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 :-) )
Lemmy is a piece of software. Lemmy software is a link aggregator - same as reddit.
So you’re signed up to a server that’s installed an instance (a copy) of the Lemmy software. Other servers also run the Lemmy software making them also instances of Lemmy. As well as you being able to talk to users in Communities (think subreddits) on the lemmy.world server, you can talk to users in Communities on other Lemmy instances. For example, lemmy.ml, feddit.de etc etc
KBin is also link aggregator software, just like Lemmy and Reddit. Same things apply there, same software on multiple servers, all able to talk with each other.
Mastodon software is a microblogging service - same as Twitter (and Threads). Just like instances of Lemmy, instances of Mastodon can talk to each other. So a user on mastodon.world can talk to (for example) a user on kolektiva.social which is also running the Mastodon software.
There’s also Pixelfed (Instagram), PeerTube (YouTube), Friendica (Facebook), Plume (WordPress) and a large variety of others.
Now, as well as all these different types of software (Lemmy, Mastodon, KBin, PixelFed etc) being able to talk to other instances of the same software on other servers, because they are all underpinned by a single method of passing information called ActivityPub, each type of software can also talk to each other - so you as a Lemmy user can also see posts and comments from a user on a server running an instance of Mastodon (or Plume, or PixedlFed, or…you get the idea). All these things are loosely joined together making a joined (federated) universe - the fediverse.
This is how my poor grandmother must feel all the time. I’m slowly trying to understand it all. I’ve got most of lemmy figured out so far I think. But there’s a lot more to this.
Just abstract it in your mind - Lemmy is software. Microsoft Word is software. Mastodon is software. Photoshop is software.
You can install copies of all of these pieces of software on different machines. Now just imagine if all the various copies (instances) of MS Word installed on peoples PC’s around the world were able to talk to each other. And so were all the copies of Photoshop. And then further imagine that all the copies of Word were also able to talk to all the copies of Photoshop.
That’s all the fediverse is. Multiple copies of the same software able to talk to each other and also able to talk to multiple copies of different software.
Have a look here, put a tick in the ‘ActivityPub’ protocol tickbox and you’ll see the software that can (theoretically) talk to each other.
I’ve seen numerous posts trying to explain what is going on here but this is the one that made sense to me. Thanks.
No problem :)
I thought I was getting the hang of this until I read your comment and learned about all these cool technologies in the fediverse. Thank you, I found this super helpful.
Do I need to setup accounts for these other ones like mastodon, pixelfed?
Technically, no, but you may want to. All of these services are federated and interact with one another. Mastodon users can interact with pixelfed posts and lemmy communities and anything else in the Fediverse. In reality, though, these services, and their clients, are built for specific types of content. If you’re spending much time at all on those other Federated communities, the “round peg, square hole” nature of using a Reddit-like app to use a Twitter-like service (as an example) may start to chafe.
No problem :)
It really depends on your intention…if you intend to just interact with (for example) Mastodon users that appear occasionally in the Lemmy communities you’re a part of then there’s no need at all. Or if you want to communicate occasionally with a Mastodon (or any other type of software) user then you could use their Mastodon handle to do so - for example go to the Search box on your Lemmy instance and type in @Mastodon@mastodon.social (which is the ‘official’ Mastodon account on the mastodon.social server but it can be any handle) wait for a few seconds (or longer depending on the speed of the server) and the user account with the ability to private message them appears. There are currently some issues but it used to be possible to post directly to a Mastodon user’s timeline from Lemmy. Mastodon users can post to Lemmy. It’s worth remembering that Mastodon is a LOT more mature as a product than Lemmy, which is still in its infancy.
For now, at least, Id say if you’re looking to spend a lot of time on each different software type then register an account at an instance of it. The integration will come, but the fediverse is young, Lemmy in particular is very young so it’ll take time.
Thank you for this explanation! Lemmy really needs an award function to allow me to give people awards for going above and beyond.
No need :) if you’re not already, make a donation to the instance you’re on instead.
I really appreciate this comment. So many of us are still trying to learn exactly how this all works, so it’s very helpful for people like me. Here’s a cool wallpaper
Hmm I feel like I’ve seen this before 🤔
deleted by creator
😄😄😄 btw, thank you!
Thanks! This seems to be exactly what I was looking for :-)
This part is especially helpful:
“You should always stay on lemmy.world. To join the “music” community from lemmy.ml, you click the search icon in the top right corner on lemmy.world (not the “Communities” link) and search for !music@lemmy.ml including the exclamation mark (!) at the start. You should see the community pop up in the list after clicking Search. In general, the search term is “![community-name]@[instance-name]”.”
A few times I was looking for communities using the search bar, and got confused that I found more than one community for the same thing (e. g. music) and they seemed to be on different Lemmy instances. I did not know if I can even subscribe to them or not, if they are even visible for me with my lemmy.world account or not, etc. Now I understand that part a bit better. Thanks again! :-)
I think it is dangerous to tell everyone to go to lemmy.world. That buildup of lots of people on a single server goes against the intended use and risks introducing similar problems as Reddit has, when a single instance gets too much power. We regrettably have that problem with email servers today, where a few bad powerful actors (Gmail, Yahoo etc) with a business incentive control who is allowed to send mail or not.
It would be much healthier if they encouraged everyone to find a Lemmy instance that is either geographically close or has a local community that with common values and interests. We need to spread people out to promote democracy.
I was about to post the same. Joining the biggest instance is a bad Idea. I remember when joining Mastodon, there was a quiz that helped me find a fitting instance. Maybe there is a way to have something similar for lemmy instances? Maybe it already exists and I don’t know about it? The concept of a decentralized social network seems to be hard to grasp for people.
I did not realize that lemmy.world is but a single instance - it’s all starting to come together in my head :-)
The FAQ linked earlier in the thread suggested making an account on lemmy.world, that same thing was what I meant in my post as well. And I see the comments about it being beneficial to “stress test” the Lemmy backend, so… should I edit my original post?
One advantage lemmy.world has which led to many people recommending it early on is that Ruud is an experienced Fediverse admin (here is a summary of all his servers: https://lemmy.world/post/6441). This meant it was easy to suggest to early Reddit refugees since he’s proven competent and reliable so it soothed fears of instances having poor uptime or getting abandoned and helped ease the transition.
I joined lemmy.world and have been really enjoying it. Still have a lot to learn, but it looks and feels like the old days of what Reddit used to be.
My main beef is with the FAQ, not your comment which just repeats what the FAQ says. But I’m concerned that bad advice from documents like that will spread through word of mouth, and become pervasive in a way that becomes difficult to retract later.
I see now, thanks! Note: If that’s the case, we need an updated FAQ later down the line, when Ruud says Lemmy.world will have been properly stress-tested :-)
It’s kind of a double-edged sword, though. Sure the better advice would be to join a smaller instance, or spin up your own. Most people can’t spin up their own instance. As for smaller instances, who’s to say that smaller instance ris still going to be here 1, 2, 5 years from now? The 2 largest are more likely to stick around. Not saying you’re wrong, just that there are lots of unknowns.
Personally, I don’t think Lemmy folks should be working to get people to leave Reddit. Most people I see on Lemmy love the fact that it’s a small community like Reddit used to be. Why work to destroy that? If people want to leave Reddit, Lemmy will be here, and they’re probably going to add to the community. To me the barrier to entry of understanding how lemmy/Fediverse works is kind of helping to keep the community from growing to Reddit sizes with all the annoyances that entails.
I think they were saying ‘if you are an existing happy lemmy.world user and you want to join a community on another instance, do that through Lemmy.world
It’s reasonable generic advice. I’m subscribed and commenting from kbin.social
Ayooo kbin.social
While you’re not wrong per se, having a massive instance like .world has enabled some much needed stress testing of the Lemmy backend in a way that really hasn’t been possible before, which will help the Devs find optimizations and improvements that will facilitate future growth overall on all instances. The recent memory leak that was discovered is a great example of it.
Really testing the limits of scalability is important for the overall future of Lemmy. Doing it on a server whose admin already runs a large mastodon server and has proven to be trustworthy and reliable is not a bad thing so long as donations can keep up with server costs.
Finally, gathering on .world makes it easy for Reddit refugees to transition, which is actually valuable in reaching critical mass on Lemmy, though maybe that first big wave of people has passed already.
Welcome to Lemmy. Here is your free Lemming:
Go wild!
Oh shit it’s Lemmiwinks
We are Lemmyins now. Lemmy In! Lemmy In! …That was a good shitpost, IMO.
LOL, thanks!
Oh yes I quite like this actually.
Essentially, lemmy.world is an email provider right? Like Gmail.
And communities [or subs!] are forums. While these forum posts are made by people who are on the lemmy.world instance, every other provider [instance] can see them, provided the instance owner has not decided to block other providers [defederated].
As long as you are browsing ALL instead of Local [local only shows subs on your own instance], it’s effectively reddit.
It may be worthwhile to make an account on an instance which features your country for Lemmy performance purposes, plus the local communities [subs, remember] may be very relevant for you, albeit probably very small in terms of users.
Signing up for lemmy.world is like signing up for shit, monopolised, slow internet in America? It has lots of customers, but that new upstart fibre company [small, fast instance] will let you see the same pages as shitty, slow Comcast.
(I’m not knocking Lemmy.world, just using it for this analogy)
That’s what I make of the fed so far, pretty cool.
This site, lemmy.world is managed by @ruud from The Nethlands and hosted in Helsinky (guessing Hetzner, that’s where my Helsinky server is from).
Non-US was as I believe the main reason for this setup.
browse Tildes and wish you could get an invite because they talk about things other than reddit and beans
then log in here and talk about reddit and beans.
I have invites for tildes. Want one?
Can I have an invite pls?
I can send you an invite if nobody has sent you one yet
Yes pls. I haven’t heard back from the person who asked me to DM them. I don’t know if it’s a technical issue or not (or maybe I was supposed to msg them through mastodon?), or if you need a DM from me, or whether you can just send me one through the messaging system. Thanks.
Sure thank you, I’d gladly check it out!
Small question - is Tildes not part of the “Fediverse”? If it is, why can’t I use it with my lemmy.world account? Are there multiple Fediverses? :-)
@Sati1984 Tildes is not part of the fediverse. DM me for an invite
I wouldn’t want to be part of anything that would have me as a member
I explain the fediverse a bit like all those “local” newspaper websites (that have names like Chathamgazette.org or GainsvilleAdvertiser.com or ChanningtownTimes.net), that in actual fact share 90% of the content on articles (usually all articles written as adverts but that is not part of the analogy here). They have 10% local content that others could access then the pages are made up of material they all share.
Lemmy has definitely been able to replace Reddit for me. And although I don’t fully understand the fediverse either, I am super intrigued by the concept. I hope this style is the future of social interaction on the internet.
I’m on Connect with a Lemmy.world account and I’m loving it. I also don’t fully “get it” but I’m here to learn! Also using Mastodon WAY more than I ever used bird app.
Optional extra point to add on to #5: if the community that needs to replace a subreddit isn’t here yet, MAKE IT. And advertise it, so it can get popular. Be the change you want to see!
This is something I need to get into my head because I’m shy on the idea of being the one to make communities.
I’d also encourage people to check the Lemmy explorer first before assuming a community doesn’t exist just because it’s not on lemmy.world. Https://Lemmyverse.net has a surprising amount of communities on it, split among so instances. We don’t want a bunch of clones.
Can you make a magazine without having to make an instance?
Yes. Only your server needs to allow it. But lemmy.world f.e. does
Yes. a Magazine is the same thing as a Community on Lemmy and a subreddit on Reddit hence the r/whatever on reddit, m/whatever on KBin and c/whatever on Lemmy.
An instance is the name given to a server thats installed and run a copy of the KBin (or Lemmy) software. So kbin.social is a different server than fedia.io - both are running the KBin software but on different servers. You can create communities on one or both which can lead to overlap - there are several c/funny communities on Lemmy for example, each on a different server, modded by different users.
Not having people join can be discouraging, so maybe people treating magazines like their own personal blog would help until it gets growth.
Newbie here and apologies if these are FAQs but just want one line answers
What’s an instance?
What’s a community?
What are federations?
Whats the difference between all these?
What’s mastodon?
What’s Kbin?
What’s ActivityPub?
Just jargon I’m trying to get my head around, I’m still confused on signing up to different communities?! I guess and yeah… a bit lost I suppose. If there are FAQs to all this please direct me to them, thanks!
What’s an instance?
A website hosted by some kind individual or group created to host data and interface with one of the specific fediverse applications (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon, Pixelfed, etc).
What’s a community?
This is a Lemmy-specific term. They are topic-specific boards hosted on instances, similar to subreddits on Reddit. The Kbin term for this same idea is magazines.
Example: For Lemmy, they are represented as “!community”, such as !pics. On Kbin, they are “@magazine”, such as @pics.What are federations?
I haven’t really heard the word used this way, I’ve heard it more as an adjective or verb. This may take more than one line to explain because I literally had to see it to believe it.
To have one instance federated with another is to have them communicating with each other, so that users, posts, communities, etc on one instance can be read by uses on another instance. It’s how I can read all these Lemmy posts on Kbin and comment under them, because these Lemmy instances are federated with the Kbin.social instance I’m currently on.What’s mastadon?
A federated version of Twitter.
Whats Kbin?
A federated web application that combines the link-aggregation of Reddit with the individual micro blogging threads of Twitter.
What’s Activity Pub?
It’s the current protocol to enable federation of all these sites we’ve been talking about. Federation is possible because all these sites are speaking the same language, and this is that language.
In addition to Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon that use Activity Pub, we also have Pixelfed, Micro.blog, Nextcloud, PeerTube, and more I’m sure.If you have any other questions, just ask!
An Instance is the server you’re currently on, it’s running the platform you’re using, and it is also where your user profile is hosted.
A community is the Lemmy equivalent of a Subreddit.
Federations are interconnected groups of Instances and Platforms.
Mastodon is a microblogging platform (similar to Twitter) which can Federate with other ActivityPub platforms like Lemmy.
Kbin in is another Reddit style link aggregator.
ActivityPub is server protocol that allows federated instances to talk to each other and the instances of other platforms.
What’s an instance?
An instance is a server running the Lemmy software (or some other federation software such as Mastodon, Kbin, Pixelfed, and others). Instances can talk together (similarly to how you can send email from gmail.com to outlook.com), so you can sign up on one instance and subscribe and comment to communities on other instances
What’s a community?
A community is to Lemmy what a subreddit is to Reddit. on
What are federations?
Federation is the machanism allowing different instances (servers) to talk together. Federation is automatic, so two instances becomes federated, when you as a user on one instance subscribe to a community on a different instance
Whats the difference between all these?
Many instances are general but have somewhat different values and rules for what you can post or not. “lemmy.world” is a good choice for a general instance. There are also topic specific instances, such as “mander.xyz” that is science focused.
What’s mastodon?
Mastodon is like twitter but is part of the federated universe (the “fediverse”).
What’s Kbin?
Kbin - like Lemmy - is like Reddit. The impelemntation is different and focuses on different fetures. Some (myself included) like Kbin more than Lemmy - others the other way around.
What’s ActivityPub?
ActivityPub is the common technical protocol that allows all of the software in the Fediverse to talk together. Both Mastodon, Kbin and Lemmy (and others) are build “on top” of the ActivityPub protocol.
Hope this helps
I’m just not sure about how much I like that on kbin, upvotes and downvotes are publicly viewable. I don’t mind publicly viewable comments of course… but your votes? Eesh.
Sorry about the reddit link. It’s old.reddit though: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14gyay8/on_kbin_upvotes_downvotes_are_public/
I tend to agree, though it should be noted that the public access to vote information is part of the current backend and Kbins frontend just makes it available for everyone to see. WefWef for example also shows your point totals (“karma”) on Lemmy and I’m sure many other 3rd party apps will too.
Someone raised this issue on the Lemmy GitHub today but it’s unclear what stance the Devs will take.
As a reddit refugee I appreciate the quick FAQ. I have been re-reading the lemmy welcome post as I browse around and find new stuff. Mastodon is a whole other can of worms for me.
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.
I’ll givr it a try, though I’m new here too:
What’s an instance? -> A server on which you can register your account
What’s a community? -> same as a subreddit
What are federations? -> Information exchange between servers
What’s mastodon? -> Twitter alternative. As lemmy is to reddit
What’s Kbin? -> Similar to lemmy, but kbin can interact better with Mastodon
What’s ActivityPub? -> the protocol used within the fediverse
Thanks, so you can register with multiple servers (instances) right? Like I have a lemmy.world account and a Feddit.uk one, I am generally logged into the fedddit.uk. when would I need to switch over to using Lemmy.world? Do i need too?
Also can you only find certain communities depending on which account your signed into
You can register with multiple instances, but you don’t need too, because you can view, post, comment and vote on any instance that your home instance is federated with.
So you only need one account.
I like to diversify my bonds, ngl.
when would I need to switch over to using Lemmy.world?
I can think of 2 reasons:
- feddit.uk is down.
- you want to create a community on Lemmy.world you have to do it with an account on that instance.
Also can you only find certain communities depending on which account your signed into.
so if an instance is defederated with another like beehaw to lemmy.world (though they say this is temporary), then you won’t get any updates out of those communities. You can always search the community from another instance in the search tool. If someone else on your instance already did this the community should be accessible via c/communityName@instance.name. That URL will not work unless someone has already searched it and it’s indexed. For large instances this will likely not be an issue, but it may be annoying for people on smaller instances.
I haven’t found anything like Joey, but I like liftoff a lot
Connect is OK but I don’t like comment threads having the color line extended the whole way down. I also don’t like connects font size options. Too big or too small.
I also don’t care for Connect’s comment option bar between comments. Too spread out
Font size options are a big miss on most reddit apps
I still need an app that does the RIF thing of hiding the little links under a post (time it was posted, by whom, also links to share share, save, hide, comments, etc.) on the main feed until I click on it. It saved a lot of screen real estate.
But until an app does that, I’ve been switching between Liftoff, Connect, Jerboa, wefwef, and the kbin.social PWA. They all seem to sort posts in different ways so it’s actually provided a different experience each time lol.
Joey! Underrated
I switched to it after I got a new phone and Sync pro didn’t move over properly. Really grew to love it
I highly recommend trying the Summit for Lemmy app. It doesn’t have an Inbox or Profile pages yet, but browsing is much smoother than all alternatives
Can confirm. Instantly better than any other app I’ve installed for Lemmy. Also, Liftoff requires you to login to each individual instance to upvote anything from that instance for some reason. Summit is great, is what I’m saying.
Also, Liftoff requires you to login to each individual instance to upvote anything from that instance for some reason.
Uh, I just upvoted you and this post from feddit.it using Liftoff
Are you logged into lemmy.world, too? I tried using Liftoff to upvote pretty much anything else, but I get errors like, “this thread was retrieved via lemmy.ml. You are not logged in there.”
You probably have an empty instance in your settings (eg. lemmy.ml but with no account under it) and were browsing the “Everything / All” feed, you went inside a post served “via lemmy.ml” and tried to upvote. Obviously it asks you to login in that case.
You can remove instances with no accounts by long pressing them. Also you can hide the everything feed from settings ;)
I must say, that’s an odd default behavior since no other app I’ve tried does it like that. Regardless, removing the empty logins worked.
Welcome. The confusion will fade away after a few more days of using lemmy. :)
For apollo: use https://wefwef.app, it’s nearly identical.
The speed at which all apps are updated is insane! Not only wefwef.app but also Memmy. The community really wants this project to succeed.
Definitely rooting for it!
Yes it has been very crazy. Lemmy and kbin went from this niche thing to all of a sudden finding themselves given the expectation of ramping up the pace at which they are progressing by possibly months or a year ahead of schedule due to the growth. And they’ve been making improvements fast. It’s amazing.
This is the way. Although Memmy in the App Store is also very good.
Plus Memmy is out on the App Store! Doesn’t help OP of course.
I’m not sure if I’m just technologically challenged, but I can’t seem to find a way to log into wefwef from a smaller instance. Does it only support the big four?
//edit: Turns out you can only pop in as a guest from the bigger instances. You can log in to any instance, and I’m just dumb.
For Sync, try Thunder, it’s similar. Sync will eventually come out, but Thunder is FOSS.
www.fedi.tips it’s tailored to Mastodon but similar rules apply. It’s written for non technical users.
I would discourage telling everyone to go to Lemmy.World as not only could it overload the server, the centralisation problem starts all over again.
The vast majority of instances are federated to all the big ones anyway, so I would recommend looking around to see if there are any instances that better fit your wants before going straight Lemmy.World. You won’t lose anything from it, and you’ll be supporting the wider fediverse.
Spread out communities makes it easier to avoid a single admin deciding to go crazy. Like imagine if Reddit had been composed of different instances, so people were able to just pack up and leave the instance he was on and not lose all their communities by quitting the Spez reddit instance. So you make a good point. Maybe over time there will be topic based instances popping up like an instance for entertainment, and an instance for games. Which would be pretty cool over a swiss army knife do everything approach instance where everyone starts migrating communities too because it has the largest user base.
We’re kind of starting to get that, we just need to encourage people to spread out from lemmy.world and make communities in these other instances. We’ve got lemmy.film that’s TV and film focused, pathfinder.social and another ttrpg instance, star trek has an instance, the solar punk instance, there’s a couple tech, privacy, and hacker instances. I’d also like to see more local area communities in instances like midwest.social instead of all on lemmy.world, too.
This already is a thing, see StarTrek.website, Lemmy.film and LemmyNSFW.com for just a few examples.
The admin paranoia is tough because it goes both ways. Yes, big instances mean huge losses if they get abandoned, defederated or the admin loses his mind. At the same time, smaller instances are often run by regular people who can’t or aren’t interested in running an instance long term, or don’t have the ability to have 99%+ uptime.
At the moment momentum is important to reach critical mass of users and it’s just not feasible to tell most Reddit refugees “Okay so go to look up the handful of instances closest to your geographical location. Research their uptime, the reliability of their admins, their funding, their rules and whether they’re defederated from any major instances. Just pick the one that best suits your needs! Oh, also remember to use !community@instance.something (don’t forget the exclamation point!) when searching for communities because many small instances haven’t connected yet to everyone. This also means these subs will appear empty at first because old content doesn’t get propagated but don’t worry about it. Oh and also sorting topics by Hot is bugged on small instances currently.”
