Kbin is the first Reddit alternative I looked at and i liked the UI so I stuck with it. I kind of assumed everything would be kbin. I thought I understood things. I thought it was kbin and lemmy separate but they federated and so I’d be able to access lemmy stuff from kbin. Which I guess is true. But now I’m confused. I look at all, and I see a post in m/main@sh.itjust.works and the post is from lemmy.world and it’s devs. I’m not subbed to m/main, so did Ernest curate /all and add it? Are people cross posting from lemmy into sh.itjust.works? I feel like I need a drawing or red string diagram.
The site you're using is your platform (kbin=pc, mastodon=xbox, lemmy=ps). After that, the instances are what servers you connect to (lemmy.ca=psNA, whatever on mastodon=xboxSEA, kbin.social=pcEU. Then, federation is bringing it all together with crossplay.
Made a bit of sense to me, so hopefully this helps!
kbin and lemmy are different softwares, but they are both used for link aggregation and the 2 softwares use a common protocol, so they can talk to each other. So there are kbin servers and lemmy servers, and they are all interconnected.
So now we can take this post as an example:
You are a user on kbin.social
You posted this question on /m/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world - this means the community you posted on is actually hosted on lemmy.world
lemmy.world then tells other instances that its federated with that someone just made a post on /c/nostupidquestions on its instance. what kbin calls magazines are called communities on lemmy, hence the /c/ instead of the /m/.
kbin.social and all the other instances will then also show this post, even though it originally was created on a different instance
yes, to view the other kbin instances you can go to the kbin landing page (https://kbin.pub/en), at the top nav bar under instances it'll show the others.
Kbin and Lemmy are basically web applications. They both use the same protocol to communicate (ActivityPub), which is also used by Mastodon (more of a Twitter alternative). kbin.social or lemmy.world are instances, basically specific servers that you can register to, like you'd register with an email provider. They're running their respective kbin or Lemmy applications that you use to view and interact with the content on their servers, as well as the other ActivityPub servers, as they're federated to communicate with each other. There's plenty of other instances / servers, you can even set up your own ones if you want to. Each one can have their own set of rules too but overall it usually does not matter too much where you go to for your account. However, some instances like beehaw, which is a Lemmy based instance, is heavily defederated & moderated. Sort of a safe space if you will. Communities on Lemmy, or Magazines on kbin, are basically subreddits. Kbin's microblogs are basically Mastodon threads / toots. The main / all page contains pretty much threads from all federated instances on kbin or Lemmy.
so the main kbin homepage is "all" meaning, everything across the fediverse. that means we see content from lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, beehaw.org, lemmy.world, etc.
now, everyone can participate in each other's communities. for instance this community is nostupidquestions@lemmy.world. you and I are kbin.social users. our comments right now are being posted to lemmy.world. lemmy users can see such and respond to it.
m/main@sh.itjust.works is a community on sh.itjust.works. similar to how reddit.com/r/gaming is a community on reddit. however, we on kbin.social can also see and interact with that community. when we do so, people can see our username as coming from kbin.social, since that's what we're using.
tl;dr:
The site we are on is kbin.social. this is a website running the "kbin" software.
kbin can interact with other "fediverse" websites, such as lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works.
as a result, we see all their contents and users, and vice versa (noted with the @ url afterwards). the other users are not visiting kbin.social in their browser. If the account says lemmy.world they are going to the lemmy.world website, which can see kbin.social content just how we can see their content.
I'm replying to this from Jerboa (the Android Lemmy app), while logged in as my lemmy.ml account.
Federation; it's great (when it works). 😁
Only issue is I can't set up my kbin.social account on Jerboa, but eh, it's still in development, so I'll probably be able to at some point down the line (or someone'll make a more general Fediverse app). 🤷♂️
Microblogs are a very cool feature, but it's a shame that it is one button on the top of the page that looks similar to the other buttons that you'd mostly ignore it if you weren't actively looking for it
kbin.social is effectively a Lemmy instance as far as magazines/communities go. Lemmy users can join and post in kbin magazines. kbin users can do the same with Lemmy communities. If kbin used the term "communities" instead of "magazines" it would be much less confusing.
Afaik Lemmy is a protocol used by a bunch of servers; lemmy.world, shitjustworks, lemmy.ml, etc. They're all (well, mostly) connected to each other, and each hosts various communities that any member can access. You can access it all through kbin, though kbin is different from lemmy. For example, this community is on lemmy.world, and you posted it here from kbin. I saw it and responded from kbin.
"All" gives you all the content your home server has access to.
Kbin is not lemmy, but it's very similar and almost fully compatible.
lemmy.world users can post to sh.itjust.works and vice verse, that's probably what you're seeing.
The front page is /all by default. You can change this in setting. You're probably seeing something in /all from another instance. You can also turn off federation in the sidebar if you're interesting in ONLY seeing kbin stuff until you turn it off.
Your instance becomes aware of the existence of another instance when just one user subscribes to a community there. From then on it will appear in all.
Whenever somebody subscribes to a community in another instance, that instance starts sending posts and comments to your instance (kbin.social in your case). The front page of any instance is just the all of the posts and comments that exist on that instance, sorted.
It's like a multiverse, or imagine skin cells and how stuff can be transmitted between them, but ultimately part of one greater thing. It's kind of the shit imo. Whatever it is lol
So I joined one cell, but due to an underlying nerve network, I can see what’s going on in other cells and vice versa, unless someone pops off the limb. Right?
So me reading lemmy devs updates is telling me what’s going on in their cell, but it doesn’t directly affect my cell, yeah?
I view it as like 2 different movie theaters showing the same movie with one of them streaming it from the other, but then we all get to experience it together as if one big audience live chatting each other.
Maybe not a movie analogy.
2 different worlds and their people say hi then start sharing their content and communities with each other. Signing up is like choosing a world to start from, but you can leap to see any planet wherever. Just your starting home is always home.
@SoupOfTheDay Kbin and Lemmy are two different softwares that talk to one another using a protocol called activitypub. This is similar to email if I use gmail and you use outlook we can still send one another email even though we are using software operated by different email providers. The same thing Applies to Kbin and Lemmy different software with very similar use cases that communicates with one another. Please mention me in this thread if you have any more questions for me.
I know you're using the e-mail analogy to represent how SMTP and ActivtyPub are a common protocol, but I've seen the same analogy mentioned several times and I think it only serves to muddy the waters, because it's incomplete.
They may be posted by people that are on lemmy, you can mouse over their username to see what instance they're from. Otherwise you can also install the kbin enhancement script with tampermonkey or something that would make anyone who isn't from kbin have an @(instance) after their name.
I don't think "All" feed is curated by anyone, except if your instance is defederating a lot from other instances (like beehaw.org). You'll either have to curate your own "Subscribed" feed or use "Local" feed which will only consist of your own instance's (kbin's) communities.