this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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Yes, it is. And I literally have no idea what Iβm doing or what the fediverse is or how to best utilize it and I have a mastodon account but donβt use it because all of this fediverse/instance stuff stresses me out and I just want a cool community to feel like Iβm a part of, not a bunch of stuff I donβt 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 [email protected], I am [email protected]. Someone else is [email protected]. 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 [email protected] 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
You should post this on the ELI5 community
Thanks! Feel free to cross post it!
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 focusedz 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've 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. 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
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
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.
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.