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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Newbie here and apologies if these are FAQs but just want one line answers
What's an instance?
What's a community?
What are federations?
Whats the difference between all these?
What's mastodon?
What's Kbin?
What's ActivityPub?
Just jargon I'm trying to get my head around, I'm still confused on signing up to different communities?! I guess and yeah.. a bit lost I suppose. If there are FAQs to all this please direct me to them, thanks!
What’s an instance?
An instance is a server running the Lemmy software (or some other federation software such as Mastodon, Kbin, Pixelfed, and others). Instances can talk together (similarly to how you can send email from gmail.com to outlook.com), so you can sign up on one instance and subscribe and comment to communities on other instances
What’s a community?
A community is to Lemmy what a subreddit is to Reddit. on
What are federations?
Federation is the machanism allowing different instances (servers) to talk together. Federation is automatic, so two instances becomes federated, when you as a user on one instance subscribe to a community on a different instance
Whats the difference between all these?
Many instances are general but have somewhat different values and rules for what you can post or not. "lemmy.world" is a good choice for a general instance. There are also topic specific instances, such as "mander.xyz" that is science focused.
What’s mastodon?
Mastodon is like twitter but is part of the federated universe (the "fediverse").
What’s Kbin?
Kbin - like Lemmy - is like Reddit. The impelemntation is different and focuses on different fetures. Some (myself included) like Kbin more than Lemmy - others the other way around.
What’s ActivityPub?
ActivityPub is the common technical protocol that allows all of the software in the Fediverse to talk together. Both Mastodon, Kbin and Lemmy (and others) are build "on top" of the ActivityPub protocol.
Hope this helps
I'm just not sure about how much I like that on kbin, upvotes and downvotes are publicly viewable. I don't mind publicly viewable comments of course... but your votes? Eesh.
Sorry about the reddit link. It's old.reddit though: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14gyay8/on_kbin_upvotes_downvotes_are_public/
I tend to agree, though it should be noted that the public access to vote information is part of the current backend and Kbins frontend just makes it available for everyone to see. WefWef for example also shows your point totals ("karma") on Lemmy and I'm sure many other 3rd party apps will too.
Someone raised this issue on the Lemmy GitHub today but it's unclear what stance the Devs will take.
As a reddit refugee I appreciate the quick FAQ. I have been re-reading the lemmy welcome post as I browse around and find new stuff. Mastodon is a whole other can of worms for me.
I'll give it a try, though I'm new here too:
What's an instance? -> A server on which you can register your account
What's a community? -> same as a subreddit
What are federations? -> Information exchange between servers
What's mastodon? -> Twitter alternative. As lemmy is to reddit
What's Kbin? -> Similar to lemmy, but kbin can interact better with Mastodon
What's ActivityPub? -> the protocol used within the fediverse
Thanks, so you can register with multiple servers (instances) right? Like I have a lemmy.world account and a Feddit.uk one, I am generally logged into the fedddit.uk. when would I need to switch over to using Lemmy.world? Do i need too?
Also can you only find certain communities depending on which account your signed into
I can think of 2 reasons:
so if an instance is defederated with another like beehaw to lemmy.world (though they say this is temporary), then you won't get any updates out of those communities. You can always search the community from another instance in the search tool. If someone else on your instance already did this the community should be accessible via c/communityName@instance.name. That URL will not work unless someone has already searched it and it's indexed. For large instances this will likely not be an issue, but it may be annoying for people on smaller instances.
You can register with multiple instances, but you don't need too, because you can view, post, comment and vote on any instance that your home instance is federated with.
So you only need one account.
I like to diversify my bonds, ngl.
What’s an instance?
An instance is a specific website running Lemmy or another piece of federated software. For example, lemmy.world and lemmy.ml are two distinct instances
What’s a community?
A community is the "sub-reddit" of Lemmy. Kbin uses the word "magazines", but these are the same thing.
What are federations?
A federation is a group of instances sharing posts and activity data with each other so that it can be displayed to their respective end users. For example, I can post to a community on lemmy.world and then you will be able to see my post when you are browsing feddit.de.
Whats the difference between all these?
Let me know if you have additional questions based on my answers above.
What’s mastodon?
Mastodon is a piece of federated software that is built to look and feel like Twitter, similar to how Lemmy is built to look and feel like Reddit.
What’s Kbin?
Kbin.social is a website you can use to browse posts from the Fediverse. From what I understand, it is similar to Reddit as well.
What’s ActivityPub?
ActivityPub is the underlying protocol that Lemmy, Mastodon, and other pieces of federated software use to communicate with each other. This is how they notify each other of new posts, comments, upvotes, etc so they can stay in sync with each other.
A website hosted by some kind individual or group created to host data and interface with one of the specific fediverse applications (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon, Pixelfed, etc).
This is a Lemmy-specific term. They are topic-specific boards hosted on instances, similar to subreddits on Reddit. The Kbin term for this same idea is magazines.
Example: For Lemmy, they are represented as "!community", such as !pics. On Kbin, they are "@magazine", such as @pics.
I haven't really heard the word used this way, I've heard it more as an adjective or verb. This may take more than one line to explain because I literally had to see it to believe it.
To have one instance federated with another is to have them communicating with each other, so that users, posts, communities, etc on one instance can be read by uses on another instance. It's how I can read all these Lemmy posts on Kbin and comment under them, because these Lemmy instances are federated with the Kbin.social instance I'm currently on.
A federated version of Twitter.
A federated web application that combines the link-aggregation of Reddit with the individual micro blogging threads of Twitter.
It's the current protocol to enable federation of all these sites we've been talking about. Federation is possible because all these sites are speaking the same language, and this is that language.
In addition to Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon that use Activity Pub, we also have Pixelfed, Micro.blog, Nextcloud, PeerTube, and more I'm sure.
If you have any other questions, just ask!
An Instance is the server you're currently on, it's running the platform you're using, and it is also where your user profile is hosted.
A community is the Lemmy equivalent of a Subreddit.
Federations are interconnected groups of Instances and Platforms.
Mastodon is a microblogging platform (similar to Twitter) which can Federate with other ActivityPub platforms like Lemmy.
Kbin in is another Reddit style link aggregator.
ActivityPub is server protocol that allows federated instances to talk to each other and the instances of other platforms.