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.
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.
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.
In my own personal experience, Lemmy is significantly easier to understand than Mastodon was. I think the communities make discovery easier and you end up with a decent feed without as much effort.
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 @DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one
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/technology@beehaw.org
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 .
No. I did find this article that I need to read too! https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-find-subreddits-communities/
You also are not able to log in to another instance with your instance’s username and password
The way you subscribe to a community on another instance is to view it from your instance and then subscribe that way
The easiest way to do this is to go to your instance and the search for the other community on that instance in your search bar
You can just copy the url or use !community@instance.org
For searching for communities there is browse.feddit.de and lemmyverse.net
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/gaming@beehaw.org. Beehaw user wants to comment to Kbin Tech Magazine? https://beehaw.org/c/tech@kbin.socialAnd 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.
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 !wellthatsucks@lemmy.one and !wellthatsucks@beehaw.org. 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 !wellthatsucks@lemmy.one 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!
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. (That federate with yours) That includes 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.org/c/newsbecomeslemmy.one/c/news.orgSame goes for kbin, to access kbin “magazines” the url would be something like:
lemmy.one/c/RedditMigration.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.
Yep. I’m currently replying to your comment from kbin.
It’s possible that OP doesn’t realise they’re seeing kbin content and users.
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.
So, is the fediverse just a content aggregator for everyone who officially joins it?
Kinda, but not exactly. Imagine there’s a sea with different ships. The ships have different crews, all with their own interests - some may like sleepy cats, others might like painting etc. And the sailors set their communities. Each community must take a room on that ship, and they can have whatever rules they want, unless they don’t break the general rules of the ship they’re on. Now, imagine the rooms have hardware that can create a hologram version of you, through which you can communicate with others - just like in Star Wars or Star Trek. By using that particular thing, any sailor can have a holographic version in any of the ships at will, and attend the discussions.
That fleet of ships is Lemmy as a whole. And every ship is a server.
Now on to something a bit more complicated: out there, there’s also a group of airplanes, and there’s also a group of UFOs, but fortunately controlled by humans. Their crews similarly have different interests, different hobbies, whatever. They also have this thing that allows their hologram into the room where your community gathers. They might however have their voice distorted, or there might be some latency, their image might be distorted a bit, but that’s okay. You generally get their message. That is because they use a different implementation of that thing, or they work differently since they’re not ships - they’re planes, or UFOs, serving different purposes, working differently. There is usually, however, no issue in ship-to-ship communication.
The other vehicles are the other platforms such as Mastodon, Kbin, Friendica, Pixelfed etc. - they all use a protocol (think of it as a language) called ActivityPub (that would be the thing allowing you to be on any ship through your hologram); these platforms usually work together in order to facilitate communication from one-another, but they add different features, they cather to different people, so issues may arise from time to time. That’s fine. The message should get through.
How do you decide to cut off one or more of the different sites/apps if you wanted?
Let’s return to my previous example: Each ship has a captain. The captain can decide to cut all communications with all ships, allow communications with all ships from his end (mind that other captains can have the same power, but on their ships), or only allow communications with certain ships (which is generally what is done around this place).
When any captain decides to cut communications with any ship, the process is called defederation - it’s more of a red button.
Besides that, you can also block individual users yourself from contacting you, so you have some power as well. :D
Hope my example makes things more clear :D
Think like this. On reddit, you had old.reddit.com and www.reddit.com, here you have lemmy.world, kbin.social, and many more.
On reddit you have (I making the names up): /r/politics, /r/politicaldiscussion /r/truepolitics etc. All about the same, but slightly different. Here you may have politics@lemmy.ml politics@kbin.social and many more.
The rest goes behind the scene - fedeverse decentralized, run on many different servers, but you can simply ignore all that, and think about all of that as names and themes.
Regarding many similar communities, that also happened on Reddit, just maybe on a smaller scale because it was a bit easier to see which subs already existed. /r/translation and /r/translator both existed, only one was actually used. Subscribe to all of them, I predict that over time (when things have calmed down) one or two will emerge as the most popular ones.
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 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.
You can’t login like that. You login on your home instance, your home instance is federated with beehaw and so has a “window” into all its content, but you are still grabbing it via your home instance. Put the url if the instance you want to join into your home instance search bar and the community will show up and you can subscribe through there. Same content but different url.
It would be great if there was a feature for grouping like-communities you’re subscibed to into a single feed. I’d almost bet that there’s a feature request somewhere about it
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.
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.
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 accountThis site might help a lot with finding the equivalent subreddits on Lemmy and Kbin. It even tells you which ones are “official” ones.
Personally, I use kbin because it seems to federate with the other services more easily. I see so many posts from other Lemmy sites on it, plus it runs pretty well. I also like how it gives you Fediverse-friendly URLs for sharing, with makes it easier to post things from Kbin and Lemmy on Mastodon.
