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:
- Create account on lemmy.world, so the browser part is covered
- Search for the information on which app provides the closest to the RiF (Apollo, etc.) experience
- Instal Liftoff and be happy - it is just like RiF :-) (for Apollo and others, it could be different - find your own favorite!)
- Dial back dramatically on using Reddit at all. I only load 4 subs in my phone’s browser, because I did not find the Lemmy / Fediverse alternatives yet
- Constantly look for the communities to replace the subreddits you are still visiting
- OPTIONAL - once or twice a week, look at /r/pics and /r/videos and laugh at the creativity of the still ongoing protest :-)
So that is where I am right now, posting this via the web browser on the lemmy.world site, by pressing “create a post”. Seems easy enough for now, but I find it a bit confusing that other people can post from Mastodon and other Lemmy instances… Do they see the same communities I do? Do I see all Lemmy communities if I use lemmy.world…? So many questions, but it’s exciting to explore this brand new structure.
Even after reading the Fediverse and ActivityPub articles on Wikipedia my head is spinning, and I don’t really understand how everything fits / works together, but here I am! An ex(-ish) Redditor after the APIcalypse, looking for cool new communities, and excited about the future that the Fediverse can bring!
(I’m willing to learn! Someone please link me a FAQ where I can find the answers to my questions :-) )
What’s an instance?
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.