I get it that things can have unfortunate names, but I’ve seen a lot of people proudly claim lemmy is “federated” or a “federation”. Isn’t a federation actually against what people want out of the fediverse?

Like, a federation in governments is about a bunch of otherwise self-governing states under a centralized government. Like the US, that’s a federation.

isn’t the whole point of the fediverse that it’s anti-centralization? Then why do people call it a federation positively? That sounds like the last thing I’d want it to be.

I think a confederation would work, but that’s not what I see people going for. Is that what it’s actually intended to be and people just call it the wrong thing?

Imo Reddit is more of a federation than the fediverse, since the subreddits are self-governing communities until the admins demand them to change something.

  • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The “central authority” is not an instance, but the ActivityPub protocol itself. Each instance is federated under ActivityPub, but is otherwise independent with their own platform and rules of interaction.

    • Pamasich@kbin.socialOP
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      1 year ago

      I see, I do think a confederation fits much more with that reasoning, but I can understand it from that perspective.