I don’t think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse. There are other platforms and will be more to come. Referring to a post on “Lemmy” or “kbin” is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.
We should be referring to it as…
- I saw it on the fediverse.
- Hey fediverse users …
- A thread on the fediverse…
New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.
edit: A better example is email. You wouldn’t assume everyone is on Hotmail because that is the email provider you use. You say I’m sendingan eamail, not I’m sending a Hotmail.
While you’re correct, it’s just a clunky term. I think some other way to refer to the whole thing will probably come along soon, and in a few years, people will regard saying fediverse the same way we look back on people talking about “surfing the information superhighway” or whatever.
Dang I totally forgot all about that term. Been awhile. Well it eventually reduced to “surfing the net”.
The thing about the internet, is it was the thing to make it only one net. Previously there were weird systems like bitnet, VMSnet, where you had to juggle email address encoding standards to get balkanized college campus networks to talk back and forth to each other.
“The web” became the subset of the net, that worked with web browsers. Only one thing.
Was there a “The Facebook” period? Or was that just a movie name?
So then we passed through a period of brands. Reddit is a brand. It is not altogether surprising that people would refer to the fediverse in terms of brands. Lemmy, kbin, beehaw, whatever.
Email and the web had/have specific protocols associated with them. The fediverse has multiple protocols. We’re using ActivityPub, which seems to have won as a standard. It isn’t exactly catchy or smooth flowing off the tongue.
Ok, if we try to brain crunch all these previous trends, here’s what it’s going to be called, if it hasn’t been already:
THE VERSE
The difference between the fediverse and the universe will be forgotten. Linguistically, people will not keep up with that detail. Only old timers / early adopters will notice that linguistic change.
Possibly, ‘verse’ will come to be seen as short for multiverse.
I mean, threadiverse works pretty well to describe this area specifically
Definitely a clunky term. It will be interesting to see what the feds come up with. Lets see if that catches on :-D
Seriously, I’m sure something good will emerge.
I’m not convinced that something good will emerge.
Keep in mind we still use “internet”.
Yeah, but we used to call it the information superhighway and the worldwide web. Internet IS the good term. It may well be that fediverse sticks around so long that we all get used to it, but at the moment, eh. I think if someone somewhere suggests a good alternative, we’ll all likely jump on it.
“Internet” is closer to a lot of existing English words than “fediverse,” though. “Fediverse” might get familiar over time, and it might make more sense to non-English-speakers, but I think it’s a more exotic construction than “internet.”
I would love it if we just went all early 1990s and started saying “hello Internet!” or something beautifully corny like that.
In the end activitypub is a standard recognized by the W3C, so it would be kind of accurate.
In my best AOL voice: You’ve got fedi! 🤣🤣🤣
Radical dude
Referring to a post on “Lemmy” or “kbin” is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.
That’s not how language works. Language evolves naturally and in this scenario people would instantly know that the user had seen something on a fediverse platform without having to use another awful ‘-verse’ word.
Likewise you can’t police how people use language. People use whatever makes understanding for both sides easiest on both sides
If someone logs into a website called Kbin and sees something interesting, it’s fair to say ‘I saw something interesting on Kbin’ without having to give unnecessary explanations about what the fediverse is.
And once again, no one likes the word fediverse…
without having to use another awful ‘-verse’ word.
They will stop using prefixes. They will just say verse.
based antiprescriptivism
Tell my old English teacher you can’t police the way people use language…
And you can’t language the way people use police either!
If I was browsing Reddit and saw an interesting video, I might tell someone “I saw an interesting video on Reddit the other day” even if the video itself was hosted on YouTube. The technical detail of exactly where and how the video is hosted is not relevant to the conversation. The listener wants to know how I found it, not where it is stored.
The same is true for posts on the fediverse. The various instances are the websites that we browse. The technical detail of how they share content and how it can be accessed from various different routes just isn’t important most of the time. If you’re a Lemmy user, you’re reading the posts on Lemmy and there is nothing wrong with talking about it that way.
If I tell someone I bought a game on Steam or borrowed a book from the library, the fact that they are also available elsewhere doesn’t matter. If I tell someone I read something on kbin, does it matter that the same post also exists on different websites? 99% of the time, the answer is ‘no’.
New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.
I agree, but you’ve got it upsidedown. The fediverse is the platform that the instances operate on, not vice-versa.
Until they try to find it on Reddit and they cry. Cry!
Personally I think “fediverse” is a stupid fucking name. I’m tired of “-verses”. I’ll keep saying kbin, thanks.
I’m not referencing the fediverse, it’s stupid. But also, lemmy isn’t a great name so I probably just won’t mention anything like that.
“The Fediverse is stupid.”
“The Fediverse is stupid.”
Negativeland said Christianity is stupid.
Christianity is stupid.
Communism is good!
[then a lot of chanting and noisemaking]
I think it’s more like saying, “I saw this on my phone,” or, “I was on the computer and read,” which are both entirely reasonable.
It’s just stating what format you were using when you saw it. Like, “I was scrolling through Google News and read…” What you actually read was an article hosted on a different website, but you were using the platform of Google News to read it. It’s the same kind of thing as saying, “I read on Lemmy,” because you were browsing Lemmy when you read something.
It’s not wrong to say that these things are on this site. I often specify Lemmy.World because that’s the instance that I use and other Fediverse sites function slightly differently. That’s one of the both great and annoying things about the Fediverse is how every instance is slightly different. I’ll say, “I was on Lemmy.World and…” I don’t know, saw a post, made a post, had trouble because mod controls are minimal over here, whatever. Saying, “On the Fediverse,” is more generic. It’s usually considered best convention to go with more SPECIFIC terms than generic. I consider using my Mastadon account and using my Lemmy account to be different, but they’re both on the Fediverse. I would feel really weird talking about my Mastadon account in the same terms as my Lemmy.World one since I use the two platforms completely differently.
Maybe it’s even more like “I got an outlook message” instead of “I got an email”. Since email is an analog of ActivityPub. Just that people are not used yet to the fact that social media can be interoperable like email, so “saw on lemmy” carries different connotations. It should not, however.
Anecdotically, I have an old frendlica account too, from times of diaspora, and it’s now very lively, so I saw this post on frendlica too.
But you are posting on a Kbin thread right now, not a Lemmy thread. So you’re not “on Lemmy World” when you’re viewing this thread.
it’s more correct to say they’re on lemmy than kbin though… they are interacting through lemmy: kbin is literally irrelevant to them
… and that’s kinda the point of the fediverse isn’t it? you shouldn’t care where something is stored, and if you don’t care where it’s stored then you have only 1 way to refer to the space: the client by which you’re viewing it
people referring to it as “lemmy” or “kbin” or “mastodon” is the fediverse working as intended, and that’s good news!
(it’s also much better marketing for us! people search fediverse and they get a bunch of random descriptions about what it is… people search lemmy/kbin and at least they have a join button)
Mastodon is at least something of a more generalized term at least, because that’s referring to hundreds of instances. And it has a specific (Twitter-esque) format that unites them. But Lemmy and Kbin has the same formatting structure (Reddit-esque). Makes me wonder if we need a specific, but generalized term that unites everything in this format.
In Usenet days we called them newsreaders.
No. I am on Lemmy.World right now viewing a KBin thread. My entire interaction here is through Lemmy.World and not KBin. So for me to say, “I was on KBin arguing with someone,” would be factually incorrect because I am not on KBin. It would be factually correct to say, “I was on the Fediverse arguing with someone,” but since the Fediverse has different forms, that interaction itself could take several forms and context does sometimes matter. There’s nothing wrong with the more generic The Fediverse, but there’s also nothing wrong with stating which instance you’re using to be more specific.
You had an argument on the 'verse.
The apostrophe is gonna get dropped eventually. Same as it did for 'net meaning internet.
I doubt fedi~ will be remembered after awhile. It’ll be seen as pedantic, technical, or old school.
I don’t know if people are generally sci-fi enough to think of you as on “planet Lemmy” but it would have a bit of snark like saying you’re on planet Mars. Could be a good subculture lingo.
“I am Clark Kent from the planet Kbin!”
“Yeah and I’m Flash Gordon STFU.”
You’re missing the point. If I email you, are we talking ON Gmail? ON Hotmail? Not really. We’re using our different clients to interact with the same original message. Sure, the message gets converted to your emails specific formatting, but it’s just a copy of the original info. The message itself is the conversation, the clients are just access to it.
You wouldn’t say “I drove my Honda to the store”. You’d say “I drove my car”.
Nobody said “I’m browsing Apollo/Sync/RIF”. You’d say “I’m browsing Reddit” or “fuck spez”.
You’re one step from being the mom that calls every video game system a “Nintendo”.
are we talking ON Gmail?
Sometimes. People meeting in real life, exchanging email addresses, and noticing they’re both on GMail, is common enough for some people, they really are on GMail. Implying they could chat trivially. But that’s not applicable to the scenario under discussion.
Actually you’d just say you drove to the store. We don’t really care if you own a car, a truck, and a SUV in your driveway. We don’t expect you to have a horse and buggy.
But the person you were arguing with wasn’t arguing with you on Lemmy.world, so that’s misleading on where the argument was taking place.
If someone took you at your word and looked on Lemmy.world in specific, they would not be able to find the argument in question, because it was taking place in a Kbin.social thread.
The battlecruisers were out arguing in neutral space, in the verse.
The cruisers’ home ports were planet Lemmy and planet Kbin.
Unfortunately half the galaxy was destroyed in the ensuing exchange.
K. “I saw it on the internet.” You’re a big boy, you can figure out where.
“fediverse” isn’t correct either - it’s too broad. Kbin and Lemmy post to a part of the fediverse - the “threadiverse”. Meanwhile job in can also post to the microblogverse connecting with Mastodon. And there is not one fediverse - ir is both separated by different algorithms for different bits and also within areas some bits federate with others.
If you want a good term for the threadiverse, then Feddit seems like a good catch all name?
Y’all talkin’ on the verse.
If I see a post on Lemmy World, then it’s from Lemmy World.
Now that gets me thinking, what the hell was Wally World anyways? Was that a Chevy Chase thing?
I’ve been missing this grandiose caliber of post since leaving Reddit, truly bravo.
- Posted to Lemmy
You didn’t actually. You posted to Kbin. Because this thread is on Kbin, even if you’re reading it on Lemmy. Which is kind of OP’s point.
I did, actually. My instance has a saved copy of the post, I replied to it there, it forwarded the information to Kbin.
OPs point is dumb. Lemmy and Kbin are separate platforms that happen to be interoperable because of the backend protocol they’ve decided to use (which Kbin added relatively recently in the grand scheme). The Fediverse is made up of many of these platforms that are doing the same thing. There is nothing wrong with referring to the platform one is using.
Well said. If you want to mean all the things connected to ActivityPub, you say Fediverse. If it’s restricted to lemmy, it’s fine to use lemmy. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. OP saying it borders on ignorance may have to think about it.
I use lemmy. I don’t really care for nor use other Fediverse services like Mastodon.
🤓🤓🤓 just use whatever
Why not “lemmyverse” for lemmy federation?
I think just Lemmy, kbin, mastodon, etc. naturally implies the platform-specific -verse, doesn’t it? I think “Hey, Lemmy–” posts addressing the entire fediverse are being accidentally myopic, but “Hey, Lemmy [users]” would be understandable, given a need to discuss our UI differences. The former is fairly common atm, though, which I admit is faintly annoying to see on my kbin feed. I feel so left out.
“Hey, Soviet SSR! In Russia you don’t federate. Federation does you!”
Didn’t mean to be so accurate…
Allow people to enjoy their experience here. When you start going down this path, you are confusing the user base that’s still learning a whole new platform. When I first got here, I said a lot of the same stuff, that I was a Lemmy world member, etc.
That sounds a lot like Pier 1 Imports!
You’re vastly overestimating the knowledge, intelligence and fucks given by the vast majority of people.
The fediverse is frankly too complex and convoluted for the normies. Whichever instance manages to remove the complexity, solve the onboarding process and get the content right will win out and be the thing the normies speak of.
Call it Verse. You’ll win the branding wars.
Are you implying that defederation is a myth? Since the flow of data between instances is conditional on the instances. they are relevant.
Well Kermit the Frog said it’s a myth. But every time he said it, a miss showed up.
