this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023
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Fediverse

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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

Getting started on Fediverse;

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My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.

I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.

I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.

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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

They're different kinds of experiences.

Forum-type things like Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker news, Reddit, etc. put the focus on the topic or community.

Micro-blog type things like Twitter, Mastodon put the focus on individuals.

If you want to see what your favourite author is posting about, or what your favourite musician is working on, or maybe behind the scenes pictures from a sporting event, microblogging platforms are great for that. Journalists also loved them because they could follow specific other journalists or other key people in the area they cared about, and get direct info from that source.

OTOH, if what you care about is a certain topic (F1 racing, beebop jazz, etc.) then forum-style platforms are better because the focus is the topic rather than the individuals.

[–] b0b89@midwest.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't like Twitter for that reason. Often I'd follow someone because I saw some posts they made about something I'm interested in. Then suddenly they're flooding my feed with stuff I don't care about and often being really annoying while they do it.

I rarely find someone who I like all their posts. So it's like do I just put up with the furry porn retweets because this person is a genius who occasionally posts about really interesting hacks?

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[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I like Mastodon, but I like Lemmy more. That said, I liked Reddit a lot more than Twitter so it makes sense I'd prefer Lemmy. I'd rather follow topics than people, and Mastodon/Twitter are about following people (yes you can subscribe to hashtags on Mastodon, but it isn't the same).

That said, I still have and use both.

[–] raubarno@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Insert meme 'I like you both equally ... that means I like YOU much more' here...

IDK, I never used Twitter and never understood it: why would one ever want to share short messages? What can you express/explain with 160 characters? This is why I see no point in using Mastodon either...

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[–] bhj@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago

I have tried so many times to use Twitter(before Musk) and it never clicked with me. I have been on Reddit for over a decade. I like the idea of the fediverse but will it be able to hit the critical mass needed to actually replace Twitter and Reddit?

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[–] XPost3000@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah same here, Reddit is my mindless scrolling app of choice, not Twitter, so when I tried to use Mastodon I just kinda stood there not knowing what to do

I love being able to read and immerse myself is specific communities and whatnot, and specifically I love Reddit for the discourse, people posting in a community, replying to posts, and replaying to those replies, and so on

So Lemmy has just become my jam, so happy that Reddit has an open source federated alternative now, even if they reverse their API debacle I'm still gonna keep using this app

[–] 7heo@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)
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[–] araquen@beehaw.org 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I kind of see Mastodon as a Twitter replacement and Lemmy as a Reddit replacement. Each has specific use cases. I can see both platforms having value in my online engagement.

[–] myself33@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

The possibility to follow hashtags in mastodon is a real progress : i just follow a few account but i like following hashtags on mastodon/pixelfed and may be tomorrow peertube. lemmy suffer from lack of contents. I hope it will improve in the comming months

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[–] Kronusdark@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Mastodon is WAY better if you follow tags. that said, I am very optimistic of Lemmy, it just needs a quality app.

[–] SammichParade@vlemmy.net 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

I'm currently using Jerboa (Android). Seems pretty good but I've only been here a couple hours. Have you tried it?

[–] KreekyBonez@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm on Jerboa now, and I think it's got good bones, but it still needs some work. Minor stuff tho, like how setting the overall font size affects pages slightly differently.

I also miss how RIF would open articles/media natively, instead of utilizing my default browser for everything. It's actually nice using reader view in firefox for some stuff, but the extra loading and app-swapping is a little clunky. I'm sure it's something I could get used to if I stick with it.

I also need to figure out what pages/instances to follow so I can curate what shows up on my home page. I'm on day 2 here, so a grain of salt is needed for my commentary on a project that I can nitpick, but could not build on my own.

[–] SammichParade@vlemmy.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I hope the devs from the third party apps that Reddit is murdering are able to get similar/better jobs elsewhere. Maybe the dev teams whose platforms are now getting flooded with Reddit refugees could use the help.

[–] KreekyBonez@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

anyone who isn't burnt out by the circumstances would do well to get in early on this. I see it in my industry all the time; shittier companies shoot themselves in the foot, and the laborers that made them big in the first place bail to make other startups better.

fingers crossed

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[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You know what, I feel like the second part of my name right now. The solution for discovery has always been there. Like, it is the MAIN feature.

Okay, I think I am ready for another Mastodon account. Just need to find the right instance.

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[–] Rumblestiltskin@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Micro blogging like Mastodon I like more for following the personalities. I don't have a big attention seeking personality so I do not get a lot of followers on that type of social media. I am more of a reply guy so Lemmy style content aggregator with comments I am able to participate more in.

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[–] Mcballs1234@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm gonna be honest Lemmy feels like a very chill place unlike Reddit or Facebook, it feels like defusing a bomb when talking on certain subreddits

[–] Acester47@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

People are very chill here. However, we are all going through the same thing.. we are trauma bonding over the loss of a loved one lol. As the site grows I am sure the vibe will change.

[–] BigJimKen@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I for one am extremely excited to see what Lemmy's first mainstream-news-tier controversy is going to be 🤣

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[–] nimnim@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Yep, Same here! When things went south with Twitter, I tried switching to Mastodon, but after several months, I haven't become fond of it. Its interface is so terrible and difficult to navigate. When I heard of Lemmy as an alternative to Reddit, the first thing that came to my mind was, 'Oh, please don't be like Mastodon...' and I'm glad that it is not! I like the fact that it is kinda' similar to Reddit (interface-wise), but at the same time, it is decentralized, which means it is (hopefully) going in the right direction.

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[–] honk@feddit.de 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

Damn I really miss forums.

I had the greatest times in the internet 20 years ago in forums where you could be part of something that felt like a community built over years. Found some long lasting friendships on forums. Sadly then came myspace and facebook and caused every single forum I used to die.

Honestly the fediverse somewhat can replace that because the instances emulate that feeling of community a little bit.

[–] thepiguy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It feels like the internet has gotten too big for forums. As if they can only support a certain population and then they get too crowded. I feel like the up/down vote system gives the internet a lot more space.

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[–] open_world@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah in general, I like forums better than the format Twitter is in. I like topic-based discussions more than discussions spawned from short, potentially out-of-context messages.

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[–] BlinkerFluid@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Lemmy and Reddit promote engagement, discourse and even arguments... ok, especially arguments.

Mastodon feels like a list of billboards that I am disconnected from.

"Oh, that's news"

But no one talks between eachother about anything. I almost feel like the nature of the layout of Twitter and it's alternatives are almost by design to make the users a little more self serving.

Mastodon has every user standing on a soapbox yelling at crowds, Lemmy is more of a public forum.

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[–] CanOpener@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm from Mastodon and trying Lemmy to explore more of the fediverse, liking it so far too 😃. My Mastodon feed is almost all politics so I'm liking the different content on here.

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[–] Moonrise2473@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Similar. For me it's almost a drop-in replacement for Reddit, while mastodon not really

[–] dogmuffins@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well yeah but they're two different things.

Lemmy is a forum like reddit.

Mastodon is microblogging like twitter.

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[–] lightrush@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think the main difference comes down to the sorting algorithms. In Lemmy we get the organic content sorting done by collective human appreciation or lack thereof of said content (↑, ↓). Generally better stuff rises to the top, and worse stuff sinks to the bottom. You can still see either if you like by changing the order. That coupled with sorting by community does a great job at sifting through the noise. In Mastodon you have hashtags that can serve as communities but there's no organic sorting within that. If you subscribe to #Linux, you'll get pretty much everything with #Linux, whether one or a thousand people found it valuable.

[–] _ed@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It’s quite interesting as I think the twitter migration put the focus on mastodon for a while and this place became quieter and then Reddit didn’t want to be left out so the spotlight is now here and kbin. If only Instagram could join the fun pixelfed would get a bump.

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[–] thisjustin@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This does feel a lot like the reddit I missed, only better. I will also agree that I find myself more likely to engage here, versus reddit where I exclusively lurked.

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[–] Joker@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do too. Mastodon is great software, but I’ve never been much of a user of the micro blogging format. The Reddit/hacker news format has been my preference for many years.

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[–] donelias@mastodon.cr 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@DidacticDumbass I love liking this from Mastodon and the fact that you are more comfortable with a different platform interoperable with the rest of the Fediverse

[–] markipol@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love how cool this is. Imagine being able to read and comment on a Reddit thread from twitter and Facebook and have it all work seamlessly and visible to all parties. That's literally what this is and that feels amazing to me

[–] imach@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never thought about it that way, but yeah it feels like we're in the future 🤯

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[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I tried Mastadon too, it didn't gel with me. Turns out I don't care to follow people. I follow topics.

Is this so hard for big tech to understand?

[–] baronvonj@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

You can follow hashtags on Mastodon. You can also follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon! Search @<community>@<instance> (ie @fediverse@lemmy.ml)

[–] dropmiddleleaves@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile.

I’ve never been able to find the meme posts on mastodon, therein lies part of its core issues, federation makes discoverability iffy at best. It hasn’t yet reached mass yet.

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[–] DrQuint@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't mind a community having low amount of content. It's easy to just join multiple and hop around. I don't mind a UI not entirely matching my preference, that stuff is "matter of time".

But Mastodon made it VERY hard to find the little content their communities did have. They have an anti-Trending philosophy, and that drove me, and most people I know, away. When I joined, they didn't even have proper tag searching, and to this day, the activity in a tag is still reported wrongly. When asked, I got aggressively told off that Text Search is evil and I'm evil for asking and no, I didn't even talk about twitter but I'm evil for even daring to make requests even lightly resembling a Twitter user's UX preferences (Aka: Discoverability and UX). I just wanted to hear a "oh that's broken and being worked on" but no, it was always a "no, we don't like that" instead.

No such thing here. I wanted to find the gaming subs, I found the gaming subs. I wanted to find a desolate abandoned community for Dota 2, bam, I found the desolate abandoned community for dota 2. Within 2 minutes I was on grounds with /c/PatientGamers.

It got slightly better. But won't ever fully fix itself. To me, and to a couple colleagues, Mastodon was a bad website, with bad gatekeepers and a bad advert for the Fediverse. I don't care about it and I hope Rhynodon some day comes, implements text search and steals all their users.

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[–] simple@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (14 children)

I never really liked Twitter as a concept. It feels like it's built on an "old man yells at cloud" concept where people just shout their thoughts and nobody gains anything from it.

By comparison forums are there to foster discussions and communities. I thought Mastodon would be better but I spent 5 minutes and it's exactly the same nonsense.

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[–] strypey@lemmy.nz 8 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.

Servers running these apps connect to the same fediverse Mastodon servers connect to. As does Lemmy. All these apps just give you different ways to view the same social network, so which software you use makes less difference to what you can see than which server you use. Because there is no global view of the network, what you'll find in hashtag searches or federated timelines in the micro-posting apps (Mastodon, Pler/Akkoma Miss/CalcKey) depends on which accounts are being followed from the server hosting your account.

I'm new to Lemmy's way of viewing the 'verse, so I'm not sure what the equivalent is here. But I think what @dave describes in this thread about Communities hosted on other Lemmy servers taking a while to show up in searches here is relevant: https://lemmy.nz/comment/28480

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[–] pieceofcrazy@feddit.it 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm Gen Z and when I was little my parents were (rightfully) very careful with how much time I spent on the internet. Even so, I saw from a distance the old internet, where forums were a thing and you could find lots of cool websites that people made for reasons that weren't limited to promoting or selling something.

When I discovered Reddit it was like I could somehow experience that time, but for many the decline had already started.

I love interacting with people, asking and answering questions, discovering and making others discover new things, but I just can't stand feeling like everything and everyone is trying to sell me something anymore.

Now that I'm here, I feel like this could be the place, at least for a while.

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[–] Thedogspaw@midwest.social 8 points 1 year ago

I agree with you mastodon is to much like Twitter and Twitter sucks reddit has always been much more fun to me so I'm hoping lemmy can get some traffic going

[–] SamC@lemmy.nz 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I've been thinking that it is probably easier to move a community from a platform like Reddit to the Fediverse than it is from Twitter. I have used both Twitter and Reddit a lot, but have moved off Twitter and now use Mastodon. Mastodon works pretty well for me, but it's taken a lot of work to get there, and there are parts of the communities (mostly related to my work) I want to connect with that just don't exist on Mastodon.

But the big difference between Reddit/Lemmy and Twitter/Mastodon is that on Reddit/Lemmy I am interested in communities for topics that are mostly hobbies/entertainment etc. for me, so I don't really care about who I'm interacting with... I can't really name more than a handful of regular users or mods on the Reddit subs I've been using for more than a decade. But it's not really important for interacting there, because it's about interacting with people who have an interest in a particular topic no matter who they are. On Twitter/Mastodon (at least how I use it), the specific people I'm interacting with are more important.

So it seems the "lock in" of Reddit is weaker than Twitter, and I think it'll be quicker to establish communities here. A community on Lemmy with a few hundred people contributing (posts/comments) is already pretty successful and enjoyable. It doesn't matter that the equivalent community on Reddit has over a million people (and in fact it's often better if it's smaller!).

That weaker lock in and the fact that Reddit seems to be massively undervaluing the contribution mods and third-party app devs make to the platform make me think Reddit is going to quickly regret this whole fiasco.

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[–] tmpod@lemmy.pt 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Awesome! Welcome to Lemmy, I hope you have a great stay :D
Lurking is also always an option, I tend to do it myself quite a lot as well hehe

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[–] chaoticPuppies@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Can you point me to the FOSS/Linux community? I'm actually looking for that too.

I'm also new here and I love it! I stopped really interacting with anyone or making content on reddit a few years ago. Federated instances are so much fun. I am inspired again.

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[–] imekon@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit to me felt like I'd found a home. My score shot up into the thousands and I felt it was somewhere that was mine. I was on Twitter but never got into it, left when the orange babboon was allowed back on, and don't miss it.

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[–] couragethebravedog@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The main thing I like about mastodon is the small communities seem to make it easier to have meaningful conversations.

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