What are the practical benefits of the fediverse?
I don't fully understand how lemmy works completely yet. But for example I made an account at Division by zero and subscribe here to post. Is it not just a more inconvenient version of making a reddit account and being able to post practically anywhere?
Also what's the difference between making an account at one instant and just making one centralized account for the social media?
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Well, you said it yourself, you're able to comment using your Db0 account on Lemmy.world.
Which websites can you post to using your Reddit account besides Reddit?
But are they different websites? I'm a bit confused because I just saw a link to what looks like a lemmy instant but the url doesn't start with a lemmy. So is it possible for someone to make a completely different website and for me to post with the same account I have now?
Say somebody makes a website with games like Kongregate or Newgrounds, could they let me post with this same account?
Yeah essentially.
The idea is not that the "Fediverse" - or well any specific app - is a single site broken up to run in multiple servers.
Rather it's the inverse, it's a lot of different little websites like lemmy.world, mastodon.social, etc etc, but you can also load any foreign thread / post / account via your own (as in, where your account is) site and then comment or vote on them. There's a degree of interoperability - the federation - between all these various websites.
In the case of instances of the same app (say all the Lemmy servers) there's also interoperability in the search, which importantly allows you to discover content on other servers and largely pretend it might as well be on your own.
wait I can use mastodon using this account? That's crazy, I think I'm getting it now.
You won't have all the features of mastadon with a lemmy account, but here are some things that can happen.
Mastadon users can post to lemmy and kbin communities. You can reply to these posts and both lemmy and mastadon users will be able to see it. For the mastadon users, the comments look like replies on a mastadon thread.
Mastadon users can also comment on lemmy/kbin posts. You can reply to those comments, upvote/downvote them etc.
Mastadon users can follow lemmy and kbin communities. But lemmy users can't follow mastadon users yet. Kbin users can follow mastadon users. The reason kbin is less popular than lemmy is because kbin lacks mobile apps.
it's Mastodon.
Good call out. There used to be (and may still be) a scammer squatting on mastadon.com
The whole point is deliberate engagement and sharing. Don’t like the content coming out of an instance? Don’t federate with them. It allows communities to stay small and focused, or grow large and be a big tent, according to their users.
Still wish there was a way to block Instances instead of just users and communities for non-instance owners. I'd rather not switch instances for a slight inconvenience of having to block every community from an instance.
There is. I checked, your instance is on 19.2. It's in the settings, "blocks", last list
Thanks! I didn't realize that existed.
They only added it a couple of versions ago
@JollyTreecko@lemmy.dbzer0.com I am reading, up voting and commenting on this thread from https://kbin.melroy.org/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/99078/What-are-the-practical-benefits-of-the-fediverse
The way I quickly explain the Fediverse to technical folks is it is like public email with voting and open trigger tracking baked in. ActivityPub is the SMTP of an ecosystem of multiple domains and clients with varying policies and features.
What is happening with Threads is very similar to when AOL started making it easier for the people within their walled garden to interact with the rest of the internet.
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de @Carighan@lemmy.world
An example from Firefish (a Mastodon alternative): https://calckey.world/notes/9ojwvbyqsqpdvek2
But how is that a benefit to the user? Instead of one large user base there’s a bunch of tiny ones scattered about fracturing the community and inhibiting growth.
Niche communities that existed on Reddit I doubt will ever exist here, at least anywhere near the user base as they had in Reddit before it went to shit.
On the contrary, a bunch of scattered communities create one large user base. The people you see in this thread all come from a bunch of different websites and services. You'll see users from startrek.website discussing woodworking in communities hosted by lemmy.ca.
On top of this, someone could make an instance dedicated to that niche subject and similar topics, and you could subscribe with the account you already have somewhere else instead of having to periodically check that niche instance.
Right now the problem is finding those instances, and generally finding reliable instances that won’t suddenly go offline