This question is especially for people who have joined in the last week. Have you used other fediverse platforms or is this your first time really using one? What do you think of it so far? Are you aware that you can comment on Lemmy posts with a Mastodon account?
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First time user here. I have heard of Mastodon, but never attempted to use it. I always was under the impression that it was sort of a Twitter alternative, and I’ve never had any interest in Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Same here. I never really engaged on twitter, this is more my speed.
Yes, it is. And I literally have no idea what I’m doing or what the fediverse is or how to best utilize it and I have a mastodon account but don’t use it because all of this fediverse/instance stuff stresses me out and I just want a cool community to feel like I’m a part of, not a bunch of stuff I don’t understand and I hope I can feel comfortable here with Lemmy. Oof.
Imagine there were multiple reddit websites. Reddit.com, reddit.org, reddit.social, etc. Doesn’t matter what account you have, you can see communities/subreddits across anyone of them.
That’s Lemmy.
When you make a lemmy account, it’s more like an email address. You are evolone@lemmy.ml, I am cosmicsploogedrizzle@lemmy.ml. Someone else is joeblow@beehaw.org. We can all chat and post and have a good time no matter what website/instance we post to.
That’s how users work on lemmy. Just like email. Communities on lemmy work the exact same way as users.
If all you’re interested in is that, then you can stop there and fully enjoy your time with lemmy as a reddit replacement.
The future potential and complexity comes from the next part:
The fediverse is someone said, "hey, you know how people on reddit can’t follow people on Twitter, or people on YouTube can’t subscribe to subreddits, or people on Instagram can’t leave YouTube comments? Well let’s make it so you can.
Now this isn’t perfectly implemented at the moment, and there are a lot of growing pains (it’s kinda like the wild wild West), but you can make a mastodon account (like Twitter), and follow the this lemmy community !asklemmy@lemmy.ml on it, and you’ll see all the posts and all the comments that you would otherwise see on lemmy, just in a twitter-like format.
It’s not perfect and compatibility across these decentealized apps is not perfectly impremented atm, but in the future you could theoretically have one giant interconnected web where everything from “Twitter” to “reddit” to “YouTube” to “Instagram” to whatever fediverse equivalent app are all interwoven. And if any instance of them gets a big enough head to pull something like reddit is pulling, or what Twitter has been pulling, the community can just make a new “email” on a different instance/website and continue as of nothing changed. No single website/instance can abuse their power, because another instance can be spun up any time.
I’m about 24 hours into Lemmy and beyond bamboozled so thank you intensely for your ELI5 response: really helped. My key concern is who pays to keep all the lights on?
Depends where you go. Some servers ask for community funding, some are run by volunteers, and some I’m sure have probably found a way to monetise it, though I’m not sure how.
Of course! Whoever runs the server bears the cost. How they pay for it is up to them and the community. Maybe you run your own instance and pay out if pocket. You’d be your own admin and can do whatever you want. Or you join lemmy.ml and maybe donate or sub to patreon, or you don’t pay anything. Maybe in the future some instances might make private deals to pin ads at the top in exchange for payment. It’s up to the server hoster. Right now it’s the wild wild West. If a server gets filled with ads and you don’t like it, you pick up shop and join a different server.
What lemmy/the fediverse really needs is an account migration tool, so that if you want to set up shop elsewhere, you can export all your subscriptions and settings, etc and import it into a new profile on a new instance. That will come with time
I’m not sure I understand the last part correctly. As I understand it, if a community behaves in a way the users don’t like, we can just create a new community. The advantage of the federated nature is that it’s not as painful as finding for example a whole reddit or twitter alternative because of how modular the fediverse is, right?
Edit: come to think of it, I have a second question and you seem to have this whole thing figured out. I’ve seen people say that they are on lemma as well as kbin to see which they like better ot which one grows better I guess. But does it really matter since the whole thing is interconnected anyways?
Thanks :-)
The user interface is different: different looking website, different apps. The only thing in common is the content itself.
That makes sense. Thanks!
Yes, somewhat. Communities are like subreddits. So yes, if a community is doing what people don’t like they can pick up and make a new community. A good example is on reddit r/gaming used to be more discussion and news focused but over time it became more popular and filled with memes. Some in the community didn’t like this so they made the r/games subreddit which is news and discussion focused.
On lemmy, that new community can be made on the same instance or on a different instance.
What I was getting at, was that in addition to this, if the communities on an instance dont like how an entire instance is being run, they can pick up shop and just move to a new instance. As a user you’d have to make a new account on a new instance, but you’d be able to subscribe to all the same communities on the instances you like.
To simplify: Instances are run by admins, communities by mods. On reddit your only option is to make a new subreddit and change your mods if you don’t like something, but you will always have u/spez as your admin. On lemmy, you can ditch your admins and set up shop with other admins.
To answer your kbin vs lemmy question: The only reason you would pick one over the other would mostly be due to their layout and customization. Additionally, instances can block other instances, so you might like kbins layout, but maybe they block an instance that has a community that you like. Conversely, kbin might have a cool community you want to subscribe to, but your specific lemmy instance is blocking it. So you can do what I said above, you pick up shop and you set up in an instance that doesn’t block the community you want to join. Alternatively, you can set up your own instance on your own server and then you can join anything you want, provided that you aren’t so toxic that other communities potentially block you lol.
I have general helpful additional links in the bottom of my sidebar over on my community https://lemmy.ml/c/ps5 if you want to see how you can do some of what I said above.
Thanks, this is very helpful. I’ll be sure to check out the link
Doesn’t matter what account you have, you can see communities/subreddits across anyone of them.
I’m having trouble with this part. If I want to look up threads about the latest Pokemon movie, Reddit would let me just type “Pokemon Avengers of Middle Earth” into the search bar, and I would see hundreds of results from all different subreddits that I can comment on right away.
Lemmy only seems to search my local instance, unless I first
- search on lemmy.directory
- manually subscribe to those communities so they show up on my local instance
- search again on my local instance
- finally I can comment
It’s a hassle. I would love if Lemmy included some kind of optional search mode that searches the directory instance, and then has a nice big button to subscribe to the results that are not federated (am I using that right?) with your current instance.
I understand there are growing pains, but I work in tech and I’m just barely stumbling along here. The “it’s like email” analogy starts to fall apart pretty quickly once you realize Gmail can only send messages to Outlook if you first go to Outlook and copy a special code. For every email address you want to send to. The average user is going to give up.
Am I misunderstanding how it all works? I’m hoping to learn more. Just figuring out how to comment on this remote thread from my instance took forever. I don’t even necessarily want to be subscribed here, but it seems to be required to make even a single comment. I am probably doing something wrong.
You should post this on the ELI5 community
Thanks! Feel free to cross post it!
Holy shit, thank you for this explanation! This was the simplest way I have ever seen it explained and was super helpful. Very appreciated!
I feel you. What’s cool though is to see the growth over the last few days. It’s nice that here are a lot of people sick and tired of these giant tech companies and their terrible behavior. I think treating it the way you’re describing is fine enough.
I’d messed around with Mastodon, but Twitter was never my thing so it didn’t really stick. Lemmy is the first Fediverse thing that will likely see a lot of use from me.
This is my story as well. I follow a few accounts on Mastadon, but I find it much easier to connect with Lemmy. I joined Maston during the height of the Twitter crisis, and Lemmy earlier this week during the Reddit crisis.
Same thing here. Twitter has always sucked and has been intolerable the last few years. Lemmy feels like Reddit from back in the day.
I was never really into the idea of twitter and I really only lurk on a couple of people’s twitter accounts but the idea of reddit is good for me because I can find a community of people who like similar things as me easily and see what’s been popular. It’s also a decent news feed on the side.
Same here. Mastodon didn’t stick, same with Twitter. Much more of a Reddit user so I expect to be more of a Lemmy user.
Me too. Lemmy seems like a promising alternative
In the same boat, looking forward to seeing the interfaces develop a bit for Lemmy, I haven’t found many app alternatives
Same here. I signed up just to get an account/handle in case I end up being more interested in sharing a “reach me at this username” blah blah but I never signed up for Twitter based on its initial inception concept of “post every second of every day!!! Isn’t this great!?!?” No. It isn’t. It’s a stupid concept and I hated the mentality of posting on your Facebook wall every day… why would I want to do that constantly?
Yes, it is my first time, and don’t know what i’m doing
I think I will understand only what Jerboa makes easy to understand. I mean: there’s a search function so I look for things there. There’s a gaming community, so I suscribe. The frontpage or whatever show me posts from servers (?) I’m not subscribed to, so I will lurk there (like in this instance).
I don’t know if I there’s another way to find communities or “sublemmies” or whatever. Basically I see, I comment, I post, and I hope to find things related to my hobbies.
I can’t find the Jerboa search and now I’m afraid to ask.
Edit: Hamburger menu and it’s at the top.
Also first time, also don’t know what I’m doing! But I’m having fun and am not going back to the other place
Yes… just signed up. I had never heard of Fediverse until 3 days ago. I spent the past 2 days reading up on it and bam, here I am. I remember a lot of chatter about mastodon after Elon stuck his head up his ass but didn’t pay attention. I glad to see a lot of people here (smarter than me) are as confused as I am. This will be so fun to watch this evolve.
I agree that this will be a fun evolution to watch!
Tried Mastodon after Twitter fiasco, seemed like an okay experience, but in the end, it lacked what’s most important about any such site: the people. A lot of people I followed on Twitter just didn’t make the transition (some did), so after a while of not really seeing content I was used to see, I drifted away. To be honest, I can imagine Lemmy could follow the same pattern (for me, personally, not in general). Even though it’s off to a good start after I already found /r/patientgamers alternative here. Now I would love some equivalent of /r/soccer and I think I could make Lemmy my new home.
There are currently a few communities about football (soccer)
Try to search in the community section using “All instances”
If you can’t find them, comment below and I’ll gather links to the ones I can see
Thanks a lot, you’re too kind!
I’ve not been lazy and been looking myself. For anyone interested, this one seems to be the most active. If anyone finds a better one, let me know. Or lemmy know? What’s the pun code around these parts…?
Thanks for this - there’s at least one more, but I can’t recall the URL.
Cheers, that one looks promising as well! Will keep a tab on more now, let’s see which picks up pace.
No worries :-)
Elon Musk made me jump to Mastodon. Spez made me jump to Lemmy.
deleted by creator
Also me. At this point I’m wondering when rather than if Discord will get too enshittified to use.
I first used Mastodon but I was never one to really “get” or use Twitter either so I haven’t actually used it much. This suits my needs far better.
Same, I got a mastodon account but never really used it. Reddit and now Lemmy is my shit.
First time for me. I had heard about Mastodon when Elon first bought Twitter, but I never liked Twitter so I didn’t look into it. I think it’s okay so far. Kind of reminds me of old internet, which I miss.
It reminds me of the early internet, too. What a wild time
Yes! It really captures that feeling of excitement and experimentation perfectly.
Just joined my first instance was kinda difficult but finally got my acceptance email excited for this platform and fuck you reddit
Yes this is my first time and my first comment too :) Glad to be here
Happy pie day!
First time, second comment! I guess we’ll see how this works out.
I used mastadon a but but never got hooked. Not because of the app but because the Twitter like format is only good if you have interesting people to follow.
I’ve always preferred the reddit style discussions.
Same here. Tried Mastodon, but the birdsite like way of following people, not topics, and having only this sites equivalent of “Sort by New”, just doesn’t work for me.
I like it though the no central login is my biggest issue I think I have right now. What works for Reddit is that it’s really easy for a non-technical person to get in to it; Setup an account, login in, find, view, subscribe, post, and comment all in one place. With Lemmy/Fediverse there is a barrier with trying to explain it straight away e.g is it called Lemmy or Fediverse or Kbin etc
I get why it’s better, and I don’t know what a solution could be, but at the moment the simplicity of it in one place will keep Reddit a viable solution for a lot of people who would like it to “just work”
As an example here’s a post from PrequelMemes
squabbles.io is a pretty good reddit alternative. I hear a lot of people suggesting lemmy and other federated options, but those are just confusing to me tbh. Squabbles works very similarly to reddit, so the transition should be painless.
And the reply
Thank you! I’m heading to squabbles.io right now, based upon your description of it!
I don’t want to come across as an asshole, but these people already understand the fediverse if they can comprehend creating a squabbles.io account vs a reddit.com account.
But isn’t squabbles owned by a single company? I thought I heard that. So the same thing will probably end up happening there.
Ick, keep my Twitter-like services and Reddit-like services apart lol. And unless I’m compelled with a strong real life reason, it’s Fediverse socials or bust for me going forward, I think.
This is my first time using Fediverse accounts but I’ve always stayed away from other social media other than reddit due to privacy reasons.
I think Lemmy is cool but I will miss all the different communities and information I could find or did find on reddit, but I hope Lemmy grows into what reddit was and what it could have been.
But, yes, I have to admit I am a little heartbroken after about a decade.
I tried Mastodon, but Twitter was never my thing anyways, so it didn’t really click. This is been a much better experience. I’m quickly getting the hang of how it works.
Mastodon felt too isolated in its approach to gathering communities for me.
