I don’t think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse. There are other platforms and will be more to come. Referring to a post on “Lemmy” or “kbin” is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.
We should be referring to it as…
- I saw it on the fediverse.
- Hey fediverse users …
- A thread on the fediverse…
New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.
edit: A better example is email. You wouldn’t assume everyone is on Hotmail because that is the email provider you use. You say I’m sendingan eamail, not I’m sending a Hotmail.
While you’re correct, it’s just a clunky term. I think some other way to refer to the whole thing will probably come along soon, and in a few years, people will regard saying fediverse the same way we look back on people talking about “surfing the information superhighway” or whatever.
Referring to a post on “Lemmy” or “kbin” is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.
That’s not how language works. Language evolves naturally and in this scenario people would instantly know that the user had seen something on a fediverse platform without having to use another awful ‘-verse’ word.
Likewise you can’t police how people use language. People use whatever makes understanding for both sides easiest on both sides
If someone logs into a website called Kbin and sees something interesting, it’s fair to say ‘I saw something interesting on Kbin’ without having to give unnecessary explanations about what the fediverse is.
And once again, no one likes the word fediverse…
If I was browsing Reddit and saw an interesting video, I might tell someone “I saw an interesting video on Reddit the other day” even if the video itself was hosted on YouTube. The technical detail of exactly where and how the video is hosted is not relevant to the conversation. The listener wants to know how I found it, not where it is stored.
The same is true for posts on the fediverse. The various instances are the websites that we browse. The technical detail of how they share content and how it can be accessed from various different routes just isn’t important most of the time. If you’re a Lemmy user, you’re reading the posts on Lemmy and there is nothing wrong with talking about it that way.
If I tell someone I bought a game on Steam or borrowed a book from the library, the fact that they are also available elsewhere doesn’t matter. If I tell someone I read something on kbin, does it matter that the same post also exists on different websites? 99% of the time, the answer is ‘no’.
New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.
I agree, but you’ve got it upsidedown. The fediverse is the platform that the instances operate on, not vice-versa.
Why not “lemmyverse” for lemmy federation?
I think just Lemmy, kbin, mastodon, etc. naturally implies the platform-specific -verse, doesn’t it? I think “Hey, Lemmy–” posts addressing the entire fediverse are being accidentally myopic, but “Hey, Lemmy [users]” would be understandable, given a need to discuss our UI differences. The former is fairly common atm, though, which I admit is faintly annoying to see on my kbin feed. I feel so left out.
I think it’s more like saying, “I saw this on my phone,” or, “I was on the computer and read,” which are both entirely reasonable.
It’s just stating what format you were using when you saw it. Like, “I was scrolling through Google News and read…” What you actually read was an article hosted on a different website, but you were using the platform of Google News to read it. It’s the same kind of thing as saying, “I read on Lemmy,” because you were browsing Lemmy when you read something.
It’s not wrong to say that these things are on this site. I often specify Lemmy.World because that’s the instance that I use and other Fediverse sites function slightly differently. That’s one of the both great and annoying things about the Fediverse is how every instance is slightly different. I’ll say, “I was on Lemmy.World and…” I don’t know, saw a post, made a post, had trouble because mod controls are minimal over here, whatever. Saying, “On the Fediverse,” is more generic. It’s usually considered best convention to go with more SPECIFIC terms than generic. I consider using my Mastadon account and using my Lemmy account to be different, but they’re both on the Fediverse. I would feel really weird talking about my Mastadon account in the same terms as my Lemmy.World one since I use the two platforms completely differently.
Maybe it’s even more like “I got an outlook message” instead of “I got an email”. Since email is an analog of ActivityPub. Just that people are not used yet to the fact that social media can be interoperable like email, so “saw on lemmy” carries different connotations. It should not, however.
Anecdotically, I have an old frendlica account too, from times of diaspora, and it’s now very lively, so I saw this post on frendlica too.
But you are posting on a Kbin thread right now, not a Lemmy thread. So you’re not “on Lemmy World” when you’re viewing this thread.
it’s more correct to say they’re on lemmy than kbin though… they are interacting through lemmy: kbin is literally irrelevant to them
… and that’s kinda the point of the fediverse isn’t it? you shouldn’t care where something is stored, and if you don’t care where it’s stored then you have only 1 way to refer to the space: the client by which you’re viewing it
people referring to it as “lemmy” or “kbin” or “mastodon” is the fediverse working as intended, and that’s good news!
(it’s also much better marketing for us! people search fediverse and they get a bunch of random descriptions about what it is… people search lemmy/kbin and at least they have a join button)
I personally like to call it “Fedi”. I was reading a post / thread on Fedi and it said…
If someone asked where exactly it was I would mention the platform.
And in my opinion, everyone should be mentioning the name of the platform they are on. Because when you mention what software or server you used, it promotes it to non Fediverse people. And it also tells current Fediverse users about other Fedi platforms that they may like, and didn’t know about.
That’s how I found Misskey, and it’s quite cool.
So many options to explore, and try out interfaces that may work better for you.We are all on the Fediverse, we all should be promoting that in any way we can.
Share, educate and take pride in our diverse community.I just consistently mention it because it’s a huge topic atm and it’s to everyone’s benefit to clarify. If I’m over here talking about how I’m SO glad I can mute instances willy-nilly as I please but don’t mention I’m doing that from kbin, that’s going to send a lot of frustrated lemmings scrambling through their settings.
Generic is “(the) fedi/fediverse.” But where I’m specifically from may carry connotations in UI or culture for those here, and those not here would maybe prefer a platform name they can actually look up, as has already happened to me once.
I do think the “Blaaah, we got X amount of users and we’re the biggest in the fedi!” posts are borderline odd, because yeah, we’re not going head to head anymore. The tribalism we’ve had drilled into us for decades, we have no need of now and I don’t wanna see any of the platform politics that’s always been in the past. Thankfully, it seems to be stemming from genuine enjoyment instead of elitist gloating, and it keeps itself to a minimum.
Yeah, the tribalism needs to go away and we need to think more along the lines of the “neighborhood” we are in. All the Fedis are our neighbors.
I dunno, the Ferengis are neighbors and they’re damn greedy.
The Centauris I hear are pretty nice.
This is going to reveal my ignorance:
How does the federation work from a high level? On Reddit, data is stored and managed by Reddit.
How about the fediverse? If the data isn’t centrally located, what is stopping some data from just being lost at any time? Who owns the servers?
If the servers are owned by anyone who wants to own a server, I assume there will still be popular servers that get the most traffic. And if those servers have high traffic, how will they sustain that model? How do they “keep the lights on” without ads?
Thanks for helping me understand.
Good question. Not ignorant. The one thing we use all the time but never think of as federated is email. Multiple users from different providers can reply all and everyone gets a copy. That is one way to help think about how the fediverse works. People using kbin and Lemmy have replied in this thread. We all see it. we are just using different providers/software to read and reply in the fediverse.
Others have already commented well on funding.
https://lemmy.world/comment/20357
This comment was very helpful when I first joined. Long story short, each server is locally storing data for its own users and communities, and also for external communities that at least one user is subscribed to.
Everything is either self or donor funded, and it is my understanding that this model can scale quite a bit without a crazy amount of donations.
But if we get into instances with over a million users, I’m not sure when/if the donor funded model eventually breaks down. That’ll be a good problem to have though, because it means this platform will have been a massive success.
I think Ruuds starting guide post in !lemmyworld@lemmy.world is good too.
Are the bang links working for kbin users too or only lemmy? https://lemmy.world/post/37906Bang links work for users on Kbin.
If that is Lemmy creating the URL or kbin seeing the bang format and using it, I don’t know… off to find out :-)
edit: experimenting here !kbin
edit2: I think Lemmy is creating a regular link out of that. My bang above was not auto converted on kbin.
I like the name fediverse, but I think it’s too broad. I think we need a collective name for platforms like Lemmy and KBin (which are more like each other than they are like Mastodon).
“forum”. It’s correct. Short for web forum. Social media forum if you really want to get picky.
No, “forums” are old style message boards from back when the internet was good, that people stopped using for some reason. If KBin/Lemmy can one day be half as good as real forums I’d consider that to be a success.
What feature is missing from KBin or Lemmy to make them forums? KBin superficially looks like a forum, but I only just got here. My next step is to find out whether Lemmy devs are tenable people to work with on forum software development. They are Marxist-Leninists and run a M-L instance or two, it seems. I’m a socialist but not M-L and I’ve got run out of plenty of “tankie” subs on Reddit, so I’m worried about that. I don’t enjoy being called liberal or a bootlicker.
