This is a non issue. Different communities and instances have different rules, norms, cultures etc. There's no need to smash everyone together in a monoculture.
this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Technically, I agree.
Practically, I myself have experienced several fragmented communities about the same topic with similar ethos. This was not a healthy separation based on different norms. It was simple, ineffective fragmentation. Or, at least the ethos and norms differences wasn't clear.
I feel like it is just a matter of time before either:
- The fragmented communities develop more and become distinct, so that they are more unique and shouldn't merge.
- One of the communities becomes the more popular "default" option, and the other becomes less active as people gather in the more popular one.
Even if that doesn't happen, redundancy isn't bad. We've seen how hard it is to migrate when there's only 1 real option and that option disappears or goes bad for some reason (i.e. reddit). If there was another fairly active community with the same focus, that would make it easier to keep going. That's part of why decentralization is good.
This is solved by Piefed.
how exactly? isn’t piefed "just" another instance in the fediverse?
You have comments from different communities under the same URL post. "Multicommunities" but without user intervention.
It does have some drawbacks. For example, under this post, I can see comments from an earlier post (referring to the same URL) from over a year ago.
Piefed is also a platform, in addition to Piefed servers being instances and clients.
Got any links or docs where I can read up on that?
I would just try a piefed.social account.
The support docs don't really look comprehensive.
done that already. :) but it looks like this only works for url-posts, which Mlem already handled pretty good before.
Mlem is an iOS client.
Crosspost comments consolidation has to happen in the default UI for everyone to be able to use it
Mlem is an iOS client.
I was wondering what Mlem is. Thanks!
Well no, because app users can't use it if it is only implemented in the web UI
Sorry, I wanted to say "it should happen server-side with an API so that both web UI and apps can use it"
Solution 2 in the post, multicommunities. I'm not sure it actually solves the problem though, as you still have to go to the actual community to post and I imagine multicomms add an extra layer of confusion to that.
You can post from the multi community/feed, you are then asked which community you want to post to
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Crosspost comments consolidation example: https://piefed.zip/c/fedibridge/p/794856/r-buyfromeu-asking-for-a-reddit-alternative#post_replies
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"Separate conversations are splintering discourse, we should all just shout over each other in one massive wall of text!"
The separate communities across instances is a benefit of federation just like separate posts are a benefit over a single thread for everythjngs. Yes, features that allow them to be combined for those that want that way of interacting is great, but we don't need a single news community between all instances when there are can be massive differences between instances.
Proposed solution 3: Communities following communities
The ability for communities to "subscribe" to other communities is an idea that comes from this Github comment. This is, in my opinion, the best proposed solution by far. Community a can follow community b, making posts from b also appear on a.
What this means is that community moderators can choose to have posts from other communities to show up on theirs. That means if all the pancake communities are following each other, I can post on pancake@a.com and it would show up on the other pancake communities as well, and the comments would simply be grouped into just one post!
The main proposed solution doesn't force merging on anyone. Mods can decide whether or not they want content from other communities to show up in their space. No two news instances have to merge if they serve different audiences.
It isn't explicitly called out in the proposal but I could easily see there being an option for mods to unlink individual posts from other communities if they get too spicy.
you’re right, definitely something I hadn’t really thought about. I just don’t get the sense that some communities are intentionally spread across different instances. Like there are two Plex communities on two separate instances that basically talk about the same stuff. I guess it’s just part of getting used to things, and it throws me off a bit since I’m still new to the fediverse.
In fact, there is a problem of asymmetry of difficulty. It is much easier to start a new community, that dealing with existence of several separated communities. Especially as social solutions (eg in case that the communities are really about the same thing in the same way, asking all members to switch, so for newcomers it is easy to know which one is active and maintained).
Exactly. This is a non issue and actually a feature.
Nice thing would be to have a structured way to clearly present differences between communities of same name. Eg. possibility to link (in machine readable way) in sidebar to other communities and mark them as pure duplicates, or state the actual difference. This information could show also in search and crosspoting dialog.
Maybe I am misunderstanding something. I am on lemmy.zip, but I see communities from many different instances. How is it segregated?
For example, https://lemmy.world/c/technology, https://lemmy.zip/c/technology, and https://piefed.social/c/technology coexist. Thats what the author meant with "community separation".
Oh, okay. Im not super familiar with how all this works. Thanks
The article does a good job breaking it down, but a short example is if you want to post about technology, you have to choose one of those communities to post to.
You can cross post or repost in the other communities but then any discussion gets fragmented, people see the same thing multiple times in their feed, only engage with one, and likely not the same one as somebody else.
On the other hand only posting in one community could significantly reduce engagement if you choose poorly.
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