So apologies if this is a stupid question as I’m new to Lemmy. Came from Reddit. I moved to lemmy.world and have noticed that lemmy.ml has been popping up as another featured instance. What differs from lemmy.world vs lemmy.ml? Is .ml more active?
Part of why I ask this is because I downloaded the lemmur client on my phone and it defaults to lemmy.ml. (Yes I’m aware that app is no longer being maintained)
Again apologies for the stupid question.
To my knowledge, the dev actively does not want .ml to be the main instance, and because of that a lot of people ended up (and still are) joining .world or beehaw. I fully expect .world to become the default at some point, it statistically has more active users and is outgrowing .ml at a rapid pace.
lemmy.world seemed to be the obvious starting point to me when I was first looking at it a few days ago.
can see all of the posts of any instance it’s federated with.
Definitely not all in my experience.
For me it was the only one that actually let me sign up. The others just spun forever and ever after submitting.
I think since lemmy.world is so stable and didn’t have (many) issues when the signup spikes were happening a lot of former Redditors ended up here. lemmy.ml is run by the developers.
Because of the way it all works, and because we can interact with everything we’re federated with, we’re pretty free to choose the best instance for us or even create our own if we wanted to.
I’m also a new Reddit user to Lemmy. I know that we can see other instances when we are logged into our main instance, lemmy.world for example, and we can interact with those other instances like email. Are we required to create a separate account if we want to change to a different main instance instead?
You do have to create another account if you want to move to a new instance, yeah.
But you don’t need to create another account to participate on another instance, which is an important distinction for newbies to understand.
Moving to a new instance is not required for participation there unless that instance is defederated.
Changing to a different main instance requires a new account.
My issue has been that you can’t see every post from another instance. For example, I can only see 200 out of the 2k posts on !linux@lemmy.ml when viewing it from Lemmy.world.
Other instances can see you too. And other Fediverse based platforms. This thread is trending on kbin.social for example, which is where I’m posting from.
Yes.
They’re federated so we can interact from both networks I think. It’s more populated here so it’s more active.
Fun fact: if you took a sip of beer every time you saw the word “federated” on Lemmy, you would drown.
Yeah I know we can interact with .ml (which is simultaneously weird and cool) but that answers my question for sure. This place is so cool.
What’s even crazier is that you can also post to Kbin which is a server running completely different software
I’m from kbin. just saying hello.
Howdy, welcome!
I signed up on Lemmy just this week. I’ll be signing up on Kbin and Mastodon next.
why tho? Mastodon, okay its a whole different platform but why on kbin? you should be able to follow their instance from here…
Ok, thanks for letting me know. I’ll look into accessing kbin from lemmy instead.
You can of course try kbin, in case you like that software better. Kbin communities look like lemmy communities to lemmy users and lemmy communities look like kbin communities for kbin users.
As a side note, it’s possible you have already interacted with kbin content without realizing it, isn’t that cool? Federation between the two is still a bit broken, but it’s getting there.
See that’s the part that trips me out. I understand the concept pretty well now. What I don’t understand is how in the fuck you can interact with Kbin and Mastodon, even though they’re built on instances…I just don’t get that. It’s amazing.
Kbin, Mastodon, Peertube, anything in the Fediverse adheres to ActivityPub standard, which is the protocol that all of these sites use to communicate.
On a side note, what exactly is Peertube? I’ve been hearing things about it but I have no idea what it is. Is it like a YouTube alternative? Or is it like P2P YouTube?
I am going to be honest, i don’t really know either, I just included it in my example because I know it’s federated
I think it’s a P2P YouTube alternative?
Is it like a YouTube alternative? Or is it like P2P YouTube?
Yes to both. Or, more specifically, it’s a piece of software that lets you set up federated YouTube alternatives (just like Lemmy lets you set up federated Reddit alternatives) and uses P2P to save bandwidth for the host. Basically, if multiple people are watching a video at the same time, they’ll be able to download parts of it from each other instead of everyone downloading it from the main server.
The core part of it that they all have their content in a common protocol. How they display it and handle it differ based on the application, but the info itself is the same. The example often used is email - you can use any email client or service, and the email base message will be the same. It just may look a bit different, and some extra features might be lost if your client doesn’t support them.
Yeah I am trying to wrap my head around the ActivityPub spec so I can understand the magic
Time to break your mind more, I’m replying from kbin.social
It’s all interconnected.
Always has been 🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀
I don’t fully understand it either, but I’m on kbin right now and I can see this entire thread. It’s very cool!
Hey I’m reading and replying from Kbin right now :)
I don’t know how to describe it, but it just feels right to me.
I think it is now because Lemmy.world seems to be more stable than Lemmy.ml
.ml is I believe the ‘flagship’ instance, so the instance of the devs of Lemmy ;)
.world is an instance run by Ruud and the team! It’s just another server with the same software. Just like I am posting this now from u.fail :-)
Not a stupid question at all!
Right now, lemmy.ml is the biggest Lemmy instance and the “flagship” site. There are several other Lemmy instances across the internet. They are all connected with each other - or “federated” - meaning each instance can see all of the posts of any instance it’s federated with. Since every instance is federated with each other, you will get the same content no matter where your account is. So even though you are on lemmy.world, you can see everything that is posted to lemmy.ml.
E.g. even though I’m from lemm.ee, i still saw your post!!
Well one of the other questions I had was, I’m seeing things in my feed like Android, catpics, therewasanattempt, and they all “look” like subreddits. They don’t look like different instances from what I can tell. So of course I’ve subscribed to them the same way I would on Reddit.
Is the concept of those the same as subreddits? Or are they just different instances? Or are they affiliated with lemmy.world? How does that even work? Hope that makes sense.
This infographic can explain better than I can:
That does answer my question actually! So they are “subreddits” in a sense but they’re called Communities. Cool!
And yeah I understood the concept of the fediverse pretty well before but I love the visualization here. Really well done. Will be sending this to my Reddit and Twitter friends to convince them to switch :)
Each Lemmy instance (or kbin 👋) is like its own Reddit, all connected together. So you’re seeing ‘subreddits’ from multiple instances right now.
Small correction. Kbin is not a Lemmy instance. It’s an entirely different backend on the ActivityPub protocol. It federates with “threaded” fediverse sites like Lemmy, and with microblogging sites like Mastodon. Users on kbin can create and interact with both kinds of posts and kbin magazines “Lemmy communities” can natively include both.
Edit: sorry @atypicaloddity I totally misread your comment. Ignore me!
I, uh, don’t think they were claiming that kbin was a Lemmy instance. To refactor the sentence slightly, it says “Each Lemmmy (or kbin) instance is like it’s own Reddit…” which acknowledges that kbin isn’t Lemmy.
Thank you, I think you’re right! I misread it for sure.
I’m pretty new here. I’d say the concept is the same in the sense that they are each their own community run by their own moderators. However, the all powerful Admins are those in control of the instance.
One interesting example is that Beehaw has started making “Bee themed” community icons which makes it easy to tell when you’re looking at one of the communities hosted on their instance.
Someone on Lemmy.world could have another community with the exact same name, you just have to pay attention to the end (and having themed icons also helps).
But it goes even a little farther than that. We can end up with Mastadon (twitter equivalent) users who are also able to comment in these communities. I don’t think its working in reverse yet (at least not for Lemmy.ml accounts).
Lemmy users can’t currently follow other users, only “groups” (Lemmy “communities”, Friendica “forums”, kbin “magazines”, Chirp “groups”, Guppe “groups”, and PeerTube “channels”), which means you can’t interact with other fediverse users outside of a group. Mastodon users can post to Lemmy communities (or these other group types), and comment on existing posts, and Lemmy users can interact freely with them within that context.
I haven’t heard anything about that changing, though the number of Lemmy users has expanded by several orders of magnitude these last two weeks, and so I imagine the number of contributors to the project will also increase and expand the roadmap somewhat.
On the flip side, kbin users CAN follow other users. Kbin has a feed like Lemmy, but also the “microblog” which is basically tweets. You can link the microblog to Mastodon servers and follow and interact with users from that platform as well. Mastodon, Lemmy and kbin are all different technologies that are allowed to interact with each other, and we as users get to pick the ones that best fit our needs. It really is an amazing concept
See, the cool thing is that by that logic, if hypothetically speaking the admins of Lemmy.world did anything shady or unfriendly to the user, we could just move to another friendly instance without making another bullshit account or moving to a different website, or god forbid a different app.
Not that I think they would, as it’s clear to me they can’t given there’s no actual company. But DAMN do I love options!
Could one move instances while retaining their own post / comment history? That’s the part that I’m unclear on (new reddit refugee here)
My understanding is no. You would need account migration. And at the moment kbin or lemmy does not support it?
Only Mastodon seem to support that.https://joinfediverse.wiki/Moving_instances
For me this is still a big issue to solve. But hopefully will happen at some point.
I’m here from lemmy.one and saw this! It is growing quick on me, and I’m older. I am glad I don’t have to understand the inter-workings to use it!
First, welcome to the #Fediverse! I’m glad you found your way in the #ActivityPub-based “federation network”.
So, wait… what are these terminologies? And what exactly is the “Fediverse”?
Think of it like this:
- Name: Web
- Protocol: HTTP
- Browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Naver Whale
Then you have the Fediverse:
- Name: Fediverse / Fediverse Network
- Protocol: ActivityPub (extra info: Before ActivityPub it was #OStatus; before OStatus it was #OpenMicroBlogging )
- Browsers: #Hubzilla, #Friendica, #Calckey, #Rebased, #Akkoma, #Foundkey, #Meisskey, #Pixelfed, #BookWyrm, #PeerTube, #GlitchSoc #Pleroma, #Misskey, #Mastodon, #Kbin, #Lemmy, etc.
All these “fediverse browsers”, like Lemmy and Kbin, are commonly referred to as fediverse software. (extra info: Wikipedia calls Lemmy, Kbin, and similar answers-type or Threads-type software as “Link-aggregators”.)
There is no “Mastodon network”. There is no “mastoverse”. There is no “threadiverse”. There is no “Threadinet”, or whichever -verse / -network people are coming up with.
Any software that is using the ActivityPub protocol is part of the “Fediverse network”. Just like how any software that uses the HTTProtocol is part of the Web.
That clear so far?
Now, we go to your question.
Q: I moved to lemmy.world and have noticed that lemmy.ml has been popping up as another featured instance. What differs from lemmy.world vs lemmy.ml? Is .ml more active?
lemmy.world and lemmy.ml are called instances (the terminology used to refer to a fediverse server/service). These two are only two out of many fediverse instances available. In paritcular, these two instances are only two out of probably a hundred Lemmy-based instances available.
What differs between the two? As far as features and functionalities go, none. Since these two Lemmy-based instances are using the same software, they have the same set of features. The only difference would be if one instance fell behind in Lemmy version upgrades.
Since lemmy.ml is one of two flaship servers of the Lemmy software project, naturally it will get the bulk of registrations and content.
For example, before the Reddit Migration, there were already existing communities for many similar Subreddits, and many of those are in lemmy.ml and are very active. So, when Subreddits started to migrate, some chose lemmy.world and other lemmy instances. Which allowed lemmy.world to catch up with the number of users and number of active communities that lemmy.ml already have. AND, some of these are about the same topics/fandom.
So… yep, that’s the detailed explanation. _
I hope I wasn’t confusing.
It looks like lemmy.world has more active users than lemmy.ml now.
Sorting this by active users gives you the answer you’re looking for better than that github page: https://lemmyverse.net/
lemmy.world is both more stable (like the server doesn’t go down) and has less political extremists.
Don’t sign up to lemmy.ml or you’ll need to sign up again on a new instance when they get defederated. Tankies. I guess a blind eye is being turned right now because numbers are important for survival atm, but I wouldn’t consider it a future-proof instance.
I’m really getting confused, as a person leaving Reddit. If the largest lemmy instances are lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, beehaw.org, and lemmygrad.ml, and the big draw to Lemmy in the first plaace is the interconnectivity, right? And yet Beehaw just defederated lemmy.world, we’re over here talking about defederating lemmy.ml and everyone wants to defederate lemmygrad. Is it fair to say that the whole push for everyone to migrate to Lemmy is already falling apart one whole day after the blackout? It feels like being pointed at a huge, distibuted universe of content and looking up on day one to see a bunch of walled off little half-empty mini-reddits instead.
Im being hyperbolic of course, but the whole defederating thing seems like a step backward from any kind of critical mass.
That’s going to be how it is for a bit. Everything is in a state of flux right now, people are pilling in, learning the platform, moderation is overwhelmed, and people that have long since been segregated on Reddit ar finding themselves having to put up with each other again.
What’s going to end up happening is one of the instances will become the predominant one, and it will end up being closed off from the others.
It’s because people aren’t coming here for the decentralization. They’re coming here to find a new reddit. The whole federated thing is great but I don’t see it meaning much in the long run. Centralization isn’t the result of corporations, it’s the result of people centralizing in one convenient location. it will happen here too. The defederalizing is essential, otherwise all instances would be beholden to the worst, and that would nuke the whole thing real fast.
It doesn’t matter. They all feed into each other. Or don’t. Depending on your personal preference.
Just FYI for anyone who doesn’t know. The “lemmy.ml” instance is “ml” for “Marxist Leninist” and the main dev is a basically self-admitted tanky. So if you don’t want any of that, it’s probably a better choice to choose one of the other major instances.
