How should I be using Lemmy?

stopthatgirl7, 10 months ago

This site might help a lot with finding the equivalent subreddits on Lemmy and Kbin. It even tells you which ones are “official” ones.

Personally, I use kbin because it seems to federate with the other services more easily. I see so many posts from other Lemmy sites on it, plus it runs pretty well. I also like how it gives you Fediverse-friendly URLs for sharing, with makes it easier to post things from Kbin and Lemmy on Mastodon.

TimeSquirrel, 10 months ago

This is going to blow your mind too but...you don't HAVE to create accounts on all those servers. I'm reading your post right now from Kbin.

Scope, 10 months ago

This is all very confusing for me, too. I have an account here (posting from kbin), and one on lemmy.world. I assumed it was a good idea to make an official presence in as many of the instances as possible. So, is the fediverse just a content aggregator for everyone who officially joins it? How do you decide to cut off one or more of the different sites/apps if you wanted? I have a lot of questions I can't quite formulate. I have sort of an intuitive understanding, but I feel like a kid using the Internet for the first time in another way, too.

Which I really like.

MxM111, 10 months ago

Think like this. On reddit, you had old.reddit.com and www.reddit.com, here you have lemmy.world, kbin.social, and many more.

On reddit you have (I making the names up): /r/politics, /r/politicaldiscussion /r/truepolitics etc. All about the same, but slightly different. Here you may have politics@lemmy.ml politics@kbin.social and many more.

The rest goes behind the scene - fedeverse decentralized, run on many different servers, but you can simply ignore all that, and think about all of that as names and themes.

ginerel, 10 months ago

So, is the fediverse just a content aggregator for everyone who officially joins it?

Kinda, but not exactly. Imagine there's a sea with different ships. The ships have different crews, all with their own interests - some may like sleepy cats, others might like painting etc. And the sailors set their communities. Each community must take a room on that ship, and they can have whatever rules they want, unless they don't break the general rules of the ship they're on. Now, imagine the rooms have hardware that can create a hologram version of you, through which you can communicate with others - just like in Star Wars or Star Trek. By using that particular thing, any sailor can have a holographic version in any of the ships at will, and attend the discussions.

That fleet of ships is Lemmy as a whole. And every ship is a server.

Now on to something a bit more complicated: out there, there's also a group of airplanes, and there's also a group of UFOs, but fortunately controlled by humans. Their crews similarly have different interests, different hobbies, whatever. They also have this thing that allows their hologram into the room where your community gathers. They might however have their voice distorted, or there might be some latency, their image might be distorted a bit, but that's okay. You generally get their message. That is because they use a different implementation of that thing, or they work differently since they're not ships - they're planes, or UFOs, serving different purposes, working differently. There is usually, however, no issue in ship-to-ship communication.

The other vehicles are the other platforms such as Mastodon, Kbin, Friendica, Pixelfed etc. - they all use a protocol (think of it as a language) called ActivityPub (that would be the thing allowing you to be on any ship through your hologram); these platforms usually work together in order to facilitate communication from one-another, but they add different features, they cather to different people, so issues may arise from time to time. That's fine. The message should get through.

How do you decide to cut off one or more of the different sites/apps if you wanted?

Let's return to my previous example: Each ship has a captain. The captain can decide to cut all communications with all ships, allow communications with all ships from his end (mind that other captains can have the same power, but on their ships), or only allow communications with certain ships (which is generally what is done around this place).

When any captain decides to cut communications with any ship, the process is called defederation - it's more of a red button.

Besides that, you can also block individual users yourself from contacting you, so you have some power as well. :D

Hope my example makes things more clear :D

PlutoniumAcid, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Now what might really cook your noodle is the info that the developers of the Lemmy software are pro-Russian genocide deniers, and there's a growing sentiment to not support that by dropping Lemmy in favor of kbin or something else.

Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579

Just as I was starting to get the hang of this, it feels like I stepped into another wasp nest.

Ookay, then let's look at kbin, right? Well, there's literally only ONE developer and the current version still very much a (good) beta version. So, not kbin either, then?

What's left? Beehaw, who act like snowflakes and have disconnected from where growth and interesting stuff is happening?

I feel pretty lost in the sea of the fediverse right now. Go back to Reddit? Naw, not right either.

slybird, 10 months ago

Mostly just wanted to make my first comment

I haven't signed up for Lemmy. Between the Lemmy and Kbin I like this Kbin a heck of lot more and decided to sign up here.

I haven't abandoned Reddit and I have no plans on doing so. I'll probably be on both platforms if this one takes off or until Reddit becomes something like a Myspace. For now I'm just exploring here.

LunarTick, 10 months ago

I tried signing up to lemmy.world and it just wouldn't progress past spinny waiting graphic. Then lemmy.ml and it said application sent and then never heard back. Kbin just worked, so here I am. Also signed up for wt.social, but tried to sign up for trust cafe and it was just broken.

I'm finding that much or most of what I saw on Reddit is here too, so I may actually phase it out myself.

Willie, 10 months ago

Well, you can always put one foot on each side. Make an account on both, use both a bit.

kbin has a better interface, in my opinion though, I'm cheering for them!

kerplunk, 10 months ago

Let's say they are - who cares? They write the software, they don't run the server you are on unless you are on their server, so don't be on their server then. That's the whole point of federation. If one developer at some company you like is a tankie, you wouldn't use that software? If that's the case, it might be more of a you problem.

Packopus, 10 months ago

@kerplunk Also to that point, this is apparently a baseless rumor started from someone who had some beef with the dev at some point. And it's only spiralled because people keep spreading this info to new people who then just rinse and repeated what they hear because they're all new.

I can't find the link but it's on the lemmy blog. So it's best not to spread the info based on what you hear in the comments anyway. Lemmy is fine as long as you like the software. The best way to not support them is by not donating or something. That's all they get from it. Let them be tankies if they are, and distance yourself from the core instances.

kbin is newer but in my opinion the better interface. And if I stick around it will only get better!

I'd say Beehaw is the fediverse for your kids. let them be soft and kind and ban curse words.

You're safe with lemmy or kbin, probably. Just live with some growing pains for a month or two.

@admiral_muffin @PlutoniumAcid

PlutoniumAcid, 10 months ago

It may not be so baseless after all. Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579

Thank you for your comment though, you have good points, especially that Beehaw is also a Lemmy instance, and to look for one that is not operated by these people.

silicon_reverie, 10 months ago

Just to clarify a few things:

1. Some of the dev team members who wrote the apolitical Lemmy software are the ones being accused of things. However, anyone can copy that software and create a Lemmy instance. Those devs made one called lemmy.ml that they host and moderate themselves, but everyone else is just copying the base code.
2. Beehaw is a Lemmy instance. Same apolitical software that runs all the other instances you see, just hosted and moderated by people who would rather not see disinformation, political propaganda, and hate speech on their site.
3. Kbin is different software, but still uses the same ActivityPub communication so they can talk to Lemmy instances and Mastadon (Twitter-like) instances.
4. Kbin.social is the main kbin instance run by the developer, but anyone can host their own version

PlutoniumAcid, 10 months ago

It may not be so baseless after all. Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579

Thank you for your comment though, you have good points, especially that Beehaw is also a Lemmy instance, and to look for one that is not operated by these people.

ScreaminOctopus, 10 months ago

As long as the devs don't admin the server your account is on they won't have much effect on your experience

Kichae, 10 months ago

1. The Lemmy project maintainers are communists, and quite possibly Marxist-Leninists, but I've never seen them make any statements denying genocide. They're been fairly explicitly against genocide, and have made statements directly to that effect. Meanwhile, the actual software has seen contributions from many people from all over the political spectrum. Because that's how the open source development community works.

2. Reddit's seen significant investment from Tencent, a Chinese company with well-known ties to the Chinese government and the CCP. Whether the people running the company believe China has committed genocide or not, those continued ties are implicit support for the government's actions (made even stronger by the Chinese government set to take ownership over a significant chunk of the company). They've been invested in Reddit for years, but that hasn't stopped basically anyone playing the "evil communist" card against the Lemmy devs from using Reddit. In fact, it's been used for a while now to try and convince people not to leave Reddit.

3. Reddit's also seen investment from white supremacist and actual fascist Peter Thiel. He invested almost a decade ago. Once again, no one seems to have any issue with the politics of the people backing Reddit.

4. The politics of the Lemmy devs can be separated from the usage of the software. The software is free, contains no ads, and usage of it does not directly financially support the Lemmy developers at all. Meanwhile, Reddit investors who implicitly deny or actively support genocide both in China and in North America stand to make considerable money off of farming our content out to chatbot developers and/or selling their stake in the business to greater fools.

5. Beehaw defederated from like 3 Lemmy instances. Most of us on the fediverse still have unfettered access to their communities. All it takes to not be disinvited from their party is to not shit all over their rugs.

PlutoniumAcid, 10 months ago

Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579

Kichae, 10 months ago

Ah, I see. This is a common blind spot with respect to genocide. The word gets tied to the Holocaust and the massacres of Cortez, that it gives people an out when confronted by acts and attitudes that are very much genocide, but which do joy generate literal mounds of dead bodies.

And it doesn't change the dynamic with respect to service or product usage, because I can all but promise you that spez, and basically the entire staff of Reddit deny the ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples in North and South America, the ongoing genocide of the Roma in Europe, and perhaos - even probably - the historical genocides of these groups (with the possible exception of the Aztec).

I don't mean to come off as if I'm playing with whataboutism. I'm not. Genocides done here do not excuse genocides perpetrated by foreign cultures or regimes. It's just that if we apply the same standards to people who deny genocides being perpetrated by our own peoples and institutions, then we basically can't go anywhere or do anything ever. The only difference with that particular Lemmy dev is that they're playing rhetorical games about a genocide that most of us probably never would have heard of if not for the US playing politics with China.

Golfindriel, 10 months ago

This is the first time I hear about the Lenny developers being pro-Russian. Do you have any source where we can look into it?

PlutoniumAcid, 10 months ago

Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579

Danican, 10 months ago

I'm curious about this Russian connection as well. This is the only related link I've found so far. Can anyone shed more light on this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/143o5xd/reconsidering_my_support_for_lemmy/

tikitaki, 10 months ago

if https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835073659101524 is the post you're referring to, I'm not impressed

the devs haven't actually said anything - they just didn't ban someone who was sharing those beliefs

is that what you want? anyone who says anything controversial about sensitive topics gets banned and silenced? wrong or right, I don't think someone should be banned unless they are explictly advocating for genocide (ie dictator xyz should have finished the job) or using hate speech (ie people from race xyz are a bunch of dumb dirty **** )

beyond that, people should be allowed to share controversial opinions and the community will correct said person and by doing that 3rd party readers have the chance to be educated. this automatic response to cancel and ban just isn't conducive. we need to stick together at this point - we're in a fight for the future of the internet

MentalEdge, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Except this is open source developed software. Using it doesn't actually funnel money to those people is any way similar to using something that is commercial does.

Unless you're also a direct supporter of that individual dev via buymeacoffee.com or something.

And again, it's open source. We can literally just take the code from them and start making it our own.

The devs have literally no power over instance admins. And anyone can start up a node, and be one.

That's one of the perks of open software. Unlike with corporations, where you have to take or leave the whole thing, you can actually change things in the direction you want without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Maybe that's Kbin, maybe its a future fork of lemmy that is able to convert existing nodes.

Regardless, the boycotting for change that we are forced to resort to under capitalism, isn't relevant here.

bernieecclestoned, 10 months ago

It's open source software, if the devs try to enforce their political views, it can be forked

Oneandonlyzach, 10 months ago

Maybe I can be of help with explaining how Lemmy and the federation works. (Hope I have this right, anybody feel free to correct me)

Lemmy itself is just the software used by the different servers (beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, etc..) that belong to the federation.

These servers can each have communities and users that belong to them, but these communities and users can all interact with and be interacted with from other servers. Example, I am currently logged into and browsing this post from the sh.itjust.works server)

So the communities that you see on lemmy.one are hosted on one server and the communities from beehaw.org are hosted on a different server.

Because of this setup, communities aren't just as simple as Reddit (/r/wellthatsucks) because there can be !wellthatsucks and !wellthatsucks. These communities are different and run by different people.

Now the way the federation for the servers works is that in order for servers to know that eachother exist, communities or posts from one server have to be searched for on another one. (Ex. searching !wellthatsucks while on beehaw.org) by searching for the communities, your server now knows they exist and will work in the background to sync those communities so that you can browse them from your own server.

The idea is that you only need 1 account on 1 server somewhere in order to participate in the federation.

Unfortunately, because of this system and the rapid growth from the Reddit exodus, communities have been splintered onto different servers. That is why LOTRmemes exist in many different places. They are all different communities.

In order to find the communities that you are looking for on beehaw, search for them while logged into your account on Lemmy.one. You'll probably be able to find them.

Keep in mind, this federation works when the servers are okay with communicating with eachother. You will find there are posts talking about defederation of servers.

My home server is has been defederated from beehaw.org. I cannot find their communities or interact with anything on their server, and the same with them to my home server. Both of our servers however can still participate with other servers though, because only the metaphorical link between beehaw.org and sh.itjust.works is broken, all the others are still intact.

I hope this sorta clears things up a bit for you. Welcome to Lemmy!

Mintyytea, 10 months ago

I would actually try to not subscribe to any beehaw communities if you’re not planning to be on beehaw since they’re defederating. I think that means anything you post on those communities can’t be seen by other servers?

You can browse on lemmyverse.net/communities for a list of every single (Lemmy-only) community.

There’s no equivalent browser site on kbin.

However, another way you can search and get pretty much/nearly all results is by using the community search on the large servers of lemmy and kbin. These large servers try to add every single community, so you can search for both kbin/lemmy communities on these

So for kbin, I use https://kbin.social/magazines
and you can search lemmy.world’s communities too. You can do searches on these even without an account

bear_delune, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

You're on street(ActivityPub), you have your home(lemmy.ml) and in your home there's a bunch of rooms with people hanging out(communities), but you can visit other houses(Beehaw, kbin) on the street and hang out in their rooms too.

There may be rooms in different houses that have similar purposes, but you can freely go to whichever is best for you and aren't required to stay home. It doesn't matter if there are multiple rooms in different houses for the same purpose; just check them out and see which one works best for you

Evkob, 10 months ago

To use the ever popular email analogy, trying to log-in to beehaw with your lemmy.one credentials is like trying to log-in to gmail using your hotmail account just because you want to send an email to someone with a gmail address.

gingerman, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I think am sort of struggling to wrap my head around how lemmy really works and where should be hanging out. It was easier on reddit in the sense that if I wanted to go LOTRmemes, there was only subreddit but here on Lemmy, there seem to be multiple instances of the same community :D

This one took awhile to wrap my head around as well. I'll try to explain. Each Lemmy instance has its own unique communities. So you might find LOTRmemes on lemmy.one, lemmy.ml, and Lemmy.world. Each is a community of its own and unrelated to the community of the same name on a different instance. You can choose to subscribe to each one you find or only the ones that seem to fit your tastes.

nerdyguy1990, 10 months ago

Not for nothing, but have you tried Lemmy.ml? They are very left-wing (apologies if that's not your thing) Mostly socialist I wanna say. Great community and various topics to choose from, for discussion.

CarlsIII, 10 months ago

deleted_by_author

AlexTheLost, 10 months ago

One server can defederate from another server, that doesn't prevent a 3rd server from communicating with both of them

JWBananas, 10 months ago

While true, I would like to point out that this does not imply arbitrary routing. In other words, instance A can't pull data from instance C via instance B.

Hyperreality, 10 months ago

The kinks really need to be worked out and it all needs to be made far more noob friendly. When I opened this thread, I was super confused. I'm currently reading it on kbin.social with my kbin account. And it looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/2R8HjMa.png

I read the title, next to it: kbin.social. But obviously this thread isn't on kbin. It's on lemmy. Still showed up in my feed, even though I'm not subscribed to m/asklemmy. You're now saying beehaw is unfederated, but I've also subscribed to stuff on beehaw from kbin.

I assume it's largely because it's still early days, but oh boy. I'm relatively pc literate. I grew up using dos, have installed linux, and have no problem using the commandline in windows or osx. I've seen people far more pc literate than me getting confused by it all.

I can only imagine how confusing this must be for casual users.

subignition, 10 months ago

That's due to a bug where local caches of remote communities are recognized as being under kbin.social instead of the actual domain they're on.

(Not disagreeing that it isn't newbie friendly at all. Just adding context)

yelgo, 10 months ago

Defederation doesn't disconnect an instance from the whole network, only specific instances.

The news about beehaw defedrating referred specifically to beehaw.org defederating from shitjustworks and lemmy.world. Only users on those instances cannot see posts from beehaw, and users on beehaw cannot see posts from those instances.
shitjustworks and lemmy.world have not defederated from the fediverse at large, and are still communicating with all major instances other than beehaw.org.
Beehaw.org has also not defederated from kbin.social which is why you can still subscribe to and interact with them on kbin.social.

JohnEdwa, 10 months ago

sorting "All > Hot" means I end up seeing the same threads.

That's a known bug which should be fixed in the next Lemmy version - the process responsible for updating those currently crashes rather often and the only fix is a server reboot which are not advisable.

saigot, 10 months ago

To top it off, it is proving hard to login to beehaw [probably the server is under stress] with the same details I use to login into Lemmy.one.

You can't login like that. You login on your home instance, your home instance is federated with beehaw and so has a "window" into all its content, but you are still grabbing it via your home instance. Put the url if the instance you want to join into your home instance search bar and the community will show up and you can subscribe through there. Same content but different url.

MentalEdge, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Isn't lemmy.one and beehaw still federating? Why did you make a second account on beehaw? Same for kbin, what do you mean you are not exploring it? All the content on kbin is accessible from lemmy.one.

If you have an account on one instance, you're already able to access all the content of all other instances. (That federate with yours) That includes kbin. Kbin's content is already in your "all" feed, and you're already exploring it.

admiral_muffin, 10 months ago

I havent made a second account at all. On the contrary, I was trying to login using the same account. The thing I was and am still clueless about is how I can go about accessing Kbin with the same account created on Lemmy. I didnt even know that until you said it here. Lol

MentalEdge, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

That's not how it works, you'll always access everything from a url that begins with "lemmy.one".

If you aren't, you need to flip it around, for example:

beehaw.org/c/newsbecomes lemmy.one/c/news@beehaw.org

Same goes for kbin, to access kbin "magazines" the url would be something like: lemmy.one/c/RedditMigration@kbin.social

Of course, you don't actually have to manually edit stuff in the address bar, most of the time, you'll just seamlessly see "outside" communities in your feed, and be able to click them and open them. You probably have been without realizing. You posted this in a community thats from lemmy.ml.

Also, if editing the url doesn't work, you can also paste a url to a community into search, in your instance (even a url for other instances), to make your instance look it up for you.

Hyperreality, 10 months ago

Yep. I'm currently replying to your comment from kbin.

It's possible that OP doesn't realise they're seeing kbin content and users.

da_g, 10 months ago

You don't have to think of the servers as different entities, all servers are Lemmy, each one slightly different sure but you can participate in every server equally so nothing changes to you

admiral_muffin, 10 months ago

That makes more sense now. I was really lost around all these different servers and Reddit experience had spoilt me because it was so centralized by construct that I came in here expecting the same!

semperverus, 10 months ago

Yep, it's like if subreddits were sorted into larger groups of subreddits, like say a megareddit where you can have many subreddits with the same name as other subreddits, but a little bit different.

So instead of going to /r/aww, you would hypothetically go to /r/lemmy.one/aww or /r/beehaw/aww. They can have different sets of rules but you can see and post to both equally.

thebestaquaman, 10 months ago

I think what will eventually happen (I may very well be wrong) is that when there are several communities that are very similar on different instances (e.g. lemmy.one/c/aww and behaww/c/aww) one of them will eventually grow significantly bigger/more active than the other, and the other will be more or less abandoned, with its subs/mods moving to the bigger one.

That may not necessarily be a good thing, but over time I think thats what will start happening.

vikingduck03, 10 months ago

That kind of thing happens with subreddits, too, so I don't think it will be that big of a deal

trash, 10 months ago

It's becoming painfully clear that federation is the most confusing part for new people. It felt less so with Mastodon but the Reddit migration seems to be bigger. (I don't know since I was already on Mastodon a few years before the Muskaning) I think we need an easier way for people to understand how instances work.

Grimlo9ic, 10 months ago

Unfortunately I think it's gonna be like this for a while as more and more people come and get exposed to this concept for the first time. Some folks have made very helpful introductory threads to guide newbies into the Fediverse, but at its core it's a very different paradigm to "log on this website to see and interact with this one thing" that people have gotten used to.

jmp242, 10 months ago

I would say that in an update that allows you to redirect links to your own instance would be great, and I was told I was wrong thinking that would need an extension. Take link, copy to search wasn't obvious for me when I started with Mastodon, but I eventually figured it out.

If I was an instance I would try and find a way to make a FAQ that linked maybe to Wikipedia or something that everyone can update for common questions, and a local community with FAQ posts for anything specific to that instance.

xffxe4, 10 months ago

In my own personal experience, Lemmy is significantly easier to understand than Mastodon was. I think the communities make discovery easier and you end up with a decent feed without as much effort.

MentalEdge, 10 months ago

Mastodons federation has become pretty seamless. Just browsing around, it seldom takes you off-instance.

Lemmy still does that a good bit, and it throws people off hard.

Caboose12000, 10 months ago

Beehaw defederated from my instace lemmy.world, so they may have defederated from your instance too (idk anything about lemmy.one). this means that beehaw users won't see your posts and I think you won't see new posts from beehaw, only old stuff that lemmy.one saw before the defederation

you can think of Lemmy kind of like a Minecraft server. maybe the lemmy.one Minecraft server has all your friends on it while the beehaw Minecraft server has lots of new people. maybe some of your friends are on both servers.
maybe lemmy.one has banned some blocks like tnt to prevent griefing, so if you visit that server you won't be able to blow stuff up, but in lemmy.one tnt isn't blocked so you can explode things to your hearts content. either way, whichever server you play on, you're still playing Minecraft.

I hope that made sense lol

bibbleskit, 10 months ago

What happened between lemmy.world and beehaw?