As I understand it, Mastodon doesn’t federate like Lemmy/K-Mbin does (and Sublinks & Piefed too!), where in order to follow someone you need to be on the same instance? Or something? Anyway Mastodon needs some work before it could be a viable replacement.
Edit: I did not phrase this well at all. Oh well, it led to an interesting discussion so I’ll leave it here for posterity, but it’s incorrect. I think the only correct part of the above is that if you try to leave a Mastodon instance, then like a Lemmy one, you can’t really take your account with you (only your settings, but people who followed you before will have to now follow you again in the new location, it does not automatically transfer). So it “federates” but it’s not “freely transferable” as people were over-selling it to be.
there are 2 sides to the AP-connected fediverse… microblogging (tweets/mastodon) and the threadiverse (federated forums/lemmy). mastodon is 100% microblog. lemmy is 100% threadiverse.
mbin is both.
i can easily follow/be followed by mastodon, universodeon, etc as well as fully participate with lemmy.
But can someone follow you from a different Mastodon instance than the one you are currently on? Or was that something that changed in the last year? Maybe I misunderstood or it wasn’t explained to me well, but I definitely get that people don’t want to switch instances bc they will lose all their old followers, but is that the main impediment to people using Mastodon - they just don’t want to switch to using it? If so, it’s enough, bc as we have seen, these large entities like Twitter are a lot more fragile than people used to believe.
mastodon is a federating micrblog platform… so anyone on any other instance of any kind that also speaks AP/microblog can interoperate. instance is just an address.
the main thing keeping people from leaving twitter are their own egos. as you point out, ‘ive got x followers! ill have none in the fediverse!’
Hehe, I’ve switched between at least three different Fediverse accounts since leaving Reddit, but okay sure if that’s how they want to interact with the world…
Tbf it does point to the more fundamental differences between the platforms, with like anonymous shitposting on the Fediverse (which is like 90% Star Trek and Linux memes:-P) vs. tech or other topical blogging on Mastodon where their actual irl names mean something (e.g. I would be inclined to read something from Robert Reich, but Alex Jones not so much).
And the funny part is that, according to that article I linked in another comment in this thread, their followers are already leaving, now that Twitter has morphed into X (just like advertisers, hey-oh!). They aren’t even necessary going elsewhere, so much as simply leaving, and waiting for something to solidify.
So, much like all the people on Reddit that self-report now as being shocked - shocked I tell you, shooketh! ⚡ - that the platform is feeding them crap that they don’t want to see (but which the algorithm demands that they view - all hail The Algorithm, forever may it reign 😭), the time to be bold and jump somewhere else was when Musk took over and people could have made a coordinated exit strategy. Or maybe if enough people got (ahem 💵 “involved” 💰 i.e. 🤑 enough to affect the market) they could even have ousted him as CEO entirely and saved Twitter to be bought by someone else. Anyway, the second best time is now, before their followers never log back in to that advertisement-infested cesspool of human garbage again, in order to see their messages about where they have decided to jump ship too.
Like fascist governments all around the globe, WE the people gave these demons the power that they hold over us.
I love Lemmy. But the thing I miss most about Reddit is being able to connect with ppl who have deep obscure knowledge about specific things. That will come as Lemmy grows.
Definitely it will but I don’t expect it to happen soon. Social media has turned fairly toxic, and now that people have been saturated with those bad experiences, many people have simply moved on. Some to offline, some to far more obscure rather than centralized spaces, some even are dead of COVID, or lost or are stressed about keeping their jobs in Big Tech, etc. A new generation will rise up to replace them and those likely will use a federated source, or they may turn away from “social media” altogether and use more like wiki writing or even micro-blogging.
What people choose to not understand is that while they are free to do whatever they wish, so too are other people - e.g. a community mod removing their post, an instance admin banning them altogether, or even simply someone else leaving the room when all the kids shout and make too much noise.
Lemmy requires heavy and constant curation, and a thick skin during that never-ending process, to be usable. Not everyone is willing to do that, especially people who are perfectly happy to entertain themselves in other pursuits. Thus the most capable people are the least likely to put up with our crap.
Hopefully I’m wrong, or at least just wrong enough that that aspect of the Fediverse still grows despite that counter trend.
Lastly, there is hope for improvements on the technology side - e.g. if you could see someone who is consistently downvoting you even for solid quality stuff, that’s someone you can block to reduce that negative “noise” feedback, except right now the voting is essentially anonymous since there is no way off a non-instance admin to view it (outside of K/Mbin, I mean like even on those platforms iirc I’ve tested and you can only view those originating from another K/Mbin instance, at the time, again iirc). When things become more equitable in that regard, it should entice more people to remain.
It is actually easy to participate in Lemmy from Mastodon. Federated community are represented as user. When someone write on the community, they appears as the author on Mastodon while the community boost the post. This way a Mastodon user can follow acommunity. By mentioning the name of community in a post that is not an answer to another post, their write post on the Lemmy community. The next post in the Mastodon thread will be treated by Lemmy as comment.
The problem is more in sharing comments. After one or two level of comment it is becoming very buggy. For the rest, it works very well.
Incorrect. It’s just a different kind of platform. There’s no really simple way to make a twitter-like site and a forum site mesh fluidly, but Mastodon users can see Lemmy posts and comments and like and reply to them, and I believe even post. Lemmy users can interact when Mastodon users come into Lemmy but are limited in discovering other Mastodon content.
Yes, they can post. They only need to make sure the community IS federated to there instance and then mention it in the toot that is the first of its thread.
but people who followed you before will have to now follow you again in the new location, it does not automatically transfer
It’s possible to leave a redirect information on the old profile. Normally all your followers are informed about this and automatically follow the new account.
Anyway: this means that you depend on your old profile and server to work at that moment. If the server completely vanishes or if you’re banned by the admin for whatever reason you can’t set that redirect information.
By the way it’s worthwhile to consider that in the case of Bluesky at least right now the whole portability of profiles is depending on some kind of centralized Meta server in the background that manages the identities. Bluesky claims that this won’t be necessary in the future, but right now it does afaik still work like this.
Bluesky uses “AT protocol”, not ActivityPub. Ironically the former is trying to federate as well, but still it’s a different protocol altogether (so it would federate within its own network, as in people could start up their own Bluesky instance). Despite that, some people tried building a bridge between ActivityPub and AT, but there was enormous pushback, driven in part by ideological differences between more serious Mastodon users and the more casual X/Twitter style user (picture a Reddit mod, now halve their IQ, and I’m just joking bc I’ve never had a Twitter account so I don’t truly know what that filth is like to have to wallow in:-). Anyway, MBin is able to connect Mastodon to Lemmy bc they both use the ActivityPub protocol, but AT is a different protocol.
A lot of things allow you to export your settings, but nothing that I’ve heard of allows you to import your posts and such - and therefore truly migrate - your account from one place to another. Therefore the whole federated concept has been oversold - as in, “if you don’t like a place you can leave it and go somewhere else”, the same as anything else in the entire history of space and time (divorce, immigration, quitting your job, etc.). But if you do, then you lose everything - all of your follower base, which for like an author is impactful to their actual career. Hence why so many are so reluctant to leave X, despite the Musk having taken over (and the smell permeating the place now, to where most of their followers are gone as well).
It’s the same reason why “everyone still uses Windows” (I don’t): herd mentality, and also, like using Querty (that one I do), holding onto the past bc of not wanting to pay the price to have to switch.
As I understand it, Mastodon doesn’t federate like Lemmy/K-Mbin does (and Sublinks & Piefed too!), where in order to follow someone you need to be on the same instance? Or something? Anyway Mastodon needs some work before it could be a viable replacement.
Edit: I did not phrase this well at all. Oh well, it led to an interesting discussion so I’ll leave it here for posterity, but it’s incorrect. I think the only correct part of the above is that if you try to leave a Mastodon instance, then like a Lemmy one, you can’t really take your account with you (only your settings, but people who followed you before will have to now follow you again in the new location, it does not automatically transfer). So it “federates” but it’s not “freely transferable” as people were over-selling it to be.
there are 2 sides to the AP-connected fediverse… microblogging (tweets/mastodon) and the threadiverse (federated forums/lemmy). mastodon is 100% microblog. lemmy is 100% threadiverse.
mbin is both.
i can easily follow/be followed by mastodon, universodeon, etc as well as fully participate with lemmy.
Thank you for the explanation!:-)
But can someone follow you from a different Mastodon instance than the one you are currently on? Or was that something that changed in the last year? Maybe I misunderstood or it wasn’t explained to me well, but I definitely get that people don’t want to switch instances bc they will lose all their old followers, but is that the main impediment to people using Mastodon - they just don’t want to switch to using it? If so, it’s enough, bc as we have seen, these large entities like Twitter are a lot more fragile than people used to believe.
mastodon is a federating micrblog platform… so anyone on any other instance of any kind that also speaks AP/microblog can interoperate. instance is just an address.
the main thing keeping people from leaving twitter are their own egos. as you point out, ‘ive got x followers! ill have none in the fediverse!’
Hehe, I’ve switched between at least three different Fediverse accounts since leaving Reddit, but okay sure if that’s how they want to interact with the world…
Tbf it does point to the more fundamental differences between the platforms, with like anonymous shitposting on the Fediverse (which is like 90% Star Trek and Linux memes:-P) vs. tech or other topical blogging on Mastodon where their actual irl names mean something (e.g. I would be inclined to read something from Robert Reich, but Alex Jones not so much).
And the funny part is that, according to that article I linked in another comment in this thread, their followers are already leaving, now that Twitter has morphed into X (just like advertisers, hey-oh!). They aren’t even necessary going elsewhere, so much as simply leaving, and waiting for something to solidify.
So, much like all the people on Reddit that self-report now as being shocked - shocked I tell you, shooketh! ⚡ - that the platform is feeding them crap that they don’t want to see (but which the algorithm demands that they view - all hail The Algorithm, forever may it reign 😭), the time to be bold and jump somewhere else was when Musk took over and people could have made a coordinated exit strategy. Or maybe if enough people got (ahem 💵 “involved” 💰 i.e. 🤑 enough to affect the market) they could even have ousted him as CEO entirely and saved Twitter to be bought by someone else. Anyway, the second best time is now, before their followers never log back in to that advertisement-infested cesspool of human garbage again, in order to see their messages about where they have decided to jump ship too.
Like fascist governments all around the globe, WE the people gave these demons the power that they hold over us.
I love Lemmy. But the thing I miss most about Reddit is being able to connect with ppl who have deep obscure knowledge about specific things. That will come as Lemmy grows.
Definitely it will but I don’t expect it to happen soon. Social media has turned fairly toxic, and now that people have been saturated with those bad experiences, many people have simply moved on. Some to offline, some to far more obscure rather than centralized spaces, some even are dead of COVID, or lost or are stressed about keeping their jobs in Big Tech, etc. A new generation will rise up to replace them and those likely will use a federated source, or they may turn away from “social media” altogether and use more like wiki writing or even micro-blogging.
What people choose to not understand is that while they are free to do whatever they wish, so too are other people - e.g. a community mod removing their post, an instance admin banning them altogether, or even simply someone else leaving the room when all the kids shout and make too much noise.
Lemmy requires heavy and constant curation, and a thick skin during that never-ending process, to be usable. Not everyone is willing to do that, especially people who are perfectly happy to entertain themselves in other pursuits. Thus the most capable people are the least likely to put up with our crap.
Hopefully I’m wrong, or at least just wrong enough that that aspect of the Fediverse still grows despite that counter trend.
Lastly, there is hope for improvements on the technology side - e.g. if you could see someone who is consistently downvoting you even for solid quality stuff, that’s someone you can block to reduce that negative “noise” feedback, except right now the voting is essentially anonymous since there is no way off a non-instance admin to view it (outside of K/Mbin, I mean like even on those platforms iirc I’ve tested and you can only view those originating from another K/Mbin instance, at the time, again iirc). When things become more equitable in that regard, it should entice more people to remain.
It is actually easy to participate in Lemmy from Mastodon. Federated community are represented as user. When someone write on the community, they appears as the author on Mastodon while the community boost the post. This way a Mastodon user can follow acommunity. By mentioning the name of community in a post that is not an answer to another post, their write post on the Lemmy community. The next post in the Mastodon thread will be treated by Lemmy as comment.
The problem is more in sharing comments. After one or two level of comment it is becoming very buggy. For the rest, it works very well.
@pseudo
And here I am, participating in a Lemmy thread from my Mastodon account.
@originalucifer @memes
cool!
Hello from Mastodon
Cool! Consider the receipts delivered, and with my thanks for the gentle correction:-D.
Nice name and profil picture.
Thanks! 😁
even your correction is wrong lol. you can move accounts on mastodon taking all your followers and follows with you, just not your toots.
Incorrect. It’s just a different kind of platform. There’s no really simple way to make a twitter-like site and a forum site mesh fluidly, but Mastodon users can see Lemmy posts and comments and like and reply to them, and I believe even post. Lemmy users can interact when Mastodon users come into Lemmy but are limited in discovering other Mastodon content.
Yes, they can post. They only need to make sure the community IS federated to there instance and then mention it in the toot that is the first of its thread.
It’s possible to leave a redirect information on the old profile. Normally all your followers are informed about this and automatically follow the new account.
Anyway: this means that you depend on your old profile and server to work at that moment. If the server completely vanishes or if you’re banned by the admin for whatever reason you can’t set that redirect information.
By the way it’s worthwhile to consider that in the case of Bluesky at least right now the whole portability of profiles is depending on some kind of centralized Meta server in the background that manages the identities. Bluesky claims that this won’t be necessary in the future, but right now it does afaik still work like this.
If you migrate, people will automatically follow you on the new account, I’ve done it cca month ago.
I’ve been able to follow people from different instances no problem.
I thought Blue Sky wasn’t based on ActivityPub at all. Isn’t a different implementation better than no implementation?
Bluesky uses “AT protocol”, not ActivityPub. Ironically the former is trying to federate as well, but still it’s a different protocol altogether (so it would federate within its own network, as in people could start up their own Bluesky instance). Despite that, some people tried building a bridge between ActivityPub and AT, but there was enormous pushback, driven in part by ideological differences between more serious Mastodon users and the more casual X/Twitter style user (picture a Reddit mod, now halve their IQ, and I’m just joking bc I’ve never had a Twitter account so I don’t truly know what that filth is like to have to wallow in:-). Anyway, MBin is able to connect Mastodon to Lemmy bc they both use the ActivityPub protocol, but AT is a different protocol.
A lot of things allow you to export your settings, but nothing that I’ve heard of allows you to import your posts and such - and therefore truly migrate - your account from one place to another. Therefore the whole federated concept has been oversold - as in, “if you don’t like a place you can leave it and go somewhere else”, the same as anything else in the entire history of space and time (divorce, immigration, quitting your job, etc.). But if you do, then you lose everything - all of your follower base, which for like an author is impactful to their actual career. Hence why so many are so reluctant to leave X, despite the Musk having taken over (and the smell permeating the place now, to where most of their followers are gone as well).
It’s the same reason why “everyone still uses Windows” (I don’t): herd mentality, and also, like using Querty (that one I do), holding onto the past bc of not wanting to pay the price to have to switch.
Bluesky does their own thing: https://atproto.com/