I was trying to address a point that is frequently raised by people that gave Lemmy a try but are not planning to stay: seeing the same content posted across a few similar communities hinders content discovery, and just provides a worse browsing experience than centralized solutions like Reddit.

Not trying to be mean, but … you’re making a post about redundancy because other people make posts about redundancy? :D

In these other posts, a frequent answer is: Reddit isn’t that much different. A popular example is /r/gaming or /r/games or whatever. Apparently there are multiple subs for the same topic, sometimes with little to no differences.

Then some people object “but that’s not the same, they have different names”, to which others reply “on lemmy, the full name includes the instance, so we don’t have same name communities here, either”.

I think, bottom line, the two platforms aren’t very different in this regard. On both, users can create new subs/comms even if the exact same content already exists. And they do. Sometimes both survive, sometimes not. On both, users decide “with their feet”.

One relevant difference might be that in the Fediverse, redundancy actually has value. It protects against defederation, unstable servers, servers disappearing.

I still see value in combining duplicates. When I see a new community popping up, and I know a very similar thing already exists, I might leave a note in the new community wether they might want to participate in the other community instead. Just in case they were not aware it exists.

But aside from the Fediverse-specific reasons for duplicates, there are additional general reasons, which is why we see the same phenomenon on reddit. For example, people might dislike the moderation in the ‘original’. Or one might allow bots, the other not.

While this is my point of view (“it’s a non-issue”), I also note it’s a topic which is frequently brought up. Apparently, it’s frequently seen as an issue. This may be rooted in perception (including the fact that reddit is monolithic, falsly leading to the misconception it would only have one sub for one topic, all while it still has plenty of redundant duplicates) and communication (I got the feeling the fediverse’s federated structure is sometimes over-emphasized and creates more worries than necessary).

We probably will get technical solutions like grouping on a user-view level. Maybe some apps already have that. GitHub issues exist.

Aside from technical solutions, people can vote with their feet. It is of course perfectly fine to address and re-address the topic. This might help consolidate similar communities. Personally, I think having a few redundant communities is healthy for the nature of the fediverse.