Edited; the defederation bit probably shouldn’t be the reason why someone picks a server (my original thought was that someone who is LGBTQ probably won’t have to worry about seeing phobic content from another instance, for example), but chances are if the rules make a place inviting to a group, conflicting (or illegal) instances will probably be defederated anyways.
That post seems to be missing.
Lionir 23 points 3 years ago
Thank you for your work! I wonder if this could be updated to include join-lemmy since it just points people to kbin.social. That might be confusing if they're trying to find a Lemmy server or well, simply other instances in general!
unsunny 14 points 3 years ago
Thank you, I didn’t expect this to take off like it did! I explained in another post here why I didn’t name join lemmy for the guide, but the thread is getting pretty long. There are instances listed on there fairly high up with descriptions that suggests the instance hosts and permits illegal content (the instance is not FMHY or related to piracy as I also noted), and I wouldn’t feel good about recommending the website because of that. browse.feddit.de didn’t have anything of that nature on their list as far as I can tell by scrolling for a few minutes, and it also tells you which instance hosts the community.
JohannesOliver 11 points 3 years ago
That is not a dumb question.
kbin is it’s own thing, originally it couldn’t talk to Lemmy. It can also have its own instances. Today it can talk to Lemmy and Mastodon and should be able to talk to anything else that talks to them. It also has its own communities, and people on Lemmy can access those as if it were another Lemmy instance.
Lowbird 9 points 3 years ago
If you mean the instance that promotes itself as NSFW allowed and "shota/loli/cub friendly", it's my understanding that fictional drawings of that type are not illegal, at least not in the states (presumably laws vary between countries on this). It's certainly not something I'd ever want to be within 10 feet of, but there's an ocean between that and actual child abuse materials (and the instance in question does explicitly ban such materials, per a quote of the rules I saw in another thread about this). I don't think it necessarily follows that people into the former must also be child abusers, same as I don't think furries are automatically into beastiality.
But nevertheless I agree it's... not a good look at all for that to be front and center on the join page. It could have and should have been removed a while ago - it's been up long enough I believe the Lemmy devs must be aware of it, so I'm suspecting they just don't care.
I think the join page also made generally offputting by Lemmygrad and arguably even Lemmy.ml, too, frankly, and since those are the lemmy dev's instances, there's no fixing that until and unless they end up just outnumbered.
tl;dr: I support you not linking join-lemmy, but I wonder if we have an alternative site that people can use to browse and choose an instance somewhere? If not, could someone make one?
Edit: an alternative would be especially helpful since redditors, lacking a direct link, will inevitably just google "lemmy" and immediately find the join-lemmy page anyway.
unsunny 2 points 3 years ago
Thanks for the reply; regardless of whether it’s actually legal wherever a person is/where the server’s hosted (Canada has stricter laws pertaining this type of stuff, not sure if it would cover what’s going on there), it still has a definite ‘ick’ factor I am not comfortable with, and I’m glad to know I’m not alone I’m thinking that! The ideology of the Lemmy devs and the Lemmygrad instance are also highly questionable at best, and while there’s not much we can do to keep the join Lemmy site off of the Google results in the short term, not spreading it further is a good idea.
There’s not another easily accessible mobile-friendly actual directory I know of; I put the browse community page as a next best thing. I think I vaguely recall finding some all-Fediverse-instance site, but that is was very broken, crowded, and unusable on mobile.
I’m not code-savvy at all myself; I’d really love to see another, more filtered directory that would be more appealing to the average person!
SindriDeLaMancha 18 points 3 years ago
all the weirdly specific cat subreddits if I don´t have a my r/catloaf idk what I'm going to do.
Anarch157a 11 points 3 years ago
Here's one for you buddy:
SindriDeLaMancha 1 point 3 years ago
thank you kind sir/madam/everything in between.
Martineski 5 points 3 years ago
You can make it yourself and start posting here and make it grow
P0wderedtoastman 17 points 3 years ago
As someone who is brand new here, I agree with the others: the de-federation part confused me. But the email analogy was easier to grasp. Otherwise thank you for this!
code 15 points 3 years ago
Alright so this seems a good a place as any to ask dumb questions... This almost feels like the 90's and using the internet for the first time 🤣
So, I'm viewing this post on lemmy.world, but the content itself is from beehaw.org, simple enough. What happens if beehaw.org is unavailable, let's say permanently shut down, right now? Is the past content still available on other instances or does it just poof? Could I still view this post one day, week, month, year after a shut down? Could I still comment? The image itself I see is hosted directly on the beehaw instance so that obviously depends on a stable instance.
httpjames 5 points 3 years ago
If an instance shuts down, they're supposed to send a "self destruct" notice to all other instances to delete their content, but technically speaking, instances do not have to listen to these notices. Thus, it's possible that deleted or unavailable content still remains available on some platforms.
httpjames 4 points 3 years ago
Lemmy's source code shows that user account deletion means the hosted instance will purge and redact all of that user's content and send a notice to other instances as well, but since it's federation, nobody is required is to listen to these commands, although the vast majority will.
chinpokomon 1 point 3 years ago
The concern which has been raised about this is also what happens if one of those other instances is down when the purge message goes out. It's a risk of a federated system like this, that because there isn't a single source of truth, that instances fall out of sync with each other and content is semi permanent... That's also one of the strengths of a federated service, so I think that should also help foster a better community.
SmugBedBug 13 points 3 years ago
Really like it, sadly I don't think the people I'd share it with would be willing to read through it. I'll try with word of mouth for now and use this as a backup.
Kory 13 points 3 years ago
It's great. I agree with the removal of de-federation, I don't see how that's important at this stage. And since you mention kbin.social, why not also point people to https://join-lemmy.org/?
unsunny 12 points 3 years ago
I will be removing the de-federation part and putting the email analogy in its place, I agree it isn’t really important enough to note. The reason I don’t add the join lemmy site is that they list at least one instance that seems to invite illegal activity/content, and that didn’t take long to find in the directory, so I feel it would be irresponsible to mention it. I scrolled through browse.feddit.de for a few minutes and couldn’t find anything that obvious, so I added that one. It says where a community is hosted, too, so that might help someone!
unsunny 1 point 3 years ago
(I can’t reply to zekus@beehaw.org for some reason, just loads endlessly)
It’s not FMHY, and the piracy sub appears on the feddit.de list I posted. Good to hear it’s being moderated!
BobQuasit 13 points 3 years ago
Very nice! Perhaps it would be a good idea to spell out that you can subscribe to any community in the Fediverse no matter what part of it you signed up on, kbin or any instance of Lemmy?
I know that's not absolutely accurate, but it's close enough.
croobat 9 points 3 years ago
Kbin is a different application, another content agregator suitable for leaving Reddit. The thing is, since we all use the same protocol to communicate (ActivityPub), these two completely different applications can talk to each other :)
SaucyGoodness 2 points 3 years ago
Alright, but functionally, for a reddit refuge, which one is "better"?
Edit: and what's Mastodon?
OneRedFox 2 points 3 years ago
I think kbin has the better feature set currently, but the dev describes the platform as being in "early beta," so IDK if it's ready for serious usage yet. Mastodon is a Twitter-like site. I think Redditors would like Calckey better if they're going for a Twitter-like platform, as Calckey also has threaded comment replies (though theirs is different from Reddit's).
Fullburn 1 point 3 years ago
I honestly think that kbin is "better" but it wont be really better until they can bring back federation properly as they have had to introduce cloudflare that seems to be breaking federation. Once that is up you should be able to view between regular kbin and lemmy instances you choose. I just think kbin is set up better.
priapus 4 points 3 years ago
They're functionally very similar but are two seperately developed pieces of software. The lemmy devs are tankies and many would prefer to completely avoid using something from them. I don't believe there's anything to worry about, as the devs can't control individual instances.
Aardonyx 2 points 3 years ago
I didn't know about kbin before making a Lemmy account, and Lemmy is the one being spread around Reddit as an alternative site. It then only comes up through an occasional comment on certain communities (meta ones) that the Lemmy devs hold particular views, it's easy to browse a lot of content without finding that out. That's probably the major reason.
emr 11 points 3 years ago
Important note for kbin (and fedia.io): if you sign up and fail to click that confirmation link, I think you're basically SOL. So don't make the same mistake I made! Click that confirmation link, it expires in an hour!
unsunny 3 points 3 years ago
Darn, but thanks for the note. I’ll put a reminder to confirm emails on tomorrow’s edit, even for Lemmy; since email is used to recover passwords, no email + lost password = lost account, and that’s not fun!
itty53 6 points 3 years ago
Kbin, Mastodon, Lemmy, and others are all "federated apps" connected to ActivityPub. They are just different UIs to connect to it, so you can see posts and content from one on the others.
Mastodon is a UI inspired by Twitter.
Lemmy is a UI inspired by reddit. It is more stable but less feature rich. You can get native apps just like with reddit, such as Jerboa (similar to rif).
Kbin is a UI inspired by reddit. It is more feature rich and less stable (said to be, anyway).
They are all speaking the same protocol though. So while you can load Mastodon posts in this Lemmy ui they might look ... off. Similarly you can load things in Mastodon from kbin etc and they too might seem weird. It's because they're not giving the same context you might get viewing that content in the UI it was made for.
These are all still new with Mastodon being the one most widely adopted already. So expect better features and bug fixes to roll out over time. Especially with so much more demand now, I'm guessing many old 3PA devs have already been working out new tricks for ActivityPub.
Faceman2K23 4 points 3 years ago
third party apps.
JesusTheCarpenter 4 points 3 years ago
I think you give some really important information for people to get their head around it. I've never seen it explained like that. Even further, I feel like there should be ELI5 without trying to use terms like protocol for non-tech people.
amortized_cost 5 points 3 years ago
Kbin = Reddit + little bit of Twitter
komnenos 10 points 3 years ago
So, is kbin a lemmy instance? If so, how do I log in over there? I'm registered here on beehaw, so how do I access/vote on kbin content?
gotta say, as a somewhat technically-inclined person, I don't like this fediverse stuff.
yukijoou 6 points 3 years ago
@komnenos@beehaw.org @unsunny@beehaw.org kbin isn't a lemmy instance, it's a lemmy "competitor"
kbin is a software you can install on your server just like you can install lemmy, or mastodon, or pixelfed, etc...
if you want to interact with a post/profile/community/... on another instance, the usual way is to just take the link to the post, and paste it into your instance's search bar. this'll bring up the post in your instance where you're logged in!
that's what i just did with your comment: i don't use either lemmy or kbin on my instance, but i saw your comment on beehaw, so i copied the link, pasted it in my akkoma search bar, and was able to reply to the post, even though my instance doesn't even have support for user groups/communities
that_funny_feeling 4 points 3 years ago
kbin in a separate software from lemmy. The same way that Mastodon is different but still federated.
gt24 4 points 3 years ago
Long winded explanation but hopefully it clears a few things up...
There is a protocol that allows two or more things to talk to each other. That is called ActivityPub and things that speak that protocol can work together. The things in this case are the servers which you register your account with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
You can have two different things (kbin and a Lemmy instance) and they can work together despite being different. They are differently written programs in different programming languages. The ActivityPub federation thing allows your Lemmy instance to ask to be sent all posts and comments from another server "just to have" as a local copy which you can then read on your server. If you comment, vote, or post on your server's "local copy" then your server sends that update back to the original server so they can update their records.
The content being downloaded from a remote server is like 1 person looking at everything over there. At that point, you and everyone else on your server can look at your local copy which is quick (if your server is not overloaded). The remote server can better handle lots of users from where you are at because your server is taking on the "user interaction load". This way, the user load is distributed to remote servers where the users do their interactions and the smaller "like 1 person" transactions are sent along when necessary.
The way things work on the Lemmy side is that you can see other communities by using the search function or by clicking on the communities button and clicking on all. You will see all communities that your server "knows about" (including communities hosted on this specific server). It automatically downloads all content from remote servers that it "knows about" (and it does so frequently) but that is driven by you first asking the server to get things from a specific server if necessary.
You can ask for things by searching for a specific address starting with a ! character. Wait a few moments and search again and you should be able to see that the content was retrieved for you. (You can search by a more granular term like the server address itself if necessary.) At that point, you can interact with that community in expected ways (like subscribing to that community to see updates from them).
The link you need is on the right side of any community page you view. Examples are technology@beehaw.org and kbinMeta@kbin.social
Once everything is set up and working, the server you log in to will automatically gather posts and comments from "the fediverse", show it on your screen, and send along any comments or votes you make back to "the fediverse" for others to see.
That all being said... kbin is a bit overloaded at the moment and is not quite sending updates to other servers. When they have that sorted, you should be able to interact with them. Refer to the following post from chaorace for more information.
EcstaticHumility 10 points 3 years ago
Saving this for when I need to explain to people the differences.
Harmageddon 9 points 3 years ago
I'm having a hard time figuring out how to subscribe to a community from another instance. I know I need a link to the community (not sure what this looks like as the one I thought I'd found didn't work) and a search bar to paste it in, which I found once on jerboa I think but not again. Is there a more detailed guide for subscribing to another instance's community?
4th_Times_A_Charm 5 points 3 years ago
You should just be able to search for the community using jerboas search. Example: I searched "technology" and it gave me back a handful of different communities from different instances all with "technology" in the name. Then you should be able to just tap the one you want and hit subscribe.
Harmageddon 3 points 3 years ago
Thank you! That is much simpler than I expected
Gordon_Freeman 9 points 3 years ago
I did't knew I could use a mastodon accout and created a new one here on Kbin. I'll like to know more about that, if it's possible (yet, I know I can use my mastodon account to subscribe to content from other platforms and see it on my mastodon's activity feed)
worfamerryman 7 points 3 years ago
It is a great post, but I would recommend changing the color you use for lemmy in the text. It is too close to black and it looks like only kbin is a different color. When I first read it, I thought there was a smudge on my screen.
Additionally, it seems that kbin.social is not currently federated due to being behind cloudflair and not being configured correctly. (according to other users) but I can confirm that kbin.social is not currently federated.
worfamerryman 2 points 3 years ago
For more info, I read more about it and the cloudflare thing is just temporary to prevent them from getting ddos'd. They will start to federate once things stablize.
levmyskin 7 points 3 years ago
As others have said, I would not talk about de-federation, and try to keep text as concise as possible. I believe we need a super easy, short and visual guide (this one is definitely on the right track).
I think the core concepts that should be illustrated are:
- fediverse nature (as you did);
- it doesn't matter where (on which instance) you sign up, you can still access and interact with all content of any other instance. Could be seen like having multiple doors (or streets) to access the same room (or town square).
I believe these two are the most important bits of information (and what puzzles people the most)
CynAq 7 points 3 years ago
I don't agree with the "it doesn't matter which one you join" part because each instance offers a different user experience, even though technically they are interconnected, and depending on mostly the size of the instance someone chooses, their experience can make or break the usability of the fediverse in their eyes.
I think people should be directed to instances with already vibrant communities and then when they learn the ropes, they'll find their best fit anyway.
levmyskin 3 points 3 years ago
I totally see your point here (and @unsunny@beehaw.org's). Yet, I still believe this is one of the most puzzling things for new people. People are just used to sign up and go, the fact they have to choose where can be pretty baffling imo, and maybe push them to desist.
This is just my opinion, but I think we should think about making the transition as smooth as possible (little by little, people will understand how this works and get used to it). Talking about my personal experience, I signed up on feddit.it, but I always look at the all feed (so I'm actually mostly hanging in beehaw or lemmy.ml communities).
Again, I totally get your point of view here, and you're totally correct. I'm just saying that my impression is people are super puzzled by the sign-up mechanism, which can be a pretty huge barrier preventing people from actually joining lemmy.
unsunny 3 points 3 years ago
This is kind of what I was thinking; it does matter which instance you joint in the sense that different servers have different goals, rules, and moderation, and saying it doesn’t matter isn’t quite right. It is true that you’ll see a lot of the same things across instances, though, and I’ll revise to add that in the next few hours.
CynAq 2 points 3 years ago
I'd suggest adding something like "even though you can access the content on other instances, the user experience will differ depending on which instance you sign up for".
A good analogy would be using Facebook vs Twitter but being able to follow and post content cross platform from either of them.
One will not look and feel like the other, but they will let you read and reply to content from the other one.
For good measure add in reddit, hacker news, and discord in there too to help people visualize.
It's also important to give people a few clear instance examples to check out, but you already did enough of that I think.
rustyspoon 1 point 3 years ago
Could you elaborate on why it doesn't matter which instance you join? Because I've tried accessing communities from other instances using my Beehaw account, and I'm unable to comment without registering under that instance first
levmyskin 1 point 3 years ago
Yes, seeing other instances communities from your own instance can be painful, and this is (as far as I understand) something the devs are working on. The way I do this is by simply setting the feed to all, so that you can see communities from all instances.
If you need to look for a specific community from another instance see here.
JohannesOliver 1 point 3 years ago
You need to access them through Beehaw, not directly. This can be done through the Communities menu at the top, or the search function (put in the !community@place or the full direct url to the community).
RassilonianLegate 10 points 3 years ago
@marsxyz
@unsunny
You can view and even comment on lemmy/kbin posts from mastodon, like I'm doing right now
It's not as good a way to view forum based content though imho
kryostar 3 points 3 years ago
So i replied to my comment from my mastodon account, but that does not seem to show up here. Is that how it's supposed to work? I could be easily missing something here. I know how federation works but.. I've never used it hehe
kiwi 5 points 3 years ago
You should see it now. I searched "https://mastodon.online/..." in the beehaw.org search bar to force beehaw to federate.
Kryostar 3 points 3 years ago
@kryostar@beehaw.org @unsunny Ok i figured it out. It's a bit clunky, BUT IT IS POSSIBLE! I didn't even know! Now to see if i can view this on lemmy.
OneFluffyBoi 2 points 3 years ago
@kryostar Hello from Mastodon! You can follow users/communities on Lemmy from Mastodon like any other Fediverse user and it'll boost all their posts into your feed. Then you can interact normally from Mastodon.
metaltoilet 6 points 3 years ago
Wow! I was going to make a guide but this is so much better than what I could've made.
sugar_in_your_tea 1 point 3 years ago
Feel free to create one!
Da_Boom 3 points 3 years ago
I have to agree with this. I wonder how difficult the actuvitypub/Lemmy APIs are.. I have some interesting ideas on ways to browse the fediverse and what I want out of a Lemmy app.
Of course the jerkily side of things could be due to having to access so many different instances to build your front page or /r/all equivalent.
Also I'd default to subscribed - people don't usually create an account using the app and therefore they usually have already subbed to a number of communities, not to mention smaller instances have a tendency to only have a couple of basic communities.
Another thing is some form of community aggregation system, so you can set up multis based on different criteria, or manual selections. Multis, i'd wager would have more use and utility on the fediverse than Reddit.
r3nder 4 points 3 years ago
This is awesome, thank you for making this. Trying to get friends and family to move platform seems like such a daunting task and I wasn't sure how to put forward the information - feeling much better about it now.
WindInTrees 4 points 3 years ago
Related question for all you experts: if I have an account on both (for example) lemmy.ml and lemmy.world, what is effectively the difference between them if I can view content from any federated instance?
Sirquacksalot 2 points 3 years ago path: 0 101230 101696 115273, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 2
mightyfoolish 2 points 3 years ago
Any member of the Fediverse can be banned by specific community. That can be a specific account or an entire instance of Lemmy, Mostodon, kbin, etc. I guess it's like one instance shadow banning another.
For example if behaw goes rouge, Lemmy.world can decide to ban all content and all users from showing up on Lemmy.world. The proper authorities must be notified immediately so Lemmy.world doesn't look complacent in those crimes.
priapus 1 point 3 years ago
If a community had no moderation other communities would defederate them, locking them into their own instance. If they had the illegal content you described, they would probably be taken down fairly quickly.
1993_toyota_camry 5 points 3 years ago
AFAIK, the difference is mostly in the performance, moderation, and peering of each instance.
WindInTrees 6 points 3 years ago
I see, so...
- If the instance my account is on is down or slow, I may not be able to log in.
- Only moderators from my account's server can take action against me? This seems... potentially problematic, unless the moderators from federated instances are all in communication with one another? E.g. if I'm a problem on one instance but not my home instance, is there nothing the moderators on the non-home instance can do?
- Could you elaborate on peering? Does that refer to which Fediverse apps a Lemmy instance can communicate with?
1993_toyota_camry 9 points 3 years ago
I'm new to this as well, so this is all AFAIK, don't take it as gospel, please correct me readers, etc.
If the instance my account is on is down or slow, I may not be able to log in.
Correct. Your account is tied to your local instance. Unlike mastodon there is currently no way to transfer accounts between instances.
Only moderators from my account’s server can take action against me? This seems… potentially problematic, unless the moderators from federated instances are all in communication with one another? E.g. if I’m a problem on one instance but not my home instance, is there nothing the moderators on the non-home instance can do?
Moderators of communities can delete your posts or ban you from their community. I'm not sure if remote admins can easily ban you from their entire instance.
Remote admins can definitely decide to de-federate your local instance if you and a bunch of peers are being bad trolly spambots.
Could you elaborate on peering? Does that refer to which Fediverse apps a Lemmy instance can communicate with?
Yes. Click "instances" at the bottom of this page to see which instances beehaw federates with. You'll note there are a couple banned instances due to issues with their content or moderation.
WindInTrees 1 point 3 years ago
Good stuff! Thank you for clarifying. This all makes a lot more sense now.
altz3r0 3 points 3 years ago
Only moderators from my account’s server can take action against me? This seems… potentially problematic, unless the moderators from federated instances are all in communication with one another? E.g. if I’m a problem on one instance but not my home instance, is there nothing the moderators on the non-home instance can do?
They can stop you from accessing their instance, afaik.
WindInTrees 1 point 3 years ago
Okay good. Not that I plan to be an issue. 😆
yukijoou 2 points 3 years ago
@WindInTrees@beehaw.org @1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org
Only moderators from my account’s server can take action against me?
as someone running a fediverse instance: not really... I can "ban" you from my instance, so that people from my instance can't see your post/follow you/interact with you, or delete specific posts from you, so that they don't show up on my instance. but i can't completely remove your account: anyone from any other instance can still see your account and follow you.
if i believe you did something really wrong and should be banned, i'd contact your instance's admin to take actions against you. if they don't comply and i believe it's causing too much issue, i can mute or "defederate" your instance. muting means posts from your instance won't be visible to people on my instance unless they specifically look up your account by name, and defederation makes it so that my instance pretends yours doesn't exist, and will refuse to lookup anyone from your instance, or let anyone from your instance follow some of my instance's people and so on!
hope this helps :3
BlackCoffee 4 points 3 years ago
Is the target group people who know what servers and/or instances are or not?
Otherwise I would go up one layer and put in the comparison more users have made about having an mailadres user1@gmail.com and being able to communicate with accounts who also have user1@yahoo.com etc.
It gives users who are not familiar an idea of the concept.
ghostalmedia 4 points 3 years ago
Great post. Mind if I repost on subreddits that are open during the blackout?
ghostalmedia 2 points 3 years ago
Fantastic job. I wanted to do something similar this weekend, but life kind of got in the way and I was pretty bummed that I couldn’t get it out the door. It makes me really happy to see that someone had the same thought! There was a big need for something like this.
You’re a bad ass!
rickcooker 3 points 3 years ago
join the same communities together
Let me make sure I have this right:
- there are separate Lemmy instances
- I can chat with other people from other instances (like email)
If I wanted to join the same communities as a friend, do I need to sign up for another instance or do communities 'live' on multiple instances? For instance, a community on 'cats.' If there is one on {instance1} and {instance2}. They aren't the same, right?
Splodge5 5 points 3 years ago
There are some duplicate communities (e.g. cats@instance1 and cats@instance2 to use your example) but you can subscribe to and interact with either/both communities without leaving your chosen instance - you don't need to make multiple accounts.
Galapagon 4 points 3 years ago
Can I "combine" those communities? What about duplicate posts across communities? For example, there's likely to be multiple gaming communities, i don't mind subscribing to multiple, but I don't want to see the same posts from both. Alternatively, if one gaming community "wins" - basically becomes default: then what? Sounds like we'd be reliant on whoever owns that community again.
Splodge5 5 points 3 years ago
Pretty sure combining communities isn't possible, from what I've read the idea is that after a bit the most popular incarnations of any particular community will win out and the problem should somewhat solve itself. Don't think that solves the problem of being overly reliant on a single instance to host that community tho.
howllo 3 points 3 years ago
Isn't having multiple communities instead of a default one a strength instead of a potential issue? Like, sure, if you're personally following more than one you'll likely end up running across repeating posts, but should one of them become a problem in any way the users can just abandon it for one of the others. Kinda like what happened with r/curatedtumblr, but the "new" option has been there all along. Plus, some will naturally prefer sticking to the smaller ones.
Faceman2K23 4 points 3 years ago
you cant combine them as such, you would have them both in your main feed though.
aggregated subscriptions are a feature being looked at for the future apparently though. which would be cool. you could have 5 different versions of one community, if one is outside of what you want to see you could block just one of them.
yukijoou 3 points 3 years ago
@rickcooker@beehaw.org @unsunny@beehaw.org to add onto what was said, the cool thing about the fediverse is that it's all interoperable:
i am currently replying from my own self-hosted [akkoma](https://akkoma.social/] instance. this is more of a twitter-like microblogging software, that i'm running on a server i rent with a few friends. with it, i can't really browse lemmy/kbin communities yet, because akkoma doesn't yet have support for those, but i can reply and read content from users, and i believe even follow communities! and i can also follow video creators on peertube, or on the instagram-like pixelfed, whichever instance they use, because it's all the same protocol, so i don't have to sign up there :)
JesusTheCarpenter 3 points 3 years ago
Really well put together. Very succinct but with enough information to get people started.
I find that for not tech people trying to deal with such terms like fediverse, kbin, Lemmy, instance, protocol might be quite overwhelming and even off-putting. I am saying this because I used to do software development and still took me a bit to get my head around it.
that_one_guy 3 points 3 years ago
This is great. Does a good job of outlining the important information and making sure that things are approachable for new users. There really should be content like this on join-lemmy.org and similar sites.
PCChipsM922U 3 points 3 years ago
I want to preface, if you see a mistake in the image or have something helpful to add, go right ahead! I still have the layered files for this, so edits can be made very quickly.
Why didn't you mention Jebora or the iOS app? People are into apps, makes things easier and quicker. For example, I never would have transfered to Lemmy if it wasn't for Jebora.
sugar_in_your_tea 2 points 3 years ago
Small correction, the app is Jerboa.
I 100% agree, and the existence of a mobile app is the main reason I picked Lemmy over kbin. I also like that the backend is in Rust, vs PHP in kbin, so I'll feel more comfortable contributing since I'm more familiar with that ecosystem. That probably doesn't matter to the average user though, but the app existing certainly does.
icanmakesound 3 points 3 years ago
Thanks for the info! Been here for a few days but it can still be a little confusing.
billbennett 3 points 3 years ago
@unsunny that link doesn’t appear to work
UnsupervisedScum 2 points 3 years ago
I cant add my account on mlem. I wonder if I am putting in the correct information for homepage.
navydevildoc 2 points 3 years ago
I can’t even find mlem in the App Store, so you are one step ahead of me.
Fullburn 2 points 3 years ago
It's in beta you you have to grab the Testflight app from the store, then go to https://testflight.apple.com/join/xQfmkJhc on your device and you're in. I just figured this out myself lol.
NisiMarie 1 point 3 years ago
I’m having the same problem. It won’t connect to any of the Lemmy servers. I set up accounts on two different instances, and it just keeps saying that it can’t connect. I don’t know if it’s just because of the influx of new peeps from the exodus or if I’m just letting my inner blonde do the driving today.
NisiMarie 2 points 3 years ago
Hooray! I just got the app to work. And I have to say that the app is absolutely beautiful. I instantly did not miss reddit whatsoever once they uploaded. I think my issue was that the servers are really backed up on FMHY right now and it was taking a really long time to save my password. Once it finally went through, I was able to get the app to connect. I am incredibly happy right now!
PiedPipetter 2 points 3 years ago
I was confused by "instance instances" in the first starred note.
Skooshjones 2 points 3 years ago
Great work on this guide!
CrimsonFlash 1 point 3 years ago
Question: Why are multiple communities allowed with the same name? Won't that create too much confusion? beehaw.org/c/community is different than lemmy.ml/c/community. Wouldn't it be better that all subs go to a single instance, no matter what the TLD is?
Eldritch 7 points 3 years ago
Because they are separate communities on separate instances. And despite having the same name can serve highly different purposes. You might start an instance relating to your local city or town. Then if you had a technology sub on that it might be more specifically geared towards talking about technology in your city or town. Others might be more general in topic. But all are just as valid. And you can subscribe to all of them or none of them.
remi_pan 5 points 3 years ago
This sounds great ! So if I take a famous video game as an example (for the sake of the argument, pong). maybe lemmy.world/pong is a global english-speaking community and mylocal.place/pong is the community of players near me (in a localized language). What might be strange is a transition period when you look for the biggest worldwide community, but don't know on which instance to subscribe... Very new user here... I am right ?
1993_toyota_camry 4 points 3 years ago
Yep. and if you're having trouble searching for a community because nobody else on your local instance is a member of the community yet, you could check a site like this:
YerbaYerba 1 point 3 years ago
Exactly, you can subscribe to both if you like. If communities were unique across instances then a bad actor could set up their own instance and claim all of the community names.
elonspez 4 points 3 years ago
That's the point of a fediverse. When lemmy.ml admins go crazy and adopt ridiculous policies, you can simply switch to another instance. If all the subs go into a single instance, then it's just the same as reddit, which is a single point of failure.
Hellebert 3 points 3 years ago
There are apps for both.
I haven't used the IOS app so I can't vouch for it. The Android app is passable though.
Encinos 1 point 3 years ago
So I'm trying to understand the whole federation thing, I know we can view/reply to the posts/comments on different servers, even to different platforms(?) like kbin/Mastodon while using a Lemmy account, though they might have slightly different formats, but can we sort of "follow" the feeds of other platforms?
Essentially what I'm trying here is to look for a one app/account to rule them all approach, where I can doom scroll through all the feeds from everywhere, kbin, Mastodon, Fedia, Beehaw, you name it.
For instance, since every server appears to have their own Communities/Magazines, I'm wondering if I can just subscribe to something like gaming@beehaw.org, gaming@kbin.social and user69420@mastodon.social, and read through all their posts in a single page?
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
I wouldn't bother with the concept of de-federation in a beginners guide. One of the most confusing bits of the fediverse to new users is picking a server. For most users, the one they pick doesn't really matter, but talking about defederation makes it sound like a really important choice.
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