Call them whatever you want, but please not <something>verse. They do not form a separate universe, they talk as much with the rest of the fediverse as with each other
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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A galaxy, I suppose
The Fediverse. There's nothing inherently special about Lemmy or kbin or lotide being link aggregators. We get regular posters from Friendica and I've gotten replies from Mastodon accounts before.
The Fediverse is ALL of us. We should be interacting with PeerTube and Misskey and all the rest!
How do we interact with PeerTube from /kbin?
Can I ask then: on the Fediverse, what distinguishes something like Lemmy from kbin? They can presumably...federate with each other, so what's the distinguishing factor? Is a Lemmy instance fundamentally different in some way than a kbin instance (I only just found out about kbin and originally though it was a Lemmy instance, but now I'm not sure).
Disclaimer: I am not a dev, my technical understanding is limited, and I only discovered kbin today.
The difference is that they are running completely different software, despite speaking the same* language ('protocol'). There may be some things one software does that another can't. I wonder if it's easier to answer what distinguishes it, or what makes them similar. They're both link aggregators (the same kind of website as reddit, e.g. people post links to groups and they get voted up or down by subscribers), and they're both able to process each other's posts and see each other's groups (kbin calls them magazines, apparently, while we call them communities. I don't know if that's purely semantic or if there is a profound difference). So as far as basic usage goes, both can make a post and unless they do something fancy, the other site can read and reply to it.
kbin has a different visual layout and appears to have more focus on also having microblogging and social media features within those groups, we don't have that feature and integration with Mastodon can be a bit stranger here (such as them replying to replies, in my experience it doesn't nest neatly like ours do, instead just showing as a reply to the original post, and maybe that's unavoidable when a twitter-like thread without proper comment replying has to fit our comments layout). It seems Lemmy has stayed closer to what reddit is like, while kbin has strayed into a more experimental approach.
kbin says "This is a very early beta version, and a lot of features are currently broken or in active development, such as federation" (and I have noticed the federation doesn't show some posts yet which would be expected to show). Lemmy doesn't seem to have such disclaimers. It's current version number suggests it is considered more mature, but still not particularly stable either.
kbin seems to have a mobile app under development, while Lemmy's seem to be more mature. That said, I've never used one.
Thanks, that does fill in some pieces!
Fediverse. Also I hate that mastodon is seen as the fediverse. I had to explain to someone like they were a 5 years old I was using pleroma and they kept saying that no, I didn't understand, we're on mastodon. He didn't get the concept at all.
I wish there was a unified document / webpage / video that put all of the info into an easy to understand format. I understand the fediverse now but it was confusing until it clicked. If there was resources that boiled it all into layman's terms, I think there would be higher adoption and the fediverse itself would really take off
You know what, I was planning to make a channel, like, videos and stuff. Might make a video explaining this as my first project.
Would it be accurate to say anything that implements ActivityPub and communicates with other things using ActivityPub are part of the Fediverse?
@menturi @raccoon There is a bunch of other protocols other than ActivityPub who are also considered part of the fediverse: Diaspora, Zot, Streams, etc.
In fact ActivityPub wasn’t always the main protocol of the fediverse, it used to be OStatus. Mastdon was first build on top of OStatus before switching to ActivityPub.
But nowadays ActivityPub is by far the most used one.
The Fediverse is obviously enough to describe this all, and it reduces the confusion for new users. I'm still throwing my worst idea here: The Groupiverse.
The versatile -verse; the versaverse!
I would actually recommend sticking to Fediverse to REDUCE the confusion that Mastodon has caused. If people referred to Mastodon as the Fediverse or even fediversetodon or something it may help. But calling it the Twitter alternative all the time has just said "screw twitter, it's mastodon now!" and that's where people don't understand the potential it really has and then get confused. Keep referring all the fediverse sites as the fediverse and it can bring people to the smaller instances and not think that if they're not on Lemmy or Kbin that they have to make some kind of choice on which "site" to join.
What prompted this was trying to refer to the growth of the userbase on the federated Reddit alternatives as a distinct niche within the fediverse.
I’d probably call this niche of fediverse apps “fediverse link aggregators”. Their UI really only makes them useful for that at the moment (IMO - haven’t tried kbin), and you can technically follow a Lemmy community from Mastodon if you want (it’s not a great UX), but you don’t get the aggregation doing that. At least not without sorting down to just that view.
I think when talking colloquially to a broader audience, "reddit-like" is good enough.
When talking internally, I don't know, "link aggregator" doesn't really describe what these are to me at all. I wouldn't call reddit a "link aggregator" it doesn't really fit what reddit is (many posts don't have links??).
I think the essential differentiator of reddit is the voting.
I like that a lot too.
That's the best idea I've heard yet. It's not very "cool" but it solves the problem perfectly :)
As a “replacement” for Reddit (I think that moniker is selling it short, it can be so much more), it makes sense. Reddit and sites like it, depending on the specific community are really just a place to share content from outside sources and discuss that content with a like-minded community.
The other type of subreddit I’ve see are tech support style where someone is asking a question of a group of people who are likely to have a good understanding of the subject matter. I think link-aggregation-style sites are the best interface for these at the moment as well.
I like the approach, but think both "fediverse" and "link-aggregator" are just not good terms from any sort of branding/messaging/marketing perspective. They're both relatively technical or confusing and inaccurate. The fediverse isn't really a federation, which you forget once you understand what federation is in a computing sense or in the case of the fediverse, and lemmy and reddit aren't really link-aggregators, they're more like forums.
I would agree with you... except that Reddit has always been referred to a link aggregator (and forum) since I've used it. It's a bit of both.
The problem is that there isn't really an over-arching name that you can call these services because they are all pretty distinct in their feature sets. Lemmy and kbin get grouped together often, but kbin also has microblogging capabilities which sets it apart from both Lemmy and Reddit.
Ha yea ... the elephant in the room is that we probably just want to define ourselves as "Not-Mastodon".
Even though /kbin is a fusion of platform formats (which I think is awesome BTW), the underlying common factor is the primary basis of connecting or socialising.
IN the case of reddit/lemmy/kbin/link aggregators etc ... it's subject matters and interests, not direct person-to-person social connections (which aren't even possible on lemmy). It's a significant difference IMO, and well worth trying to package in a memorable catchphrase or term. I just don't know what it'd be (my best idea being "threadiverse", which doesn't capture this idea at all really).
Seeing some push back here on the idea of confusing things with more terms than just "fediverse". I get that. The problem is that that cat is very much out of the bag. Surely, for the vast majority of people that have any awareness of the fediverse, they think it's just Mastodon.
Either way, "Mastodon" is a much larger "brand" than "fediverse" or anything else on the fediverse. So trying to get some conceptual branding going makes sense. It make things more clear, as the idea of the fediverse itself is kinda fuzzy and complex and probably best left out at the beginning. It's a little bit like the matrix, you have to see it with your own eyes, IMO.
So, my lame contribution ...
Threadiverse!: "Social media, but woven into threads, like Reddit or Forums, not like the chaos of Twitter, but all on the Fediverse so you can find anyone else doing anything else too."
Why should we just accept that some naïve twitter refugees have misassociated the Fediverse as being just Mastodon? This isn't branding, this is raising awareness of the interrelatedness of this federated network! Disassociating from the Fediverse just makes the problem worse, I'd say.
I get you. In the end, for me, and I settled on this a while ago, "Fediverse" is a bad name. It's confusing, seems like a Marvel thing, sounds weird and even unappealing frankly. Mastodon works because it's a cool appealing word. It's not just twitter refugees and their ignorance. The "fediverse" has a marketing/branding problem. And if you want "refugees" or "migrants" (which I acknowledge are problematic terms for actual IRL refugees, sorry), you've got meet them where they are.
Additionally, platforms are actually products. In fact, relatively vertical products with often sub-par interoperability for something that claims to be the "next internet protocol". So, whether you create some branding or not, "you", as a platform, are putting branding out there even if it's the absence of an attempt.
So my recommended approach would be to happily "brand" a platform, but always be pushing and clarifying that it's on the fediverse and what that actually means. Also, I'd start talking about "the social web" rather than just the fediverse, because that's what it is and it's a better term IMO.
I don't know that I agree that just being heavy with product branding and trying to list interoperability as a feature really addresses the issue, but I 100% agree that "Fediverse" is an awful name.
But then, so is "world wide web". Or "Internet", for they matter. We get stuck with so many awful, awful names that sound like they were the idea of villains from a low budget 90s sci-fi tv show.
I’d guess that for early to mid 90s, World Wide Web was fine and Internet was actually good (remember the film “The Net”?). I was too young then to know though.
Maybe the Social Web?
because that would also cover sites like Dreamwidth and AO3 that don't aren't decentralized so aren't concsidered part of the fediverse.
Why should we just accept that some naïve twitter refugees have misassociated the Fediverse as being just Mastodon?
Because no amount of ideological objection will change the fact that this is exactly what has happened. People are using it this way, and what I was trying to raise here is a way to talk about this particular niche of the web without running in exactly the same problem with lemmy
Well, I honestly haven't come across anyone who uses it that way so I can't really advise.
I just feel like it's not so widespread to just assume we should accept that the "cat is out of the bag". We can just focus on correcting people, like we do when they conflate Lemmy with lemmy.ml.
A name for forum- and aggregator-style fediverse software. and instances sounds like a good idea to me. I agree with the points you and @ada@[email protected] make elsewhere in the thread about the problem that most people coming from Twitter currently equate Mastodon with the "fediverse" as equivalent to Mastodon (a problem in general because it leads to centralization and marginalizing other implementations, and an even bigger problem currently because of Mastodon's reputation for anti-blackness and reply-guyism), and not wanting to have similar dynamics with people coming from reddit.
I'll have to think more about the specific term threadiverse. I see what you're getting at but Mastodon / Pleroma / CalcKey etc all have threads as well even from a microblogging perspective, and Kbin also has a microblog (as opposed to forum) view.
Yea I know. I guess the idea was that it's the part of the fediverse that starts with threads rather than adds them to a social network. I couldn't think of any better term for a "post + comments" structure ... ?
yeah, i've come around to it as a working name. kbin bridges between the threadiverse and the "feediverse" or whatever to call it.
I really like how this addresses the format of the content, you get my vote ❤️
Yea, and it retains "fediverse" in it too. Not to love my own creation too much, but I'm liking it the more time I spend with it ... I'll probably start using it all over the place now LOL.
Importantly, it's not just Lemmy and /kbin, there are other thread or forum based platforms out there too (See, eg @[email protected] and their work). Advocating for them all with a single umbrella term surely helps.
Also, after a quick check there are some domains available too.
There are more.. three forum softwares are adding federation support: #nodeBB, #Discourse and #Flarum.
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/flarum-forum-software-2-0-will-have-federation-support/3246
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/adding-federation-support-to-discourse/2966
I would just call it the fediverse to be honest. Technically they all federate content, and I could respond to this post from Mastodon or Lemmy and it just works.
I think people referring to Mastodon as the fediverse is kind of similar to someone saying "the reddit for " instead of "'s sub-reddit", if that makes sense?
Link aggregatorinator!