I don't agree. The term "Fediverse" must be mentioned at the very beginning of the introduction - the decentralized network must be understood as the basis of the whole. People have made the mistake for too long of selling Mastodon to people as the Fediverse - that's just wrong.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration
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The issue is that for your average Joe Schmoe, decentralization isn't really a selling point. For a lot of people, a computer is a magic box they use to visit websites, and how anything works under the hood is irrelevant. Whether it's one server or a federation of servers doesn't matter.
I saw a lot of people bail on Mastodon before even signing up because this concept of "instances" confused them. What server do I join? Can I talk to X of I'm not on X's server? Do I need an account on each server I want to follow? This concept of multiple instances of a platform doesn't exist outside of the fediverse. Kbin just pointing you to the default instance is probably the best thing it could do for widespread adoption.
I don't think it's fair to expect someone looking to join a new knitting community to learn about client/server relationships and federated social platforms. Point them to the main instance and give them a high level overview about the fediverse if they ask. The resources are here if they want to learn more.
I don't think it's fair to expect someone looking to join a new knitting community to learn about client/server relationships and federated social platforms.
This is my opinion as well. I really don't think that the average end user should be expected to know or care about how federated servers work, any more than I need to know that when I visit a website it uses a load balancer to route my request to one of many servers. Users should be able to create an account and click on links to find and create content without having to understand anything about the technical end.
I don't think it's fair to expect someone looking to join a new knitting community to learn about client/server relationships and federated social platforms.
This is the situation with the communities I'm most interested in - it's a big psychological barrier to entry, if you're not particularly tech-minded. I've been trying to spread the word, but I don't think I can put it simply enough (and I've been putting it really simply, because honestly I don't completely understand it all myself yet).
I'm here because it was easy to sign up, it's friendly and reasonably intuitive, and it seems like a place where you can learn by doing. I just jumped in without thinking too much about it, and it's working out pretty well so far. I just wish more people understood that they could do the same thing...
I'm not too worried about the learning curve. I can remember when explaining Reddit to my friends ended in a blank stare. I also encountered plenty of people on Reddit, even recently, who were only there for a specific sub and had no real awareness of the larger Reddit system/community.
The same thing can happen with the Fediverse. Communities on specific instances will gain critical mass and attract people from outside the Fediverse, who will sign up and engage with what they think of as just another website.
The onboarding process, prior to selecting a server, could be streamlined. It's common fair to ask new users to identify some of their topics of interest. Server admins could provide a list of tags/topics that are associated with their community. The new user would then see a list of communities ordered by strongest matches to their interests. Just a thought.
As long as it's optional. I absolutely despise sites trying to decide what I want to see based on a few vague interests. I know that works for most people, but I can't be the only one who would have a negative impression of that being the only onboarding option.
I love this idea! Anything (within reason) to reduce decision paralysis is a great thing, and I think this would help a lot with that.
As an alternative the UI could hide the fediverse-related technicality while showing basically all the magazines from all the kbin instances. When new users create an account, all the kbin instances should allow creation for any other instance. Just allow redirecting or something. There should be an advanced info button to show each kbin instance's policies. They won't matter for the average Joe.
You can't show anyone anything "from all [blank] instances", though. There's no centralized server that they all phone home to. There's no mechanism for them to learn about each other except through user exploration.
So there’s no way to see non-kbin content without going and subscribing to another instances magazines?
Bingo. Someone on the site has to follow remote content in order for the site to receive it. So long as one person is subscribed, it will land here, and become searchable via regular search.
New Fediverse sites pop up every day. They don't register with any kind of central authority, and, indeed, if no one on those sites subscribes to remote users or groups, and no one off-site subscribes to local users or groups, the site is in effect unfederated.
Ooh I did not realize this but it makes sense.
A dumb follow-up then if I may… if I don’t see a particular magazine I’m looking for (so it either doesn’t exist or no one from this site has subscribed to it yet), how do I search other instances to see if it exists anywhere else?
If you're staying here, this won't be an actual problem going forward, for the most part. There are enough people here to make sure everything except the most niche remote groups are being followed, given a little bit of time.
But as an academic exercise, the easiest way is to use the search bar on another big server. Lemmy.world, Lemmy.one, Lemmy.ml, or beehaw.org should do. Once you've found something that's out there that you want syncing here, copy the originating URL (found via the Fediverse's rainbow network icon on Lemmy-based sites, or the "copy link to Fediverse" option under "more" on kbin-based sites) and then paste that into kbin.social's searchbar.
Searching for direct URLs is seemingly how all Fediverse sites allow users to pull in remotely hosted content (its the same process on Mastodon, Misskey, Friendica, PixelFed, and Hubzilla, I believe). Once it's been pulled in, you can subscribe and keep the content flowing.
Thanks for the primer! Added bonus, I now understand the function of “copy link to fediverse”. Much obliged.
This concept of multiple instances of a platform doesn't exist outside of the fediverse.
This is not 100% true.
A good comparison might be World of Warcraft. While not the best example, a player does not have to be in the same instance/server as their friend in order to join in each other's content/dungeons. This is a fairly new feature of WoW ( and not feature-complete compared to full federation ). It could stand in as a starting point for the conversation.
most people have not played WoW or any MMO
Most people haven't used Twitter or Reddit, either.
and the fediverse is also about value of inclusivity. it goes beyond a technological ideal.
I initially downvoted you because I disagree, but then changed my mind because it's still a valid opinion. Personally, I agree with OP. People are being scared off by confusion in trying to understand what the fediverse is. While I agree it's good to mention the fediverse and the distributed nature, it's often coming across as the main thing and I think it's counter-productive. People will come to understand it just fine if they can just be left to dive in without befuddling them. I think getting them on board is more important than it being in the fediverse.
I think what scares people off is looking for an explanation and seeing 15 page documents or 30 minute videos explaining it.
"Fediverse lets different sites talk to each other. It's like if Facebook could follow people on Twitter and subscribe to subreddits so now your Facebook page has Facebook posts, reddit Twitter posts, and reddit posts all in one, if you want. If you join a site on the fediverse, you can communicate with any other site on the fediverse easily." 3 sentences gets the job done for what's needed.
One they're in kbin or whatever, they can learn the site. "oh a magazine is like a subreddit or like channels in a discord server" or whatever they're used to.
I wish that's how it was explained to me. I'm not massively into technology but it interests me casually so I was able to put up with the long explanations because it felt interesting to me. But it really could be boiled down so much more for newbies.
This is a great analogy. I also like the comparison to emails - doesn’t matter if you’re on Yahoo or Gmail or AOL (we’re still out here!), you can communicate with each other seamlessly, though your user experiences (email features, layouts, etc) may differ.
i just wish we can keep the terminologies consistent, even calling magazines as subs/subreddits.
people don't want to learn another set of terminology when all they want to just to refer to that thing they want to point to.
i don't even like the word "boost". just give me up and down arrows and it'll be good enough.
I agree it's not important to introduce and/or explain the Fediverse at length, but the concept probably cannot be ignored completely either.
People migrating from Reddit are faced with the choice between Lemmy and kbin, and a bunch of different servers. Telling them that "which one you choose doesn't matter that much, as they will all talk to each other anyway" is probably of some relevance.
The differences among instances really do matter.
If Stormfront opens an instance tomorrow, would you say it makes no difference because they will all talk to each other anyway? You shouldn't. The example of Mastodon shows they won't all talk to each other, often for very good reasons. Like "that instance is literally Stormfront." You can expect that instance to have Nazi moderation policies, to normalize Nazism and to engage in Nazi brigading.
Imagine an average Redditor lands on one of the main Lemmy instances, where everyone (on penalty of excommunication) holds that Stalin Did Nothing Wrong, that Ukrainian culture and language should be exterminated and submerged in the Russian Empire, and so on. If that Redditor doesn't really understand that the instances are different in viewpoint and policy, they can reasonably conclude that the Fediverse is dominated by tankies. Meanwhile, despite their faults, Twitter and Reddit still exist and are not so clearly dominated by people who like to promote genocide. What does the average user think?
Absolutely - I'm coming from the assumption that they are given a list of reasonable instances (for example from the kbin front page or from recommendations).
Among a curated list of servers, it's probably best to join one without assigning too much importance to it, and rather change instance later should you be unhappy. But of course, some instances should not be considered, and some might prefer to join an instance with stricter/more lenient moderation right off the bat.
Which one you choose does matter though, at least for the immediate user experience.
I don't think decoupling the content distribution system from the immediate interface works in the favor of large scale adoption of the whole system.
We can be honest by saying something like "the particular site you sign up for will look and feel different, and the people you first encounter will have a slightly different culture, but ultimately all of these sites can and do interact with each other's users and content. It's like choosing one of twitter or facebook as your main interface but being able to read and post on either one. It's a lot more complicated to talk about than it is to use it, really. You'll see when you try it".
Most importantly, people can start somewhere, and if they don't like the first site they choose, they can register with another. We should be finding ways to tell people this isn't the end of the world if they feel the need to go to another site to use the same overall ecosystem.
I don't really agree with this because the fediverse is not only interconnected by a technology (ActivityPub) but also by some shared values, like inclusivity and kindness to each other.
so for me it's important to agree to embrace those values if you want to be part of it. it's not just a replacement for other platforms. users that experienced the twitter migration know what I'm talking about.
if an instance becomes toxic, il will simply be de-federated and continue to live on its on , on a secular island (a good example of this is thruth.social, who is not accessible from mastodon.social for obvious reasons). I really don't want this to happen to here.
so please let's keep what was on reddit on reddit and build something new here.
I don't really agree with this because the fediverse is not only interconnected by a technology (ActivityPub) but also by some shared values, like inclusivity and kindness to each other.
That's kind of overegging the pudding. There's nothing intrinsically "nice" about fedi, quite a lot that isn't, and this feels like a promise that will be very rapidly seen as hollow lies the moment someone has a negative interaction, as well they might.
It's what every underdog social network says when it doesn't have the network effect yet. BlueSky, for example.
While I agree that it's important for people to have an understanding of the values that the fediverse are founded upon, as well as associated etiquette, I still don't think that the fediverse itself needs that much of an explanation for people to reach that understanding. Though platforms may provide tools that can be used for malice, a tool is only ever as good or bad as the intent of the person using them. I don't think someone necessarily has to understand the technical aspects of the fediverse to know how to treat others. Maybe to put things in better perspective, like how much of a communal aspect there is to the efforts that maintain this network, but I think most people will get to that understanding on their own regardless if it's truly in their intent. Inclusivity and kindness aren't concepts that are unique to the fediverse, but human concepts that people learn, and unfortunately unlearn over entire lifetimes. And above all, I believe the best way to teach and convey values to one another will also always be the most intuitive: by example.
I think that it's important for users to know where they are.
and I think that it's critical to fight technological illiteracy, raise awareness about how it works, who's developing it, who's paying for it. it doesn't need to be complex, but the main concept need to be explained, and thus let users be actors of their digital life.
in my opinion it's important to take any opportunity to do so.
the online courses from the totem project about digital security and privacy are very well done and easy to follow, if anyone is interested:
https://totem-project.org
I think understanding how federation works would eliminate a lot of the "Which network should I be on" questions, though. Because a lot of people seem to be confused about that. If I'M understanding it correctly, it doesn't matter really which aggregator you use, because with federation you actually have access to the content in all of them.
You don't have access to the ones which refuse to federate (for example, because they will only federate with instances that accept the same Code of Conduct).
First rule of fediverse: Don’t talk about the fediverse.
Here's what would I say when introducing Kbin to someone:
"...So Kbin is a lot like Reddit; you can pretty much upvote and downvote stuff, you can post stuff that you wanna post, you can follow people, you can save posts by simply 'boosting'. But here's the deal: you can also access posts from other sites like Kbin, and you can write microblogs! With what's going in Reddit, I think it's safe to say that Kbin is here to stay."
this is not that simple. If a user joins an instance that has only a few users they will get disappointed because it will look empty and non-active. They need to understand that they can still join communities from another instances where they can find more users and activity and they can still interact with them
I still don't understand how to do this part
It's been turned off temporarily here on kbin.social to help keep the servers running, should be back soon though
it already works, partially. You can go to search and try pasting "[email protected]" . You need only the community name, if you paste the whole URL it is not working. Then, if you click on the community name's, you are transferred to https://kbin.social/m/[email protected] which is essentially the content from that community, but "inside" your current instance. The problem now is that this content is stuck in 2 days ago, when the issue with cloudflare started. When fixed, content will start being updated
Is that content being updated, though? Or was that community simply imported before syncing was off, and is now stale?
This is why some knowledge about how things work is important. Accessing https://kbin.social/m/[email protected] does not access the remote community. It accesses a local mirror of the remote community, which is updated when the remote group forwards content along.
If k-soc isn't accepting those content updates, it's not actually engaging with remote users and new content, and it's not se ding along local content addressed to the remote group.
It's interacting with a ghost.
Is that content being updated, though?
did you read my comment till the end?
I think the question is when cloudflare is no longer needed, will interaction with the content be "live" vs only when instances send/receive data. It's a reasonable question, no need to be impatient. A lot of people are learning right now.
We are obviously assuming different things: You think that there are only uneducated people out there. I assume that there are many interested people who would like to be fully informed.
Sure, there are definitely people who are going to want to know how everything works. But the community won't grow and evolve if there's too steep of a learning curve for the average internet user to just to join in
And why does the community need to grow? That has never been the main goal of the #Fediverse to be focused on. Quality over quantity.
Because for this to work long term we need adoption. Protocols only work if there is large adoption, which means making all this comprehensible to more than just the tech nerds that are really into it. Plus isn't the whole idea to get everyone to start using these open protocols so we can make the internet a more open place? It defeats the point if we essentially just make this in to a niche silo too.
Also, I think "fediverse" is really bad branding. It makes this whole thing feel too close to those crypto-scammers.
No, it's not. If you look "a little bit" closer then you will understand what a decentralised network is and the the "fediverse" - combination of "federated universe" - quite clear.