I migrated from reddit like a lot of folks. I'm using kbin.social, but it seems I can also see posts from people at places like lemmy.world. How many different instances are there? How does the federated model work? So far I like what I see, but I'm also just trying to understand how things are integrated here.
Instances are like smaller Reddits. Communities (lemmy) and magazines (kbin) are like subs. You can subscribe and participate in any c/ or m/ as long as their instance is federated with yours.
To add to the fun, we can also interact with users on Mastodon (similar to Twitter), Pixelfed (like Instagram), or any other ActivityPub-enabled instance that federated with us.
To my mind, a better analogy is email. It doesn’t matter which platform (provider) you use, you can interact with anyone on almost any other email platform. Make sense?
Kbin and Lemmy are different software that have communities (magazines on Kbin) where people post content and have threaded discussions. Very much reddit-like.
There are many instances of both Kbin and Lemmy.
Kbin and Lemmy do federate, i.e. ‘talk’ to each other via the same protocol. This means you can see and interact with content regardless which of the two software an instance has chosen. It’s not perfect, e.g. I believe some minor features are not compatible (yet) and I have experienced that federation doesn’t always work, but hopefully this all becomes smoother when both mature.
I'm not really sure how it is with Lemmy but kbin displays the instance URL within the magazine search. Maybe you can check the URL of those communities to see it more clearly, but yes, those should be all from different instances. Whether you want to subscribe to the biggest or all of them is up to you, just like you could have subbed to various kinds of subreddits for the same topic.
Currently I’m more aware of general interest instances for both Lemmy & Kbin, and a few more focused ones (e.g. Mander.xyz/slrpnk.net/startrek.website), so I’m curious what others there might be....
I've been thinking of starting a theatre-focused kbin instance, but realistically not until the platform has matured, as my sysadmin days are well, well, well behind me. In the meantime I've started a Musicals magazine on kbin.social.
Oh, thanks for explaining that. I started following some kbin magazines on my instance and thought there was maybe a sync issue, but no new posts have been created yet, so this makes a lot more sense!
Hello, some people have told me that it is possible to see lemmy posts from mastodon. To me it makes a lot of sense to have a single app for whole fediverse. However, mastodon is not doing a good job at this....
As mentioned by @Kichae above, the microblog section, while it will contain posts by people you follow, seems to essentially be a global or federated feed of everything that goes through the instance … so it’s not just the microblogs posted to groups drowning things out then … ?
How would you filter out all of the microblogs posted by mistake? If the microblog section is like a global feed, how could you filter out everything but those you follow?
I don’t want to be too critical of kbin here, especially as it’s young platform with a bright future, but it shouldn’t be too hard to explain how to get a feed of the people you follow … right? Unless it’s just not possible? In which case, people should really stop saying that kbin is lemmy + mastodon. From the perspective of writing posts to both platforms, it seems to fit the bill nicely, especially with the nice hashtag->magazine feature. But for reading a feed, it appears to not have the mastodon side covered at all.
Is this on the roadmap (I would guess so)?
IMO, there is a tad too much “hype” or “overselling” happening on the fediverse. Excitement is good, obviously. But I’ve seen a bit too much factually incorrect statements about what is possible with a specific platform, which, IMO, only do harm by either leading someone to disappointment or feeling like a platform is too hard to use because they can’t work out how to do something that isn’t actually possible. I certainly felt that way about kbin and getting a feed of those I follow and dismissed it as having a bad UI, now I realise that I was under a false impression.
I just read Cory Doctorow’s article “Let the Platform Burn”. It reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for some time. Instead of joining yet another social network and recreating yourself, why not create your personal social network object and link it to others via a federation of the personal social network...
? You can search for Kbin magazines & subscribe to them via Lemmy, as well as post to them/reply to posts that are federated and the like. There have been some issues/delays in federation between the two, but not too different from those between Lemmy instances, unless something has recently changed with Kbin again in this regard.
Not sure how it is on lemmy. But looking at the structure on kbin. I reckon you could (with a little sql magic) convert the existing one to a local magazine without cloning, and then people could subscribe to the new version or existing subs could also hack their sql to change the id to match the new instance and toggle the subscriptions.
On Lemmy though I think images are not cached locally. So you might lose those. Kbin by default will also download images/media locally too.
Not sure this would happen enough to add formal functionality for it though.
We should implement this as whenever I wish to browse (for example) [email protected] I have to go to there, and whenever I wish to browse [email protected] I have to go there. Would it be possible to implement it in kbin/lemmy's code to make it easier to browse all?
KBin/Lemmy should provide a combined local view for duplicated magazines/communities across the fediverse. Treating the concept like a hashtag.
The point of the fediverse is to distribute content so no one has a monopoly. People squatting on communities/magazines don't understand there is nothing stopping people creating one on a hundred other instances.
Each kbin/lemmy instance decides to follow magazines/communities from others through activity pub and stores it locally for the instance.
Having the UI retrieve all local posts with the same magazine/community name (e.g. m/[email protected] c/[email protected]). Wouldn't be hugely difficult, I believe Kbin uses postgres database as the local store and suspect it would be a tweak to the SQL query it runs.
Even if that wasn't an option, there is a means to get all of the magazines/communities from the kbin UI/lemmy REST API. As well as retrieve all posts for a specific magazine/community. So you could do it entirely in a web client, for KBin it would be more work.
The combined view wouldn't change how you comment on specific posts. The issue is where do you post and what view would take dominance (e.g. if a magazine had themed itself).
The solution here would be to default your local instance if it exists or the instance providing the most posts/comments. Perhaps with a drop down so users can choose.
I would also configure things so instances can select a site wide default if they can't moderate it effectively. For example pushing all posts to the star trek instance rather than local magazine with a mod who is MIA.
This would remove most of the concerns users have about the fediverse, since they wouldn't be confronted by different instances. To them the fediverse is <insert instance> it would also encourage distribution of content.
I don't think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse. There are other platforms and will be more to come. Referring to a post on "Lemmy" or "kbin" is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer....
It’s not posting comments specifically to the original instance. If the instances defederate I can continue to post comments, and people on my instance can see and interact with them.
Once somebody subscribes to a community (or magazine if you’re on the rifle site), ActivityPub acts like dynamic, synchronizing RSS. Everybody interacts with local data, an instance isn’t simply acting as a proxy when interacting with a different instance.
I have Mastodon running on a VPS running Debian 11. Now I would like to add a Lemmy instance on the same server. I tried using the from scratch method from Lemmy documentation, but ran into errors that likely stemmed from minor version incompatibilities of the dependencies. I tried using the Lemmy easy deploy script but it wants...
I tried kbin and don’t really understand it to be honest. I looked at their documentation and it doesn’t really explain much other than how to create an account on an instance.
Going to kbin.social and creating an account didn’t get me much farther. I don’t undrestand how to “subscribe” to (for example) the lemmy communities I follow her, or the users I follow on mastodon. And the “magazines” thing I really don’t get.
Nope don't feel bad - it's totally understandable. Kbin is new, so the documentation is lacking.
Almost all content on Kbin, including users, has a follow / subscribe button in the sidebar beneath the magazine or user description. There's also a block button. These buttons can be used on almost all Kbin content, so it's very powerful - after spending about a week adding subs, my Kbin feed is far more active than Reddit was, even at its height.
Kbin breaks down your content into Magazines, Microblogs, and Threads. Magazines are synonymous with Communities on Lemmy, or subreddits on reddit. Microblogs are where the Mastodon Toots go, and how you interact with instances based on that architecture. Threads are just like posts on reddit, and can be text only, a link, a pic, or a video (although it seems video is still under development).
The best place to start getting subscriptions are in the magazines section:
...which lists all of the currently federated communities. Putting a domain search into the search bar will bring up all magazines in the instance on that domain:
This domain searching is extremely powerful, especially when you use the domain section (which can be hard to find) - you can get a breakdown of any domain currently federated on kbin by using the following link:
...where you'd put the domain you're interested in in place of 'lemmy.world'. You can then subscribe to the entire instance through that feed, or block it f you'd like. This also works for standard domains as well:
You really need to just test on a piecemeal basis. It’s a matter of what works with what, and sometimes even the devs don’t know.
What I’ve found so far:
Lemmy uniquely grabs old posts from Lemmy, but most software is “here and now” so you won’t see a history if you go somewhere until your instance is following it.
Mastodon can see Lemmy communities and users and you can DM people on mastodon from lemmy, but you can’t follow Mastodon users on Lemmy because the paradigm is different.
Lotide communities can be followed and interacted with. I think the latest Lemmy has fixed federation in the other direction.
Friendica groups can be followed and interacted with. Users are the same as mastodon users
Peertube channels can be followed like communities and you can see, upvote, and comment on videos, but you can’t post anything new – your instance will let you, but it won’t federate.
Kbin communities can be followed, be aware that kbin is in its early days so it has a lot of work on the back-end.
I was not able to federate with a.gru.ppe communities.
Hopefully this helps, and maybe others can post their discoveries. Decentralization is strength on the fediverse. The more things we can connect to, the less reliant we are on any one thing.
To do a lot of these, you put the community, magazine, or channel url into Lemmy search. It takes longer than you expect but if it’s federating at all it’ll show up on the search, then you can go and subscribe.
I'm a Reddit refugee and I've been moving all the pictures and videos from my old niche subreddit to my new niche Kbin magazine. I'm afraid Reddit will collapse, and the collection of floaty things I've been building up will become lost media if it's not reposted somewhere else. I like the Fediverse's mission and I want to see how the Fediverse develops. Also, I want to have a complete and functional artsy magazine on Kbin to show the others back on Reddit that it can be done well.
For the past couple days, some of my posts have been making Fedia's home page and apparently other instances' home pages too. It's good to be seen, but I'm afraid I'm getting more attention than I actually deserve. I like seeing art of fantasy worlds and interactions, and I'm not alone in that. But, I'm afraid I'm corrupting your feeds with stuff you aren't looking for, just because I'm doing it first.
I’ve noticed federation with Lemmy seems much quicker after updates to both so that’s a huge step forward. And I fully understand it’s beta software, it was essentially on the stage of just Ernest and his friends using it to test things and suddenly it has 50k users. It’s a miracle it survived at all.
My biggest issue right now is the difficulty finding communities in remote instances. Searching for !community doesn’t work and I’ve heard you’re supposed to paste the entire web adress but that doesn’t seem to work either. Puzzling since it’s so simple on Lemmy.
And while I like the front end the terminology makes no sense to me. I know it’s less important than the backend and whatnot but Magazine, Article, Boost, Favourite, Reduce… They all sound extremely unintuitive to me for what they are: communities with threads you up/downvote. And whatever Boost does. Especially since the microblogging integration means pressing “new post” doesn’t do what you think it does. And trying to pluralize Reduce ends up sounding incredibly awkward since it’s a verb and not a noun. What do you call downvotes? Reductions? Reduces?
My biggest issue right now is the difficulty finding communities in remote instances. Searching for !community doesn’t work and I’ve heard you’re supposed to paste the entire web adress but that doesn’t seem to work either. Puzzling since it’s so simple on Lemmy.
So, if the community is already present (someone has subscribed already) on your kbin instance, when you click magazines it will be there and typing part of the name will filter the list and make it show.
If the community is not yet on your instance, you click the search button at the top of the kbin screen and in that search box type the whole [email protected] and it should find it and auto subscribe you to it. From then on it should be in the list above.
I agree this was less than intuitive and when I first setup my instance I really did wonder why I couldn't find anything to subscribe to.
In terms of terminology. I think it's because kbin is trying to place itself as a halfway house between the threadiverse and microblogging. There's going to be a learning curve and things are constantly changing.
I’m still not seeing it in neither search box. Strange. There also seems to be federation issues with some instances still. I only noticed it because PoppinKREAM migrated to Lemmy (sh.itjust.works instance) but I can’t see any of their comments, posts or user profile on Kbin.social and it’s been a week.
I think the way people interact with microblogs versus comments and posts on a link aggregator are fundamentally different enough that I’m not sure trying to unite them under the same terminology is a great idea. Boost acting like a retweet for the people who follow you is not a bad idea though if that’s how it works, just name it something other than boost so people understand it’s purpose.
And calling single-image memes in a shitpost sub “Articles” in a “Magazine” will never not be bizarre to me.
In this case I was looking for the instance feddit.nu since I was trying to sync up subscriptions on the accounts I have. Try [email protected]. Previously I tried [email protected] and it still doesn’t show up no matter what I search for in the top-right magnifying glass next to the username but it has finally appeared in the magazine list now.
Not exactly what you're looking for, but kbin's search functionality can give you a list to find every community with that name that's federated on their instance:
I used to browse Reddit 90+% of the time from my phone through the RiF app, so after June 30th, here is what I did and what I recommend as a starter pack for others in the same situation:...
A website hosted by some kind individual or group created to host data and interface with one of the specific fediverse applications (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon, Pixelfed, etc).
What’s a community?
This is a Lemmy-specific term. They are topic-specific boards hosted on instances, similar to subreddits on Reddit. The Kbin term for this same idea is magazines.
Example: For Lemmy, they are represented as "https://kbin.social/search?q=community@instance", such as https://lemmy.world/c/pics. On Kbin, they are "@magazine", such as @pics.
What are federations?
I haven't really heard the word used this way, I've heard it more as an adjective or verb. This may take more than one line to explain because I literally had to see it to believe it.
To have one instance federated with another is to have them communicating with each other, so that users, posts, communities, etc on one instance can be read by uses on another instance. It's how I can read all these Lemmy posts on Kbin and comment under them, because these Lemmy instances are federated with the Kbin.social instance I'm currently on.
What's mastadon?
A federated version of Twitter.
Whats Kbin?
A federated web application that combines the link-aggregation of Reddit with the individual micro blogging threads of Twitter.
What's Activity Pub?
It's the current protocol to enable federation of all these sites we've been talking about. Federation is possible because all these sites are speaking the same language, and this is that language.
In addition to Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon that use Activity Pub, we also have Pixelfed, Micro.blog, Nextcloud, PeerTube, and more I'm sure.
An instance is a specific website running Lemmy or another piece of federated software. For example, lemmy.world and lemmy.ml are two distinct instances
What’s a community?
A community is the “sub-reddit” of Lemmy. Kbin uses the word “magazines”, but these are the same thing.
What are federations?
A federation is a group of instances sharing posts and activity data with each other so that it can be displayed to their respective end users. For example, I can post to a community on lemmy.world and then you will be able to see my post when you are browsing feddit.de.
Whats the difference between all these?
Let me know if you have additional questions based on my answers above.
What’s mastodon?
Mastodon is a piece of federated software that is built to look and feel like Twitter, similar to how Lemmy is built to look and feel like Reddit.
What’s Kbin?
Kbin.social is a website you can use to browse posts from the Fediverse. From what I understand, it is similar to Reddit as well.
What’s ActivityPub?
ActivityPub is the underlying protocol that Lemmy, Mastodon, and other pieces of federated software use to communicate with each other. This is how they notify each other of new posts, comments, upvotes, etc so they can stay in sync with each other.
I don’t know how I didn’t think of this be for, but the Lemmy bean posting could be a psyop that reddit is trying to get people to return to them after switching to Lemmy
Just for the sake of argument: it is different here, than there. Like here if you sub to something, at least on kbin.social I get every single new post as a "notification", rather than simply seeing more of that on the home page like you might expect. I keep forgetting, subscribing, then having to unsubscribe when already the next day there are 30+ notifications from a single account or magazine posting a flood of stuff.
And having to visit the specific magazine - not the user, not the thread, not clicking the link or expanding the picture - to unsubscribe first is somewhat counter-intuitive I suppose. All the more so when you continually have to keep doing it for every non-English magazine from an instance that doesn't mark each magazine since the entire instance is that way (and I've heard people say that about non-NSFW too? although on kbin.social I hardly ever see NSFW content to begin with).
So if someone has a need or desire to simply be taken care of without having to lift a finger to do stuff themselves, atm Reddit legit does that better than here. Fuck spez and all that, I'm just saying that the collective weight of all that effort from all those programmers and such have made it a more "polished" environment than here. You sell your soul to him, and he looks after you, up to a point.
Those of us who come here now don't care - I mean more polish would be nice but we think it's better here even without that - but those who simply want to be taken care of and can't be bothered to e.g. read instructions or search for those, would do better to return there. imho at least, for now, until the software catches up.
The notifications are flooding you because you turned them on or were on by default. If you go to your Kbin’s settings at the bottom of the page there are two checkboxes for subscribed magazines’ notifications. Just turn those off.
Also, make sure you set your homepage to your subscribed magazines and you’ll be good to go.
And about the other stuff, it’s not just about having a desire to be taken care of without having to lift a finger. I don’t care about having to learn how all of this fediverse stuff works because it’s fun for me, but that isn’t the case for the overwhelming majority of internet users that genuinely have zero problems with the platforms they use, and barely use. For example, my 70 year old parents barely know how to use YouTube and that’s the place they use to consume and discuss the topics they care about. I tried to teach them about Reddit and other forums, but it’s simply unnecessary when the reliable and easier thing already exists.
Same thing when you expect someone who uses their computer because of 2 or 3 applications, to ditch MacOS and all their neatly integrated hardware, to then spend hours and months on end to craft themselves an OS with Linux in which none of their specialized hardware works anymore.
Also, a ton of teenager to middle aged people will think the same about the Fediverse, when Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and other websites already provide them the platforms they need to express themselves and are "too casual" on those, to genuinely not have an issue with the platform itself. All of those users have valuable inputs and content to offer to the platform, and we’re not going to have them here, just because of how complex this platform is not only on paper, but in infrastructure ie: search engines are going to have a terrible time indexing the Fediverse, the content is mirrored in some instances but not EVERY piece of content is, and not amongst all instances, etc.
How does this federated forum / site work? (kbin.social)
I migrated from reddit like a lot of folks. I'm using kbin.social, but it seems I can also see posts from people at places like lemmy.world. How many different instances are there? How does the federated model work? So far I like what I see, but I'm also just trying to understand how things are integrated here.
Reddit exodus - Using Lemmy from my existing Mastodon (vijayprema.com)
Many are turning to Lemmy as a viable Reddit alternative. Here is how to use your existing Mastodon account with Lemmy.
How it going here? I'm looking forward to helping fuck up Reddit's IPO.
Done with Reddit’s bullshit, and happy to check this out as it seems to be popular. Any apps that people would recommend for this platform?
Confusion around duplicate communities
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/82a9ef2c-1508-477b-ab2f-ccdf3106f11d.png...
Besides tech-focused instances, what other subject focused Lemmy/Kbinstances have you found?
Currently I’m more aware of general interest instances for both Lemmy & Kbin, and a few more focused ones (e.g. Mander.xyz/slrpnk.net/startrek.website), so I’m curious what others there might be....
YSK About Trending Communities
!trendingcommunities...
mastodon with lemmy (lemmy.world)
Hello, some people have told me that it is possible to see lemmy posts from mastodon. To me it makes a lot of sense to have a single app for whole fediverse. However, mastodon is not doing a good job at this....
The Last Social Network: Your Own
I just read Cory Doctorow’s article “Let the Platform Burn”. It reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for some time. Instead of joining yet another social network and recreating yourself, why not create your personal social network object and link it to others via a federation of the personal social network...
10 days after 3rd party reddit app shutdown, Lemmy's top 10 instances combine for a thriving userbase of 234,000 (lemmy.world)
Current breakdown at the time of this post sorted by the number of monthly active users:...
What happens to orphaned communities when their host instance dies?
Do they get adopted by other instances? Are they still accessible from other instances? Can you still post on them from another instance?...
What do you think is the best solution to having the same named communities on different instances?
We should implement this as whenever I wish to browse (for example) [email protected] I have to go to there, and whenever I wish to browse [email protected] I have to go there. Would it be possible to implement it in kbin/lemmy's code to make it easier to browse all?
It is not Lemmy or kbin, it is the fediverse. (kbin.social)
I don't think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse. There are other platforms and will be more to come. Referring to a post on "Lemmy" or "kbin" is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer....
Anyone hosting Lemmy and Mastodon on the same server?
I have Mastodon running on a VPS running Debian 11. Now I would like to add a Lemmy instance on the same server. I tried using the from scratch method from Lemmy documentation, but ran into errors that likely stemmed from minor version incompatibilities of the dependencies. I tried using the Lemmy easy deploy script but it wants...
How does Lemmy intregrate with the rest of the Fediverse?
So I’ve been trying to get myself accustomed to this place and understand whats going on....
I don't get people that are here in the fediverse and *want to bring over* the content that is on FB, IG, TikTok, etc.
This has come to mind because all the chatter about Meta federating....
deleted_by_author
Is there a way to subscribe to all communities with the same name? (i.imgur.com)
Is it possible to automatically subscribe to all (federated) communities with the same name?...
Disappointed ex-Reddit user after the APIcalypse - starter pack
I used to browse Reddit 90+% of the time from my phone through the RiF app, so after June 30th, here is what I did and what I recommend as a starter pack for others in the same situation:...
Lemmy bean posting could be a reddit counterattack to get people to return to reddit.
I don’t know how I didn’t think of this be for, but the Lemmy bean posting could be a psyop that reddit is trying to get people to return to them after switching to Lemmy