I think this illustrates why this isn't a replacement for reddit for many people. The point of reddit is it brought community and discussion to one site. It's what killed decentralized forums, and sadly, I don't think the average user is going to go back to that.
That visualization shows exactly why the whole thing here is overwhelming for the average user. I feel that the federated aspect should be less focused on when talking about the fediverse. It makes sense to explain it, but many explanations on how to switch to lemmy/kbin/whatever put the whole federation thing on top of the list. I think this is a big turnoff for casual users/lurkers. They do not understand that they don't need to understand the structure of the fediverse to join, enjoy content and engage with others, so they don't even start.
I'm sure a visualization could help with that, but having a bunch of boxes and circles with arrows all over the place isn't exactly something that will mitigate the feeling of being overloaded with information. I'm not saying you didn't do a great job. "Arrows all over the place" is not meant to devaluate your work, on the contrary, it perfectly captures the feeling i have about the fediverse, but I would not use that image as an ad for it.
true. I am literate in internet/computer yet the idea in general is still confusing. Navigating is also abit jarring, and I dont understand some buttons and features like “boost”. It would be great for beginners to include a tutorial for navigating the UI and a short introduction of the fediverse in #teachmelikeim5 level
I'm seeing people recommend different servers within kbin (Fedia, for example), but when I visit those servers my login doesn't work (I have not registered), so it seems I would need a completely separate registration...
So when I see posts like this: https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/12526/Question-best-kbin-server-to-recommend-to-users-tomorrow what is the benefit of splintering these userbases and therefore conversations? Wouldn't this be akin to having different tables in a cafeteria, or different Discord servers? Sure, they may all have similar conversations about topics, but it isn't the same conversation about a topic. What if I want to hear what a specific user has to say, but they aren't in my server?
I see right now that Lemmy.ml is not accepting new registrations because their server is at capacity and are recommending other servers. But what is the benefit for users to go to a different server? Wouldn't they get a lessened experience since the alternate servers are smaller communities?
Am I misunderstanding something about federated communities? If I make a post in one it isn't synchronized to the others right? It just seems a little self-defeating when the big draw for sites like Reddit and Twitter is that everyone is in one place...
Edit: I see another post that says that the cross-functionality between these servers may be currently disabled, so maybe this is just a bad time to learn about how these interrelate...? I'd still love some clarification that isn't someone just linking to documentation and specs.
My understanding is, to reach content found on other kbin instances, it is not necessary to create logins on them and go to them, rather the content on those instances can be "rebroadcast" to the instance you have an account on. You don't go to the content, the content comes to you. Likewise content you generate on your "home" instance can be rebroadcast to other instances.
I realize that's an optimistic assumption, one that I can't prove. By what mechanism the content is rebroadcast, I do not know.
The mechanism is called ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
It's the underlying protocol behind fediverse that makes things "propagate" for different servers and services.
This is why you can, for example, read, follow and post to any of these kbin discussions from Mastodon or PIxelfeed.
It's the same protocol under all fedi-sites.
What separates them is what "document types" they display and how they display it (threads, posts etc) and the surrounding UI and tools.
Your account is local, you can have as many as you like on different sites and communities.
Your data is federated and is accessible from other sites.
This way you can have "local home" community (people on your instance), but still have "global discussions" (communities on various Lemmy instances, Mastodon etc).
What's different from Reddit, is that there's not one "sub" - there's many. For example, let's say Linux. On Reddit you'd just go to /r/linux and that's all there was. On fedi, you have /m/linux here on kbin.social, probably one at fedia.io and, you have /c/linux on multiple Lemmy instances AND you'll probably have linux discussions on Mastodon (like you can follow Linux creator Linus Torvalds at @[email protected]). This means you'll have many discussions in many places and that can be confusing at start. But it's not really that complicated. You just follow them all and you can see them all in your own /sub feed here on kbin.social (or whichever server you call home).
The server "doesn't really matter" in the end. In most cases.
So how exactly do I discover there is /m/Linux on kbin, and /c/Linux on Lenny.ml and /m/linux on fedia? On Reddit I liked that a new account was automatically subscribed to r/news r/awww, r/music etc, and if I got bored I could browse r/all and subscribe if I found something interesting
You can go to "Magazines" and search. If you search, for example, for Linux, you'll see several communities pop up.
You can also see if they're local (they don't have domain name) or from some other instance (they have domain name).
However, those are just instances that have been federated to kbin.social (i.e. someone here has previously subscribed to them). Discovering stuff from "unknown" servers isn't super easy - there's no "global fedi directory" of communities yet (as far as I know). You have to visit the local server to discover what communities it has.
That's the downside of distributed model. On Reddit everything was in one place because that's all there was.
But in a lot of cases it wasn't the case that a single subreddit had it all. Many topics had numerous sub's covering the same ground or being more specialised or having different rules.
Thats no different here. There may be an /m/linux and a /c/linux but they will likely cover different things so just subscribe to both.
But in a lot of cases it wasn't the case that a single subreddit had it all. Many topics had numerous sub's covering the same ground or being more specialised or having different rules.
True. It wasn't always easy to discover "everything" on reddit either.
I find that lot of new people joining the fediverse are unnecessarily worried about servers and instances.
Most of this works organically and you discover places, servers and communities as you go. There's no penalty in subscribing to multiple communities. Or all of them.
Unfortunately navigation to individual magazines feels clunky right now. Nevermind that I already have 36 subscriptions on this site alone. A multimagazine function is truly necessary if the federation is going to be taken advantage of, otherwise there’s not really a practical difference between federation and just using multiple forum sites.
A multimagazine function is truly necessary if the federation is going to be taken advantage
I'm subbed to 100+ communities. Some of them are here, but most of them are on Lemmy instances (since Lemmy has been around longer and there's are loads more of them).
Federation on kbin.social is currently a bit hit and miss because of the site load/CloudFlare DDoS protection, but I can see and subscribe to multiple communities just fine.
Wait, so is the way it’s supposed to work like this: let’s say I want a discussion about hockey. I sub to hockey here ([email protected], I guess). In theory, it’s likely they would federate with something like [email protected]. I shouldn’t have to sub to [email protected], because they’re federated? (I know federation is a bit wonky right now. I’m mostly concerned that it feels like I have to check a few different servers to see all the content I want, but if that will be fixed then I’m not worried.)
let’s say I want a discussion about hockey. I sub to hockey here ([email protected], I guess). In theory, it’s likely they would federate with something like [email protected].
No.
I shouldn’t have to sub to [email protected], because they’re federated?
You do have to sub to [email protected] if you want to see posts from that community.
But but once you have subscribed to [email protected] and [email protected] - you'll see posts from both of them in your feed.
I'm more of a visual learner and none of the explanations of the Fediverse included a detailed map of all the different entities involved. By all means, please make corrections, I'm sure there is at least one misunderstanding in there somewhere. Also not sure how Mastodon fits in, seems like the format would be incompatible with kbin and/or Lemmy. Thanks.
The part I'm getting tripped up revolves around accessing the content in another part of the fediverse. e.g., if I go to a lemmy instnace, it will ask for a log-in specfic to it (i.e. it doesn't recognize my kbin log-in). So what's the mechanism by which travel between platforms happens? If I understood correctly, some stuff will show up here that's been 'retweeted'. But what if I'm searching for content that lives in Lemmy or Mastodon instances?
You are making sense, just remember your login does not travel between kbin and lemmy. When you are on kbin, you can search for communities on the server you joined or across the fediverse. The way to do that is [email protected]
For example, say if I found out the beehaw.org server had an awesome gaming community, well I can just type [email protected] into the search box and then subscribe to it. It will then federated into the server (the server will start pulling in new posts - but not old posts) that means others can now see it too. That's why if you see the message that it's not fully federated and you might see more on the original instance.
Your login is just a place to reside but with the fediverse, you can pull in content to view. Which helps as you don't need multiple log ins for multiple services. I've seen a few people ask about people with the same username as theirs on other instances and that will happen but remember that your username is like email. You have [email protected], so whilst someone might share the same username, they'll never be on the same instance. That's how you tell others apart.
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