I‘m not sure if this is the right place to ask this, please excuse if it’s not. As many people rn, I’m new to Lemmy and that’s my first venture into the Fediverse at all. Lemmy is sometimes regarded as an alternative to Reddit (hope this phrasing doesn’t offend anyone here, you know what I mean😅), like Mastodon is to Twitter. I’ve also heard about Kbin but tbh I haven’t looked into that at all so I have no idea what it is about. Also, I read in some comments, that they’re all interconnected the same way different Lemmy instances are. So you have people reading Lemmy content on Mastodon, people reading Kbin content on Lemmy etc. That’s where my confusion comes in: What’s the difference in these types of services then? Is there a reason why I would want create an account on a mastodon instance, if I have a Lemmy account already? (Other than the „I don’t like what the instance I’m currently registered at is doing, so I’m moving somewhere else“, but that could be another Lemmy instance ofc). What is the benefit of switching between/having multiple accounts on these types of platforms? Thank you!
It’s pretty much the same as with email. If you create an account at Mastodon, you are user@mastodon. If Mastodon goes down, that account is gone. If Mastodon gets sketchy, spams, posts NSFWs, etc. it might get blocked by other hosts and your account won’t be able to participate on other server.
If you just use throwaway accounts, it doesn’t matter, just create one on each host. If you want a permanent account, either create it on one of the bigger servers or in a community you trust and expect to survive for a long time.
Accounts also only work on the server they were created. While you can post with your feddit account on lemmy.world, you have to do so on feddit, you can’t login on lemmy.world with your feddit account.
The idea of making accounts transferable has been around, but so far isn’t possible:
I hope that the whole Fediverse can switch to crypto identities (as in GnuPG, no need for blockchain) sooner or later, it would make this whole thing way more robust and easier to truly decentralize. What we have right now is not much different from lots of individual websites with a little bit interconnection for easier discovery.
This is a really good explanation, I don’t know if there is an FAQ or something, but this should definitely be in one.
Question is for most of us, how do we know which servers we can trust? I think I lucked out here and on Mastodon, great hosts on both.
No way to tell in the long run. The pragmatic way is to simply go with whatever server hosts most of the communities you participate in, as when that server runs into issues things have to move around anyway.
Though in the end, I don’t think there is a way around multi-accounting, see lemmy.ml, the biggest instance there is and it was down for the majority of the blackout.
Thanks for your response! It’s a very good explanation of the concept of federation, although that wasn’t what I meant. I get why switching between instances of a certain platform (like Lemmy) can make sense, for the reasons you mentioned. But not what the differences are between having an account on Lemmy vs. Mastodon for example, if they’re interconnected.
Even the different service still operate on the same underlying protocol and can communicate with each other. But due to the different ways they display their information messages from one service might not make a lot of sense when viewed on another service, e.g. here is your account viewed from mastodon.social:
The primary reason to have an account with Lemmy, Kbin, or Mastodon as opposed to each other really just comes down to UI preference more than anything else. Which design feels the most clean to you. What special features have the devs built into the platform. That’s really it. Though it’s also worth mentioning that they’re emulating different types of social media. Lemmy and Kbin are emulating the same type - the forum style we recognize from Reddit. Mastodon is emulating the Twitter “microblog” type of social media. Frendica is emulating Facebook. PeerTube is emulating video sharing services like YouTube and so on. So reading Mastodon data in Lemmy would be like trying to read tweets as Reddit threads. It doesn’t transfer very well. As far as I’ve heard, Kbin is trying to create a better way of reading Mastodon style data within their platform. In the long term I’m willing to bet many of these platforms will implement similar cross-functionality for the different “versions” of social media.
I think kbin also has the microblog thingy
Thats exactly the answer I was looking for, thank you!
For me it’s trust. Do I trust the hosts of lemmy.world to host my data? Do I trust they behave responsibly in their domain so that they one day aren’t blocked from other large instances? Can I invest my data in this instance and build my internet points within their service? What happens if all my points are lost because they get hacked or one day just close down? Gathering internet points is hard work and it has a lot of benefits. As you might have noticed, some people are considering selling their 10 year old Reddit accounts to spam bot farms. They will pay good money for a credible and old account.
Our world is changing. Having a job in the traditional way is just one way to create value. Picking the right instance might one day be like picking an employer. What values do you want to build? Who do you want to invest your time and energy into?
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