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.

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.

mancy,
@mancy@lemmy.ca avatar

🙄 pedantic much

Evoke3626,

Sticking to true Reddit fashion lol

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.

b00m,
@b00m@kbin.social avatar

I think your opinion is pretty ignorant

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

The thing is just because something is posted to the fediverse doesn’t mean everyone can see it. For example, we don’t see most Mastodon posts on Lemmy.

vaguerant,
@vaguerant@kbin.social avatar

I think the portmanteau "threadiverse" works for this situation and it's what I've been using to refer to anything in the general Lemmy/kbin side of the fediverse, but I think people just referring to the platform is inevitable. People talk about posts "on Mastodon" even though there's like 15 different services you can use to post to the blogging side of the fediverse, like Pleroma, pump.io, etc. It's worth thinking about in situations where you're like "Hi Lemmy" because you're definitely talking to more than just Lemmy, but any time you're talking about your personal experience of where you saw a thread I think it's perfectly accurate to use the name of that platform rather than having to say you saw it "on the fediverse".

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

Threadiverse? 🤨 We found zuck’s alt, y’all. Just kidding 😁

vaguerant,
@vaguerant@kbin.social avatar

Busted! I have been thinking about how "threadiverse" is complicated a lot by Threads existing. It could easily mean "the part of the fediverse that is attached to Threads" (uppercase) rather than "the part of the fediverse that revolves around threads" (lowercase). Maybe we already need a new name. Eggheadiverse?

nosedive,

My silly -verse suggestion: palaverse, from palaver + universe.

noodlejetski,
@noodlejetski@masto.ai avatar

@Jilanico you're seeing this Mastodon reply though. hi!
@Cat

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

👋

WaltJRimmer,
@WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

I think it’s more like saying, “I saw this on my phone,” or, “I was on the computer and read,” which are both entirely reasonable.

It’s just stating what format you were using when you saw it. Like, “I was scrolling through Google News and read…” What you actually read was an article hosted on a different website, but you were using the platform of Google News to read it. It’s the same kind of thing as saying, “I read on Lemmy,” because you were browsing Lemmy when you read something.

It’s not wrong to say that these things are on this site. I often specify Lemmy.World because that’s the instance that I use and other Fediverse sites function slightly differently. That’s one of the both great and annoying things about the Fediverse is how every instance is slightly different. I’ll say, “I was on Lemmy.World and…” I don’t know, saw a post, made a post, had trouble because mod controls are minimal over here, whatever. Saying, “On the Fediverse,” is more generic. It’s usually considered best convention to go with more SPECIFIC terms than generic. I consider using my Mastadon account and using my Lemmy account to be different, but they’re both on the Fediverse. I would feel really weird talking about my Mastadon account in the same terms as my Lemmy.World one since I use the two platforms completely differently.

Silverseren,

But you are posting on a Kbin thread right now, not a Lemmy thread. So you're not "on Lemmy World" when you're viewing this thread.

PupBiru,
@PupBiru@kbin.social avatar

it’s more correct to say they’re on lemmy than kbin though… they are interacting through lemmy: kbin is literally irrelevant to them

… and that’s kinda the point of the fediverse isn’t it? you shouldn’t care where something is stored, and if you don’t care where it’s stored then you have only 1 way to refer to the space: the client by which you’re viewing it

people referring to it as “lemmy” or “kbin” or “mastodon” is the fediverse working as intended, and that’s good news!

(it’s also much better marketing for us! people search fediverse and they get a bunch of random descriptions about what it is… people search lemmy/kbin and at least they have a join button)

Silverseren,

Mastodon is at least something of a more generalized term at least, because that's referring to hundreds of instances. And it has a specific (Twitter-esque) format that unites them. But Lemmy and Kbin has the same formatting structure (Reddit-esque). Makes me wonder if we need a specific, but generalized term that unites everything in this format.

oskoo,
@oskoo@mindly.social avatar

Well, the Twitter-esque format also extends to Misskey and Pleroma, and there are tons of those accounts interacting seamlessly with Mastodon instances. So in a way those microblogging instances face the same issue you're describing between Lemmy and Kbin. In any case, I'm a fan of 'threadiverse' as a term for the Reddit-like instances.

WaltJRimmer,
@WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

Threadiverse. I like that. It’s dumb in the best kind of way.

bvanevery,

In Usenet days we called them newsreaders.

oskoo,
@oskoo@mindly.social avatar

You're absolutely right, presenting an awesome website first and allowing the true nature of the fediverse to sneak up on people is a great way to handle it. Even if someone learns about the fediverse as a whole first somehow, they'll need to figure out what 'portal' into it makes the most sense anyway.

WaltJRimmer,
@WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

No. I am on Lemmy.World right now viewing a KBin thread. My entire interaction here is through Lemmy.World and not KBin. So for me to say, “I was on KBin arguing with someone,” would be factually incorrect because I am not on KBin. It would be factually correct to say, “I was on the Fediverse arguing with someone,” but since the Fediverse has different forms, that interaction itself could take several forms and context does sometimes matter. There’s nothing wrong with the more generic The Fediverse, but there’s also nothing wrong with stating which instance you’re using to be more specific.

Silverseren,

But the person you were arguing with wasn't arguing with you on Lemmy.world, so that's misleading on where the argument was taking place.

If someone took you at your word and looked on Lemmy.world in specific, they would not be able to find the argument in question, because it was taking place in a Kbin.social thread.

WaltJRimmer,
@WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

They absolutely would be able to find it on Lemmy.world. Here’s a link to this very argument: lemmy.world/comment/971144

Note that is on Lemmy.World. That’s part of why the Fediverse is great. You can find this argument which you’re engaging on KBin and I’m engaging on Lemmy.World on any similarly connected Fediverse site.

bvanevery,

The battlecruisers were out arguing in neutral space, in the verse.

The cruisers' home ports were planet Lemmy and planet Kbin.

Unfortunately half the galaxy was destroyed in the ensuing exchange.

fishos,

You're missing the point. If I email you, are we talking ON Gmail? ON Hotmail? Not really. We're using our different clients to interact with the same original message. Sure, the message gets converted to your emails specific formatting, but it's just a copy of the original info. The message itself is the conversation, the clients are just access to it.

You wouldn't say "I drove my Honda to the store". You'd say "I drove my car".

Nobody said "I'm browsing Apollo/Sync/RIF". You'd say "I'm browsing Reddit" or "fuck spez".

You're one step from being the mom that calls every video game system a "Nintendo".

WaltJRimmer,
@WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

You wouldn’t say “I drove my Honda to the store”.

I have absolutely heard people talk like that, especially if they have multiple cars.

Nobody said “I’m browsing Apollo/Sync/RIF”

I used to say, “When I was on RIF.”

bvanevery,

are we talking ON Gmail?

Sometimes. People meeting in real life, exchanging email addresses, and noticing they're both on GMail, is common enough for some people, they really are on GMail. Implying they could chat trivially. But that's not applicable to the scenario under discussion.

Actually you'd just say you drove to the store. We don't really care if you own a car, a truck, and a SUV in your driveway. We don't expect you to have a horse and buggy.

bvanevery,

You had an argument on the 'verse.

The apostrophe is gonna get dropped eventually. Same as it did for 'net meaning internet.

I doubt fedi~ will be remembered after awhile. It'll be seen as pedantic, technical, or old school.

I don't know if people are generally sci-fi enough to think of you as on "planet Lemmy" but it would have a bit of snark like saying you're on planet Mars. Could be a good subculture lingo.

"I am Clark Kent from the planet Kbin!"

"Yeah and I'm Flash Gordon STFU."

volodymyr,

Maybe it's even more like "I got an outlook message" instead of "I got an email". Since email is an analog of ActivityPub. Just that people are not used yet to the fact that social media can be interoperable like email, so "saw on lemmy" carries different connotations. It should not, however.

Anecdotically, I have an old frendlica account too, from times of diaspora, and it's now very lively, so I saw this post on frendlica too.

LostCause,

Ok but telling others of the specific platform I use is still useful, like if somebody doesn‘t know what a computer is it helps them to hear in Windows or Mac cause then they know what computers there are.

flansyrup,

People are used to consuming content from an isolated products - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. even if the content is a link to another website or social network - the place they saw it and interacted with it, will feel like the source. The fediverse is a new and confusing system for most people. It’ll take a while for even mildly tech savvy people to wrap their head around this.

nan,
@nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’ve been missing this grandiose caliber of post since leaving Reddit, truly bravo.

- Posted to Lemmy

Silverseren,

You didn't actually. You posted to Kbin. Because this thread is on Kbin, even if you're reading it on Lemmy. Which is kind of OP's point.

nan,
@nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I did, actually. My instance has a saved copy of the post, I replied to it there, it forwarded the information to Kbin.

OPs point is dumb. Lemmy and Kbin are separate platforms that happen to be interoperable because of the backend protocol they’ve decided to use (which Kbin added relatively recently in the grand scheme). The Fediverse is made up of many of these platforms that are doing the same thing. There is nothing wrong with referring to the platform one is using.

CheshireSnake,
@CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Well said. If you want to mean all the things connected to ActivityPub, you say Fediverse. If it’s restricted to lemmy, use lemmy. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. OP saying it borders on ignorance may have to think about it.

I use lemmy. I don’t really care for nor use other Fediverse services like Mastodon.

Silverseren,

Wouldn't every viewed copy anywhere then be a saved copy of the original post? Does that distinction even mean anything when it's still posting specifically to the original instance?

If I reply in a Lemmy.world thread, I'm still posting on Lemmy.world even if I'm viewing from Kbin.social.

As a comparative example to old and dying social media, it would be like finding a link to a celebrity's Twitter comment on Reddit and you saying you saw the person saying that on Reddit, which would be extremely misleading to anyone listening, thinking that the celebrity had posted it on Reddit.

nan,
@nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It’s not posting comments specifically to the original instance. If the instances defederate I can continue to post comments, and people on my instance can see and interact with them.

Once somebody subscribes to a community (or magazine if you’re on the rifle site), ActivityPub acts like dynamic, synchronizing RSS. Everybody interacts with local data, an instance isn’t simply acting as a proxy when interacting with a different instance.

Kichae,

No, you're posting on kbin.social. You're never ever doing anything directly on a remote site. You view on k-so, you vote on k-so, you post on k-soc, and you comment on k-soc. Your actions are then, at some later point (which may be microseconds, or it may be hours, depending on traffic levels on both k-soc and the remote website), relayed to the remote website so the two copies of the community can be synchronised.

Entropywins,
@Entropywins@kbin.social avatar

Go back to lemmy...this kbin country!!!

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.

WookieMunster,

fediverse is too close to metaverse imo and thus it sounds dumb

CynAq,
@CynAq@kbin.social avatar

And with Threads potentially federating, it's pretty ominous

Xiphorang,

While you're correct, it's just a clunky term. I think some other way to refer to the whole thing will probably come along soon, and in a few years, people will regard saying fediverse the same way we look back on people talking about "surfing the information superhighway" or whatever.

cloaker,

Radical dude

Entropywins,
@Entropywins@kbin.social avatar

Get federated!!!

TimeSquirrel,
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.social avatar
sab,
@sab@kbin.social avatar

I would love it if we just went all early 1990s and started saying "hello Internet!" or something beautifully corny like that.

In the end activitypub is a standard recognized by the W3C, so it would be kind of accurate.

52fighters,
@52fighters@kbin.social avatar

hello, fediverse!

techviator,
@techviator@infosec.pub avatar

In my best AOL voice: You’ve got fedi! 🤣🤣🤣

Cat,
@Cat@kbin.social avatar

Definitely a clunky term. It will be interesting to see what the feds come up with. Lets see if that catches on :-D

Seriously, I'm sure something good will emerge.

Kichae,

I'm not convinced that something good will emerge.

Keep in mind we still use "internet".

Bozicus,

“Internet” is closer to a lot of existing English words than “fediverse,” though. “Fediverse” might get familiar over time, and it might make more sense to non-English-speakers, but I think it’s a more exotic construction than “internet.”

Xiphorang,

Yeah, but we used to call it the information superhighway and the worldwide web. Internet IS the good term. It may well be that fediverse sticks around so long that we all get used to it, but at the moment, eh. I think if someone somewhere suggests a good alternative, we'll all likely jump on it.

SNEEZ,
@SNEEZ@kbin.social avatar

I mean, threadiverse works pretty well to describe this area specifically

bvanevery,

Dang I totally forgot all about that term. Been awhile. Well it eventually reduced to "surfing the net".

The thing about the internet, is it was the thing to make it only one net. Previously there were weird systems like bitnet, VMSnet, where you had to juggle email address encoding standards to get balkanized college campus networks to talk back and forth to each other.

"The web" became the subset of the net, that worked with web browsers. Only one thing.

Was there a "The Facebook" period? Or was that just a movie name?

So then we passed through a period of brands. Reddit is a brand. It is not altogether surprising that people would refer to the fediverse in terms of brands. Lemmy, kbin, beehaw, whatever.

Email and the web had/have specific protocols associated with them. The fediverse has multiple protocols. We're using ActivityPub, which seems to have won as a standard. It isn't exactly catchy or smooth flowing off the tongue.

Ok, if we try to brain crunch all these previous trends, here's what it's going to be called, if it hasn't been already:

THE VERSE

The difference between the fediverse and the universe will be forgotten. Linguistically, people will not keep up with that detail. Only old timers / early adopters will notice that linguistic change.

Possibly, 'verse' will come to be seen as short for multiverse.

Sarsaparilla,
@Sarsaparilla@kbin.social avatar

Personally I agree, but we all know what someone means when they say "posting on Lemmy" etc. I simply make it a point to refer to it as "the fediverse" in my own posts. Eventually people will catch onto the right terminology, especially as more software platform options become available for the Fediverse ... like Threads (though those ppl will probably always call it Threads because that will be all they know and understand of it).

Levetamae,

I like how the Memmy app introduces new users to what the fediverse is and what a server means. I had found that out beforehand but it was still helpful when I downloaded the app today.

I’m new to it all, but it’s so interesting. Now I want to know what else I don’t know about that’s on the web. 👀

Teon,
@Teon@kbin.social avatar

Here is a current list of the Fediverse. https://fediverse.info/explore/projects

4am,
@4am@lemmy.world avatar

Actually it’s “GNU/Linux”…

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