It is not Lemmy or kbin, it is the fediverse.

I don't think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse. There are other platforms and will be more to come. Referring to a post on "Lemmy" or "kbin" is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.

We should be referring to it as...

  • I saw it on the fediverse.
  • Hey fediverse users ...
  • A thread on the fediverse...

New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.

edit: A better example is email. You wouldn't assume everyone is on Hotmail because that is the email provider you use. You say I'm sendingan eamail, not I'm sending a Hotmail.

Mane25,

I like the name fediverse, but I think it’s too broad. I think we need a collective name for platforms like Lemmy and KBin (which are more like each other than they are like Mastodon).

stopthatgirl7,
@stopthatgirl7@kbin.social avatar

The nickname I’ve seen used for kbin and lemmy is the “threadiverse,” which I personally like.

Mane25,

Much too problematic with Meta’s new platform.

Madison_rogue,
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

Calling it "Threadiverse" is walking right into Meta's playbook. Zuckerberg would want you to call it exactly that.

bvanevery,

You could go all The Orville and call it the Zipperverse.

bvanevery,

"forum". It's correct. Short for web forum. Social media forum if you really want to get picky.

Mane25,

No, “forums” are old style message boards from back when the internet was good, that people stopped using for some reason. If KBin/Lemmy can one day be half as good as real forums I’d consider that to be a success.

bvanevery, (edited )

What feature is missing from KBin or Lemmy to make them forums? KBin superficially looks like a forum, but I only just got here. My next step is to find out whether Lemmy devs are tenable people to work with on forum software development. They are Marxist-Leninists and run a M-L instance or two, it seems. I'm a socialist but not M-L and I've got run out of plenty of "tankie" subs on Reddit, so I'm worried about that. I don't enjoy being called liberal or a bootlicker.

Mane25,

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek with my nostalgia there, with some truth to it as well, but if anything it’s something intangible. KBin and Lemmy haven’t developed a culture yet, in my opinion a lot of damage has been done to online culture by the big centralised social media networks, and it remains to be seen if something good emerges here or whether the toxicity of modern social media creeps back in.

I personally wouldn’t worry about the political beliefs of the Lemmy developers, it’s open source software, anyone can use it and run an instance. Each instance sets its own content and moderation policies and decides who it federates with. There are over 1000 instances. The developers have made it clear that they don’t want their instance to be seen as the default one and discouraged people from registering there during the influx from Reddit.

bvanevery,

My own personal interest was beyond running a server. It was getting features / policies into the software. I'm actually starting to think that developer's politics aren't the real issue. Might be open source dynamics are the real issue. Saw a lot of things in the bug tracker of someone saying, "Oh yeah that's a good idea" and I thought whatever feature it was, might pull people into more chaos in various ways. Chaos meaning, people don't stick with communities they want to continue to be in. It may be an inherent problem with writing software that uses the Fediverse. People may have rather different ideas about what the Fediverse is "for". Like I'm not trying to look at thousands of GIFs a day. I think that's what's basically wrong with social media. Big groups, big volumes of shallow posts, that mainly works towards advertizing business models and reducing the "user's" participation mainly to the act of "watching the new TV".

richard_wagner,

This is going to reveal my ignorance:

How does the federation work from a high level? On Reddit, data is stored and managed by Reddit.

How about the fediverse? If the data isn’t centrally located, what is stopping some data from just being lost at any time? Who owns the servers?

If the servers are owned by anyone who wants to own a server, I assume there will still be popular servers that get the most traffic. And if those servers have high traffic, how will they sustain that model? How do they “keep the lights on” without ads?

Thanks for helping me understand.

Chozo,

My understanding is that most instances are currently being either self-funded (sort of as passion projects), or accepting donations to cover hosting/maintenance costs.

Buy your local admin a coffee!

imaqtpie,
@imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works avatar

lemmy.world/comment/20357

This comment was very helpful when I first joined. Long story short, each server is locally storing data for its own users and communities, and also for external communities that at least one user is subscribed to.

Everything is either self or donor funded, and it is my understanding that this model can scale quite a bit without a crazy amount of donations.

But if we get into instances with over a million users, I’m not sure when/if the donor funded model eventually breaks down. That’ll be a good problem to have though, because it means this platform will have been a massive success.

anamethatisnt,

I think Ruuds starting guide post in !lemmyworld is good too.
Are the bang links working for kbin users too or only lemmy? lemmy.world/post/37906

Cat, (edited )
@Cat@kbin.social avatar

Bang links work for users on Kbin.

If that is Lemmy creating the URL or kbin seeing the bang format and using it, I don't know... off to find out :-)

edit: experimenting here !kbin
edit2: I think Lemmy is creating a regular link out of that. My bang above was not auto converted on kbin.

bvanevery,

That’ll be a good problem to have though, because it means this platform will have been a massive success.

I dunno, could be a repeat of Eternal September.

Cat, (edited )
@Cat@kbin.social avatar

Good question. Not ignorant. The one thing we use all the time but never think of as federated is email. Multiple users from different providers can reply all and everyone gets a copy. That is one way to help think about how the fediverse works. People using kbin and Lemmy have replied in this thread. We all see it. we are just using different providers/software to read and reply in the fediverse.

Others have already commented well on funding.

bvanevery,

How does the federation work from a high level?

Well, Captain Kirk goes out on the flagship and kicks some serious alien ass. Contrary to popular belief, he doesn't usually screw it, but he is almost contractually obligated to have his shirt torn. Spock bails him out with derisions of Something Something Diplomacy, I forget exactly what. And that's how the federation works. At a high level.

At a really high level, they all get zapped by plant spores and turn into hippies.

Annoyed_Crabby,

Dude, fediverse is the whole system linking everything together and lemmy/kbin/mastodon is the platform within it. So refer it as fediverse IS saying you saw a post from the internet.

bvanevery,

I wonder how much sleep early network people lost about communicating through the ether. Or late 19th century physicists for that matter.

HipPriest,

Referring to a post on "Lemmy" or "kbin" is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.

That's not how language works. Language evolves naturally and in this scenario people would instantly know that the user had seen something on a fediverse platform without having to use another awful '-verse' word.

Likewise you can't police how people use language. People use whatever makes understanding for both sides easiest on both sides

If someone logs into a website called Kbin and sees something interesting, it's fair to say 'I saw something interesting on Kbin' without having to give unnecessary explanations about what the fediverse is.

And once again, no one likes the word fediverse...

darcy,
@darcy@sh.itjust.works avatar

based antiprescriptivism

Entropywins,
@Entropywins@kbin.social avatar

Tell my old English teacher you can't police the way people use language...

Madison_rogue,
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

Mine as well, yet she'd then recite the first few verses of The Canterbury Tales in Old-English; pretty much proving that you can't police the way people use language.

bvanevery,

And you can't language the way people use police either!

bvanevery,

without having to use another awful '-verse' word.

They will stop using prefixes. They will just say verse.

Enttropy,
@Enttropy@kbin.social avatar

Who gives a fuckidi fuck?

bvanevery,

Burkina Faso?

Wooly,

I’m not referencing the fediverse, it’s stupid. But also, lemmy isn’t a great name so I probably just won’t mention anything like that.

bvanevery,

"The Fediverse is stupid."
"The Fediverse is stupid."
Negativeland said Christianity is stupid.
Christianity is stupid.
Communism is good!
[then a lot of chanting and noisemaking]

Mr_Will, (edited )

If I was browsing Reddit and saw an interesting video, I might tell someone "I saw an interesting video on Reddit the other day" even if the video itself was hosted on YouTube. The technical detail of exactly where and how the video is hosted is not relevant to the conversation. The listener wants to know how I found it, not where it is stored.

The same is true for posts on the fediverse. The various instances are the websites that we browse. The technical detail of how they share content and how it can be accessed from various different routes just isn't important most of the time. If you're a Lemmy user, you're reading the posts on Lemmy and there is nothing wrong with talking about it that way.

If I tell someone I bought a game on Steam or borrowed a book from the library, the fact that they are also available elsewhere doesn't matter. If I tell someone I read something on kbin, does it matter that the same post also exists on different websites? 99% of the time, the answer is 'no'.

New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.

I agree, but you've got it upsidedown. The fediverse is the platform that the instances operate on, not vice-versa.

bvanevery,

Until they try to find it on Reddit and they cry. Cry!

Doherz,

You’re vastly overestimating the knowledge, intelligence and fucks given by the vast majority of people.

The fediverse is frankly too complex and convoluted for the normies. Whichever instance manages to remove the complexity, solve the onboarding process and get the content right will win out and be the thing the normies speak of.

bvanevery,

Call it Verse. You'll win the branding wars.

favrion,
@favrion@lemmy.world avatar

If I see a post on Lemmy World, then it’s from Lemmy World.

bvanevery,

Now that gets me thinking, what the hell was Wally World anyways? Was that a Chevy Chase thing?

5BC2E7,

Are you implying that defederation is a myth? Since the flow of data between instances is conditional on the instances. they are relevant.

bvanevery,

Well Kermit the Frog said it's a myth. But every time he said it, a miss showed up.

comcreator,

Why not “lemmyverse” for lemmy federation?

Nepenthe,
@Nepenthe@kbin.social avatar

I think just Lemmy, kbin, mastodon, etc. naturally implies the platform-specific -verse, doesn't it? I think "Hey, Lemmy--" posts addressing the entire fediverse are being accidentally myopic, but "Hey, Lemmy [users]" would be understandable, given a need to discuss our UI differences. The former is fairly common atm, though, which I admit is faintly annoying to see on my kbin feed. I feel so left out.

bvanevery,

"Hey, Soviet SSR! In Russia you don't federate. Federation does you!"

Didn't mean to be so accurate...

Tygr,

Allow people to enjoy their experience here. When you start going down this path, you are confusing the user base that’s still learning a whole new platform. When I first got here, I said a lot of the same stuff, that I was a Lemmy world member, etc.

bvanevery,

That sounds a lot like Pier 1 Imports!

Teon,
@Teon@kbin.social avatar

I personally like to call it "Fedi". I was reading a post / thread on Fedi and it said...
If someone asked where exactly it was I would mention the platform.
And in my opinion, everyone should be mentioning the name of the platform they are on. Because when you mention what software or server you used, it promotes it to non Fediverse people. And it also tells current Fediverse users about other Fedi platforms that they may like, and didn't know about.
That's how I found Misskey, and it's quite cool.
So many options to explore, and try out interfaces that may work better for you.

We are all on the Fediverse, we all should be promoting that in any way we can.
Share, educate and take pride in our diverse community.

Nepenthe,
@Nepenthe@kbin.social avatar

I just consistently mention it because it's a huge topic atm and it's to everyone's benefit to clarify. If I'm over here talking about how I'm SO glad I can mute instances willy-nilly as I please but don't mention I'm doing that from kbin, that's going to send a lot of frustrated lemmings scrambling through their settings.

Generic is "(the) fedi/fediverse." But where I'm specifically from may carry connotations in UI or culture for those here, and those not here would maybe prefer a platform name they can actually look up, as has already happened to me once.

I do think the "Blaaah, we got X amount of users and we're the biggest in the fedi!" posts are borderline odd, because yeah, we're not going head to head anymore. The tribalism we've had drilled into us for decades, we have no need of now and I don't wanna see any of the platform politics that's always been in the past. Thankfully, it seems to be stemming from genuine enjoyment instead of elitist gloating, and it keeps itself to a minimum.

Teon,
@Teon@kbin.social avatar

Yeah, the tribalism needs to go away and we need to think more along the lines of the "neighborhood" we are in. All the Fedis are our neighbors.

bvanevery,

I dunno, the Ferengis are neighbors and they're damn greedy.

The Centauris I hear are pretty nice.

bvanevery,

What if I want to call it Freddy?

BananaTrifleViolin,

"fediverse" isn't correct either - it's too broad. Kbin and Lemmy post to a part of the fediverse - the "threadiverse". Meanwhile job in can also post to the microblogverse connecting with Mastodon. And there is not one fediverse - ir is both separated by different algorithms for different bits and also within areas some bits federate with others.

If you want a good term for the threadiverse, then Feddit seems like a good catch all name?

bvanevery,

Y'all talkin' on the verse.

Balios,
@Balios@kbin.social avatar

Hermione from "Harry Potter" saying it's LeviOsa, not Leviosar"

bvanevery,

I'm a bit creeped out by her saying it over and over again. It's like she got her time dialer too soon.

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