(Reminder: if you have shared the original version in a public post with an old version up, replacing it with this one might be more helpful.)
I want to preface, if you see a mistake in the image or have something helpful to add, go right ahead! I still have the layered files for this, so edits can be made very quickly. I chose to handwrite the text to avoid font copyright infringement.
Feel free to share this poster as you wish, especially on Reddit. All I ask is that you respect the license and don’t remove my socials at the bottom. If anyone’s addition is included, I’ll credit them, and if this gets added onto (or translated) by someone else later, they can add their info as well.
I hope someone can find it useful with the subreddit blackouts right around the corner.
I want to thank the Beehaw admins so much for their amazing work!
(Poster edited; I spotted a duplicated word, [email protected] noted the lack of whitespace; current version is slightly larger and has been spaced out. You can still request the 800x2000 size, but know it is a little squished.)
(Edit 2: Removed defederation part as it’s not really required. The email analogy [email protected] suggested has been added, thanks!)
(Edit 3: Here’s another version making the interconnectivity a bit clearer and mentioning some cool-looking reader apps that have been suggested! Also made the image slightly longer for ease of viewing. I might do some small cosmetic changes tomorrow)
(I’ll put out Edit 4 tomorrow, which will include the date the edit was made, will clarify mlem only being available through TestFlight, will mention other Kbin instances, as well as a reminder to confirm emails with any new signup in a timely fashion. Thank you all for the help and tips!)
I’m having a hard time figuring out how to subscribe to a community from another instance. I know I need a link to the community (not sure what this looks like as the one I thought I’d found didn’t work) and a search bar to paste it in, which I found once on jerboa I think but not again. Is there a more detailed guide for subscribing to another instance’s community?
You should just be able to search for the community using jerboas search. Example: I searched “technology” and it gave me back a handful of different communities from different instances all with “technology” in the name. Then you should be able to just tap the one you want and hit subscribe.
Thank you! That is much simpler than I expected
Jerboa has so far been a really good interface to use. A lot of work can be done to make it more friendly but I’ve been really impressed so far with how seamless it’s made my transition.
I like this style! Kind of reminds me of a whiteboard. It’s neat!
Thank you so much!
You’re telling me that i could have just… logged in with my mastodon account? How does that work? (i know its beyond the scope of the guide but i want to try)
lemmy, kbin and mastodon are federated but you can’t log into each app with an account from another platform. You can post to lemmy from your mastodon server, but not log into beehaw.org.
So i replied to my comment from my mastodon account, but that does not seem to show up here. Is that how it’s supposed to work? I could be easily missing something here. I know how federation works but… I’ve never used it hehe
You should see it now. I searched “https://mastodon.online/@Kryostar/110534580057347959” in the beehaw.org search bar to force beehaw to federate.
Wow! I see it now. That’s epic. I’m grinning so hard right now heh. Thank you.
@[email protected] @unsunny Ok i figured it out. It’s a bit clunky, BUT IT IS POSSIBLE! I didn’t even know! Now to see if i can view this on lemmy.
@kryostar Hello from Mastodon! You can follow users/communities on Lemmy from Mastodon like any other Fediverse user and it’ll boost all their posts into your feed. Then you can interact normally from Mastodon.
“You can use a mastodon account to use lemmy”
What do you mean?
Really like it, sadly I don’t think the people I’d share it with would be willing to read through it. I’ll try with word of mouth for now and use this as a backup.
I wouldn’t bother with the concept of de-federation in a beginners guide. One of the most confusing bits of the fediverse to new users is picking a server. For most users, the one they pick doesn’t really matter, but talking about defederation makes it sound like a really important choice.
Thanks for the info! Been here for a few days but it can still be a little confusing.
Really well put together. Very succinct but with enough information to get people started.
I find that for not tech people trying to deal with such terms like fediverse, kbin, Lemmy, instance, protocol might be quite overwhelming and even off-putting. I am saying this because I used to do software development and still took me a bit to get my head around it.
You could mention that Fedia.io is an alternative to kbin.social, as kbin.social is starting to get overwhelmed.
Thanks for letting me know!
Important note for kbin (and fedia.io): if you sign up and fail to click that confirmation link, I think you’re basically SOL. So don’t make the same mistake I made! Click that confirmation link, it expires in an hour!
I know people have said mastodon is like twitter, but what’s kbin? Do I want all three?
Kbin, Mastodon, Lemmy, and others are all “federated apps” connected to ActivityPub. They are just different UIs to connect to it, so you can see posts and content from one on the others.
Mastodon is a UI inspired by Twitter.
Lemmy is a UI inspired by reddit. It is more stable but less feature rich. You can get native apps just like with reddit, such as Jerboa (similar to rif).
Kbin is a UI inspired by reddit. It is more feature rich and less stable (said to be, anyway).
They are all speaking the same protocol though. So while you can load Mastodon posts in this Lemmy ui they might look … off. Similarly you can load things in Mastodon from kbin etc and they too might seem weird. It’s because they’re not giving the same context you might get viewing that content in the UI it was made for.
These are all still new with Mastodon being the one most widely adopted already. So expect better features and bug fixes to roll out over time. Especially with so much more demand now, I’m guessing many old 3PA devs have already been working out new tricks for ActivityPub.
What’s 3PA?
third party apps.
I think you give some really important information for people to get their head around it. I’ve never seen it explained like that. Even further, I feel like there should be ELI5 without trying to use terms like protocol for non-tech people.
Kbin = Reddit + little bit of Twitter
So, is kbin a lemmy instance? If so, how do I log in over there? I’m registered here on beehaw, so how do I access/vote on kbin content?
gotta say, as a somewhat technically-inclined person, I don’t like this fediverse stuff.
Long winded explanation but hopefully it clears a few things up…
There is a protocol that allows two or more things to talk to each other. That is called ActivityPub and things that speak that protocol can work together. The things in this case are the servers which you register your account with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
You can have two different things (kbin and a Lemmy instance) and they can work together despite being different. They are differently written programs in different programming languages. The ActivityPub federation thing allows your Lemmy instance to ask to be sent all posts and comments from another server “just to have” as a local copy which you can then read on your server. If you comment, vote, or post on your server’s “local copy” then your server sends that update back to the original server so they can update their records.
The content being downloaded from a remote server is like 1 person looking at everything over there. At that point, you and everyone else on your server can look at your local copy which is quick (if your server is not overloaded). The remote server can better handle lots of users from where you are at because your server is taking on the “user interaction load”. This way, the user load is distributed to remote servers where the users do their interactions and the smaller “like 1 person” transactions are sent along when necessary.
The way things work on the Lemmy side is that you can see other communities by using the search function or by clicking on the communities button and clicking on all. You will see all communities that your server “knows about” (including communities hosted on this specific server). It automatically downloads all content from remote servers that it “knows about” (and it does so frequently) but that is driven by you first asking the server to get things from a specific server if necessary.
You can ask for things by searching for a specific address starting with a ! character. Wait a few moments and search again and you should be able to see that the content was retrieved for you. (You can search by a more granular term like the server address itself if necessary.) At that point, you can interact with that community in expected ways (like subscribing to that community to see updates from them).
The link you need is on the right side of any community page you view. Examples are [email protected] and [email protected]
Once everything is set up and working, the server you log in to will automatically gather posts and comments from “the fediverse”, show it on your screen, and send along any comments or votes you make back to “the fediverse” for others to see.
That all being said… kbin is a bit overloaded at the moment and is not quite sending updates to other servers. When they have that sorted, you should be able to interact with them. Refer to the following post from chaorace for more information.
kbin in a separate software from lemmy. The same way that Mastodon is different but still federated.
@[email protected] @[email protected] kbin isn’t a lemmy instance, it’s a lemmy “competitor”
kbin is a software you can install on your server just like you can install lemmy, or mastodon, or pixelfed, etc…
if you want to interact with a post/profile/community/… on another instance, the usual way is to just take the link to the post, and paste it into your instance’s search bar. this’ll bring up the post in your instance where you’re logged in!
that’s what i just did with your comment: i don’t use either lemmy or kbin on my instance, but i saw your comment on beehaw, so i copied the link, pasted it in my akkoma search bar, and was able to reply to the post, even though my instance doesn’t even have support for user groups/communities
@unsunny that link doesn’t appear to work
Is there a list of
kbininstances? The one fromkbin.pubseems to be incomplete.Jerboa has a not very user-friendly interface. Maybe I’m not used to it, but the feed updates jerkily, everything works with a slight lag.
I have to agree with this. I wonder how difficult the actuvitypub/Lemmy APIs are… I have some interesting ideas on ways to browse the fediverse and what I want out of a Lemmy app.
Of course the jerkily side of things could be due to having to access so many different instances to build your front page or /r/all equivalent.
Also I’d default to subscribed - people don’t usually create an account using the app and therefore they usually have already subbed to a number of communities, not to mention smaller instances have a tendency to only have a couple of basic communities.
Another thing is some form of community aggregation system, so you can set up multis based on different criteria, or manual selections. Multis, i’d wager would have more use and utility on the fediverse than Reddit.
How can i collapse comments?
