this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023
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Fediverse

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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

Getting started on Fediverse;

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My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.

I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.

I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Personally I find Kbin more usable (while still being reddit-like) as it also has functionality letting you follow on normal microblogging content from Mastodon and other places, making it more intertwined with the whole fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just checked out Kbin from this comment (and signed up) - the functionality definitely feels better. I love that I jumped straight into this same thread immediately from the Kbin homepage. Federated content is awesome.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

And if it helps, you can see and interact with posts on Mastodon, Calckey, etc from within kbin. Each 'magazine' has a mod set list of words/hashtags it looks for, so it's not everything all at once.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I will check that out! One of my confusions with the fediverse is that I thought having one account would allow me to access all the services, and the account acted as a kind of "base" through which I did everything. I now understand that federation basically happens at the application level, or really at the administration level, and how many services the community provides for any given account.

What I wanted was to avoid having to create so many accounts for everything the fediverse offers, but I guess it is not possible, and honestly is no different than having separate accounts for any other online thing I participate in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, that seems to be a common misconception. But it's more that your Twitter account can interact with FB, IG, YT, etc, not that your Twitter account lets you log into all the different services.

I ended up with probably a dozen as I was exploring the fediverse, but ended up with 3 more or less but only primarily use two of them (kbin and Calckey… I have a Pixelfed, but use it as much as I used IG, which is rarely).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That is okay. A little bit of compartmentalization is healthy. Each site has its own set of expectations and mode of interactions. I should be more willing to explore and find out what I like, otherwise I could miss out on an amazing community that makes my life better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mastodon allows you to verify other ActivityPub accounts with a special link-back HTML element. I wish that there was either a universal method or that more applications had something like it. Something that indicates "this is me, and you can see my other activity over here and here and here".

Maybe we need a dedicated ActivityPub service for just that lol. Maybe I should be the one to make it...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yes! I have never been one to fracture my (veiled) identity with several accounts. This is social media afterall, part of the charm is being recognized and getting to talk to familiar people.

The best I can do is use the same username for every website, and hope no one copies it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes! You get it! I'm glad I didn't stick with the popular services and tried out some of the others. You may find that after searching you're happiest back where you started, but at least you can say you've made an informed decision.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

There is definitely some truth to "the media is the message." The structure matters, and there is no sense on settling with something that feels wrong just because it is getting traction.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's really the opposite of that. One account let's you access all oftthe content (or most of it, not everything is totally interoperable, and admins do block other sites sometimes), but now there's 10,000 separate, totally independent websites.

But it's absolutely what basically everyone thinks at first, because most people hear about it from people that don't really explain things very well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow. I had no idea is was that large. I am assuming a lot of that are technical people running their personal servers, but it is still a wild number. 10,000 running websites not motivated by monetary gain or lust for power.

Yeah, I haven't actually sat down and read up on how the technology works, but I plan to.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, there's a lot of small or single-user instances. And that count is across all of the Fediverse, so Mastodon, Misskey, Calckey, Foundkey, Pleroma, Akkoma, Friendica, PixelFed, PeerTube, FunkWhale, BookWyrm, etc., etc. But it's a big place.

I said elsewhere, the internet used to be expansive and sparse. Well, we're starting to reclaim that here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have had literal dreams about how the internet used ro work. I swear I have memories about websites acting like an alternative hyperlinked operating system. I remember it being so EASY to fluidly and organically navigate to interesting websites.

Now I am lucky if I stumble upon something worthwhile through search engines.

Blogging killed the internet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not quite sure how exactly everything works but it seems like a lot of things on kbin get thrown to /m/random, does anyone know what's up with that? A lot of communities from lemmy show up as a 404 and posts end up there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Random is where content not associated with a magazine ends up.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To me, it seems to be the most "reddit-like" of the options out there. It pulls from across the fediverse so it has content from Mastodon, Lemmy, and whatever gets posted locally on kbin itself. While not perfect, it is being actively worked on so I'm really hoping it'll get even better.

I literally just posted that in r/RedditAlternatives to answer the question, "Where would you go?" lol