Same for me. Participating on Reddit sometimes felt a bit like screaming into a void anyway and it was getting so overrun with bots. Every thread had a half dozen comments copied and pasted by random bots. It's fun to step away try new things.
Platform level: There is a company. they run the show. They have the software, hardware, networking, user accounts, all for themselves.
Example: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram...
Federated network: There are many entities that all use a common computer language of communication to build up a connected service. And all of them are mutually intelligible to each other, and talk frequently.
Example: Mastodon, kbin, Beehaw, Lemmy
They all use different servers. They all run the same (or very similar) open source software to make it work. You can register to any of them. Now you have an account and can interact with the content on the server you've registered to and any other servers that speak the same language and agree to cooperate.
Usually they are going to be in the Fediverse, which just means they accept content (posts, likes, interactions, etc) from all other servers.
Protocol level: All the servers, whether they are connected on the network level, will speak the same language, or at the very least can interpret what the other is saying. They are not necessarily connected.
This is ActivityPub
This seems insane, but basically all of the internet works this way. We just got used to using the Platforms as users since the web2.0 social media revolution of the last decade.
Now many people think we should go back to it, and build better services. They are a mess right now, but many clever people are currently working on making it more user-friendly. Welcome to what the internet would have looked like if we didn't just given all the power over to the 5 companies that run all of it.
Welcome to what the internet would have looked like if we didn't just given all the power over to the 5 companies that run all of it.
This statement is so heartening, as someone who has lived through the development of the Internet since it was gopher, ftp, and irc. (www came later.)
The insidious slide into corporate control of the internet was something I hardly noticed, it happened so gradually. But we are taking a huge step in the right direction as the fediverse gains popularity in all its forms.
I'm excited for the future of the Internet like I haven't been in a long time.
I started with Mastodon and then tried out calckey and more or less never went back. It's not that mastodon is bad or that people shouldn't use it, it just wasn't for me. I like the features of Calckey better. But I also tried Friendica (FB) and it has more features than Mastodon in some ways, but it just didn't feel right to me.
But that's the beauty of the Fediverse. We can all access the same content in a way that we want and that works for us.
That said, do try Calckey out if you're at all interested in microblogging!
For me, the analogy that I find most helpful for intuitively grasping the way this "fediverse" thing works is a system where everyone can see your emails. There are a bunch of different servers out there that all handle email, like gmail.com or hotmail.com, and you sign up to one of them and get yourself an account there - facedeer@gmail.com, for example (not my actual email address, this is just for this example). I can post my "emails" for other people on gmail.com to see, but since the email standard includes methods for sending emails to other servers as well people on hotmail.com can also see my emails.
So you're @TheCreatureAnswered@kbin.social because you have an account at kbin.social, and you've posted a comment in this thread here. But someone with an account at lemmy.ml can also see this thread. They can respond to it, and you'll see their response from @someone@lemmy.ml show up here on kbin.social.
It's actually not much like Discord. Discord is more similar to Reddit, in that it's all being done on one giant server that everyone has an account on. That's simpler, but it has the downside that everything is under the control of just one organization and if they decide to do something you don't like (such as this API thing with Reddit) then there's nowhere you can go to escape from it.
So like, there’s nothing preventing someone from taking a username from a different instance that’s the same as yours and posting as if they were you, then? Obviously they wouldn’t have the same instance name at the end, but you could theoretically have any number of people using the same name posting and interacting in the same post but using the name from different instances then?
Yes, but in the same way that there's nothing stopping me from making the email address barackobama@hotmail.com (the address is probably already taken but that's not the point)
Yup. Though bear in mind that the instance name is an important part of the username, it shouldn't be ignored. There's nothing stopping the facedeer@hotmail.com and facedeer@gmail.com email addresses from being registered by two different people, but since people should be paying attention to the part after the @ that shouldn't be a problem.
What happens say, john_doe registers on lemmy.ml (john_doe@lemmy.ml) then lemmy.ml decides to stop running? Could he still login to other instances as john_doe@lemmy.ml, or is this username not usable any more?
No. Each instance is its own independent website. If Lemmy.ml goes down, trying to log into another website with that account would be like trying to log into Gmail or Reddit with it.
To add to this, Lemmy is content aggregator server. It let's people run their own content aggregator websites.
Websites like Reddit.
Lemmy.ml is a website running Lemmy. It's the operated by the main Lemmy Devs. Beehaw.org is a totally different website that's also running Lemmy. There are quite a few Lemmy-based websites out there.
Kbin is also a content aggregator server, and as such it also allows people to run their own Reddit-like website. It's a totally different server from Lemmy, but it allows people to do similar things. It's kind of like how macOS is a totally different operating system from Windows, but they both let you operate a personal computer.
kbin.social is a website running kbin. It's operated by the main kbin dev. It's one of only a small number of websites running kbin, because kbin is still very early in development.
Now, both Lemmy and kbin use a communications protocol called ActivityPub. This means websites running either server type can actually communicate with each other in a meaningful way. This allows them to share and mirror content between them,and enables users on one website running either Lemmy or kbin to potentially see posts and comments written by users on other websites that are also using kbin or Lemmy.
It's kind of like cross-posting to different communities on Reddit, only its automated, and it's across websites.
If you are on lemmy, you can search for !technology or if you are on kbin @technology. If you are the first person to do this on your instance, you wont be able to see older "posts" since your instance did not know about this community before uour search.
Kbin is currently having problems with accesing other instances because of DDoS protection, so there is a chance you wont be able to find a community; the developer is working on the issue.
is that reason why I can't find in Magazines tab @genzedong or is it actively blocked by kbin, is there some list of blocked instances/communities by kbin or is it not available at the moment because of DDoS/technical reasons?
your technology beehaw link doesn't work either, showing me 404
The Cloudflare authentication checks are interfering with connections to other servers right now, so that may be why you can't find GenZedong. But it's also very possible that ernest is just blocking lemmygrad. Lemmygrad users have a history of trolling other instances and stirring up shit, so it's easier from a site management perspective to just... Not deal with them.
Functionally? Aside from things like differences in slang, Lemmy has the Jerboa app while kbin currently doesn't have one yet. As well as small quality of life things like the ability to collapse comments, which is also apparently in the works(?)
Kbin can share content between here and the Twitter clone Mastodon — this is what microblogs are and what making posts instead of threads does, it's a personal blog. Someone can correct me, but I don't believe Lemmy can do that atm, or even see them.
Other than that, I don't think there really is much of a difference
Ok, yeah, I understand you. I appreciate it. It's strange to me that lemmy would only half-implement it, though. Admittedly, it does add even more to the learning curve and I think it needs to be handled in a more explanatory way in the UI here (thread and post are synonyms to me), but you'd think if the two would interact at all, you might as well go all the way.
It's not that strange in practice. Lemmy focuses on ActivityPub Groups, and Mastodon users can interact with Groups, but the experience is kind of janky. There are several different pieces of kit that use Groups, and use them differently. Lemmy uses them for Communities, and kbin used them for the "Threads" half of Magazines. PeerTube uses them for Channels. Friendica uses them for Forums.
These different groups all get interpreted by Lemmy as Communities, because under the hood they're all sending info around in the same way. People can post things to Groups, and reply to posts on Groups, and how those different actions get interpreted is up to the software an instance runs on.
Going back to the email analogy from earlier, Lemmy is like Microsoft Outlook and Kbin is like Mozilla Thunderbird. They're two different programs written by different people in different languages, but they both communicate using the same underlying protocol.
Lemmy is written in Rust by a couple of people who literally think North Korea is best Korea (this is a source of a certain amount of controversy about Lemmy, as you might imagine. But as far as I can tell this isn't negatively impacting the software itself, and it's open source so I don't expect it will).
Lemmy's devs are what are commonly referred to as "tankies." Authoritarians who dress up in Soviet/Maoist pagentry, basically.
I wouldn't worry too much about it, personally. They were influential when Lemmy was small, but I expect they'll be marginalized to irrelevance once the Reddit flood fully arrives.
@FaceDeer Can you link to any sources for this? A quick google didn't bring up anything relevant except similar claims.
It's a personal decision for all of us to decide if we want to support people / projects who embrace human rights violations, so the more informed we can be with solid information, the better.
The best set of primary sources I've come across so far is in this comment which has links to one of the Lemmy devs denying the Uyghur genocide. Other than that I have to admit that it's one of those "everyone knows" sorts of things, as far as I'm currently aware. I did a little Googling and found this post that contains some more discussion and sources backing the accusation up.
Since I'm not too worried about this in terms of what it means for the Lemmy software and fediverse I haven't gone delving any deeper myself.
Consider registering at another instance if you're curious about lemmy and don't want to see that kind of thing. beehaw or sh.itjust.works are good ones to consider. The former has an application process but it was painless to me. The latter one has a very apt name and should just let you in.
Thanks
I wouldnt say stolen. Thats how culture works, how memes spread, how legends are made, someone says something funny and ppl starts repeating it. Although, its nice that we can find the authors of original ideas if we want to.
no worries! your comment still stands! I saw Rexxit, wanted to spread it, created meme. Rexxit is spread! I think many of us are just learning of Lemmy and Kbin and federated content and all of this and I think its awesome. Here's to sticking around
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