated, self-run social network that has exactly the same moderation issues and running costs as Reddit or any other alternative.

Not quite. From an operators point of view, sure. However from a consumer's point of view, a social media application stack is a massive undertaking to write as whole cloth. Lemmy software simply existing means that anyone can stand up their own social media network with their own rules (and yes, costs). This, in itself, is a better evolution over Reddit as a private platform. If you don't like that "reddit" you can stand up your own "reddit".

If you're looking for me to say Lemmy is the perfect platform without any flaws, you won't find me saying that. I will say however that it is better than the alternatives we have today. We'll see if it has enough autonomy and control to its operators to stand the test of time. Irrespective of where we each stand on this discussion, I think we'll both be hoping it does.

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[–] Zak@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Decentralization provides a lot of important benefits, such as protection against worsening the whole system for profit, or imposing unpopular network-wide rules. I like it here; it's fun in the way the old web was and the corporate web isn't.

I think we're in agreement that preventing moderators of popular communities from being assholes and handling large-scale abuse as OP asked about are not among those benefits.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 17 hours ago

Agreed, for sure. If anything, decentralization makes those things harder, I'd say. And also agreed that there are benefits to decentralization along the lines you mention. Those two things can be true at the same time.

I think it'd be cool to figure out what the toolset to handle those issues is before they become a problem. Or, honestly, just because figure it out would be a meaningful challenge and may move the sorry state of social media in the right direction just in general. That said, there is a LOT of overcomplacent assumptions, at least in the userbase, regarding decentralization being a magic bullet. I think the development side is a lot less... I don't want to say naive, but a lot more realistic about the challenges, in any case.

[–] clove@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

How does that help against reddit admins power tripping? Not at all.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

That does not appear to be the problem OP was asking about.

[–] clove@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Ehh... Sure... Admins don't control narratives or exploit large communities. Totally irrelevant. Im sure OP must be stupid upvoting people calling this advantage of Lemmy. Crazy OP! Listen to the dude with downvotes!

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