Well this came outta nowhere!
This was my main reddit app. I am glad they have decided to implement it for Lemmy.
Do we have any source why dev changed his mind?
Removed by mod
He did initially say that he wasn’t going to release Boost for Lemmy https://i.imgur.com/oEJTEaI.png
No idea. He didn’t say much at all up until very recently, when he made a post confirming that Boost for Reddit was shutting down.
As far as I knew, he had given the impression he wasn’t interested in migrating his app to Lemmy, but apparently that’s not the case!
Maybe they noticed all the interest in sync for lemmy :) even the subreddit has over 5k members already.
I imagine it’s because of the interest a lot of people expressed. Not to mention, quite a few Reddit app devs already announced they’re creating Lemmy apps, and many of their users were happy about those announcements.
I saw he edited his last post, good to see he reconsidered.
What did he change his mind on?
The dev said in another post that he had really no interest in developing a Lemmy app, but very recently he edited his official shutdown post that boost for Lemmy is happening!
Whoa and it’s on playstore already huh, cool!
Well, it’s on the Play Store to allow for pre-registration. It’s not available to download yet. But, if you do pre-register it’ll download as soon as the app is made available.
Yeah i saw that, but it’s still kinda cool
Awesome, Boost was my favorite Android option for that r-site for a long time.
Never tried this app for reddit but I’m having fun exploring all the new Lemmy apps. Definitely going to give this a try once it is available!
Sync and Boost were far and away the best 2 Android apps for me.
This is fantastic news!
Screenshots look so good!
Honestly I was so excited about this that I registered without even looking at the screenshots, hahah. Haven’t been active on Reddit in a few weeks now and those just made me weirdly nostalgic <3 So pumped!!
It really feels like the beginning of something new. Brand new communities, tons of people, great looking apps…it’s just a nice change from the doomscrolling of the last few weeks on Reddit :)
I’m so excited I just ordered an iPhone!
Super keen on seeing all these apps coming out. Always good for the ecosystem to have a range of quality apps to keep people invested
well thats good. I used Boost for years and was really sad that it was shutting down.
Same. Still sad though, because now I still can’t use Boost. But will gladly support Artemis.
same! I’m soo happy
Such a great app, so glad to see it coming for Lemmy
I kinda saw it coming when I noticed you have to search for communities instead of subreddits.
Here’s hoping that the contains ads and in app purchases is just a remnant from the reddit app.
Boost was well worth the money and I’d happily pay again for the Lemmy port.
I think it’s important to not scare experienced and skilled developers away with all that brigading for free and open-source.
Developing good software is not easy and as long as Ruben offers a premium version without ads, that’s more than fair.
But it contains ads…? And sends information to third party apps? What is that?
given the nature of the fediverse and what we just escaped from, I’m not sure I’d be willing to sacrifice my newfound freedom from that kind of stuff. but I’ll try them all.
If you think about it all these apps that are popping up out of nowhere for kbin and lemmy and in alpha stage etc… Boost Rif and all the other ones are prime third-party apps. people that have used them know you probably have to pay $5 or so to unlock its full potentinal. all these newer apps don’t have any footing like the big ones do so they are letting you test them out for now but once they get big they will post something like. we have more features but you have to pay $5 all the apps are like this. When i first used apollo and alien blue you had to pay like $6 just to post and everything else was extra. Just saying its only a matter of time. Hopefully it won’t come to that but don’t be suprised if they do. Just be prepared for anything
It’s probably identical to the reddit version. The app has ads with a one-time $5 no-ads payment and a donation button for further support. If I had to guess, I’d say the “third-party apps” are stuff like Google Pay and Samsung Pay, but don’t quote me on that.
Bro I am so happy for this!!
I’ve used Boost for reddit, and I’m on KBin, but it looks like between this and most of the other apps focusing on Lemmy, I might just switch over.
It’s worth mentioning that the Lemmy focus among app developers is probably temporary. Since it’s only brand new software, kbin currently has no API active at all. Lemmy has been around for longer and has an established API. It’s not anything personal against kbin.
Yeah, I never took it as preferential treatment or anything. Part of it is just that I used Boost for Reddit, so a part of me wants thinks it would be cool to continue to support them. I’ll probably just stick here though. I’m sure eventually someone will make an app.
I’m sure most Lemmy apps will add Kbin support down the line, too. The lead developer for Sync for Lemmy already said he’s looking into it, I believe. At the moment, Kbin doesn’t have an API though, so it’s less straightforward to approach I guess.
For an app designed for Kbin first and Lemmy second, Artemis is under way and you can follow it here: https://kbin.social/m/ArtemisApp
I just got on kbin. I thought it was interchangeable with lemmy? As in this post is on lemmy and I’m responding to it. Or have I completely missed something? If anyone good a good link to clear that up I’d appreciate it.
Long post/response incoming so apologies in advance (tl;dr is near the bottom in bold).
You are correct; Think of it like emails. Particularly the @outlook vs @gmail vs @yahoo, except with @lemmy and @kbin.
You can have a JohnJacob372@lemmy and a JohnJacob372@kbin and it be two separate people with the same username, but different “instances” just like email addresses.
The point is though, that everything that’s part of the “fediverse” (Lemmy and Kbin are two of the biggest but there also exist others like Fedia.io) is connected in a way that if you’re on one, you can see posts from the others. Ex: If JohnJacob372@lemmy posts an article on Lemmy, it’ll show up on your kbin feed/frontpage and you can comment on it along with the lemmy folks.
You can tell where it originated from because it’ll say next to the username and magazine (magazine is what you might call a subreddit, but again, you can have same named subs as well, one on Kbin and one on Lemmy). Ex: [email protected] 2 hours ago to [email protected].
If you don’t see the @ part after the name or magazine, it means it was posted by someone on your same instance (otherwise it would be “redundant” to say “JohnJacob372 from your neighborhood on Main Street just posted a flyer in your neighborhood on Main Street” when you can just say “JohnJacob372 posted a flyer on Main Street”).
So recap (tl;dr):
Instance = Platform (like Lemmy and Kbin)
Magazine = Subreddit
Username@InstanceA can post on Subreddit@InstanceA, and Anyone@InstanceA can read posts on AnySubreddit@AnyInstance (so long as the instance is “federated” i.e. part of the Fediverse Network like Lemmy and Kbin).Hopefully that helps. You can stop here if you don’t want to be confused more, but I will say this:
It may be beneficial, at least in the early days, to have an account on different instances. Mainly because each instance is ran on personal servers by individuals which can have a lot of problems, especially when they are overloaded (like during large migrations from Reddit to here). Having an account on another Instance is like having another account on another Server that can still access the same posts, but because it’s a different server, it might be up and running while the other is down for maintenance.
Ideally, apps will eventually be able to switch between instances automatically, but for now, it’s easier for app developers to focus on one instance at a time which is why you see different apps for Lemmy and Kbin. This is where my own understanding could be fuzzy because afaik you should still be able to access posts from both (all) instances, it’s just that you would need to have an account on the instance/server that app is based on. So an app for Lemmy means you would need to have a Lemmy account, but you should still be able to access/read content posted on Kbin. I think. I could be wrong and you can only see/access content on Lemmy if that’s the case. But even then, it won’t be forever. These things take time but it’s definitely an achievable goal.
Don’t apologize, that was great. As someone who used to dig into schematics and such it’s refreshing. I don’t know what you do but you write very clearly. And it certainly beats a longass youtube video. And it’s good enough I feel dumb! (that’s a compliment).
Can’t reply to everyone but thank you all for helping break it down to the basics. I really hope we can see de-centralized platforms take over. It’s a front with tons of challenges but it has potential. Have a great 4th all… and you non-US people should find a reason to party too!
Novice explanation (I’m the novice, not an expert dumbing it down). The Fediverse includes all platforms that operate on the ActivityPub protocol. That means that different platforms can be part of the fediverse. Mastodon is the biggest fediverse platform I’m aware of. It’s a lot like Twitter structurally. Even though Kbin looks like reddit and Mastodon looks like Twitter, they are all part of the fediverse because their built on ActivityPub. The way these platforms are built, anyone can make their own mastodon or Kbin instance (server) and Federate with other instances. Even though Kbin and Mastodon are pretty different, they can still federate with and talk to eachother.
Kbin and Lemmy are different software platforms that were both built to be a lot like reddit. They might even be hard to distinguish. They are written in different programming languages, so Kbin isn’t just another instance of Lemmy run by a different person, it’s a wholly seperate software project. However, they can communicate with eachother through ActivityPub. Since they look so similar to users, they almost look like they are just different instances to eachother, but under the hood it’s more like how Kbin can pull in microblogs from Mastodon.
Because Lemmy has been around a few years and Kbin only a couple of months, many developers are making Lemmy apps first. Since the software is made differently, an app made to work with Lemmy won’t necessarily work out of the box if you try to login with a Kbin account. But I do think that longterm there may be some apps that support both.
I can’t help but try to add my ELI5 explanation. It’s like how Gmail and Yahoo are interchangeable but you can only use the Gmail app with Gmail accounts and to log into Yahoo you have to use the Yahoo app.
There are apps that support imap/pop that can do both but we don’t have the equivalent of imap/pop for the fediverse yet (closest we have is several projects having mastodon compatible APIs but sometimes it’s only partial, iirc pixelfed used to be usable from the mastodon app but it diverged too much)
“Interchangeable” isn’t quite the right word, because they’re different software with different features, but they share content, which is the most important part.
You can easily try both and choose the one you like better. Or if there’s an app you want to use but it only supports one service, it’s probably a good reason to choose that one. I might switch myself once sync for lemmy is ready.
That’s right, but the apps will be specific to the platform. So you won’t be able to log into an app made for lemmy with a kbin account, but you can interact with people on lemmy
Thank you for that clear and understandable response. I guess I need to sit down and read some… Not expecting any kind of “replacement” soon but I like seeing that devs are very active and getting new contributors. The 2nd half of this year is gonna be interesting no doubt.
It’s basically like email, you can get a Boost app and send and receive “emails” from Kbin but you gotta have a Boost “email address” to use the Boost app. If you want to use your Kbin “email address” then you need a Kbin app.
