Asklemmy

Generally I like it. It has a lot going for it. So for some constructive (uninformed probably, I only signed up today, but I have been lurking for about a month) criticism:

I don't really like how there can be 10 "Official Linux" subs, because 10 self-hosted servers can create it locally. But Okay, I can deal with it, searching for subs I can see where everyone has mostly subscribed to for a particular topic.

Which leads me to, Although its distributed, it should be distributed with common "global subs" which sit on all instances of self-hosted. This would allow me to see that "/g/Official Linux" is the main one (others might exist and that is fine but they are local self-hosted and accessible globally but might be more niche). This would eliminate some small popup Lemmy's self-hosted since they would need a reasonable amount of storage. But I'm not sure this is good or bad, if you want to self-host and not participate in sharing/storing that data, then fine but your local subs are not replicated to the distributed network. I don't know in my own mind if this is all good or bad, but something like this should be explored.

Currently, it appears to me in my limited usage, some sub on some self-hosted (lemmy.cheapdomain.for.fun) could blow up and that self-hoster cannot afford to maintain it, and shuts down. Boom, sub gone? (see previous, note I have not explored self-hosting a Lemmy server yet).

Server blocking/banning: This one concerns me, since its hardest to manage and deal with. Firstly, IMO you are going to get bad actors setting up bad servers with 'nazi love' subs or worse, and they should be filtered from the main distributed service. However currently this is in a terrible state of affairs and needs to be addressed, since free speech is what its about. People may disagree with things and even reddit had dubious subs. But you could choose to ignore it and not subscribe. There needs to be a way to inform users of a selfhosted site, and *why" the decision to block it was. So not just a federated list of "blocked" but with clear reasoning as to why it was blocked by lemmy.world or lemmy.me . Users could then at least identify a site that is blocked and if the reasoning for the block is against their belief they can at least go and check it out for themselves.

While being distributed, perhaps there can still be a self managed tagging system for subs and guidelines for how to tag your local sub, for global acceptance. You dont have to tag as the system says, but not doing so may prevent you from being shared across the federated net.

Everything else is great. Most of the reddit communities I had anything to do with exist here, albeit smaller. The Jerboa app is great (and another that I tried which I forget the name of off the top of my head).

I even like that the fanboys of Apple, Raspberry Pi, Docker etc are here to downvote the crap out of anything remotely negatively said, against their favourite thing... (That one might be a bit facetious, but that is what freedom of expression is).