With spez ascending the last few remaining levels of becoming an absolute wanker, it’s about time I got more active and I have been wondering how should I be using Lemmy efficiently? Like many I migrated from Reddit and I was primarly using Apollo to browse through my subscribed subreddits.
Over here on Lemmy.one, I have subscribed to communities and I scroll through my feed by sorting “All > Top Day” because sorting “All > Hot” means I end up seeing the same threads.
Then earlier today I discovered https://beehaw.org/communities where I found many communities I would love to subscribe to but then I got confused because I am also subscribed to more or less similar communities on lemmy.one.
I think I am sort of struggling to wrap my head around how lemmy really works and where I should be hanging out. It was easier on reddit in the sense that if I wanted to go LOTRmemes, there was only subreddit but here on Lemmy, there seem to be multiple instances of the same community :D
To top it off, it is proving hard to login to beehaw [probably the server is under stress] with the same details I use to login into Lemmy.one.
Not to forget there’s also Kbin which I haven’t even begun exploring. Phew.
ps - my apologies if I am sounding slightly incoherent as this is all new to me. If there is anyone out there who has this all figured out, I’d appreciate any help here.
You don’t have to think of the servers as different entities, all servers are Lemmy, each one slightly different sure but you can participate in every server equally so nothing changes to you
It’s becoming painfully clear that federation is the most confusing part for new people. It felt less so with Mastodon but the Reddit migration seems to be bigger. (I don’t know since I was already on Mastodon a few years before the Muskaning) I think we need an easier way for people to understand how instances work.
Mastodons federation has become pretty seamless. Just browsing around, it seldom takes you off-instance.
Lemmy still does that a good bit, and it throws people off hard.
Unfortunately I think it’s gonna be like this for a while as more and more people come and get exposed to this concept for the first time. Some folks have made very helpful introductory threads to guide newbies into the Fediverse, but at its core it’s a very different paradigm to “log on this website to see and interact with this one thing” that people have gotten used to.
I would say that in an update that allows you to redirect links to your own instance would be great, and I was told I was wrong thinking that would need an extension. Take link, copy to search wasn’t obvious for me when I started with Mastodon, but I eventually figured it out.
If I was an instance I would try and find a way to make a FAQ that linked maybe to Wikipedia or something that everyone can update for common questions, and a local community with FAQ posts for anything specific to that instance.
That makes more sense now. I was really lost around all these different servers and Reddit experience had spoilt me because it was so centralized by construct that I came in here expecting the same!
Yep, it’s like if subreddits were sorted into larger groups of subreddits, like say a megareddit where you can have many subreddits with the same name as other subreddits, but a little bit different.
So instead of going to /r/aww, you would hypothetically go to /r/lemmy.one/aww or /r/beehaw/aww. They can have different sets of rules but you can see and post to both equally.
Happened the same to me, it’s just the natural process of lemmy
I think what will eventually happen (I may very well be wrong) is that when there are several communities that are very similar on different instances (e.g. lemmy.one/c/aww and behaww/c/aww) one of them will eventually grow significantly bigger/more active than the other, and the other will be more or less abandoned, with its subs/mods moving to the bigger one.
That may not necessarily be a good thing, but over time I think thats what will start happening.
That kind of thing happens with subreddits, too, so I don’t think it will be that big of a deal
I think the algorithms are not quite doing what you expect, on top of server delays or whatever.
The way I am set up, I start in ALL and sort by HOT. If the post start to feel too familiar I will go by active, then new.
What I feel works the best however is to subscribe to all the communities that you are interested in (don’t be precious) and you will find that the subscriptions page has the content you want. It is nice, they don’t get lost, or you can jump into a single community and see all they have.
The most useful way to use lemmy of course is to post content.
Thanks @[email protected]
Just as a follow up to your comment - is there a link or something where one can see how many different Lemmy communities exist? I’d be up for casting the net wide like you said and right now I am mostly hanging around lemmy one.
One is https://browse.feddit.de
You generally shouldn’t be logging into another instance, you subscribe to beehaw communities from within your home instance. For example, https://lemmy.one/c/[email protected]
It’s good to have backup accounts though in case one goes down in the future for whatever reason.
An easy one is that when you search, select All instead of local, then you’ll see all communities that lemmy.one is aware of, but if you want the WHOLE picture, use https://lemmyverse.net/communities .
I’m going down the same rabbit hole and have struggled trying to figure out the fediverse. The other comments on your post explain things well. From my experience, I had to research which instance was federated and populated with what fits my interests, then sign up for it. Jerboa doesn’t do well with it’s search function yet, and I almost exclusively use the app to browse (I did so with Sync for Reddit ((3rd party app)) too and never used the browser unless I was looking up specific questions), but I did find out that when using a web browser to login to my instance they have a community browser that lists every and all communities locally and federated where you just hit Subscribe to. Once I subscribed to everything that peaked my interests I went back to my app (Jerboa for Lemmy) and sorted by Subscribed and New (or hot). I now have an experience very similar to that of using Sync for Reddit.
To answer your questions about seeing the exact same communities (instead of a singular subreddit) to subscribe to, it’s just because each community is hosted on separate instances. Some of those instances are federated with yours (ie lemmy.world) but for users who are signed up on that particular instance may not have the same federations your instance has so they created their own version of the community.
Another comment on this post explains it well using minecraft as an example. (Idk how to cross-post or @ another user yet)
Some of those instances are federated with yours (ie lemmy.world) but for users who are signed up on that particular instance may not have the same federations your instance has so they created their own version of the community.
Is this why I can read this while on kbin?
kbin has a ‘federated’ instance that’s shared w/ lemmy?
i have no idea wtf I’m talking about. still trying to wrap my head around the fediverse.Yes. Kbin is federated with basically every Lemmy instance that exists, so you can use Kbin to view, comment and post to other Fediverse instances.
You can kinda think of Kbin as being a Lemmy instance with a different paintjob (it isn’t, but from a user perspective it’s not that far off): Kbin user wants to read/comment/post to Beehaw.org Gaming community? https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]. Beehaw user wants to comment to Kbin Tech Magazine? https://beehaw.org/c/[email protected]And to add one more point…if you subscribe to both those instances, both will be part of your feed and it will not be that obvious that the two communities are on different instances.
Hi there @JohnEdwa - I am a week late to respond to your comment but it helped me finally crack the basic level of understanding behind lemmy and kbin :) Not to forget the fact I can subscribe to different instances on Lemmy from lemmy.one which I signed up for when I joined Lemmy. Knowing what I now, I am able to check out other instances from Lemmy.one and subscribe to them!
Maybe I can be of help with explaining how Lemmy and the federation works. (Hope I have this right, anybody feel free to correct me)
Lemmy itself is just the software used by the different servers (beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, etc…) that belong to the federation.
These servers can each have communities and users that belong to them, but these communities and users can all interact with and be interacted with from other servers. Example, I am currently logged into and browsing this post from the sh.itjust.works server)
So the communities that you see on lemmy.one are hosted on one server and the communities from beehaw.org are hosted on a different server.
Because of this setup, communities aren’t just as simple as Reddit (/r/wellthatsucks) because there can be [email protected] and [email protected]. These communities are different and run by different people.
Now the way the federation for the servers works is that in order for servers to know that eachother exist, communities or posts from one server have to be searched for on another one. (Ex. searching [email protected] while on beehaw.org) by searching for the communities, your server now knows they exist and will work in the background to sync those communities so that you can browse them from your own server.
The idea is that you only need 1 account on 1 server somewhere in order to participate in the federation.
Unfortunately, because of this system and the rapid growth from the Reddit exodus, communities have been splintered onto different servers. That is why LOTRmemes exist in many different places. They are all different communities.
In order to find the communities that you are looking for on beehaw, search for them while logged into your account on Lemmy.one. You’ll probably be able to find them.
Keep in mind, this federation works when the servers are okay with communicating with eachother. You will find there are posts talking about defederation of servers.
My home server is has been defederated from beehaw.org. I cannot find their communities or interact with anything on their server, and the same with them to my home server. Both of our servers however can still participate with other servers though, because only the metaphorical link between beehaw.org and sh.itjust.works is broken, all the others are still intact.
I hope this sorta clears things up a bit for you. Welcome to Lemmy!
Now what might really cook your noodle is the info that the developers of the Lemmy software are pro-Russian genocide deniers, and there’s a growing sentiment to not support that by dropping Lemmy in favor of kbin or something else.
Here’s the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Just as I was starting to get the hang of this, it feels like I stepped into another wasp nest.
Ookay, then let’s look at kbin, right? Well, there’s literally only ONE developer and the current version still very much a (good) beta version. So, not kbin either, then?
What’s left? Beehaw, who act like snowflakes and have disconnected from where growth and interesting stuff is happening?
I feel pretty lost in the sea of the fediverse right now. Go back to Reddit? Naw, not right either.
Let’s say they are - who cares? They write the software, they don’t run the server you are on unless you are on their server, so don’t be on their server then. That’s the whole point of federation. If one developer at some company you like is a tankie, you wouldn’t use that software?
@kerplunk Also to that point, this is apparently a baseless rumor started from someone who had some beef with the dev at some point. And it’s only spiralled because people keep spreading this info to new people who then just rinse and repeated what they hear because they’re all new.
I can’t find the link but it’s on the lemmy blog. So it’s best not to spread the info based on what you hear in the comments anyway. Lemmy is fine as long as you like the software. The best way to not support them is by not donating or something. That’s all they get from it. Let them be tankies if they are, and distance yourself from the core instances.
kbin is newer but in my opinion the better interface. And if I stick around it will only get better!
I’d say Beehaw is the fediverse for your kids. let them be soft and kind and ban curse words.
You’re safe with lemmy or kbin, probably. Just live with some growing pains for a month or two.
It may not be so baseless after all. Here’s the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Thank you for your comment though, you have good points, especially that Beehaw is also a Lemmy instance, and to look for one that is not operated by these people.
Just to clarify a few things:
- Some of the dev team members who wrote the apolitical Lemmy software are the ones being accused of things. However, anyone can copy that software and create a Lemmy instance. Those devs made one called lemmy.ml that they host and moderate themselves, but everyone else is just copying the base code.
- Beehaw is a Lemmy instance. Same apolitical software that runs all the other instances you see, just hosted and moderated by people who would rather not see disinformation, political propaganda, and hate speech on their site.
- Kbin is different software, but still uses the same ActivityPub communication so they can talk to Lemmy instances and Mastadon (Twitter-like) instances.
- Kbin.social is the main kbin instance run by the developer, but anyone can host their own version
It may not be so baseless after all. Here’s the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Thank you for your comment though, you have good points, especially that Beehaw is also a Lemmy instance, and to look for one that is not operated by these people.
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The Lemmy project maintainers are communists, and quite possibly Marxist-Leninists, but I’ve never seen them make any statements denying genocide. They’re been fairly explicitly against genocide, and have made statements directly to that effect. Meanwhile, the actual software has seen contributions from many people from all over the political spectrum. Because that’s how the open source development community works.
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Reddit’s seen significant investment from Tencent, a Chinese company with well-known ties to the Chinese government and the CCP. Whether the people running the company believe China has committed genocide or not, those continued ties are implicit support for the government’s actions (made even stronger by the Chinese government set to take ownership over a significant chunk of the company). They’ve been invested in Reddit for years, but that hasn’t stopped basically anyone playing the “evil communist” card against the Lemmy devs from using Reddit. In fact, it’s been used for a while now to try and convince people not to leave Reddit.
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Reddit’s also seen investment from white supremacist and actual fascist Peter Thiel. He invested almost a decade ago. Once again, no one seems to have any issue with the politics of the people backing Reddit.
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The politics of the Lemmy devs can be separated from the usage of the software. The software is free, contains no ads, and usage of it does not directly financially support the Lemmy developers at all. Meanwhile, Reddit investors who implicitly deny or actively support genocide both in China and in North America stand to make considerable money off of farming our content out to chatbot developers and/or selling their stake in the business to greater fools.
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Beehaw defederated from like 3 Lemmy instances. Most of us on the fediverse still have unfettered access to their communities. All it takes to not be disinvited from their party is to not shit all over their rugs.
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Ah, I see. This is a common blind spot with respect to genocide. The word gets tied to the Holocaust and the massacres of Cortez, that it gives people an out when confronted by acts and attitudes that are very much genocide, but which do joy generate literal mounds of dead bodies.
And it doesn’t change the dynamic with respect to service or product usage, because I can all but promise you that spez, and basically the entire staff of Reddit deny the ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples in North and South America, the ongoing genocide of the Roma in Europe, and perhaos - even probably - the historical genocides of these groups (with the possible exception of the Aztec).
I don’t mean to come off as if I’m playing with whataboutism. I’m not. Genocides done here do not excuse genocides perpetrated by foreign cultures or regimes. It’s just that if we apply the same standards to people who deny genocides being perpetrated by our own peoples and institutions, then we basically can’t go anywhere or do anything ever. The only difference with that particular Lemmy dev is that they’re playing rhetorical games about a genocide that most of us probably never would have heard of if not for the US playing politics with China.
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Well, you can always put one foot on each side. Make an account on both, use both a bit.
kbin has a better interface, in my opinion though, I’m cheering for them!
Except this is open source developed software. Using it doesn’t actually funnel money to those people is any way similar to using something that is commercial does.
Unless you’re also a direct supporter of that individual dev via buymeacoffee.com or something.
And again, it’s open source. We can literally just take the code from them and start making it our own.
The devs have literally no power over instance admins. And anyone can start up a node, and be one.
That’s one of the perks of open software. Unlike with corporations, where you have to take or leave the whole thing, you can actually change things in the direction you want without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Maybe that’s Kbin, maybe its a future fork of lemmy that is able to convert existing nodes.
Regardless, the boycotting for change that we are forced to resort to under capitalism, isn’t relevant here.
Mostly just wanted to make my first comment
I haven’t signed up for Lemmy. Between the Lemmy and Kbin I like this Kbin a heck of lot more and decided to sign up here.
I haven’t abandoned Reddit and I have no plans on doing so. I’ll probably be on both platforms if this one takes off or until Reddit becomes something like a Myspace. For now I’m just exploring here.
I tried signing up to lemmy.world and it just wouldn’t progress past spinny waiting graphic. Then lemmy.ml and it said application sent and then never heard back. Kbin just worked, so here I am. Also signed up for wt.social, but tried to sign up for trust cafe and it was just broken.
I’m finding that much or most of what I saw on Reddit is here too, so I may actually phase it out myself.
As long as the devs don’t admin the server your account is on they won’t have much effect on your experience
This is the first time I hear about the Lenny developers being pro-Russian. Do you have any source where we can look into it?
Here’s the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/47012/-/comment/196579
I’m curious about this Russian connection as well. This is the only related link I’ve found so far. Can anyone shed more light on this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/143o5xd/reconsidering_my_support_for_lemmy/
if https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835073659101524 is the post you’re referring to, I’m not impressed
the devs haven’t actually said anything - they just didn’t ban someone who was sharing those beliefs
is that what you want? anyone who says anything controversial about sensitive topics gets banned and silenced? wrong or right, I don’t think someone should be banned unless they are explictly advocating for genocide (ie dictator xyz should have finished the job) or using hate speech (ie people from race xyz are a bunch of dumb dirty **** )
beyond that, people should be allowed to share controversial opinions and the community will correct said person and by doing that 3rd party readers have the chance to be educated. this automatic response to cancel and ban just isn’t conducive. we need to stick together at this point - we’re in a fight for the future of the internet
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It’s open source software, if the devs try to enforce their political views, it can be forked
Personally, I’m having a better time using the Jerboa app on Android than using it on desktop, but I have a feeling that we’ll see improvements very soon, as more users join
Im surprised Jerboa was able to keep up with the influx of users these past few weeks and fix most of the bugs
On the iOS side, Memmy is progressing at light speed.
Such a clean app and the dev is adding features constantly, sometimes pushing updates multiple times a day.
You’re on street(ActivityPub), you have your home(lemmy.ml) and in your home there’s a bunch of rooms with people hanging out(communities), but you can visit other houses(Beehaw, kbin) on the street and hang out in their rooms too.
There may be rooms in different houses that have similar purposes, but you can freely go to whichever is best for you and aren’t required to stay home. It doesn’t matter if there are multiple rooms in different houses for the same purpose; just check them out and see which one works best for you
To use the ever popular email analogy, trying to log-in to beehaw with your lemmy.one credentials is like trying to log-in to gmail using your hotmail account just because you want to send an email to someone with a gmail address.
Isn’t lemmy.one and beehaw still federating? Why did you make a second account on beehaw? Same for kbin, what do you mean you are not exploring it? All the content on kbin is accessible from lemmy.one?
If you have an account on one instance, you’re already able to access all the content of all other instances. Including kbin. Kbin’s content is already in your “all” feed, and you’re already exploring it.
I havent made a second account at all. On the contrary, I was trying to login using the same account. The thing I was and am still clueless about is how I can go about accessing Kbin with the same account created on Lemmy. I didnt even know that until you said it here. Lol
That’s not how it works, you’ll always access everything from a url that begins with “lemmy.one”.
If you aren’t, you need to flip it around, for example:
beehaw/c/newsbecomeslemmy.one/c/news@beehaw.orgSame goes for kbin, to access kbin “magazines” the url would be something like:
lemmy.one/c/RedditMigration@kbin.socialOf course, you don’t actually have to manually edit stuff in the address bar, most of the time, you’ll just seamlessly see “outside” communities in your feed, and be able to click them and open them. You probably have been without realizing. You posted this in a community thats from lemmy.ml.
Also, if editing the url doesn’t work, you can also paste a url to a community into search, in your instance (even a url for other instances), to make your instance look it up for you.
This is going to blow your mind too but…you don’t HAVE to create accounts on all those servers. I’m reading your post right now from Kbin.
This is all very confusing for me, too. I have an account here (posting from kbin), and one on lemmy.world. I assumed it was a good idea to make an official presence in as many of the instances as possible. So, is the fediverse just a content aggregator for everyone who officially joins it? How do you decide to cut off one or more of the different sites/apps if you wanted? I have a lot of questions I can’t quite formulate. I have sort of an intuitive understanding, but I feel like a kid using the Internet for the first time in another way, too.
Which I really like.
I would actually try to not subscribe to any beehaw communities if you’re not planning to be on beehaw since they’re defederating. I think that means anything you post on those communities can’t be seen by other servers?
You can browse on lemmyverse.net/communities for a list of every single (Lemmy-only) community.
There’s no equivalent browser site on kbin.
However, another way you can search and get pretty much/nearly all results is by using the community search on the large servers of lemmy and kbin. These large servers try to add every single community, so you can search for both kbin/lemmy communities on these
So for kbin, I use https://kbin.social/magazines
and you can search lemmy.world’s communities too. You can do searches on these even without an accountBeehaw defederated from my instace lemmy.world, so they may have defederated from your instance too (idk anything about lemmy.one). this means that beehaw users won’t see your posts and I think you won’t see new posts from beehaw, only old stuff that lemmy.one saw before the defederation
you can think of Lemmy kind of like a Minecraft server. maybe the lemmy.one Minecraft server has all your friends on it while the beehaw Minecraft server has lots of new people. maybe some of your friends are on both servers.
maybe lemmy.one has banned some blocks like tnt to prevent griefing, so if you visit that server you won’t be able to blow stuff up, but in lemmy.one tnt isn’t blocked so you can explode things to your hearts content. either way, whichever server you play on, you’re still playing Minecraft.I hope that made sense lol
Lemmy.one is still in their good graces, OP is/was still just a little confused about the nature of servers and communities.
What happened between lemmy.world and beehaw?
as far as I can tell, beehaw had a small amount of users from Lemmy world trolling beehaw users (like bad taste stuff I think, not just silly pranksters) and decided to block lemmy.world until it gets better moderation
I think am sort of struggling to wrap my head around how lemmy really works and where should be hanging out. It was easier on reddit in the sense that if I wanted to go LOTRmemes, there was only subreddit but here on Lemmy, there seem to be multiple instances of the same community :D
This one took awhile to wrap my head around as well. I’ll try to explain. Each Lemmy instance has its own unique communities. So you might find LOTRmemes on lemmy.one, lemmy.ml, and Lemmy.world. Each is a community of its own and unrelated to the community of the same name on a different instance. You can choose to subscribe to each one you find or only the ones that seem to fit your tastes.
I’m really confused about a lot of things here. For one, you’re talking about Lemmy, but from my perspective it looks like you’re posting on kbin.social.
When I started my kbin account, I searched for “magazines” to subscribe to. Most looked like they were either on kbin, Lemmy, beehaw, or shitjustworks. I had heard that Beehaw had become unfederated, so I unsubscribed from those communities, although I’m unsure why I was able to subscribe to them from kbin in the first place if they were I federated.
Now I’m reading that shitjustworks is unfederated too? Also Lemmy.ml? Can Lemmy servers be h federated? And again, why can I subscribe to them through kbin in the first place if they are unfederated? Do I need to be doing research on communities before joining to make sure they are federated? Does it matter if they aren’t?
Defederation doesn’t disconnect an instance from the whole network, only specific instances.
The news about beehaw defedrating referred specifically to beehaw.org defederating from shitjustworks and lemmy.world. Only users on those instances cannot see posts from beehaw, and users on beehaw cannot see posts from those instances.
shitjustworks and lemmy.world have not defederated from the fediverse at large, and are still communicating with all major instances other than beehaw.org.
Beehaw.org has also not defederated from kbin.social which is why you can still subscribe to and interact with them on kbin.social.The kinks really need to be worked out and it all needs to be made far more noob friendly. When I opened this thread, I was super confused. I’m currently reading it on kbin.social with my kbin account. And it looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/2R8HjMa.png
I read the title, next to it: kbin.social. But obviously this thread isn’t on kbin. It’s on lemmy. Still showed up in my feed, even though I’m not subscribed to m/asklemmy. You’re now saying beehaw is unfederated, but I’ve also subscribed to stuff on beehaw from kbin.
I assume it’s largely because it’s still early days, but oh boy. I’m relatively pc literate. I grew up using dos, have installed linux, and have no problem using the commandline in windows or osx. I’ve seen people far more pc literate than me getting confused by it all.
I can only imagine how confusing this must be for casual users.
That’s due to a bug where local caches of remote communities are recognized as being under kbin.social instead of the actual domain they’re on.
(Not disagreeing that it isn’t newbie friendly at all. Just adding context)
One server can defederate from another server, that doesn’t prevent a 3rd server from communicating with both of them
While true, I would like to point out that this does not imply arbitrary routing. In other words, instance A can’t pull data from instance C via instance B.
