People need to realize you can use alternatives
I created my own server…
True, Federation is a key part in decentralization
Lemmy.fmhy.ml was the easiest one to join I found and suites my interests nicely
This is something that lemmy devs need to better address. This is an “Eternal September” kind of situation. People (me included) are not used to the fediverse. They think you can participate only if you’re in that instance. And people want content, so they think "why’s the instance with most people? Ahh lemmy.ml? Cool, let’s join.
yeah. i think the other problem is that people don’t know if the instance would be good performance wise. i.e. i joined lemmy.ml because it was the one i found first.
A good way to handle it would be to have an instance list. with number of users vs maximum users. like joining a server in a video game. if i see its super full, i’ll pick another server. of course, we’d need some large banners to make sure people know they won’t be missing out on other instances.
As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.
This is something I also find strange. If I click a link to an instance, I want to view their content and not visit their homepage, where I am not logged in and cannot do anything.
I agree with you
I think this occurs because people haven’t gotten used to linking to communities on other instances properly.
They usually post the direct link like beehaw.org/c/technology . Instead they should start using the federated link which is more instance agnostic like this: /c/technology@beehaw.org . This link will load the community from your instance.
FWIW, on a browser the /c/technology link you posted isn’t a hyperlink, so I can’t actually interact with it. It doesn’t work in mlem either.
Yeah. A shorter-term solution might be a browser plugin that recognizes links like that and converts it to a hyperlink to that community on whatever instance you tell it. I’m not a programmer but that does seem like a relatively simple plugin for somebody that actually knows what they’re doing.
assuming the servers are properly federated you should be getting a link that is still on your server. i mean, you got to this lemmy.ml link alright at least
wait, i think i get what you mean, like if you get an external link while not browsing on your instance? you should just be able to paste that link into the search function to find your instance’s version of the post
Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)
links that you find while browsing on reddthat.com will send you to other instances? that’s super odd, I’m not getting that behavior with midwest.social or lemmy.ml, using mobile or desktop firefox. just pasting the links into the search to find your instance’s version of the post is a bit of a janky workaround but it should work. you might try posting in https://reddthat.com/c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.
I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like !memes@lemmy.ml . Maybe this is the intended behavior.
The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.
Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…
You can subscribe to those communities on your instance, and then interact with them.
From my instance, I’ve been crossing to other instances fine to post, upvote, etc.
Can you elaborate on your experience a bit more? I can’t say I have had any issues as you’ve described. If something doesn’t look right, or isn’t working the way you expect, it might actually be a bug.
Lemmy.world gang
We dem boiissss
It’s my mans and them!
They need to do away with the ridiculous manual approval process on most servers and recommend servers that forego it on the main site.
Beehaw seems pretty dope
They actually defederated with lemmy.world due to spam, kindof sucks, as users will miss out on communities on lemmy.world, lots of which were not spam.
First I created account there and then landed on my current instance, because lemmy.ml’s admin views looks sketchy for me. Been living in ex-ussr for all my life I just cant accept all that communists and marxists and the fact that lemmy.ml has /c/Communism on it.
I know that’s silly but that’s why I’m not there anymore.
Profit motive ruined Reddit so you’ve come to a place created by communist then get upset that the people who made and operate it are communists. Yeah that’s more than a little silly.
There’s a difference between being a communist and blindly supporting authoritarian dictatorships wearing communist masks.
I’ve not really looked into it too deeply because every single mile-long screed about this “controversy” starts off by clutching pearls about communists. Can you link me to where this is happening without paragraphs of dissembling preamble?
This is the lead dev on Russia’s invasion, total support here and other comments:
A few months later, they’ve apparently flipped on the issue entirely and now support US aid:
I’m not very concerned with the “communist” or tankie part fwiw. And while I do have strong opinions on Russia’s invasion, I’m far more concerned with the 180 shift in position displayed here, and I have yet to find an explanation. I don’t think he wants to talk about it, but a quick “I changed my mind because xyz” could alleviate my concerns. Clear communication is important if you’re gonna have such strong opinions imo.
I’m not trying to villainize him or cancel lemmy, he seems like a decent person and we’ve even had a brief interaction here… But I hope you can see why I’m cautious about things. The whiplash is my main issue, not which side he picks.
And I’m not here to stir the pot, it’s just that you specifically asked and I had already personally looked into things.
Mods: I won’t be spamming this, just wanted to put it out there once.
However… if the platform prospers and attracts enough other devs, none of this even remotely matters, and that’s why I’m still here, I want to believe this can be set aside.
tbf people just wanna sign up and click on funny links, not browse through 100 rando instances to find the one that lines up with their exact interests and wait for approval and worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year
I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.
I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.
Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it’s subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.
I like how Beehaw is doing it. Slowly introducing new servers as there is demand for it.
I also like the beehaw has a mission for community in mind, supported by having an application process; and their having prepared umbrella communities that will prevent echo chambers.
Beehaw is definitely getting hammered too though; it’s probably the second- or third-largest instance atm.
Beehaw is most definitely an echo chamber.
Let me see if I underatand this correctly:
If I create an account on a random, small instance. And then go to the “all communities” feed. I can automatically see all communities that are in my instance. In addition to that, I can see all communities of other Lemmy instances, that are “federated”. But I cannot see other communities from other nstances, unless I go on there, find the communitis and manually subscribe to them (I believe there are other ways to get them to show up, like using the search etc.?)
So, as a normal user. Who’s just looking for a replacement for /r/all, wouldn’t joining the largest lemmy instance that is fedarated to many others (Just by how many users it has, because it’s the users who link instances by their actions?) make perfect sense?
The all communities tab should be showing you communities from every instance you are federated with. It’s true that they won’t show up in your feed until someone on your instance connects to the instance it’s on at least once, but you don’t need to be on a massive server to be connected to all the major communities right from the start.
This. There’s no need to join the biggest instance, as long as you’re not among an instance’s first users you won’t notice much difference.
Tell those instances to stop censoring other instances and it’ll be ok.
So much this. If you want to bring up federated community as a selling point you should also tell the user if your instance block any other instance.
It’s at the top of the list on join-lemmy.org’s popular server list, next to lemmy.world and beehaw.org, of course new users will sign up on the more popular ones. Plus, a few posts on reddit called out these three which set everything in motion.
Once folks start to understand how it works, they might start to sign up on other ones, for a “cooler handle @ address” for their user, or register a domain and start their own instance like I did.
Anyway, welcome aboard, right?
I joined one that won’t curate what I can and can’t see. Or ban me because they wanted to.
Yes
Hello from lemmy.world! Don’t come here, I think it’s starting to get overloaded too. Lemmy.one looks like it may be in a good “growing but not snowballing yet” position, go over there and get that ball rolling.
