How familiar were you with the Fediverse before coming here?
Before the whole Reddit migration I was passively aware of the Fediverse, I thought I somewhat grasped the concept, and had created a Mastodon account, but never really used it.
But once the migration started, I decided to try out Kbin, and really liked it, and even started to use Mastodon more often.
Heard about Diaspora around 2010s. Knew Mastodon probably before 2022 (when there were only two Polish instances, 101010.pl and a left-wing one, remade later into more mainstream pol.social), @Vivaldi brought me here as they integrated Mastodon with their web browser. However, @74 is actually my first fedi account. Learnt about /kbin and made an account there in 2023, when it consisted only of 2 Polish servers, karab.in (flagship) and another one. My account here, on kbin.social exists since 8 of May 2023.
Such stories make me think that this is a reason that nobody hear about it for almost 2 decades. Unintuitive, difficult. I've been working in tech for a while and I don't understand it. So please someone figures out how to make UX smooth so that my grandparents can start using it.
@hvitis
The concept of the Fediverse in one sentence: a series of tubes, urm,... a bunch of interoperable websites - that means, that these sites can talk to each other and their users can seamlessy access remote content.
The Fediverse is actually explorable in (as I would call it) two modes: a silo mode and a surfer mode. The silo mode is what you are already experiencing on commercial social media, as Facebook, Twitter, Wykop, Reddit, etc.. "Everything" in a one app/site. Here, sites are relatively small, but interoperability helps find remote content, sort of. In a silo mode this discovery is limited to what your instance neighbours are following, and to any boosts of local or followed accounts. The surfer mode is simply surfing the Web and finding new content outside your instance. The UX problem in surfer mode is a convoluted way to interact with content found that way. You have to copy that post URL, and paste it into your instance's search and hope it would fetch it, and then only to interact. Web browser addons, which automate the process of fetching the content to server of your choice already exist, but this feature should actually be built in into browsers (addons don't really exist on mobile)
Yes, this is a feature request - for Fediverse companion feature - for both @Vivaldi and @mozilla 's Firefox
I joined Mastodon a couple of times in 2018 but could never make it stick. Coincidentally rejoined last year just before the Twitter implosion, and maybe it was all the new people I was able to start using it in a way that made sense to me and rather enjoyed it, despite not using Twitter.
As soon as the writing was on the wall about the API changes, I created an account on Lemmy and here. That was end of May and the big migration happened end of June.
So tl;dr, I've been aware of it since 2018, but didn't actually start using it until end of 2022.
For the last year or so I’ve been using a private PeerTube instance I run to host videos my kids like to make and share with their friends/family. It isn’t federated for privacy reasons.
Had a Mastodon account years ago (whenever the radical.town instance was a thing). But I never used it because I never used Twitter either. Made an account recently on an instance for music that I’ll actually use - was reminded by all the Twitter stuff. Likewise, I joined kbin and Lemmy to check them out when everyone else did during all the Reddit commotion.
I had a general idea of the Fediverse, how it worked, and some of the platforms on it (Mastodon, Friendica, etc), but never really got into it til earlier this year, as I just never really had a reason.
Pretty similar to you: Had heard about Mastodon when Twitter started imploding and made an account over there. But didn’t really get it and I never really used Twitter anyways so I wasn’t too interested in figuring it out.
Then when the APIpocalylse kicked off I came and checked out Lemmy and learned more about the Fediverse. When I found the Memmy app and more people started coming here it really felt like this was taking off, and I’m excited to see that momentum continuing. I haven’t opened Reddit since Apollo died, and this is now filling that void in my online diet.
Same here for me, when Apollo declared it would stop support I completely dropped reddit and started on Lemmy. Initially the web app for Lemmy was a bit rough for me to use but then I found Memmy and have been here since!
Personally I was vaguely aware of Mastodon when it first started being talked about as a Twitter competitor. But I didn’t really “get it”, I thought it was Twitter with added email functionality or something.
Wasn’t until spez shattered reddits remaining anti-troll defenses that I started actually doing some research, and finding out Mastodon actually does not have email functionality. Something completely different from that, actually.
Used Mastodon for a bit a few years ago, but it wasn’t popular enough so I didn’t get much out of it at the time. Now, I basically prefer Mastodon and Calckey to Twitter, unless I want to see what my Twitter mutuals are doing, most of which are artists.
@Kara had a Mastodon account since 2018, but I didn't use it that much at first. I've been understanding fedi more and more since then, and got increasingly integrated in it. I started using Mastodon almost exclusively over Twitter about a year and a half or two ago? made my first Lemmy account in May 2021 but still stuck to Reddit, and now here I am, pretty much Twitter- and Reddit-free.
i’d used mastodon.social briefly after the tumblr porn ban but then switched back when it turned out to be not that big a deal. not to mention i really didn’t understand the concept of different servers or how federating/defederating worked. i floundered for a couple of days before i came across my current setup. calckey account which i look at rarely and an account on a small lemmy server for stability purposes.
Knew nothing, still don’t know a lot and had a hell of a time signing up but it seems to be getting better and growing. I’m trying to be more active to help out with growth but I’m not that guy.
I didn’t know anything about it, and I still pretty much don’t know anything about it. In my super hazy interpretation, it sounds like it pretty much means there are a bunch of spaces that work standalone but it’s possible to access one from another without having to sign up or anything to the other. Or something. I’ll probably look into it someday but for now I’m just happy to have it.
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