Hello everyone! Long time redditor, first time poster to Lemmy.world. As I’m learning more about the Fediverse, I’m seeing there are several instances that seem to serve the same purpose. For example, Lemmy and Beehaw seem to be similar, yet they are still separate.
Are there any big differences or factors I should be looking for when browsing different instances? So far, it looks like the number of communities and rules are the biggest differences between instances.
Bonus question: are there any good sources for learning more about the Fediverse? I’ve found these links so far:
https://opensource.com/article/23/3/tour-the-fediverse - Gives a decent explanation of the Fediverse. https://fediverse.party/ - Provides a link to different Fediverse instances, not specific to Reddit replacements.
Beehaw is a Lemmy instance. However, they defederated from two huge instances, because they’re open registration, and the four BH admins felt overwhelmed with the incoming traffic and unable to manually block trolls, so they decided to just separate from a large chunk of content rather than get it under control.
I’m on one of the two defederated instances, sh.itjust.works, and I can neither see what’s posted there, nor can a BH user see what I post (or what’s up on our server, for that matter.
The other big instance is lemmy.world.
BH has very specific rules for what’s okay over there and what’s not. Check them out and see if you’re willing to live with the defederation for the sake of what their admins define as safety.
Thanks for the background on Beehaw! After reading that, I was able to read more on defederation and what impact that has. I think I have a better understanding, but I’ll continue doing some research. Thank you!
I kept reading defenestration and I won’t stop thank you very much
Still works, Beehaw did kinda “throw the baby out with the bathwater” as they used to say.
Beehaw seem to have refederated lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works
No, they have not.
If you compare your link, on Lemmy world to https://beehaw.org/post/931057 the same post viewed through beehaw directly, you will see completely different comments. And the Lenny.world link only has comments from Lemmy.world users.
Defederation behaves in a very confusing way. It blocks interacting with a community, but not the content itself. You can see beehaw’s posts, they can see Lemmy.world’s posts. Comments are not shared, and any posts to unfederated instances never leave the instances they were written on.
I am new here so this is a little confusing for me. In the Beehaw post you linked someone writes that they see only lemmy.world posts that where synced before the defederation. But lemmy.world users should still see the posts of Beehaw since lemmy.world has not defederated from Beehaw only the other way round, isn’t it?
Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.world, but Lemmy.world did not defederate in return.
Instances copy content from other instances. When thousands of Lemmy.world users want to read a post from a tiny instance, they can. All that traffic is served from Lemmy.world’s local copy, and the tiny instance is only bothered by one download request from the Lemmy.world server.
When Lemmy.world asks beehaw for posts to update its local copy of a community, beehaw agrees and sends the content. So Lemmy.world users can see new beehaw posts when they connect to their home instance.
Before defederation, beehaw would do the same. Beehaw asks Lemmy.world for the latest content, and beehaw updates its local copy.
Once the defedeation started, beehaw stopped asking Lemmy.world for new content. But if a beehaw user tried view a Lemmy.world community, beehaw would happily send its local copy, blissfully unaware it was out of date.
Lemmy needs better user-facing error messages. This is too confusing for normal users, but its reasonable behavior for pre-alpha software which is what lemmy is right now.
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You made this comment 14 times.
Sorry. Lemmyworld is overloaded and its reporting a network error despite succeeding in posting…
Edit: I have removed the duplicates. I hope.
I still see 6 of the 18 :D
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And you made this comment twice.
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Lemmy.ml, lemmy.ca, etc users can see, comment, and interact with beehaw.org and Lemmy.world. And vice versa.
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So question. If someone registered on Lenny.ml or another one that is not .world, are they decelerated from seeing beehaw as well? How would the comments work? Would the person see both comment groups (beehaw and Lenny.world)?
Lemmy and beehaw are not separate. Beehaw is Lemmy. It’s a Lemmy server/instance. Beehaw just chooses not to participate with a bunch of other instances.
The main difference between instances is how they’re run. Like you’re asking about just now, beehaw is run very conservatively where they tend to block more quickly and try to make their instance as safe a space as possible, while others may be more laissez faire or something in between. Some may have a topic focus. But which communities and how many are on an instance basically doesn’t matter.
Thanks for the clarification! From what I understand, it sounds like as long as all the instances stay connected, the number of communities per instance doesn’t matter, but if a major instance defederates (like Beehaw I think), then you could “lose access” to the communities on the deferated instance. You can still view the content by going to that instance though, so it’s not like it’s the worst thing to happen.
You’re right that access is lost. I understand the decision by beehaw, but I think the solution should be to try to find more moderators/admins instead, as far as I see, they haven’t even tried.
It sucks because Lemmy currently has ~54k active users, and the 2 instances they defederated have a total of ~16k active users, so a pretty large split now. Especially because the other 38k users still see beehaw content, so they’re even unwittingly excluding lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works users from their own content if they interact with stuff posted to beehaw. I try to avoid communities hosted on beehaw because of that.
They are all the same, but the only difference being the rules. lemmy.ml was one of the earliest instances, run by the developers themselves. beehaw.org is a community that promotes positivity, they’ve defederates from sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world. lemmy.world is the largest instance. Some instances are hosted in different countries, which means different laws apply. Some instances are piracy friendly (lemmy.fmhy.ml and lemmy.dbzer0.com).
Then there are instances that are basically isolated. They’ve been defederated by many instances.
lemmygrad.ml - promotes Authoritarian Left politics
exploding-heads.com - many alt-right content gets posted there
Lemmy is the software a lot of the Reddit style fediverse websites run on. Many of them include Lemmy in the name such as Lemmy.ml and Lemmy.world, but others don’t include Lemmy in the name. Beehaw.org is another website that runs the Lemmy software, it just didn’t put Lemmy in its name. Beehaw does have an uncommon configuration since the down vote ability is disabled there, but it still is Lemmy at its core. Beehaw did defederate from some of the other big Lemmy servers because they were overwhelmed with trying to moderate that much content and those servers reportedly had open sign ups which led to a big influx of spammy bots, so Lemmy.world and beehaw.org are invisible to each other right now, but the admins of Beehaw have expressed a desire for more granular moderation tools in order not to have to defederate from such large servers as a whole in the future.
Kbin is a different software altogether so the kbin servers such as kbin.social and fedia.io have a different layout, terminology, and some different features than the Lemmy based servers, but Lemmy and Kbin both use the ActivityPub protocol to send and fetch data, so you can post between the two platforms as if they were on the same server. I am browsing this post and writing this reply from kbin.social.
Beehaw.org places a high priority on censoring content that would offend folks like the LGBT crowd; they’ve been more-willing than most other lemmy instances to defederate from kbin or Lemmy instances that they consider sources of problem users. For some folks, that’s great, and for others, that’s not what they want.
It is currently a little hard to find the community rules for instances that give you at least a basic idea of what an instance is “about”. And not all instances are aiming for something, but for those that are, it’s nice to know about it. Sign up for pawb.social, and you’re on a furry-oriented instance, for example. For Lemmy instances, trying to join normally shows a page that talks a bit about the instance rules. For kbin instances, you can see a short writeup from the instance admins at /terms, like:
You can get there by clicking “Terms of Service” at the bottom of any page.
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Not kbin.social, but they have from a few of the smaller ones.
Oh, yeah, I think that it was just a couple of Lemmy instances thus far. Overgeneralization.
Pretty much choose the instance that has rules you agree with, the number of communities on an instance shouldn’t be a factor because you can browse (and participate in) communities on other instances. Edit: Also, using some smaller instance might make the experience better for you, they’re not as overloaded and thus faster.
Lemmy.ee had been pretty great.
It’s interesting to hear that smaller instances might be faster. I saw some other posts about hosting your own instance for that reason, but I wasn’t quite sure what they meant. I’ll check out some smaller instances and see how that goes. Thank you!
If you want, you can join mine, lemmings.world! It’s new, but I plan on hosting it long-term. As a bonus, you can proudly call yourself a lemming.
Beehaw is a Lemmy instance/server.
The instances/servers talk to each other to spread out the load so it’s decentralized.
From a technical standpoint, there’s little difference between instances. They’re all running the same software at their core, and connected to the same network of websites.
Some instances, such as Beehaw, seem to strive more for building an actual community around their instances, while other instances aren’t as interested in that and are focused more on just being another available alternative entry point to the Fediverse. I’ve not looked around Beehaw too much, but from what I understand, they seem to want to create a highly-positive environment for their users (hence why they’ve had to temporarily defederate from some instances, until there are better moderation tools available for them to keep trouble-making outsiders away from their community).
Some instances may focus more around a particular political leaning, some may be specific to a hobby like video games, etc. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing stopping you from registering to as many or as few instances as you want. For the most part, they’re all connected to the same overall network, so you’ll typically be seeing the same content no matter which instance you browse from.
Keep in mind that your username is going to be based on the instance you sign up with. For example, I’m [email protected], and while Kbin and most instances will just show that as “Chozo”, my account is still permanently tied to kbin.social, even if I’m posting on threads from lemmy.world like this one.
I think your best bet is just going to pick whichever feels best for you in the moment. I think for most users, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re looking for a specific community, then check 'em all out and see which one fits your needs best. If you don’t care and you just want something that works, then any of the larger instances are probably going to be sufficient for you.
Also on kbin.social here, but sometimes I feel like an outside observer when I see threads that are from lemmy. But that may just be a side effect of all the platforms being connected through the same software which is the Fediverse or ActivityPub.
I’ve seen some people use the term “Threadiverse” to refer to the combination of community-oriented ActivityPub software (currently lemmy and kbin).
Yeah a bit of that feeling on Kbin, just refer to federated stuff as Lemmy. I’m fine with it though. Saw someone compare Lemmy to being the USA while Kbin is Canada
Don’t tell that to the Lemmy developers! ;)
Thanks for the information! I think it makes sense to just pick an instance (lemmy.world in my case) and stick with it for a while. I’ll keep checking out other communities to get used to the platform. Thank you!
Lemmy.world and lemmy.ml are currently pretty overloaded.
If you don’t have a preference, I’d give consideration to another instance.
Someone just wrote and put a tool up to show how overloaded lemmy instances are:
That’s like asking if there’s a major difference between email and gmail
I’ve been seeing the analogy that the Fediverse is like email, but it feels like the Fediverse is more nuanced at a glance. If my question was translated for email, I think it would be something like “What are the major differences between Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo?” The answer being they all work similar and talk to each other fine, but they can have different features that make them somewhat unique.
Email is the service Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail offer. Lemmy is the service Beehaw offers.
You might want to check out https://github.com/amirzaidi/lemmy. I stumbled upon it. Beehaw defederated Lemmy.world (info.) This section on defederating may help you understand that if it’s unclear.
Most of us are also new to the Fediverse, but learning every day. Welcome!
All of the federated sites push and pull content using ActivityPub (the technology that connects them all together), but they all seem to differ in the way their website presents the data and how you interact with things.
For example there’s an upvote / downvote button on kbin.social for articles, but also a boost button. I’ve heard that some places only use the upvote and others the boost (or whatever they call it)
I found it easiest to just pick a place that looks decent and is chill and go from there 🦙🦙
I’ve read that upvote on kbin is basically “save” and boost is the functionality that would be upvote on lemmy or reddit.
Edit: Well look at that, seems I’m wrong and so many friendly people here to correct me without resorting to calling me names. Already this is much better than Reddit. :)
Upvote and downvote is just that (they recently fixed the reputation calculation). A boost is like a retweet. You crosspost the boosted content to your own microblog space. Kbin does both reddit-like discussion threads as well as twitter/mastodon like microblogging. In fact, kbin is fully interoperable with mastodon. By boosting something you retweet (retoot?) it to your mastodon/microblog.
It was changed recently, now upvote works similar to lemmy/reddit (but also adds things to your favourites)
Boost is more for the microblogging side of kbin, it’s like a retweet. (also adds more reputation points but that’s not really useful for anything right now)
Boost also enhances the visibility of a post, and it’ll probably have to continue to do so in future versions: not so much because of the internal workings of kbin, but because boosts are used to increase visibility across the fediverse. Having them not count towards visibility in kbin would be inconsistent when displaying information from the threadiverse at large. :)
I’ve read that upvote on kbin is basically “save” and boost is the functionality that would be upvote on lemmy or reddit.
Well, that was how things worked 48 hours ago or something like that. Things are changing quickly. :-)
