Ha! Funnily enough I just responded to a different comment along these same lines: that’s the beauty of the fediverse. If a community of moaners exist, they could have their own instance. Or in the case of Lemmy (and the very theoretical Habitat), their own categories that other users can tune out from. I think you’re going to have places in which moderation is a success and places in which it isn’t. Anything that isn’t moderated appropriately and gets taken down as a result of something actually illegal won’t affect the communities that are appropriately moderated, because it can all be separated. It seems to be working well enough for Lemmy.

I think that’s the beauty of the fediverse though. Any community can be anything you want it to be. If some users don’t like how an instance is being used, they could create a competing instance that’s more aimed that their wants and needs.

Thanks for this. Perhaps invite only could work. When I signed up to my Lemmy instance, I was asked to say something nice about the UK to prove that I wasn’t a bot. I imagine this could work with a local quiz. But I personally favour the idea of it being open and communities being so small that it wouldn’t really benefit anyone to abuse. But it would certainly be nice to have the administration tools to quickly put a stop to it if it does occur. Something to think about. Thanks

I can’t seem to find anything relevant when I search for Topix, but I think we learn to moderate our local communities effectively. Just like here on Lemmy. The difference being that owners will have fewer people to moderate, so it should in theory be easier. If an owner is vile, create a competing instance.

I hadn’t heard of Yikyak, but it looks very similar to my mock-up. Thanks

Yes, I discovered this for myself yesterday after getting a lot of suggestions that it won’t catch on. I can do my best to foster my own community. If others do the same, that’s a bonus!

Hey, I’ve been looking into the idea of using population density as an indicator of how big a community should be, but it didn’t feel right that the platform would be deciding the boundaries of each community. I then thought about the idea that the owner, upon setup, would draw a shape on a map that would indicate the boundaries of their desired community. How do you feel that solution would that solution work around your river?

😃 well, tbf I feel that we have plenty of solutions for finding like-minded people. Social platforms for hobbies etc. We’re communicating on one right now, but a local platform would be for communicating with people that might not necessarily be like-minded, but would still have the same interest in mind. The interest of how much parking is, or what the opening hours are, or what this weird statue in the woods is all about. The interest is the place and that alone is what would connect people.

This is a really interesting point regarding road Vs actual distances, and large areas that are thinly populated being considered local. Australia certainly comes to mind. I suppose the right thing to do about the latter would be to give both users and owners control over search and area sizes.

The quiet feed point is my biggest concern to be honest. It worked out for Lemmy and Mastodon, but it took revolts from their privately owned counterparts to get them to the place they are now.

Hey, it’s good to know that others have been considering this sort of thing.

My article does detail solutions to some of the issues you’ve raised here, but I’ll go over them each just to see where our visions differ:

I can’t share the post with that friend very easily

All posts will have a publicly available URL. I don’t think it would be good to create closed communities, only solutions that would show the user local posts.

If you don’t validate, the system will certainly be abused

I don’t believe we should validate that people actually live in the community. I think administration of blocking malicious users should work just like Lemmy, but I don’t think the potential for abuse is quite as high, given that the reward for a spammer would be to spam to such a small amount of people. There’s less work in spamming to a larger group by choosing just about any other type of community.

Do you have to abandon your old account and start over?

You don’t, just like Lemmy and Mastodon, your account on one instance could be used to interact with other instances. The Connecting Instances section of the article details how this could work from a technical point.

It doesn’t have to be one party running this entire system. That’s the point of the Fediverse, right

Distributed cost and administration is exactly how I see it. I would only care to host my local instance.

Hey, thanks the feedback.

That would be one of the ways that I’d use the home functionality, but the categorisation would allow for more niche subjects than just generic local conversation, such as treasure hunting games or historical photos etc. Also, the nearby feature would make it more of a utility for travelling and sightseeing.

I think you’re right in that uptake would be a challenge, but I personally think that would primarily be due to the paradox of not joining a community because it’s empty. It’s something that I mention in the article. I don’t know if it’s something that can be overcome, but I wouldn’t mind giving it a go.