Reddit always suffered from multiple of the same subs, or it was hard to track down regional subs. a regional sub naming convention might help alleviate this issue. instead of just toronto make it torontocanada [place:country] for example?
Multiples of the same basic community is a good thing. It was good on reddit, and it’s part of the entire benefit of federation. The only difference is that, here, the displayed names can be exactly the same because the C/ always comes with an @ as well.
While it would be nice if location based communities had an agreed on standard, good luck getting consensus between even the five biggest instances and all of those C/s. It would be a herculean task. And, it still wouldn’t stop anyone else from just ignoring the consensus.
Hello and welcome! I’m on a similar quest, let’s share! First, what I know:
Can someone register with my username on other instances, or is my username “taken” across the fediverse?
Yes, they can. We need to understand that ‘names’ include the instance here. My username is not Spzi, but @Spzi. (Same story with communities. There are no ‘same name’ communities on multiple instances once you accept the instance is part of the full name). This identifier is unique per instance. Further, you can choose a display name, even if it conflicts with another display name from the same instance (AFAIK).
You can register your name on other instances, to block it from being taken by others.
If so, how are spoofing and/or scams using my username but on a different instance handled?
Maybe we use this platform in very different ways, but I wouldn’t worry about this too much. In contrast to mastodon, we follow topics, not people. In contrast to reddit, there is no account karma. If you still run into trouble related to spoofing and/or scams, just remember to look at the full identifier, not just parts of it.
What happens to accounts, communities and posts when its instance decides it’s been a fun few months and decides to shut down?
I’m not exactly sure. Please someone @notify me when someone else has a good answer.
it’s not my data that is federated, but only links to the data in other instances. Would that be a good understanding on how the federation technically works?
AFAIK, data is actually cloned in the process of federation. Edits and deletes are propagated. Each instance holds a local copy. Threads can have differences when viewed from different instances.
I don’t think the post has a ton of merits for reasons that have already been described. That being said, there is one potential issue that I’m surprised that hasn’t been mentioned, which is impersonation.
Say someone takes the username jimbo on an instance somewhere and becomes super popular. Then someone else decides to create the same username jimbo on a similarly named instance and tries impersonating the other user. Sure, people can look and see “oh this isn’t that other jimbo” but you would have to look and see.
Probably not a major issue, but could theoretically become one.
Frankly, you're incorrect. It's an incredible pain in the neck to try and deal with the Fediverse beyond local content.
What issues have you specifically noticed with this? I've only seen a few - the main one is sometimes it's hard to find magazines from elsewhere unless you already know the name of it and the instance it is on (but folks are creating websites to help others find this, so this is a problem being solved right now). The other one is that sometimes federation is slow, so posts and comments on the hosting instance can take hours to show up on another one. But there are technical fixes to this as well (I'm thinking that maybe the next version of activity pub should include a pull action, so other instances can ask for the latest content on behalf of their users from the hosting instance).
Without better community merging or centralization, browsing instances becomes no different than dealing with having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes,
I wasn't around this far back. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What's the issue with "having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes" ?
or talking on forums before we had tabbed browsing. It's incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
This I remember well. Sounds like you are trying to create an account on each instance and are constantly logging out of one and into the next to keep up on the latest posts and comments. This .. is not really the way to do it.
Yes, active users continues to grow - on already dominant platforms. And by that I mean KBin.social as a platform,
Don't confuse terms. kbin.social is an instance, the platform is kbin the software.
I'd argue that this is a technically a different platform - microblogging vs what reddit/lemmy do. But by the magic of federation we get both in kbin.
or even Lemmy.ML.
There are problems here with this instance that go far beyond what you are saying. But that's the nice part of federation - even problematic owners can be dealt with. Can't say the same for a centralized service.
Yes, there's not a singularity yet,
Why use this term? What does it even mean in this context? A singularity is a term from physics and represents when the existing rules break down, like in a black hole (collapsed star).
but even this limited plurality shows that it's a pain in the neck to deal with the Fediverse as a whole, so pick your local poison and go for it.
Again, this suggests you don't really understand federation. Barring one problematic instance, there aren't any serious issues accessing all the instances you mentioned from, say for example, kbin.cafe
So I just started with the fediverse, I heard about it for years, but never did the real jump to go full in. For now I started with lemmy because it seems to be the easiest option. I wanted to do a small recap of tip, tricks and general usage flow....
As Lemmy starts maturing, there starts being so many communities out there that it’s pretty hard to keep track. I’ve been browsing for about a month now, here’s a list of popular communities I’ve subscribed to that others would find interesting!...
You're on a kbin instance, and it is the main one so most of them are probably already there. If any of them is not, just click the search button at the top of the screen and enter the name you see above without the ! and without the space before the @. e.g. "[email protected]", your instance will then look it up and subscribe you to it if found.
It might take a while for threads to begin to appear if it wasn't already there though.
You're on a kbin instance, and it is the main one so most of them are probably already there. If any of them is not, just click the search button at the top of the screen and enter the name you see above without the ! and without the space before the @. e.g. "[email protected]", your instance will then look it up and subscribe you to it if found.
It might take a while for threads to begin to appear if it wasn't already there though.
Being a mod doesn’t change anything. If the community is from your instance it will be accurate. If not, in the sidebar under the name of the community there is a link to visit the community on the site of the home instance. You can click that to see the community on it’s home site amd that will show the accurate count.
Subscriber count isn’t really that helpful though, better to look at the active user coints, which seem to be mostly accurate regardless of which instance you are viewing from.
I have been using Lemmy for 20 days, at first I opened an account at Lemmy.world because you can join without writing a text and waiting approval. I have been enjoying the experience overall but despite the admin teans best efforts Lemmy.world has been experiencing some serious performance issues. If you want to avoid that join...
I thought that was built in to all Lemmy clients. All non-home instances I’m subscribed to are presented as @instance because the instance location is just as important as the sub’s name.
lemmyverse.net/communitiesOnce you go to the site on the top right there’s an icon of a house click it and set your local instance. From there you’re free to search all communities by name and by instance location and once you click on them it will open using your local instance automatically. From there you simply have to subscribe
We didn’t post this one up! I posted on /r/android shortly before bed and felt it would’ve been in bad taste if we had posted here without discussing with you folks first (I also admittedly slept in, as it’s a holiday today for Canada Day Weekend).
I was actually hoping to reach out to you and Mike to see if you’re interested in joining our mod team on !android. We hope to carry forward the same kind of content philosophy from /r/android prior to our lockdowns, namely discussions and items of collective interest, and avoiding specific, technical support questions that can overtake large communities - and think you both align pretty well with our overall emphasis on keeping it civil and cordial.
For a bit of background on the instance, @cole has been spending quite some time getting lemdro.id setup and optimized for us with a focus on ensuring backend scalability to handle load. The hope was to have an instance where major tech and other subreddits could feel comfortable moving to, without the significant performance issues that could leave folks with bad first impressions (a number of us were around for the waves of migration from Digg to Reddit).
Folks are currently reaching out to their respective mod teams at other large tech subreddits to see if there’s interest in joining Lemmy as well. We also have a number of developers with us exploring opportunities to contribute code improvements and fill gaps within the Lemmy ecosystem (e.g., accessibility improvements, moderator tools, fighting spam), with at least one bug fix already contributed to the Lemmy Github!
If you and Mike are interested, please do reach out! It would be great to have you both. Given Lemmy doesn’t support group PMs or Modmail, let me know if you want to connect somewhere else - I’m on Telegram, Discord, and Element but would be happy to chat anywhere.
Just to clarify, I don’t want to view all of the content from my subscribed communities in a single view. I want to be able to tap on something like Android and then only view the content from all instances with the same community name that I’m subscribed to.
Why shouldn’t they do “r/Android V2” posts? Is [email protected] “The Android community”? Are we going to put a non-compete rule in writing or spirit for this community? How tone-deaf would this be in the current Reddit upheaval context? The Fediverse is literally about anti-monopilization. !android just so happens to be one community named “Android” among others on other instances. It also happens to be on the largest instance for now. But a successful, large community doesn’t have to be on the largest instance. That’s not how federation works. Ultimately all of us users check the number of user subs before we subscribe or we just sub to all. Being the first to register this community on this instance isn’t what’s gonna determine that. Whichever “The Android community” becomes on Lemmy, it requires moderation work and likely that will determine the final result. If the /r/Android mods want to tell us where the new version of it is, they can do that in a lot more channels than "!android”, like the various tech or Reddit related communities across the instances. Someone posting this here shouldn’t trigger any special feelings in my opinion as it’s no different or significantly more influential. The battle for creating a Reddit alternative is much bigger one than who’s gonna claim they own this or that piece of land. So I’d welcome every free labor team (mod teams) from Reddit to Lemmy and help them get started even if it means that I have to cede some space. We supported these folks during the blackouts, why should we stop doing so when they decided to migrate? Isn’t that the logical continuation of the same events?
Combining them doesn’t make sense to me. There are situations where there are two big communities from two big instances with the exact same name(ie. c/reddit), but the content and the mod approach(rules etc.) aren’t the same.
So, I think it’s a good thing. You’re interested in discussing a topic but don’t feel comfortable on the community you found? You can just go find the same topic on another instance!
Its very easy for people to just camp on identically names communities on Lemmy.world, wait for confused newbies to their community because they’re also on lemmy.world and then the community is split (potentially no longer having mods on the new instance).
The potential lack of modding/mod engagement in the future is what concerns me most.
The way I see it, the fediverse itself is the conversational arena, not any particular community within the fediverse. Communities limited to a single instance shouldn’t have primacy, because some of those instances don’t even want their communities open to certain other instances on the fediverse. Since some of the biggest communities keep defederating each other over petty moderator politics, it’s absolutely a good thing that the the fediverse has multiple communities for the same topic, or even with the same name. As long as you’re on an instance that doesn’t defederate other instances, you’ll see them all and can interact on them from a single account. More than that though, people wielding too much centralized power always turn out to be dicks, so anything that maintains decentralization of power is good.
I have been on the edge with twitter and reddit for a while and I have finally deleted my accounts that I have had for a very long time there. They are no longer the places I used to know, even more so with twitter. I am ready for my new time here and on mastodon....
I had a Twitter account since 2009 and pretty much never used it. I got on there and got sick of political posts pretty fast in 2015 and gave up again. But then around 2 years ago I discovered some niche communities i liked a lot, basically the same stuff I participated in on reddit, but I was enjoying the Twitter style where accounts have a bit more personality. There’s some good humor too, for instance NY Times Pitchbot is pretty funny. I enjoyed Cory Doctorow’s posts.
I like the anonymity of reddit and lemmy but Twitter is more of a place where people have avatars that are actually their photos, maybe use their real names, post photos of themselves (now that I think of it, no clue why people think that’s okay on twitter and not reddit, that’s just how it is though) and I felt like I got to know people more. Once it was obvious what a pathetic shitshow Musk was going to turn it into, I quit without thinking twice. I miss some of the people and discussions on there, but fuck it, there’s no way.
Reddit, I started in 2008 and have been back and forth with the site since then, at times basically on it half the day. It’s been steadily growing worse, though. Still a prime way to waste time, sometimes slightly useful or productive, but I feel like the value of what I’d read and participate in on there has slipped over time. The ownership/admins kicking up their head and turning out to be giant dickweeds certainly wasn’t cool, obviously. Reddit used to seem like a hip or beneficial company that just stayed out of everyone’s way. So, fuck 'em. I miss some communities on there and I’m sure I’ll not hear about some local events and things about games. It’s not like “ended friendship with reddit! Lemmy is my new best friend!” though. I don’t want to participate in reddit but if I was to say, look at some subs now and then without an account to see what’s up in a town I’m visiting or something, whatever.
I started a habit a while back ago of naming any servers I run based off of names from Greek mythology - my primary server is Zeus but most forms of just “Zeus” in domain form are already taken. Similarly, I call the quasi-internal network that this server runs (since it’s a hypervisor) “ZeusNet”…
Problem with that name is “ZeusNet.net” is redundant and would irk me, I wanted something that still ends with the .net TLD (though my personal domain ends with .network).
This, zeuslink.net is what I came up with given that “link” can mean “network” and the combination isn’t as redundant as “…net.net”!
Funnily enough, originally my instance was originally under the colony subdomain which I quite liked… But unfortunately I didn’t set things up properly due to how I have everything else setup, and I had already dipped just enough in the federation that when I reset everything so that it actually worked properly, the keys that my server identified with no longer matched which broke my ability to federate properly. Which then forced me to reset everything again under a completely different subdomain (I’m glad it was on a subdomain instead of the root domain for that reason) since Lemmy doesn’t have a “self destruct” option like Mastodon has (which tells all connected instances “Hey, I’m going down - forget you knew me” as far as I understand it).
And that is the origin story of my domain, along with the subdomain. Thinking about it now, I should copy all of this as a standalone post on my instance 😅
Lemmy.ml, to my understanding, was always meant to be a pilot instance from the devs of lemmy. Beehaw is kind of its own forum. There is also sh.itjust.works, but that has been caught up in some federation drama, and I don’t think people like the name. Lemmy.world has been the right server at the right time to absorb everyone and I guess they have been able to keep up with sign-ups. Kudos to them.
I’ve signed up for a bunch of them and still haven’t decided where I want to make my main.
Same story for me, although I keep coming back to Lemmy.world in the first instance, at least for the Lemmy instances (also explored kbin, tildes and squabbles). Mixed feelings about Lemmy.ml as I think there’s virtue being on the instance the devs run as it seems unlikely to go away, although there has been the talks around political views. From the political side, I do hang out more often than not in tech spaces though so I doubt it’d actually impact anything I’d want to engage in discussion about.
Also have an account with Beehaw which was my first but silly as it may seem, the name of that one puts me off a bit. “Lemmy.world” sounds like something I can more easily communicate to a friend verbally, for whatever that is worth.
Idk about other people, but I don’t really know how the instances work and the lemmy.world instance name seems the least abstract. Beehaw was confusing because it’s not called lemmy so idk if it’s a different thing or what, and idk what .ml means or stands for. Lemmy.world just looks like it’s the default lemmy instance to me as a dunce who doesn’t know how lemmy works.
Spread Out: How To Speed Up Lemmy (lemmy.fediverse.observer)
There are many lemmy instances in the world, but currently most people are using lemmy.world. This is why everything has gotten so slow....
Suggestion: Naming conventions and standardization
Reddit always suffered from multiple of the same subs, or it was hard to track down regional subs. a regional sub naming convention might help alleviate this issue. instead of just toronto make it torontocanada [place:country] for example?
Lemmy/fediverse questions
Hi,...
ysk - your account doesn't exist on other instances and communities don't overlap
User accounts are fragmented and just because you signed on at lemmy.world doesn’t mean your account exists on lemmy.ca....
People in /r/redditalternatives are talking about a "Reddit 2.0" What website would fill that role? (kbin.social)
On Reddit at reddit.com/r/redditalternatives, people are talking about a "Reddit 2.0." What do you suggest?
Getting Lemmy right
So I just started with the fediverse, I heard about it for years, but never did the real jump to go full in. For now I started with lemmy because it seems to be the easiest option. I wanted to do a small recap of tip, tricks and general usage flow....
List of popular communities you should visit!
As Lemmy starts maturing, there starts being so many communities out there that it’s pretty hard to keep track. I’ve been browsing for about a month now, here’s a list of popular communities I’ve subscribed to that others would find interesting!...
YSK: Subscriber count on communities only show the numbers of users subscribed from your specific instance. The real number might be much larger than you think.
You can use lemmyverse.net to check actual subscriber numbers....
YSK: If you want faster and less buggy User experience, move to a smaller instance that is hosted close to you.
I have been using Lemmy for 20 days, at first I opened an account at Lemmy.world because you can join without writing a text and waiting approval. I have been enjoying the experience overall but despite the admin teans best efforts Lemmy.world has been experiencing some serious performance issues. If you want to avoid that join...
r/Android is now on the Fediverse! (www.reddit.com)
Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps....
Is it a good thing if there are identical communities on different instances?
Is it worthwhile to try to get mods to combine them? It just seems like a bit of a waste when trying to grow a community and its split in two....
Done with Twitter and Reddit
I have been on the edge with twitter and reddit for a while and I have finally deleted my accounts that I have had for a very long time there. They are no longer the places I used to know, even more so with twitter. I am ready for my new time here and on mastodon....
Fellow self-hosters of Lemmy, what is your domain name?
I hope this post is not too off topic. I thought that it would be nice to see the address of all the small self-hosted instances of Lemmy (1~5 users).
How did Lemmy.world become more popular than Lemmy.ml?
I don’t understand how Lemmy.world developers managed to surpass both Lemmy.ml and Beehaw.org instances in user activity.