How should I be using Lemmy?
How should I be using Lemmy?
With spez ascending the last few remaining levels of becoming an absolute wanker, it's about time I got more active and I have been wondering how should I be using Lemmy efficiently? Like many I migrated from Reddit and I was primarly using Apollo to browse through my subscribed subreddits.
Over here on Lemmy.one, I have subscribed to communities and I scroll through my feed by sorting "All > Top Day" because sorting "All > Hot" means I end up seeing the same threads.
Then earlier today I discovered https://beehaw.org/communities where I found many communities I would love to subscribe to but then I got confused because I am also subscribed to more or less similar communities on lemmy.one.
I think I am sort of struggling to wrap my head around how lemmy really works and where I should be hanging out. It was easier on reddit in the sense that if I wanted to go LOTRmemes, there was only subreddit but here on Lemmy, there seem to be multiple instances of the same community :D
To top it off, it is proving hard to login to beehaw [probably the server is under stress] with the same details I use to login into Lemmy.one.
Not to forget there's also Kbin which I haven't even begun exploring. Phew.
ps - my apologies if I am sounding slightly incoherent as this is all new to me. If there is anyone out there who has this all figured out, I'd appreciate any help here.
I think the algorithms are not quite doing what you expect, on top of server delays or whatever.
The way I am set up, I start in ALL and sort by HOT. If the post start to feel too familiar I will go by active, then new.
What I feel works the best however is to subscribe to all the communities that you are interested in (don't be precious) and you will find that the subscriptions page has the content you want. It is nice, they don't get lost, or you can jump into a single community and see all they have.
The most useful way to use lemmy of course is to post content.
Thanks @DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one
Just as a follow up to your comment - is there a link or something where one can see how many different Lemmy communities exist? I'd be up for casting the net wide like you said and right now I am mostly hanging around lemmy one.
An easy one is that when you search, select All instead of local, then you'll see all communities that lemmy.one is aware of, but if you want the WHOLE picture, use https://lemmyverse.net/communities .
I'm going down the same rabbit hole and have struggled trying to figure out the fediverse. The other comments on your post explain things well. From my experience, I had to research which instance was federated and populated with what fits my interests, then sign up for it. Jerboa doesn't do well with it's search function yet, and I almost exclusively use the app to browse (I did so with Sync for Reddit ((3rd party app)) too and never used the browser unless I was looking up specific questions), but I did find out that when using a web browser to login to my instance they have a community browser that lists every and all communities locally and federated where you just hit Subscribe to. Once I subscribed to everything that peaked my interests I went back to my app (Jerboa for Lemmy) and sorted by Subscribed and New (or hot). I now have an experience very similar to that of using Sync for Reddit.
To answer your questions about seeing the exact same communities (instead of a singular subreddit) to subscribe to, it's just because each community is hosted on separate instances. Some of those instances are federated with yours (ie lemmy.world) but for users who are signed up on that particular instance may not have the same federations your instance has so they created their own version of the community.
Another comment on this post explains it well using minecraft as an example. (Idk how to cross-post or @ another user yet)
You don't have to think of the servers as different entities, all servers are Lemmy, each one slightly different sure but you can participate in every server equally so nothing changes to you
It's becoming painfully clear that federation is the most confusing part for new people. It felt less so with Mastodon but the Reddit migration seems to be bigger. (I don't know since I was already on Mastodon a few years before the Muskaning) I think we need an easier way for people to understand how instances work.
Mastodons federation has become pretty seamless. Just browsing around, it seldom takes you off-instance.
Lemmy still does that a good bit, and it throws people off hard.
I would say that in an update that allows you to redirect links to your own instance would be great, and I was told I was wrong thinking that would need an extension. Take link, copy to search wasn't obvious for me when I started with Mastodon, but I eventually figured it out.
If I was an instance I would try and find a way to make a FAQ that linked maybe to Wikipedia or something that everyone can update for common questions, and a local community with FAQ posts for anything specific to that instance.
That makes more sense now. I was really lost around all these different servers and Reddit experience had spoilt me because it was so centralized by construct that I came in here expecting the same!
Yep, it's like if subreddits were sorted into larger groups of subreddits, like say a megareddit where you can have many subreddits with the same name as other subreddits, but a little bit different.
So instead of going to /r/aww, you would hypothetically go to /r/lemmy.one/aww or /r/beehaw/aww. They can have different sets of rules but you can see and post to both equally.
I think what will eventually happen (I may very well be wrong) is that when there are several communities that are very similar on different instances (e.g. lemmy.one/c/aww and behaww/c/aww) one of them will eventually grow significantly bigger/more active than the other, and the other will be more or less abandoned, with its subs/mods moving to the bigger one.
That may not necessarily be a good thing, but over time I think thats what will start happening.
Now what might really cook your noodle is the info that the developers of the Lemmy software are pro-Russian genocide deniers, and there's a growing sentiment to not support that by dropping Lemmy in favor of kbin or something else.
Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Just as I was starting to get the hang of this, it feels like I stepped into another wasp nest.
Ookay, then let's look at kbin, right? Well, there's literally only ONE developer and the current version still very much a (good) beta version. So, not kbin either, then?
What's left? Beehaw, who act like snowflakes and have disconnected from where growth and interesting stuff is happening?
I feel pretty lost in the sea of the fediverse right now. Go back to Reddit? Naw, not right either.
Mostly just wanted to make my first comment
I haven't signed up for Lemmy. Between the Lemmy and Kbin I like this Kbin a heck of lot more and decided to sign up here.
I haven't abandoned Reddit and I have no plans on doing so. I'll probably be on both platforms if this one takes off or until Reddit becomes something like a Myspace. For now I'm just exploring here.
Except this is open source developed software. Using it doesn't actually funnel money to those people is any way similar to using something that is commercial does.
Unless you're also a direct supporter of that individual dev via buymeacoffee.com or something.
And again, it's open source. We can literally just take the code from them and start making it our own.
The devs have literally no power over instance admins. And anyone can start up a node, and be one.
That's one of the perks of open software. Unlike with corporations, where you have to take or leave the whole thing, you can actually change things in the direction you want without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Maybe that's Kbin, maybe its a future fork of lemmy that is able to convert existing nodes.
Regardless, the boycotting for change that we are forced to resort to under capitalism, isn't relevant here.
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The Lemmy project maintainers are communists, and quite possibly Marxist-Leninists, but I've never seen them make any statements denying genocide. They're been fairly explicitly against genocide, and have made statements directly to that effect. Meanwhile, the actual software has seen contributions from many people from all over the political spectrum. Because that's how the open source development community works.
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Reddit's seen significant investment from Tencent, a Chinese company with well-known ties to the Chinese government and the CCP. Whether the people running the company believe China has committed genocide or not, those continued ties are implicit support for the government's actions (made even stronger by the Chinese government set to take ownership over a significant chunk of the company). They've been invested in Reddit for years, but that hasn't stopped basically anyone playing the "evil communist" card against the Lemmy devs from using Reddit. In fact, it's been used for a while now to try and convince people not to leave Reddit.
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Reddit's also seen investment from white supremacist and actual fascist Peter Thiel. He invested almost a decade ago. Once again, no one seems to have any issue with the politics of the people backing Reddit.
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The politics of the Lemmy devs can be separated from the usage of the software. The software is free, contains no ads, and usage of it does not directly financially support the Lemmy developers at all. Meanwhile, Reddit investors who implicitly deny or actively support genocide both in China and in North America stand to make considerable money off of farming our content out to chatbot developers and/or selling their stake in the business to greater fools.
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Beehaw defederated from like 3 Lemmy instances. Most of us on the fediverse still have unfettered access to their communities. All it takes to not be disinvited from their party is to not shit all over their rugs.
Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
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Let's say they are - who cares? They write the software, they don't run the server you are on unless you are on their server, so don't be on their server then. That's the whole point of federation. If one developer at some company you like is a tankie, you wouldn't use that software?
@kerplunk Also to that point, this is apparently a baseless rumor started from someone who had some beef with the dev at some point. And it's only spiralled because people keep spreading this info to new people who then just rinse and repeated what they hear because they're all new.
I can't find the link but it's on the lemmy blog. So it's best not to spread the info based on what you hear in the comments anyway. Lemmy is fine as long as you like the software. The best way to not support them is by not donating or something. That's all they get from it. Let them be tankies if they are, and distance yourself from the core instances.
kbin is newer but in my opinion the better interface. And if I stick around it will only get better!
I'd say Beehaw is the fediverse for your kids. let them be soft and kind and ban curse words.
You're safe with lemmy or kbin, probably. Just live with some growing pains for a month or two.
Well, you can always put one foot on each side. Make an account on both, use both a bit.
kbin has a better interface, in my opinion though, I'm cheering for them!
This is the first time I hear about the Lenny developers being pro-Russian. Do you have any source where we can look into it?
Here's the best sourced info I found on the genocide topic: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
I'm curious about this Russian connection as well. This is the only related link I've found so far. Can anyone shed more light on this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/143o5xd/reconsidering_my_support_for_lemmy/
You're on street(ActivityPub), you have your home(lemmy.ml) and in your home there's a bunch of rooms with people hanging out(communities), but you can visit other houses(Beehaw, kbin) on the street and hang out in their rooms too.
There may be rooms in different houses that have similar purposes, but you can freely go to whichever is best for you and aren't required to stay home. It doesn't matter if there are multiple rooms in different houses for the same purpose; just check them out and see which one works best for you
Regarding many similar communities, that also happened on Reddit, just maybe on a smaller scale because it was a bit easier to see which subs already existed. /r/translation and /r/translator both existed, only one was actually used. Subscribe to all of them, I predict that over time (when things have calmed down) one or two will emerge as the most popular ones.
To top it off, it is proving hard to login to beehaw [probably the server is under stress] with the same details I use to login into Lemmy.one.
You can't login like that. You login on your home instance, your home instance is federated with beehaw and so has a "window" into all its content, but you are still grabbing it via your home instance. Put the url if the instance you want to join into your home instance search bar and the community will show up and you can subscribe through there. Same content but different url.
To use the ever popular email analogy, trying to log-in to beehaw with your lemmy.one credentials is like trying to log-in to gmail using your hotmail account just because you want to send an email to someone with a gmail address.
It would be great if there was a feature for grouping like-communities you're subscibed to into a single feed. I'd almost bet that there's a feature request somewhere about it
This is going to blow your mind too but...you don't HAVE to create accounts on all those servers. I'm reading your post right now from Kbin.
I’m really confused about a lot of things here. For one, you’re talking about Lemmy, but from my perspective it looks like you’re posting on kbin.social.
When I started my kbin account, I searched for “magazines” to subscribe to. Most looked like they were either on kbin, Lemmy, beehaw, or shitjustworks. I had heard that Beehaw had become unfederated, so I unsubscribed from those communities, although I’m unsure why I was able to subscribe to them from kbin in the first place if they were I federated.
Now I’m reading that shitjustworks is unfederated too? Also Lemmy.ml? Can Lemmy servers be h federated? And again, why can I subscribe to them through kbin in the first place if they are unfederated? Do I need to be doing research on communities before joining to make sure they are federated? Does it matter if they aren’t?
Defederation doesn't disconnect an instance from the whole network, only specific instances.
The news about beehaw defedrating referred specifically to beehaw.org defederating from shitjustworks and lemmy.world. Only users on those instances cannot see posts from beehaw, and users on beehaw cannot see posts from those instances.
shitjustworks and lemmy.world have not defederated from the fediverse at large, and are still communicating with all major instances other than beehaw.org.
Beehaw.org has also not defederated from kbin.social which is why you can still subscribe to and interact with them on kbin.social.