The fediverse, explained
www.theverge.com
It’s Mastodon, it’s Threads, it’s the future, and it’s extremely confusing
  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    The fediverse is as if you took X, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook and made them all interoperable so you could post anything from anywhere, and all your followers would be guaranteed to see it.

    I think the one thing that still confuses people is the concept of instances with platforms like Lemmy and Masto. It’s like there are multiple Reddits and Multiple Twitters, and what differentiates them confuses newbies.

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      What I don’t understand is why I only see Lemmy content when browsing through Sync. If Mastodon is connected to the fediverse, how do I find that content?

      Also, as far as I can tell, most of the fediverse is basically more like Reddit than anything else.

      • Contramuffin@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        9 months ago

        To be clear, the Fediverse doesn’t mean that everything is interconnected. It means that everything can be interconnected, but most sites will only do a very minimal form of interconnectivity. And that’s mainly due to personal choice. You wouldn’t want to have Instagram posts on your Reddit feed, and you wouldn’t want Tumblr posts on YouTube. You can do that, but why would you?

        So most sites will only interconnect with other sites that they deem to be similar enough in content style. Lemmy interconnects with Kbin because both are Reddit clones. Kbin interconnects with Lemmy, but it also interconnects with Mastodon. Apparently the developer of Kbin thought that Mastodon is similar enough in content style that people would appreciate having Mastodon posts appear on Kbin. And this happens for all the other sites. The Fediverse is less like a tightly connected network, and more like a loose connection of sites that could operate together, if they ever chose to do so. Like a federation, if you will

        Basically, if you’re on Lemmy (which you are), you’re only going to see Reddit-like content

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        ATM, you can’t. Normal mastodon posts are not understood by lemmy servers. They don’t know how to handle content that is not associated with a community.

        Most of the fediverse is like twitter. Users making posts to their own “microblogs”/profiles, following each other or browsing a timeline of all posts by everyone. That’s mastodon, and it has by far the most activity.

        Lemmy doesn’t support profile posts, and you can’t follow users, only communities.

        Basically, all content on Lemmy is posted to groups, while all content on Mastodon is posted to the users own profiles. While the networks are technically connected, the content type is not compatible.

        I hear mastodon is getting support for groups, though, which might be something that can be interoperable with lemmy communities. Then they could look at communities as if they were user groups, and post to them, and we could sub to mastodon user groups, and see their posts and feeds as if they were communities.

        But until lemmy implements support for “user” posts and “user” following, we won’t see the massive amount of content of that type coming from mastodon.

        There’s already some funky interoperability that comes from the underlying structure of communities kind of being user accounts, where mastodon users can follow Lemmy communities, and post to communities by mentioning them. But it’s not pretty.

          • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
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            9 months ago

            Yeah, that’s why Reddit was the only platform I ever got into. And now Lemmy.

            Obviously a post on Lemmy will look like a Lemmy post, but the interoperability is kinda cursed when you look into how it actually ends up working.

              • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                0·
                9 months ago

                Oh I’m not against the interoperability, the opposite, I want it to be better.

                Comments do work.

                Right now it’s really convoluted and I’ve seen people accidentally post to lemmy while thinking they were just pinging a user, when it actually was a community.

                And following communities from mastodon is a mess because they obviously then fill the feed with way more posts than a single person would. And they all look like they’re posted by the user/community instead of the actual user that posted them TO that community. Not to mention they don’t see votes and have to no good way to sort community content, except chronologically.

          • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
            0·
            9 months ago

            the Mastodon user has to do an @ tag for the community in their toot, so if @community@instance.com is in their toot then it’ll show up on that Lemmy community

      • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
        0·
        9 months ago

        lemmy is incapable of the ‘microblog’ part of the fediverse of which mastodon only uses. . there are other server apps, like kbin that allow you access to both.

        i picked mbin precisely for this reason. plus it didnt look like someone forgot the css.

      • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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        9 months ago

        You probably have seen posts in Lemmy communities from a mastadon user without realizing it.

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        9 months ago

        From what I understand, there are different content types in activity pub. Lemmy forces on viewing community groups, Masto focuses on individuals. Lemmy would need to build support for following an individual.

        They underlying technology supports it, people just have to build a user experience for it, and that hasn’t been done yet.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    It’s an interconnected social platform ecosystem based on an open protocol called ActivityPub, which allows you to port your content, data, and follower graph between networks.

    You know how everyone online is like, “Give me your email, it’s the only stable thing on the web, and so it’s the most important tool for building a lasting audience” now?

    And the places where you connect with your friends, or make a living as a creator, couldn’t be irrevocably destroyed by a billionaire with a sink and a bunch of weird ideas about financial products?

    The ActivityPub protocol I mentioned a minute ago is a little like email: it has specifications for senders and receivers and supports lots of different kinds of content.

    You can always have different accounts for different things, but I think many people will end up having one main identity — your Threads username, or your Mastodon handle, or even a domain you hook up to all of these services individually — that ports across all of these systems.

    A lot of folks I’ve talked to say that, basically, if we’d built social media like this 20 years ago, the world would be better and smarter and we’d all be richer and better-looking.

    The original article contains 2,713 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 92%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

      • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        Been test running various Lemmy apps, I think Voyager is nice but for some reason it bothers me that I can’t see the user name that submitted a post when looking at the feed. Doesn’t seem to be any settings to correct that.

        I seem to be at a stalemate where I like features for various apps, but just still haven’t found my all in one favorite.

      • RNASpaceKoala@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        I’m using Sync. Makes me feel like I’m using the Relay for Reddit app back before Reddit forced them to charge for it.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          9 months ago

          If you liked Relay, try Thunder. It has the dismiss read feature that made Relay my go-to. It’s the only app I’ve seen that has it, maybe because I joined the dev team to add it.

            • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              0·
              9 months ago

              So it does! I didn’t find it when I tried it, I guess.

              But if one doesn’t want to pay to rid Sync of ads, Thunder is an open source, free, actively developed alternative. It’s still not feature complete, but I’ve been happily using it since I hopped over from reddit. And contributed a good few features myself, like user and community sidebars.

              The next update will include my work on an indicator that shows if and how many new comments a post you’ve already visited has received since you last opened it (like in the webUI). And some other guys on the team have gotten notifications implemented.

              • Risk@feddit.ukEnglish
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                9 months ago

                You guys have got ads on Sync? I haven’t and I’m still using the free version.

                I wouldn’t recommend Sync at this stage anymore as the lone developer is gone completely AFK for months.

                Despite charging £100 for a premium app tier…

                Do yourself a favour and use something else. At some point I’ll try out Connect.

                • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
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                  9 months ago

                  I don’t use sync. I installed it to check out whether it had that feature I wanted.

                  It does, but I’m sticking with Thunder.

            • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              0·
              9 months ago

              Good! But it definitely didn’t back when I implemented it in Thunder half a year ago.

              And the way I want it to work is the way it did in Relay. The button dismisses currently loaded read posts, but scrolling further will still load in read posts, and refreshing brings them all back.

              They don’t get permanently hidden, nor do you need to untoggle a setting to see them again next time you refresh.

              Is that how Voyager does it?

              • aeharding@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                9 months ago

                It is currently permanent (with option to show hidden in communities), but temporary is a good idea. I don’t think anyone has requested that on Github yet!

                Edit: Added to github

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
    0·
    9 months ago

    What is it with me and using the least popular thing. I’m sitting here on a Mac, writing Ruby, and posting on Kbin. All my favorite shows get cancelled. None of my favorite musicians are terribly well known. Every new car looks horrible to me.

    I think if you want something to be successful, make it as unappealing to me as possible.

  • n2burns@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    @davidpierce@mastodon.social has been pretty bullish on the fediverse for quite a while now. It’s come up a few times on the vergecast over the last year or so. I’m not surprised he wrote this decent explainer!

  • IronKrill@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    It bothers me how rose-tinted this article is. It pours praise onto the fediverse while glossing over all the major problems. They also keep saying “everything is available everywhere”, which it isn’t, or “you can take your account anywhere” which isn’t a thing on most fediverse sites, and where it is it’s limited.

    I dunno, it’s good to be positive, but I feel this article over-promises and fails to explain what is is trying to. If anything, it muddies some of the basics and sets people up to leave as soon as they realise the experience isn’t all that or that instances don’t work how they think.

  • spaduf@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    The Verge has been all in on the Fediverse, and they’re probably the biggest advocate in the media. They’re also going through the process of switching their entire backend for direct fediverse support. If you have a mastodon or kbin consider boosting this at their official account (@verge@mastodon.social) here: https://mastodon.social/@verge/111891107107406018

  • Toldry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    I still haven’t figured out how to get content posted on Mastadon in my Lemmy feed. I’m using Thunder for Android as my client

    • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      You can subscribe them manually via search.

      I follow several Lemmy communities on my Masotodon and Misskey account.

      • Toldry@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        But i wanna do the other way around–i wanna get Mastadon content on my Lemmy client

        • flamingos-cant@ukfli.ukEnglish
          0·
          9 months ago

          No, they’re asking about getting stuff posted on Mastodon to appear on their Lemmy feed. You’ve got the platforms the wrong way round.

    • spaduf@slrpnk.netEnglish
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      9 months ago

      So, you won’t see Mastodon content on Lemmy unless a Mastodon user has posted in a group (the generic term for community, subreddits, etc). For example, here’s an exchange I had with some Mastodon users. Groups don’t always come from Lemmy and as a Lemmy user you can subscribe to more Mastodon centric groups like !histodons@a.gup.pe or even PeerTube channels like !veronicaexplains_channel@tilvids.com. Direct user-to-user microblog style interaction with Mastodon users is not supported, and that’s mostly a design choice of the devs. Projects like kbin/mbin seek to bridge the gap and directly support both experiences.