That visualization shows exactly why the whole thing here is overwhelming for the average user. I feel that the federated aspect should be less focused on when talking about the fediverse. It makes sense to explain it, but many explanations on how to switch to lemmy/kbin/whatever put the whole federation thing on top of the list. I think this is a big turnoff for casual users/lurkers. They do not understand that they don't need to understand the structure of the fediverse to join, enjoy content and engage with others, so they don't even start.
I'm sure a visualization could help with that, but having a bunch of boxes and circles with arrows all over the place isn't exactly something that will mitigate the feeling of being overloaded with information. I'm not saying you didn't do a great job. "Arrows all over the place" is not meant to devaluate your work, on the contrary, it perfectly captures the feeling i have about the fediverse, but I would not use that image as an ad for it.
Agree completely. The average user doesn't need to know any of this, at least not like right away. Just join on kbin.social like you would on Reddit and start using the site.
What I've been doing during switching, so far so good with kbin. A bit under polished, but otherwise a great solution, esp with being both a Twitter+reddit alt. Looking forward to seeing it's further development
its not that simple. If for example you want to join m/technology and the community in your own instance is empty, a new user will think that there are not users/traffic. You need to explain them somehow that the m/technology@another-instance is different community even though that they share kind of the same name (first part of the name).
kind of agree. I cannot think of any way that this could be overcome. Something like having "default" communities but then this breaks the federalization. Where would this community be hosted and does this mean that there is a central entity? But still need at least a better search where one can easier discover communities from other instances. It is very tricky indeed
Thing is, people should also be able to join beehaw.org or other Lemmy or Kbin based sites and have basically the same experience with the same content. And they should be encouraged to do so, because having everyone on one server is unnecessary, likd of awful for the server admin, and also kind of generally bad for the ecosystem as a whole.
But once you tell people that, they start asking questions about how that's possible, and, well...
People understand the idea of a "Client/Server" relationship intuitively, even if they don't know what HTTP is: "this website is the server, and I am the client. I ask it for info, and it gives it to me."
Fediverse asks its users to extend that knowledge with the "Server/Server" relationship that underpins ActivityPub, kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. It's a new, unfamiliar relationship without a clear real world analogy, so that begs lots of questions, and the instinct is to be helpful and welcoming and answer those questions. These are good intentions mind you! But it's complicated, and that will limit adoption as users self-select and find something else "more their speed."
I'm optimistic though. The Client/Server relationship of the internet was once new and unfamiliar to users. I think with time (maybe a lot of time, maybe not) people will figure it out.
The problem is that the user is necessarily confronted with the technical design of the fediverse from the moment they create an account. "Do I join lemmy.ml or lemmy.world or mastodon.social or kbin.social" can only really be answered by explaining how the fediverse works, because the simple answer is "it doesn't really matter but it also sort of does", which is profoundly unhelpful
The absolute best way to explain the fediverse is to not.
When I wrote a short guide to getting started on Mastodon I made deliberate efforts to completely ignore the technical side. The instance stuff does not need explaining. Nobody cares about that. They want to know how to find people to talk to on this Mastodon thing they heard about.
Nobody will tell you to try some chocolate by explaining the entire supply chain for all the ingredients that went into it. They say "try this delicious chocolate bar!" or words to that effect.
If you can't think of a USP for fedi that doesn't revolve around obscure technical details that most people do not and will never give a shit about, and that honestlly are kind of awkward to explain and sometimes even defend, well... I'd suggest going away and trying again.
And people showed up on Mastodon, ignored how it all worked, complained that they couldn't find what they were looking for, refused to listen about how they could find it, and then fucked off.
Some rally basic level of understanding is helpful. Like the idea that "Mastodon" or "kbin" is not a single place, and that there are consequences to that that make things different here from centralized services.
Hmm, you are right with that. Maybe the focus shouldn't be on describing the underlying infrastructure before people join, but right after? So they have at least seen the building from inside before leaving again?
This is a good idea. I joined Mastadon with the influx last November, got confused and didn't return until the current Reddit debacle. I'm trying harder now to understand, but what would have helped was 1) a simple guide to getting logged in and 2) finding content and 3) being able to view it and reply (including understanding if I was supposed to use hashtags, etc.). Get someone started with a short list of popular communities/magazines, THEN show them how to branch out. #trainingwheels
No offense taken lol. I share many of your concerns about the viability of mass adoption of a complex system. The average user is not a computer scientist, and we can't expect them to have the time or patience to learn all this stuff: it needs to be intuitive and user friendly.
I think the Fediverse can get there, if not today, soon.
They do not understand that they don't need to understand the structure of the fediverse to join, enjoy content and engage with others, so they don't even start.
I think this is the biggest issue. People get so worried about how it works that they don't even try it out and get to see that it's actually pretty simple and works pretty much the same as reddit
true. I am literate in internet/computer yet the idea in general is still confusing. Navigating is also abit jarring, and I dont understand some buttons and features like “boost”. It would be great for beginners to include a tutorial for navigating the UI and a short introduction of the fediverse in #teachmelikeim5 level
I just wish boosting had a confirmation or a way to undo/delete (not sure if the Fediverse/ActivityPub supports this). My itchy Reddit migrant fingers have accidentally boosted several posts just because my monkey brain goes "ooh, large number" at this point :P
The stuff you already boosted have a line under the boost button. You can take your boost back by hitting that again. It doesn't delete it from your followers' feeds obviously but it makes it easier for it to be overtaken by something that's boosted more.
AFAIK, boosts are only used to rank posts on kbin. Lemmy uses upvotes for that.
Boosts are necessary because they re-publish content to the group, and that pushes it out to people who subscribed to the group after the content was originally posted
My understanding is that a "boost" is like a re-tweet or a "share". it reposts the content to boost visibility. whereas upvotes are like reddit upvotes or "likes".
Interesting. last night when I signed up I tried posting, and it seems kbin forces me to select a "magazine" even for the microblog feature? On mastodon and twitter I know you don't need to select a "community" or "subreddit" or whatever, so is there a way to make mastodon/twitter style posts without selecting a kbin magazine? Obviously for the reddit-style threads you'd need it?
The random magazine is meant for anything that doesn't belong in a specific magazine, so that is the one you should post to for uncategorized/random microblogging.
I think this illustrates why this isn't a replacement for reddit for many people. The point of reddit is it brought community and discussion to one site. It's what killed decentralized forums, and sadly, I don't think the average user is going to go back to that.
Personally I liked reddit because it was a forum where I could get all my topics on one site. kbin seems to be doing that. I can get different "magazines" on different topics. And the "federation" aspect seems to help increase the amount of content here? The main thing is whether the content is here, not the exact nature of it's hosting. I don't want to sign up for 30 different websites, I want to sign up for one website.
In general I think decentralisation is significantly oversold as a panacea, and conversely its advocates deliberately ignore that there are pretty concrete advantages to centralisation.
Worse, the advantages to centralisation are almost entirely on the end user experience side - "you can talk to anyone on the service no matter who!", "you only need to register one account!" - while the advantages of decentralisation are all remote and philosophical - "nobody can take it over!", "you can run your own service!". So centralised services will keep winning because they have the best pitch - or, at the very least, servers on decentralised services that become so big and have so many users that they are effectively centralised services all on their own (e.g. Mastodon.social, Kbin).
Most people don't care about philosophical stuff but they do care about having a usable service. It reminds me a bit of Linux advocates who preach the gospel about open source and how bad Microsoft is and how DRM will eat their nans or whatever, but fail to see the glaring issue that for 99% of users Windows works just fine and they don't actually care about anything philosophical, because they see their computer as a tool that plays a minor part in their life, rather than a means of self-actualisation.
That said, I think the best way to explain fediverse is to not. You don't need to tell people all the technical details, you just need to sell them on what they care about. Leading with decentralisation as your USP is a hiding to nothing because most people don't care - "it's a chill place here and you can do XYZ" will work far better. Anyone who cares will find out.
Yes, I agree with pretty much everything you’ve written.
I would like to add, that, just as with Linux, it can still take over the world, like Android — as long as the USP becomes more user focussed (like you said).
With Mastodon multiple instances work fine I think (like email), but for communities it seems more messy, so there may have to be a specific innovation there to make it less confusing.
All good points. I had the same argument with a software engineer friend, he touted the Free and Open Source Software aspect, the removal of an untrustworthy central authority, the ability to connect with only the servers you want and not the ones you don't.
And I just said "if you can't explain it to someone without a master's degree in computer science, it's not gonna gain mass adoption." This image was just my attempt at explaining for myself, it's not even as layperson as I wish it was.
Centralization has another aspect that is simultaneously both good and bad: you can easily remove offensive content and problematic users. A centralized approach makes it very easy to remove cancerous people, groups, and content, while a decentralized approach makes that far harder. But in a centralized system, who defines what is cancerous content, et al.? Reddit did a great job at removing racist content, for instance (or, if you go back farther, they removed 'jailbait' and 'creepshots' communities, which were producing content that was just on the line of being obscene). But they also took a "both sides are bad" approach when it came to literal nazis v. antifascists.
I'm a Reddit refugee, so it's going to take me a while to learn to navigate this. And yeah, I've been kicked off Twitter, so Mastodon was already on my radar.
I believe disassociating from Nazis, CSAM, etc is still very possible in a distributed network like this, the instance admin just blacklists the instances they don't want to interact with. But it requires the user to find the server that best aligns with what they want to see. A centralized admin won't do it for them.
Another question for anyone who has experience with the Federation: on Mastodon, Kbin magazines are 'people.' Is this literally what a Kbin magazine is in the back-end part of things, a space where all posts are boosted by an account (like @fediverse) ? Or is that simply Mastodon's way of displaying things?
I guess my question is: is there any difference between a magazine and a user account in the back-end side?
I want to know this as well. On kbin the magazines are identified with names such as @fediverse as if it were a user.
What happens if a user registers @fediverse as their name (or the name of any existing magazine)?
Conversely, what happens if someone creates a magazine with the name of a user that already exist?
On lemmy the communities are identified with an exclamation mark. It seems more appropriate to distinguish the two concepts. The hashtag sign might be even better no? Then every microblog post with this hashtag automatically becomes a thread in that community.
Pretty much yeah. A mastodon account or group (being added) and a KBin community are "actors" in the ActivityPub spec. All the various post types are "activities". They can all be various types of things (profiles, notes, articles, images, relationships etc) and the spec essentially glues together what a thing is with what it's done.
I see. So this is how kbin and Lemmy and Mastodon share content despite being totally different user experiences. They just implement the protocol as they see fit.
Misskey (another microblogging platform) has been growing rapidly recently, mostly in Japan, and despite fewer users than mastodon.social, one of its instances has been having more posts recently. PixelFed is getting some traction as well, and the upcoming option for importing Instagram posts will probably help it gain even more users, too.
I'm seeing people recommend different servers within kbin (Fedia, for example), but when I visit those servers my login doesn't work (I have not registered), so it seems I would need a completely separate registration...
So when I see posts like this: https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/12526/Question-best-kbin-server-to-recommend-to-users-tomorrow what is the benefit of splintering these userbases and therefore conversations? Wouldn't this be akin to having different tables in a cafeteria, or different Discord servers? Sure, they may all have similar conversations about topics, but it isn't the same conversation about a topic. What if I want to hear what a specific user has to say, but they aren't in my server?
I see right now that Lemmy.ml is not accepting new registrations because their server is at capacity and are recommending other servers. But what is the benefit for users to go to a different server? Wouldn't they get a lessened experience since the alternate servers are smaller communities?
Am I misunderstanding something about federated communities? If I make a post in one it isn't synchronized to the others right? It just seems a little self-defeating when the big draw for sites like Reddit and Twitter is that everyone is in one place...
Edit: I see another post that says that the cross-functionality between these servers may be currently disabled, so maybe this is just a bad time to learn about how these interrelate...? I'd still love some clarification that isn't someone just linking to documentation and specs.
My understanding is, to reach content found on other kbin instances, it is not necessary to create logins on them and go to them, rather the content on those instances can be "rebroadcast" to the instance you have an account on. You don't go to the content, the content comes to you. Likewise content you generate on your "home" instance can be rebroadcast to other instances.
I realize that's an optimistic assumption, one that I can't prove. By what mechanism the content is rebroadcast, I do not know.
The mechanism is called ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
It's the underlying protocol behind fediverse that makes things "propagate" for different servers and services.
This is why you can, for example, read, follow and post to any of these kbin discussions from Mastodon or PIxelfeed.
It's the same protocol under all fedi-sites.
What separates them is what "document types" they display and how they display it (threads, posts etc) and the surrounding UI and tools.
Your account is local, you can have as many as you like on different sites and communities.
Your data is federated and is accessible from other sites.
This way you can have "local home" community (people on your instance), but still have "global discussions" (communities on various Lemmy instances, Mastodon etc).
What's different from Reddit, is that there's not one "sub" - there's many. For example, let's say Linux. On Reddit you'd just go to /r/linux and that's all there was. On fedi, you have /m/linux here on kbin.social, probably one at fedia.io and, you have /c/linux on multiple Lemmy instances AND you'll probably have linux discussions on Mastodon (like you can follow Linux creator Linus Torvalds at @torvalds@kernel.org). This means you'll have many discussions in many places and that can be confusing at start. But it's not really that complicated. You just follow them all and you can see them all in your own /sub feed here on kbin.social (or whichever server you call home).
The server "doesn't really matter" in the end. In most cases.
So how exactly do I discover there is /m/Linux on kbin, and /c/Linux on Lenny.ml and /m/linux on fedia? On Reddit I liked that a new account was automatically subscribed to r/news r/awww, r/music etc, and if I got bored I could browse r/all and subscribe if I found something interesting
You can go to "Magazines" and search. If you search, for example, for Linux, you'll see several communities pop up.
You can also see if they're local (they don't have domain name) or from some other instance (they have domain name).
However, those are just instances that have been federated to kbin.social (i.e. someone here has previously subscribed to them). Discovering stuff from "unknown" servers isn't super easy - there's no "global fedi directory" of communities yet (as far as I know). You have to visit the local server to discover what communities it has.
That's the downside of distributed model. On Reddit everything was in one place because that's all there was.
But in a lot of cases it wasn't the case that a single subreddit had it all. Many topics had numerous sub's covering the same ground or being more specialised or having different rules.
Thats no different here. There may be an /m/linux and a /c/linux but they will likely cover different things so just subscribe to both.
Perhaps the app or UI can offer to bring all of them into one list, by finding / knowing all the matching 'subs' from other servers. How the app discovers them I'm not sure. It'd be functionally like how you could concatenate multiple subs into one URL.
But in a lot of cases it wasn't the case that a single subreddit had it all. Many topics had numerous sub's covering the same ground or being more specialised or having different rules.
True. It wasn't always easy to discover "everything" on reddit either.
I find that lot of new people joining the fediverse are unnecessarily worried about servers and instances.
Most of this works organically and you discover places, servers and communities as you go. There's no penalty in subscribing to multiple communities. Or all of them.
Unfortunately navigation to individual magazines feels clunky right now. Nevermind that I already have 36 subscriptions on this site alone. A multimagazine function is truly necessary if the federation is going to be taken advantage of, otherwise there’s not really a practical difference between federation and just using multiple forum sites.
A multimagazine function is truly necessary if the federation is going to be taken advantage
I'm subbed to 100+ communities. Some of them are here, but most of them are on Lemmy instances (since Lemmy has been around longer and there's are loads more of them).
Federation on kbin.social is currently a bit hit and miss because of the site load/CloudFlare DDoS protection, but I can see and subscribe to multiple communities just fine.
Wait, so is the way it’s supposed to work like this: let’s say I want a discussion about hockey. I sub to hockey here (hockey@kbin.social, I guess). In theory, it’s likely they would federate with something like hockey@beehaw.org. I shouldn’t have to sub to hockey@beehaw.org, because they’re federated? (I know federation is a bit wonky right now. I’m mostly concerned that it feels like I have to check a few different servers to see all the content I want, but if that will be fixed then I’m not worried.)
let’s say I want a discussion about hockey. I sub to hockey here (hockey@kbin.social, I guess). In theory, it’s likely they would federate with something like hockey@beehaw.org.
No.
I shouldn’t have to sub to hockey@beehaw.org, because they’re federated?
You do have to sub to hockey@beehaw.org if you want to see posts from that community.
But but once you have subscribed to hockey@kbin.social and hockey@beehaw.org - you'll see posts from both of them in your feed.
I see. Ideally, what I want to be able to do is sub to both, then click on a button that says 'Hockey' and have posts from both hockey@kbin.social and hockey@beehaw.org come up in the same feed, but only those two communities.
I'm a long-time Fediverse user although obviously new to kbin.
You have the same misconception that many people get at first. It is not your account (i.e. username & login) that is federated to other servers, rather your content that is federated. Everything you post can be viewed by people on other kbin instances, by people on Mastodon, by people on Calckey, Pixelfed, Friendica, Pleroma, .... the list goes on and on. But you don't have any logins to those systems by default, you'd have to create those.
And yes, the Cloudflare DDoS protection currently active on kbin.social (you've probably seen the "checking connection" when you reload pages) breaks ActivityPub federation. Things will be back to normal in a few days, hopefully.
So how do you access that other content — and interact with it? Can you interact with it?
If it shows in a thread here, is it a copy of the original thread? Will I be able to see the o.g. comments and, in turn, reply or just see and interact with its "retweet"?
If you subscribe to a community or magazine or whatever they call it on another instance and reply to a thread there it will appear in that thread for everyone who looks at that thread and is federated with your instance. There are some technical difficulties going on right now because of the massive influx of new people, but when things are working correctly it really doesn't make any meaningful difference whether the thread is on your instance or a completely different one. You are looking at the original thread, and other people can see your replies the same way they would see them from any other server.
There are also some differences in how Lemmy and kbin handle things, and we're in early days here, so expect a few bugs if you're checking out content from a Lemmy instance, but as a general rule in shouldn't matter what instance you're on as long as you aren't on some crazy server that encourages extremist or illegal stuff that ends up defederated from most of the Fediverse.
is not your account (i.e. username & login) that is federated to other servers,
This is kind of a problem though, no? The fact that you can have the same username as someone else who registered on another server opens a possibility to misbehave.
Usernames are unique in the sense that the full user name includes the server the user belongs to. e.g. your full user name is @gonzo0815. If somebody would make a gonzo0815 at lemmy.world, it would be @gonzo0815,world.
It's true that you don't immediately see that in the threaded view, but it is easily checked (hovering over username) if issues would arise.
As pienix said, you'd just have to be careful about the instance at the end. I guess that does open up problems where instances look similar though, like testuser@mastodon.social vs testuser@mstdn.social, testuser@mastodon.world. They'd all be completely separate but have some similarities at first glance!
Only in the sense that if someone can register bloonface [a] gmail.com and bloonface [a] outlook.com, it thus in theory "opens a possibility to misbehave".
The idea of a person having a single username that is unique across the entire Internet isn't one that really exists, if it ever did in the first place.
The idea of a person having a single username that is unique across the entire Internet isn't one that really exists, if it ever did in the first place.
Absolutely. When it boils down to it your Reddit name was not unique either it essentially was bloonface@reddit.com
Or in the real world: even there many people have the same name - believe me ;-) Then you have to ask for hist last name. And if the last name is "Miller", you have to ask even the place of residence, etc.. But even that is not a problem at all
That's a good description. There is a theory that last names were created to distinguish two people with the same first name who live in proximity. So if there was a Guy living in the settlement near a lake and a Guy living in the settlement in the forest, one would be called Guy Lake and the other one Guy Woods. I read a comment where the fediverse was described similarly. Servers are basically villages and you are free to travel to another village. In consequence, your username doesn't only consist of your chosen name, but also of the name of the village you came from.
You have the same misconception that many people get at first. It is not your account (i.e. username & login) that is federated ...
Yeah, I think I also got caught by this too. I assumed it was like a SSO Federation but well, I did a bad assumption.
I can subscribe to stuff on other instances/servers, vote on it and everything, but it's a bit more hassle to search it up in the magazines tab. Maybe it'll get easier once I'm subscribed to more stuff and more familiar with typing federated addresses of other communities, and things become more obvious to me.
And yes, the Cloudflare DDoS protection currently active on kbin.social (you've probably seen the "checking connection" when you reload pages) breaks ActivityPub federation.
I thought that was just because I'm on Starlink CG-NAT. I'm happy to put up with that since it'll help protect this new site.
if it works like as you mention. isn't it simply a "share it" feature like most social media have? like if you copy and post a link from youtube to your facebook wall page. If alot of people misunderstood the idea, it means there is something wrong with the marketing and introduction of the fediverse. That is my problem with fediverse in general, they introduces alot of jargons (instance, magazine, etc.); making transitioning from other social platform difficult. Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to understand it since I truly am planning to leave reddit altogether but not all people have the patience to understand everything like i am.
I'm more of a visual learner and none of the explanations of the Fediverse included a detailed map of all the different entities involved. By all means, please make corrections, I'm sure there is at least one misunderstanding in there somewhere. Also not sure how Mastodon fits in, seems like the format would be incompatible with kbin and/or Lemmy. Thanks.
Well, the microblog feature on kbin is sorted differently than Mastodon, but it's otherwise the same thing, to the point that you can even just follow Mastodon users with it. Technically everything on the Fediverse can interact to some degree, but it is very awkward to access Mastodon posts from Lemmy or Lemmy and kbin threads from Mastodon. It can be done, but it is a very suboptimal user experience.
All software and online communities go through growing pains, it's still Eternal September after all. Have you noticed the users making test comments just to try out the different markup options (bold, underline, strikethrough, etc)? It's always fascinating to see a new platform make those kinds of baby steps.
I suspect kbin will improve as requests for features gain traction and the developer (the only one!) finds the time to add them.
The part I'm getting tripped up revolves around accessing the content in another part of the fediverse. e.g., if I go to a lemmy instnace, it will ask for a log-in specfic to it (i.e. it doesn't recognize my kbin log-in). So what's the mechanism by which travel between platforms happens? If I understood correctly, some stuff will show up here that's been 'retweeted'. But what if I'm searching for content that lives in Lemmy or Mastodon instances?
I think part of this problem is how you got there.
If you follow a normal weblink (for example to a lemmy discussion) you arrive there as a user that is not logged in.
If you see a post in your feed here on kbin (the same discussion as above thats hosted on lemmy) you can interact with it and your interaction will be shared thorugh the fediverse.
@speck you can copy a link to the post in the search bar, this will then make the instance start to federate with the instance hosting the content. So you can do fediverse@kbin.social or you can do https://kbin.social/m/fediverse if the @ method doesn't work
Ah, you've got the common misconception that a lot of people have, but it's more the other way around. It's not your login that federates but your content. So you don't go to other sites you get the info from the other site brought to you and you view it here.
And this isn't just to other "reddit" sites running kbin or Lemmy. This is to Calckey Mastodon (Twitter), Peertube (YT), etc. All information on the fediverse is available to everyone, though certain platforms might choose not to federate with another platform.
Normally you could just search or find federated threads in All, but with the reddit migration there's a lot of strain happening, so some things aren't working as they should, in this case federation. But that will fixed soon.
I don't know if this will help, but a simplistic video about the fediverse.
I'm curious about that video link as an example of federatable content, because Framatube looks like a Peertube instance.
While you did mention Federation is limited here at the moment, when it's fully working on Kbin would it be possible to access the video on a kbin page by looking for joinpeertube@framatube as a Kbin magazine? Would I then be able to like/comment on the video without leaving Kbin, and also still be using my Kbin account? That would be quite the trick and it sounds quite exciting!
In theory yes. While all the information of the fediverse is available, not every platform chooses to federate with every other platform. But in this case I believe kbin is planning on federating with Peertube. Lemmy on the other hand I don't believe (I could be wrong) is planning on federating with many others.
In a similar example, I can follow Pixelfed accounts (IG) from my Calckey account (Twitter) and comment, like and share from there without having to go to Pixelfed to do so. It really is a great concept, and somewhat like how the web used to be (universal standards) before we let like five companies control everything.
You are making sense, just remember your login does not travel between kbin and lemmy. When you are on kbin, you can search for communities on the server you joined or across the fediverse. The way to do that is community@instance.name
For example, say if I found out the beehaw.org server had an awesome gaming community, well I can just type gaming@beehaw.org into the search box and then subscribe to it. It will then federated into the server (the server will start pulling in new posts - but not old posts) that means others can now see it too. That's why if you see the message that it's not fully federated and you might see more on the original instance.
Your login is just a place to reside but with the fediverse, you can pull in content to view. Which helps as you don't need multiple log ins for multiple services. I've seen a few people ask about people with the same username as theirs on other instances and that will happen but remember that your username is like email. You have username@instance.name, so whilst someone might share the same username, they'll never be on the same instance. That's how you tell others apart.
The 'content is federated, but your account isn't' thing definitely tripped me up too. It feels like the platforms would be improved if there were better tools for finding good content from around the fediverse, ideally from your home server, in my opinion.
To add to this, if you want to access them from your kbin account here, the place you want to look them up is https://kbin.social/magazines (also linked inside the bar at the top of the page) - that's where the search box is!
Kbin magazines and are the same thing as beehaw communities, different servers/instances just sometimes call them different things.
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