I put together a guide aimed at Redditors for Kbin and Lemmy!

Edited; the defederation bit probably shouldn’t be the reason why someone picks a server (my original thought was that someone who is LGBTQ probably won’t have to worry about seeing phobic content from another instance, for example), but chances are if the rules make a place inviting to a group, conflicting (or illegal) instances will probably be defederated anyways.

If an instance shuts down, they're supposed to send a "self destruct" notice to all other instances to delete their content, but technically speaking, instances do not have to listen to these notices. Thus, it's possible that deleted or unavailable content still remains available on some platforms.

No. Each instance hosts its own contents.

Thank you, I didn’t expect this to take off like it did! I explained in another post here why I didn’t name join lemmy for the guide, but the thread is getting pretty long. There are instances listed on there fairly high up with descriptions that suggests the instance hosts and permits illegal content (the instance is not FMHY or related to piracy as I also noted), and I wouldn’t feel good about recommending the website because of that. browse.feddit.de didn’t have anything of that nature on their list as far as I can tell by scrolling for a few minutes, and it also tells you which instance hosts the community.

Here's one for you buddy:

Here's one for you!

Thank you so much!

Good point! I can easily resize and add more space.

Darn, but thanks for the note. I’ll put a reminder to confirm emails on tomorrow’s edit, even for Lemmy; since email is used to recover passwords, no email + lost password = lost account, and that’s not fun!

I know people have said mastodon is like twitter, but what's kbin? Do I want all three?

Good point! I won’t be able to edit for a few hours, but in terms of it not always being accurate it is definitely possible in the vast majority of cases.

@[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

kbin in a separate software from lemmy. The same way that Mastodon is different but still federated.

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.

https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/67263

Absolutely! I feel like it sums everything important up cleanly and easily digestible.

I will be removing the de-federation part and putting the email analogy in its place, I agree it isn’t really important enough to note. The reason I don’t add the join lemmy site is that they list at least one instance that seems to invite illegal activity/content, and that didn’t take long to find in the directory, so I feel it would be irresponsible to mention it. I scrolled through browse.feddit.de for a few minutes and couldn’t find anything that obvious, so I added that one. It says where a community is hosted, too, so that might help someone!

Kbin is a different application, another content agregator suitable for leaving Reddit. The thing is, since we all use the same protocol to communicate (ActivityPub), these two completely different applications can talk to each other :)

They're functionally very similar but are two seperately developed pieces of software. The lemmy devs are tankies and many would prefer to completely avoid using something from them. I don't believe there's anything to worry about, as the devs can't control individual instances.

Got it, didn’t know about Cloudflare being on there. I’ll make Lemmy a slightly lighter grey but I don’t want to sacrifice readability, so I might do a different color, don’t know yet!

r/coolguides is cancer

Feel free to create one!

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.

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.

@[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.

@marsxyz
@unsunny
You can view and even comment on lemmy/kbin posts from mastodon, like I'm doing right now

It's not as good a way to view forum based content though imho

I don't agree with the "it doesn't matter which one you join" part because each instance offers a different user experience, even though technically they are interconnected, and depending on mostly the size of the instance someone chooses, their experience can make or break the usability of the fediverse in their eyes.

I think people should be directed to instances with already vibrant communities and then when they learn the ropes, they'll find their best fit anyway.

This is kind of what I was thinking; it does matter which instance you joint in the sense that different servers have different goals, rules, and moderation, and saying it doesn’t matter isn’t quite right. It is true that you’ll see a lot of the same things across instances, though, and I’ll revise to add that in the next few hours.

There is a short animated video in https://kbin.pub/en about the Fediverse. Hope someone will find it helpful. It has cats.

Could you elaborate on why it doesn't matter which instance you join? Because I've tried accessing communities from other instances using my Beehaw account, and I'm unable to comment without registering under that instance first

Yep, definitely the second one. The join-lemmy was pretty confusing about it.

Thanks for letting me know!

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.

Absolutely, that’s what it’s there for!

AFAIK, the difference is mostly in the performance, moderation, and peering of each instance.

The difference is just that you log on using two different sites. They can access the same federated content. Just read the rules of both instances and see if you prefer one or the other.

There are some duplicate communities (e.g. cats@instance1 and cats@instance2 to use your example) but you can subscribe to and interact with either/both communities without leaving your chosen instance - you don't need to make multiple accounts.

@[email protected] @[email protected] to add onto what was said, the cool thing about the fediverse is that it's all interoperable:
i am currently replying from my own self-hosted akkoma instance. this is more of a twitter-like microblogging software, that i'm running on a server i rent with a few friends. with it, i can't really browse lemmy/kbin communities yet, because akkoma doesn't yet have support for those, but i can reply and read content from users, and i believe even follow communities! and i can also follow video creators on peertube, or on the instagram-like pixelfed, whichever instance they use, because it's all the same protocol, so i don't have to sign up there :)

I can’t even find mlem in the App Store, so you are one step ahead of me.

I’m having the same problem. It won’t connect to any of the Lemmy servers. I set up accounts on two different instances, and it just keeps saying that it can’t connect. I don’t know if it’s just because of the influx of new peeps from the exodus or if I’m just letting my inner blonde do the driving today.

Login on mlem should be:

 undefined

    
Homepage: beehaw.org
Username: UnsupervisedScum
Password: YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE


  

Then bish bash bosh you're logged in (hopefully)

You could always check [email protected] for assistance if it doesn't work

Small correction, the app is Jerboa.

I 100% agree, and the existence of a mobile app is the main reason I picked Lemmy over kbin. I also like that the backend is in Rust, vs PHP in kbin, so I'll feel more comfortable contributing since I'm more familiar with that ecosystem. That probably doesn't matter to the average user though, but the app existing certainly does.

Good idea!

Yep. You just need to search that exact example (or just the URL) and it should pop up a little link where you can view that community from your local instance, which'll have a subscribe button.

You might have tried it while kbin.social's federation was broken from being behind cloudflare for awhile.

Because they are separate communities on separate instances. And despite having the same name can serve highly different purposes. You might start an instance relating to your local city or town. Then if you had a technology sub on that it might be more specifically geared towards talking about technology in your city or town. Others might be more general in topic. But all are just as valid. And you can subscribe to all of them or none of them.

That's the point of a fediverse. When lemmy.ml admins go crazy and adopt ridiculous policies, you can simply switch to another instance. If all the subs go into a single instance, then it's just the same as reddit, which is a single point of failure.