People need to realize you can use alternatives
tbf people just wanna sign up and click on funny links, not browse through 100 rando instances to find the one that lines up with their exact interests and wait for approval and worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year
I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.
I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.
Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it’s subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.
I’ve seen people literally signing up here just to make like 50 empty communities and not post or comment on anything at all. Definitely a lot of folks just trying to stake some territory that they think will be valuable in the future.
Im sure some of it is staking out territory, but I think a good chunk of it is just that modern reddit mindset. The mindset is that of course you cant have good gaming discussion on gaming you need to have truegaming, and games, and linux_gaming, and patientgamers, and etc. The thing is you can and things are small enough on all instances even lemmy.ml and beehaw that you can talk about it in one place.
The reason reddit had so many is that it would rapidly homogenise into giant echo chambers with minimal community. Minority perspectives were supressed or drowned out by lurker voting.
New subs were being made to recapture giant subs’ original intentions, or specialise, yo put minority perspectives of the Hot page and curate a community as a result.
Lemmy isn’t big enough to homogenise like that, at least not yet.
Good thing this is pretty pointless, since I can have the same community name in another instance.
I’m pretty confident we’ll eventually see some form of voluntary synchronization between identical communities added to either the codebase or a popular client app. “Owning” an individual instance’s community will be worthless.
(Wish I had the !remindme bot right now)
I like how Beehaw is doing it. Slowly introducing new servers as there is demand for it.
I also like the beehaw has a mission for community in mind, supported by having an application process; and their having prepared umbrella communities that will prevent echo chambers.
Beehaw is definitely getting hammered too though; it’s probably the second- or third-largest instance atm.
Beehaw is most definitely an echo chamber.
Very true. It would be sad to build up a persona on a smaller instance to then have it go dark and take your user with it. Other than losing your collection of “upvotes,” you can just recreate a new user with the same display name on another instance and keep going. 👍
Holy crap, you can do Slack style emoticons? Huzzah! 🎉
Let me see if I underatand this correctly:
If I create an account on a random, small instance. And then go to the “all communities” feed. I can automatically see all communities that are in my instance. In addition to that, I can see all communities of other Lemmy instances, that are “federated”. But I cannot see other communities from other nstances, unless I go on there, find the communitis and manually subscribe to them (I believe there are other ways to get them to show up, like using the search etc.?)
So, as a normal user. Who’s just looking for a replacement for /r/all, wouldn’t joining the largest lemmy instance that is fedarated to many others (Just by how many users it has, because it’s the users who link instances by their actions?) make perfect sense?
The all communities tab should be showing you communities from every instance you are federated with. It’s true that they won’t show up in your feed until someone on your instance connects to the instance it’s on at least once, but you don’t need to be on a massive server to be connected to all the major communities right from the start.
This. There’s no need to join the biggest instance, as long as you’re not among an instance’s first users you won’t notice much difference.
Idk I kind of think it having a bit more complexity might help ward off enshitification
I use lemmy.world. they have an associated mastodon as well.
I definitely didnt pick sh.itjust.works for the funny name, naaaaaaaaah
you are marked as ‘robot account’ on leemy.sdf.org
at a guess, I think its because I’m using Jerboa for Lemmy but I don’t know for sure, I haven’t done anything to become one.
Do you often drink oil? 🤖
It’s a toggle in your user settings.
deleted by creator
You could always create an account for your username on multiple popular servers if you wanted to. Can’t stop it on small servers but having multiple accounts in the Fediverse is not a crime.
Nah, I can’t see any reason to make more than one account.
Wow, posting on some of the bigger instances was really slow. I guess the influx of users has caused that
yeah
same
yeah
It can be useful in case whatever instance you’re using defederate or is defederated by another instance you want to participate in. It’s also useful in case your instance goes the way of the dodo and shut down.
Look at the usernames in the replies
agreed
same
Why would you need more than one?
Just if you wanted more than one. Just like u/kadu said about email. It’s like if you had your email on Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail. I know a lot of people have an alt on platforms like Discord too.
I know, look at the usernames of the replies
I hate Discord with a passion. Can’t wait for https://github.com/vector-im/element-call to be done so I can leave that behind.
I hate element so much on mobile (and desktop, but not as much). I’ve been planning on making my own Matrix client for a while.
If you can do better I’d be glad to migrate! :) As long as it is a matrix spec compliant client we don’t even need to agree which one is better so there’s that.
I sometimes have problems with notifications not going away and I hate that custom ephemeral messages hasn’t been merged but that’s about it I must say. (Multiaccount would be nice to separate work and private a little)
The thing that is the most annoying about the same username on different servers is that most of the time only the username part is shown (for example on feeds and comments). So a troll could make accounts with the same username on a different instance and discredit the original comment. For example, you are @kadu@lemmy.world, I could create @kadu@lemmy.ml and say stuff here, and both of us would just show up as “kadu” and to others it might seem that we are the same account without going into our profile to see our full “address”.
New feddit.de user reporting in
Ze Germans seem to have their own monopolistic instance
I created my own server…
Me too. Gonna close registrations at about 100 users. I don’t want this to get expensive but I’ll contribute what I can
Based on my previous experience running a Mastodon server, 90%+ of people are going to concentrate on already popular servers, especially the “official” one. I suppose I will also close (or be strict about) registration at some point myself, but I have a feeling I am not going to have to worry about it for a long time. My goal now is just to get some friends and acquaintances to join any lemmy instance, bonus points if it is mine.
I’ve just started my journey into lemmy, but I have to say, the federation part definitely needs better tooling. Like exploring beyond the borders of my instance is (at least using Jerboa) relatively hard. It feels very much like distinct universes, and less like a single space (like Reddit).
Well, since I am one of the people who chose the “official” server on Lemmy as well as on Mastodon, I will tell you why I did it: The “official” server will most likely be the one, that has the least chance to be abandoned/closed at some time in contrast to a small server maintained by some student as a side-project (no offense :-) ). I don’t want to loose everything and start at zero, so I chose the most “reliable” server.
Yeah the people that say “what instance you join doesn’t really matter aside from your local page” when it does. It might be easier to get into an instance with only one other person, but that doesn’t mean that instance will continue to exist a year from now or even tomorrow.
I absolutely understand. I used to run a Mastodon server, and stopped when it no longer interested me. I never really used twitter anyway whereas I am on reddit most every day, so I am expecting this to hold my interest/attention longer. I run a number of services for myself already (git, password manager, media hosting, authentication, etc) so the burden of one more thing in my homelab is minimal vs someone who isn’t doing that sort of thing.
Overall, some manner of truly federated and distributed user identity is something the current fediverse seems to be lacking. Nobody has really adopted DID yet and most of its registries still rely on some sort of central authority for identity regardless.
There’s a big difference between hosting single user servers vs public servers though. If it’s just for you then you can do whatever you want with it and it can be a lot of fun (until something breaks that is)
Same here. I only have a couple of users though so I don’t show up on join-lemmy.org anymore. Not sure how to gather more users now. I figure if I do actually get up to a hundred or so users I’ll set up a LibrePay account and expand based on available funds.
This is the way. If you don’t like the moderators, don’t play on their servers. It’s that simple.
The documentation explaining how fediverse works is so bad. It’s so long and convoluted anyone new just can’t be bothered reading it.
Yeah. It needs to be explained much better. Compare it to email or something
Docu-what now?
Seriously, if the average user needs to understand distributed systems to play in the fediverse pool, they are going to land back at Reddit. Just get people in the door (any door) and fight the technical debt that creates later.
Sure, it’s a shit plan. But, it’s the only way to really capitalise on the current moment. With both Twitter and Reddit blasting away at their own feet, there is a real opportunity for something better to step up. The fediverse can be that thing. But, not if people end up gatekeeping it. Less Stallman style, “RTFM!” And more, “hey, welcome. Let’s get you set up.”
Idk what’s going on, I just know I’m ready for open source options. I’m signed up here and mastodon now and plan to use the duration of the reddit strike to learn more about these platforms, delete my activity on others, and slowly build communities so I’m not reliant on others for news and learning.
I don’t think it’s too difficult to figure out. Seems more like a matter of shifting activity to keep people engaged. I’m far from tech literate, though.
Well, that’s my point. We need a cheat sheet easy to read that gives most of the necessary information to create an account and use different instances and how to post from one to another.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/index.html is good but way too much for newcomers
bro’ i didn’t even knew that there was a documentation
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/index.html
No, one will read that
We need a way simpler cheat sheet to get people in and leave that documentation for later
Someone posted a good infographic about the fediverse over on kbin in RedditMigration (another complicated wrinkle in this whole fediverse thing) that did a great job explaining this whole fediverse thing.
If only I could link it.
Edit: jerboa editor doing me dirty
I recognize it’s easier said than done obviously and I don’t have a good solution to propose; but if there was a way to make the app UI more user friendly it might help the understandability of the fediverse and subsequently lower the barrier to entry. Unless someone can figure out how to make it more seemless of an experience, it’s gonna be hard to get massive traction
aussie.zone alive and kicking.
New user, signed up on an alternative. It isn’t intuitive to add a community from another server. Got there eventually though!
We’re rapidly reaching the point where enough of us have struggled and figured it out that we can teach the newbies as they arrive.
Using Jerboa, I have no idea how to find communities from other servers (?). I just look for things in the search tab: “oh look, a gaming thing”.
In theory, once your community grows it will be easier. The funkyness (funkiness?) comes when you’re the first person on your server to try to add that community.
Funkiness.
Also, love your username. We’re back in early internet territory
Yeah, it’s so cool being able to snag a simple username.
Took me a lil to figure out how to use this, initially signed up at kbin but federation is temporarily down there.
lemmy.world unite!
Just registered. Very excited for this new adventure.
Same! Can’t wait to see what happens.
The best instance 😎
(no instance wars please, I’m being facetious)
I’m in lemmy.world. they have an associated mastodon as well.
Lemmy world was the only one that let me sign up lol
Lemmy.world checking in
I think people naturally tend toward the servers of the people that started the project and also the servers that have the most people on them. As the federated technology continues to smooth out I think more people might be more comfortable spreading out to other servers.
Personally I started out on the Beehaw server but they had some rules I didn’t like so then I found another server.
I couldn’t deal with the no downvote button in beehaw server. Lemmy.ml seemed to be fit my preference best when I joined at the time. There’s also the fact that there’s no way to migrate your history right now so I’m staying where I am atm I guess.
Wouldn’t that make you lose your entire history though? Or is there a way to migrate a user account to another lemmy server?
Honest question, because I saw a lot of people on Reddit worrying about this as well: what is the fear about losing your history? Maybe your usecase is different from mine, but I don’t mind if I lose my history at all. (Hence the question)
It’s a system for social interaction. I participate in these discussions to relate to other people and with the possibility of building connections with others. I’m in general the kind of person who don’t think activities are worthwhile unless they sort of “move something forward”, i.e. leaves some sort of imprint on the world or myself. I’m uninterested in sports or games like Overwatch because I feel like when a match/season is done it just starts over again, so nothing has really substantially changed.
With a history, I build an online identity over time. What I do today affects how people perceive me tomorrow. If everything would be one-shot and I just started over with a new profile every day, it wouldn’t feel like it mattered. There are other reasons like nostalgia or being able to answer in “necrothreads” (I actually received a reply on a 12-year-old comment on Reddit last week!).
Also, it’s a way for people to reach you. People stick by their email account for the longest time even if they don’t like the provider anymore, because telling everybody about an address change is such a hassle. When I got out of GMail I set up my own domain and run my email on there. That way I can move to another provider without anyone noticing. Perhaps I could set up my own Lemmy server with just myself on it so I can keep my identity stable, but I have a feeling that solution won’t scale well.
I can kinda get all that, but what I’m missing is the role of your history in this question. (I assume that this is about saving your own posts).
Keeping the account for occasional use & maybe putting a sticked post in your post history with links to your new account on a different platform, I can kind of understand. But the way I see saving my own history, it’d be about reading back my own posts, which don’t really serve me a function on a different platform.
There is currently no way to migrate to my knowledge
“I just want to be where the people are” 🧜♀️
Same… why would I use a smaller instance when the bigger one has more stuff on it? Maybe I just don’t understand this instance thing properly, it all just feels so fragmented
Same… why would I use a smaller instance when the bigger one has more stuff on it? Maybe I just don’t understand this instance thing properly, it all just feels so fragmented
You don’t NEED to be on the big instance in order to participate on the big instance.
That’s the true beauty of what we’re doing here.
Is there ever a reason to have multiple accounts in the fediverse?
One instance might have separate rules than another, so you can use multiple to get around that. Also if one instance gets shutdown for whatever reason you’ll need another instance to browse through.
Generally though, no. One instance is fine and helps keep the system from getting overloaded with users.
Like so many other people here. The federation concept is completely new to them and over time people will settle down and get used to how it works. Maybe people will set up their own instances for the ultimate name swag.
Imagine an Instance as an email address. You can still access any content from any instance (mostly). All posts and comments just go through your instance for you to see them
