Is Lemmy your first time on the Fediverse?
This question is especially for people who have joined in the last week. Have you used other fediverse platforms or is this your first time really using one? What do you think of it so far? Are you aware that you can comment on Lemmy posts with a Mastodon account?
I heard about the fediverse before, but never made an account until a few days ago. It is kinda cool how Mastodon, Lemmy, and Kbin can interconnect somewhat, but it does not feel like a fleshed out feature to me yet. There are still too many bugs when interfacing with other parts of the fediverse.
I like how maluable it feels right now. I really feel like if I dedicate a bit of time and effort I can make changes to and improve things. Or at the least break off and do my own thing that interacts with the fediverse.
I don't like how spread out and small all the communities feel. I think piracy has 5 different communities at this point. I am also torn on not having at least a centralized login. I kinda trust sh.itjust.works with my account, but there is little assurance that the instance, and my account on it, won't just disappear or attempt to do something malicious with my email and password.
I want Lemmy to take off and I think it has potential, but I also believe it will take at least another year before I am completely satisfied with it.
This is my first time on any kind of federated network. It's pretty neat. I've known about federated projects for a while, but with Mastodon being the most popular one, and with me never having an interest in Twitter to begin with, I never bothered.
I'm the type to want to run it myself instead of joining a public instance, and I have to say, this isn't half bad at all. Wasn't hard to set up, and isn't as resource intensive as I was expecting.
I see a lot of potential in Lemmy, but I don't think it can really "go big" without some significant, but hopefully manageable, improvements to how it works. You can read me ramble about my thoughts here. I'm crossing my fingers that the exodus from Reddit brings some extra attention to Lemmy's GitHub.
When reddit goes dark on Monday, there will be a horde of people looking for an alternative. When the APIs go dark at the end of the month, another horde will come. When /u/spez says just about anything, it’ll happen again. What can we do to prep here for that? How can we attract good moderators to moderate communities here? Just listing things I noticed from the twitter/mastodon migration: * Mastodon had a few thousand signups per hour during the peak times. * Having a single instance (or even a small number) really simplifies the signup process. How can we scale lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml] and other big instances now to prep for Monday? * I’m seeing communities already pop up (/c/earthporn, /c/photography and my favorite /c/jeep). If we can keep content flowing through some of the big communities, it’ll help people come back on Tuesday. (On a Sunday night at 7pm MDT, the backend on lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml] is getting crushed and posting is haphazardly working for me…) * A good intro doc would help folks get up to speed faster (this is how lemmy/fediverse works, he’s a list of mobile apps you can use, here’s how to sign up on patreon… etc). Scaling lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml], beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org], and lemmy.one (those are the ones mentioned in the pinned post for “joining”) is probably the biggest priority. If owners of these instances need money to pay for server fees, expertise with server migrations, deployments, scaling, dev work, etc, they really need to communicate. The proverbial “call to arms” would be appropriate. We’ve got lots of super nerdy folks here that can donate time/money. Personally, I’m not sure how I can help right now. (Currently subbed on Patreon, but that’s it).
Go to the search page and put in a link to a kbin magazine (what lemmy calls communities and reddit called subreddits) for example https://kbin.social/m/tech
One of the results will be something like https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
It might not have any content on it until you or another user on your instance subscribes to it though
Once you subscribe from the https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] page it will show up as a subscription for you on Lemmy until you unsubscribe so you don't need to search for it every time
@Quinncuatro @NeonBlue kbin.social is a #kbin-instance.
kbin also has communities called "magazines" and a tab for microblogging in addition.
I like it though the no central login is my biggest issue I think I have right now. What works for Reddit is that it’s really easy for a non-technical person to get in to it; Setup an account, login in, find, view, subscribe, post, and comment all in one place. With Lemmy/Fediverse there is a barrier with trying to explain it straight away e.g is it called Lemmy or Fediverse or Kbin etc
I get why it’s better, and I don’t know what a solution could be, but at the moment the simplicity of it in one place will keep Reddit a viable solution for a lot of people who would like it to “just work”
As an example here’s a post from PrequelMemes
squabbles.io is a pretty good reddit alternative. I hear a lot of people suggesting lemmy and other federated options, but those are just confusing to me tbh. Squabbles works very similarly to reddit, so the transition should be painless.
And the reply
Thank you! I’m heading to squabbles.io right now, based upon your description of it!
Yes and no.
Some months ago (or years?) I tried Mastodon for a total of 5 minutes and didn't understand it, so I left. That time I didn't really know that Mastodon was federated and if I had known it was I didn't know what it meant.
With Lemmy I'm understanding the concept a little bit more. Also I am aware that I can comment while on a Mastodon account but so far I've tried everything and I still have no clue how to do that, my smooth little brain can't comprehend that yet.
First time, liking the experience though the no central login is my biggest concern. What works for Reddit is that it’s really easy for a non-technical person to get in to it; Setup an account, login in, find, view, subscribe, post, and comment all in one place. With Lemmy/Fediverse there is a barrier with trying to explain it straight away e.g is it called Lemmy or Fediverse or Kbin etc
I get why it’s better, and I don’t know what a solution could be, but at the moment the simplicity of it in one place will keep Reddit a viable solution for a lot of people who would like it to “just work”. And it’s those people that helps build large communities.
As an example here’s a comment and reply from PrequelMemes
squabbles.io is a pretty good reddit alternative. I hear a lot of people suggesting lemmy and other federated options, but those are just confusing to me tbh. Squabbles works very similarly to reddit, so the transition should be painless.
And the reply
Thank you! I’m heading to squabbles.io right now, based upon your description of it!
Imagine there were multiple reddit websites. Reddit.com, reddit.org, reddit.social, etc. Doesn't matter what account you have, you can see communities/subreddits across anyone of them.
That's Lemmy.
When you make a lemmy account, it's more like an email address. You are [email protected], I am [email protected]. Someone else is [email protected]. We can all chat and post and have a good time no matter what website/instance we post to.
That's how users work on lemmy. Just like email. Communities on lemmy work the exact same way as users.
If all you're interested in is that, then you can stop there and fully enjoy your time with lemmy as a reddit replacement.
The future potential and complexity comes from the next part:
The fediverse is someone said, "hey, you know how people on reddit can't follow people on Twitter, or people on YouTube can't subscribe to subreddits, or people on Instagram can't leave YouTube comments? Well let's make it so you can.
Now this isn't perfectly implemented at the moment, and there are a lot of growing pains (it's kinda like the wild wild West), but you can make a mastodon account (like Twitter), and follow the this lemmy community [email protected] on it, and you'll see all the posts and all the comments that you would otherwise see on lemmy, just in a twitter-like format.
It's not perfect and compatibility across these decentealized apps is not perfectly impremented atm, but in the future you could theoretically have one giant interconnected web where everything from "Twitter" to "reddit" to "YouTube" to "Instagram" to whatever fediverse equivalent app are all interwoven. And if any instance of them gets a big enough head to pull something like reddit is pulling, or what Twitter has been pulling, the community can just make a new "email" on a different instance/website and continue as of nothing changed. No single website/instance can abuse their power, because another instance can be spun up any time.
I'm not sure I understand the last part correctly. As I understand it, if a community behaves in a way the users don't like, we can just create a new community. The advantage of the federated nature is that it's not as painful as finding for example a whole reddit or twitter alternative because of how modular the fediverse is, right?
Edit: come to think of it, I have a second question and you seem to have this whole thing figured out. I've seen people say that they are on lemma as well as kbin to see which they like better ot which one grows better I guess. But does it really matter since the whole thing is interconnected anyways?
Thanks :-)
Yes, somewhat. Communities are like subreddits. So yes, if a community is doing what people don't like they can pick up and make a new community. A good example is on reddit r/gaming used to be more discussion and news focusedz but over time it became more popular and filled with memes. Some in the community didn't like this so they made the r/games subreddit which is news and discussion focused.
On lemmy, that new community can be made on the same instance or on a different instance.
What I was getting at, was that in addition to this, if the communities on an instance dont like how an entire instance is being run, they can pick up shop and just move to a new instance. As a user you've have to make a new account on a new instance, but you'd be able to subscribe to all the same communities on the instances you like.
To simplify: Instances are run by admins, communities by mods. On reddit your only option is to make a new subreddit and change your mods if you don't like something, but you will always have u/spez as your admin. On lemmy, you can ditch your admins and set up shop with other admins.
To answer your kbin vs lemmy question: The only reason you would pick one over the other would mostly be due to their layout and customization. Additionally, instances can block other instances, so you might like kbins layout, but maybe they block an instance that has a community that you like. Like. Conversely, kbin might have a cool community you want to subscribe to, but your specific lemmy instance is blocking it. So you can do what I said above, you pick up shop and you set up in an instance that doesn't block the community you want to join. Alternatively, you can set up your own instance on your own server and then you can join anything you want, provided that you aren't so toxic that other communities potentially block you lol.
I have general helpful additional links in the bottom of my sidebar over on my community https://lemmy.ml/c/ps5 if you want to see how you can do some of what I said above.
Doesn’t matter what account you have, you can see communities/subreddits across anyone of them.
I'm having trouble with this part. If I want to look up threads about the latest Pokemon movie, Reddit would let me just type "Pokemon Avengers of Middle Earth" into the search bar, and I would see hundreds of results from all different subreddits.
Lemmy only seems to search my local instance, unless I first
It's a hassle. I would love if Lemmy included some kind of optional search mode that searches the directory instance, and then has a nice big button to subscribe to the results that are not federated (am I using that right?) with your current instance.
I understand there are growing pains, but I work in tech and I'm just barely stumbling along here. The "it's like email" analogy starts to fall apart pretty quickly once you realize Gmail can only send messages to Outlook if you first go to Outlook and copy a special code. For every email address you want to send to.
Am I misunderstanding how it all works? I'm hoping to learn more.
No, I signed up for Mastodon long ago. Didn't get a ton of use out of it, but I posted there occasionally. I've had too many platforms bought out from under me and turned to crap, so the idea of the fetaverse appeals to me. Okay, the fetaverse was invented by Android voice dictation. I invite everyone to come up with their own ideas of what that Greek cheese-based universe might be like. 😆
But I've gotten far more into the Fediverse In the last two or three days then in the previous 59 years. I've set up Lemmy, kbin, and BookWyrm accounts. I know they can all theoretically connect, but I don't know how to do it yet.
I have been on mastodon for a bit, but not really that active in contributing because I don't love the microblogging format. I do consume some pictures and news via it.
Lemmy is definitely more my speed. I've heard you can cross access lemmy from mastodon, but my understanding is the UI is not ideal, so I just also have a separate lemmy account and jerboa to go along with my Mastodon account and fedilab.
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