What is the thing that has surprised you the most about the Fediverse?

To me, it was the astounding amount of interactivity between the community.

At first I thought this was temporarily caused by the whole migration from the R site. But, just out of curiosity, I signed up to Mastodon and have enjoyed myself just as much as here.

Most of the Lemmy post's / Mastodon toots have almost as much or more comments / boosts than upvotes or favorites. It feels so organic and makes me realize how much these huge companies employ technics to pretty much force to interact the way they see fit.

It reminds me of that good old saying "you are not immune to propaganda", well I guess neither I nor anyone is immune to psychological tricks either.

P.S. I also love the fact that since there isn't pretty much any money involved, most opinions and interactions are genuine. Like, who is gonna pay this dude to advertise a book through BookWyrm? That increases immensely the odds that said person is being honest with their opinion of that book. It's amazing.

minnieo,
minnieo avatar

to me, it was surprising just how easy the fediverse was to understand if i stopped trying to think about it how i was taught to think by centralized platforms.

at first, i was really hesitant to migrate. i was confused by kbin, lemmy, mastodon, and especially the fediverse. i didn't think i could ever understand it. i wasn't confident in it. but, after a few hours of exploring, interacting, watching people talk about it and reading explanations, it clicked into place and suddenly made sense, a whole lotta sense. now, i am actually teaching others about what the fediverse is with little to no trouble and helping them migrate to kbin from reddit, and thats amazing. having tons of fun here! 👍

JWBananas,

The two biggest surprises I've had so far:

  1. Lack of federated login / single sign on. It seems bizarre in a land of federated instances to not have the identity provider decoupled (or even truly decentralized). Instance goes away? Poof, there goes your identity. "Backed up" your data and want to import it into another instance? That functionality doesn't exist today. And even if it were added, how do you validate?

I hate to even suggest it just because of how much of a buzzword it has become. But blockchain feels like a possible answer to the identity problem. It would couple one's identity to the network as opposed to the instance.

That's not to say that instance-level identities shouldn't be allowed as well; but it would be nice to have the option. Right now one basically needs to sign up for separate accounts on as many instances as possible to prevent bad actors from posing as them. A universal ID would solve that.

  1. Lack of historical data. Are you the first subscriber to !bobswidgets through lemmy.world? Doesn't matter if the original community had fiftyleven posts. You only get to see any created after you subscribe?
Decide,

I've been thinking about this for the last couple days, and I agree. There's even the problem of duplicate "subs* popping up on other instances. Federation as it currently is seems to be something that works a lot better with a Twitter alternative than a Reddit one. There's probably some tweaks that can be done to make it a more unified experience. I have some ideas, but I don't think they'd work.

These are my suggestions, and I'm sure there's a reason why they haven't been done.

  • Break down the Lemmy/Kbin Federation further. Each sub is it's own instance, this makes it cheaper for people to run their own instances, instead of running a full blown site with several subs. This will also allow for replacements for subs to be created easily, and removes the chance for another Spez to show up.
  • Make the user account an instance. Each individual post or comment is made to the user profile/instance, but is copied or reflected to the sub it is posted to. If the user account is deleted, a signal is sent to each server that the user has deleted their profile, and to remove each comment/post with the users unique ID.
  • Make each sub lowercase and remove all white space, so that individual "comic" instances, or "funny" instances appear together by default.
kresten,

I completely disagree with that it works better for mastodon than lemmy. I think it was confusing as hell on mastodon, but makes perfectly good sense on lemmy.

Communities are a major advantage, because they allow people without technical knowhow and capital, to create and moderate places of common discussion. This was an issue with mastodon because instances was the only way to divide users into topics, which prevented non tech savvy people from making these categories. Having communities, separates the concern of hosting from the concern of moderating.

Furthermore, I don't understand the problem people have with "duplicate" instances. What is the issue with subscribing to more than one? It's not like you have a limited number of subscriptions. There are already a couple threads on the issue tracker on GitHub, about implementing "multi communities" and so on, it has too many downfalls in my opinion.

tinwhiskers,
tinwhiskers avatar

But you can also have multiple subs on reddit for the same topic. e.g. AI and ArtificialIntelligence. People choose the best one and they either stand or fall based on merit. Things will settle down.

mfz,
mfz avatar

I’ve been thinking a bit about this lately since the Reddit migration started. I believe it could be solved at the client level at least. Unifying magazines over instances and behind the scenes pull in and follows twin magazines at other instances and presents them in a single abstract magazine.

There are probably reasons why you at the server level or user level want the low level community access and behavior we have today but judging of all comments and how we typically behave as humans I would say that is rather the unusual case not the mainstream.

Such users could easily then opt in at the instance level and everyone else looking for a more “centralized” experience can still have that through the client app.

No doubt it would take some work but I believe it is very doable given my understanding of the Activity Pub protocol and how it works today.

bbtai,
bbtai avatar

Lack of historical data. Are you the first subscriber to !bobswidgets through lemmy.world? Doesn't matter if the original community had fiftyleven posts. You only get to see any created after you subscribe?

This was suuuch a mystery for me as a noob, I didn't know what was happening!

tc,

Regarding the first issue, you could check out https://hubzilla.org which has NomadicIdentity, but it still doesn't solve it for ActivityPub. Maybe later.

samwise,
samwise avatar

I'll have to check out hubzilla this was something I didn't even think of but make so much sense.

Deref,

Bluesky is working on persistent identity with a DNS based scheme. You still have instance accounts but they're optional and posts reference DIDs so getting kicked out won't break mentions.

JWBananas,

In practice it's probably going to result in 90% of users anchoring at did.meta.com or some such identity broker. But it looks promising.

tal,
tal avatar

Instance goes away? Poof, there goes your identity. "Backed up" your data and want to import it into another instance? That functionality doesn't exist today. And even if it were added, how do you validate?

Normally, you deal with something like wanting to authenticate to many different entities via use of a public key. I suppose one could hypothetically have a mechanism to register a PGP or SSH pubkey with the network.

But I don't know how easy it would be for most users to handle the key management.

deadsuperhero,
@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml avatar

These are both definitely pain points. The good news is that the second issue can be dealt with manually, even though it's annoying: you can copy and paste post links from the community on the server you're browsing, throw it into the search form, and the remote post will get pulled in. This is a common convention in almost all fediverse platforms.

jrubal1462,

I think you're justified to be wary of the buzzwordiness of Blockchain though. For the 2 days I spent learning about what all this is before I signed up, every time I heard "de-centralized" I kept asking myself, "How sure am I that this isn't some weirdly elaborate crypto scam?"

Bonus fear: I was also concerned for a while that this was just going to be a refuge for hate groups who have been kicked off of major platforms. I've been pleasantly surprised so far.

Spzi,

It seems bizarre in a land of federated instances to not have the identity provider decoupled (or even truly decentralized). Instance goes away? Poof, there goes your identity. “Backed up” your data and want to import it into another instance? That functionality doesn’t exist today.

Just linking a suggestion someone made in the same spirit:

https://beehaw.org/post/605834

They propose / wish for Decentralized Identities.

There's also an open issue on GitHub Moving user profile to a new instance .

Spzi,

Two positive surprise features which are very useful in long and complex comment chains:

Comments to other comments get a colored bar on the left. Color depends on indent which makes it easy to find comments of same ident even over long vertical distances.

Super long comment chains can be continued on the same page.

Federation and defederation has much more complex implications than I thought: lemmy.world: How the beehaw defederation affects us

LegendofDragoon,
LegendofDragoon avatar

Yeah I'm on kbin and cooudfare was protecting the servers from crashing, but it also prevented federation from working properly. It's working again this morning and it's like night and day how much more activity there is!

Hugo,
Hugo avatar

I don't have to be stucked in a server. It's normal to have several profiles if I need or I can use just my main mastodon account to centralize all the main accounts I'm interested the most.

Seegrave,

How much better it is at being Reddit than Reddit. It feels like its the logical conclusion of what Reddit initially succeeded at for the user, before the perspective shifted towards myopic monetization.

Dirk,
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

On Mastodon: That you don't see comments/replies or likes for a status from before the moment you follow the user who wrote the status.

haelusnovak,

I like the new location, due to the principle of federation itself. It's interesting to see how theaet many smaller communities will evolve, especially those of identical interests on different instances. There's an inherent messiness to the situation as we're mostly humans, so all the "baggage" I wish would stay on Reddit is someone else's entire enjoyment here...

I've also been surprised how many people are eagerly becoming moderators -- there are many communities I'd like to see, but am not convinced I could even moderate effectively, so it's impressive.

That said, I worry some of the excitement is due to novelty and self-convincing, like when people say "This is fun, right?" But maybe I'm just a bit too skeptical. Regardless, I'm enjoying the ride thusfar, and love seeing people's effort on instances, communities, apps be celebrated. It helps convince me that humans do enjoy cooperative success.

sotolf,
sotolf avatar

I've also been surprised how many people are eagerly becoming moderators -- there are many communities I'd like to see, but am not convinced I could even moderate effectively, so it's impressive.

That's basically the same as on reddit, everything there also just got started by people wanting to see a topic discussed, I wouldn't worry too much, because at least in my experience, as the sub/magazine grows usually you find people that you trust that you can deputize into helping you moderate :)

VulcanSphere,
VulcanSphere avatar

Fediverse has taught me that social media can be decentralised.

Instead of stuck in a platform, Vulcan can read, write, and react to something posted in another instance (for example, from kbin to Lemmy).

dill,
dill avatar

I absolutely LOVE the open source/federated aspects of things! I think it's just so cool and interesting to me how it all works! :)

Aesthesiaphilia,

It took me a while to wrap my head around, but once I got it I'm loving it! Especially now the issues with the massive influx are starting to go away. We're on lemmy right now, right? But you and I are both posting from kbin, and you posted 3 minutes ago, and I can see it, and my reply is getting through. This was NOT possible yesterday.

dill,
dill avatar

It's amazing to me how fast its all progressing! I really love this stuff and am so glad to see it taking off as fast as it is!

iByteABit,
iByteABit avatar

It gives me hope for the future of the internet, even if the average layman never learns or cares about it all. It's interesting to think that the Internet started this way as well, it was a complete nerd thing at first and nothing like we know it today.

I hope I can contribute to either kbin or lemmy once I find some time, probably Lemmy since I know Rust and nothing of PHP. Perhaps it can be a fun way to learn PHP as well though

Dresta,
Dresta avatar

I haven't found the porn I like yet

Aesthesiaphilia,

It's getting there...slowly. My answer to OP's question is...I'm surprised by how puritan the Fediverse userbase is.

But they're getting swarmed by horny redditors now, so it's only a matter of time before there's porn all over the place!

minnieo,
minnieo avatar

be the change you wanna see in the world

nafri,
nafri avatar

just don't forget to fill in the alt text on the picture

noodlejetski,

being able to connect to not only another instance, but also another platform. I can use my Mastodon account to follow a Pixelfed account and to reply to a Lemmy thread. that's not something that the mainstream, commercialized internet with its walled-off silos would ever let you do.

dill,
dill avatar

Exactly!!

WreckingBANG,
@WreckingBANG@lemmy.ml avatar

I think the concept of the Fediverse working that well is still sureal. It is so fascinating how a entirely community driven project works better then what some comapanys do. This is what Social Media should be. A place by Humans for Humans owned by everyone. Not some Company that just wants to make money.

deadsuperhero,
@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml avatar

The biggest thing that's surprised me is just how long the network has been around. I signed up for Identica (StatusNet platform, which became GNU Social) in 2008! The fediverse has only continued to grow and evolve. It's absolutely wild.

BobQuasit,

BookWyrm. I'd searched intensively for a replacement for GoodReads, and been stuck with LibraryThing despite it's extreme user-hostility (by which I mean the opposite of user-friendliness, not that the people there were hostile). BookWyrm was what I was looking for all along!

deadsuperhero,
@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml avatar

Bookwyrm is so good! It's so simple, and just works. Somehow, it's one of those examples of the open source alternative actually being way less clunky and cluttered than the proprietary thing.

sotolf,
sotolf avatar

I've been really enjoying bookwyrm as well, it has just the things that I want, and it's clean and simple, that it makes it trivially easy to share with people I talk with on mastodon as well is a plus :)

baascus,

We need polished mobile apps to really push the fediverse to the masses. It has been a great experience so far though and I think I'll stay a while.

kresten,

I honestly have no need to return to reddit, the communities I followed on reddit are starting to form on here, and I just really like the federated infrastructure as opposed to the centralized ad-driven social media

gamermanh,

Jerboa works for me, at least, better than the reddit official one ever did...

themadcodger,
themadcodger avatar

True but tbf that's a pretty low bar 😂

kratoz29,

It needs their tweaks though, adding new communities from other instances is impossible, or at least that's what it seems.

CheshireSnake,
@CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Same here. Although I have to admit it's not ready for the mainstream. I can imagine people struggling, for example, about what instance to input if they just charged in without taking note of the specific instance they joined.

I mean, for us it's simple. For others, maybe not.

deadsuperhero,
@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml avatar

The apps situation has gotten a lot better over the years, but I can't understate how big of a sea change it was when Mastodon first came along. Prior to them, most fediverse apps were terrible. The influx of clients that came out of that community changed the network in so many ways.

baascus,

Are there any iOS apps that you recommend checking out? I tried mlem and it is incredibly unstable.

deadsuperhero,
@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml avatar

Unfortunately, I'm an Android user. But, a quick search has revealed Remmel and Cavy.

Given how fast everything is blowing up, you'll probably see a lot more very soon!

werni,

Ivory is really great for Mastodon!

ch00f,

I've got a handful of friends where our only group chain is through a Matrix-Synapse server I have running in my closet. Everyone installed Element, and it works exactly like any other messaging program.

The only downside is that at the moment, it routinely and randomly struggles to decrypt certain messages.

JWBananas,

What we need are more backend and full stack developers to shore up the core functionality. A polished mobile app is not going to cancel out the other shortcomings.

There are critical bugs and missing functions/features that need to be addressed first. Otherwise the masses are going to take one look and never return.

baascus,

hmm...perhaps time to stop ignoring rust

Maestro,
Maestro avatar

Lemmy is Rust, Kbin is PHP/Symfony

!deleted110152, (edited )

deleted_by_author

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    sotolf,
    sotolf avatar

    The sync dev is at least thinking of doing it, I would point you to the announcement, but well, they are still parttaking in the lockdown :)

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