Blahaj zone (the Calckey instance) has been running for around 6 months now. We've had a slow but constant growth of new members, with a big spike when Calckey drew a lot of attention. And as a result, even though we're not a huge instance, we are one of the larger Calckey derived instances around.
lemmy.blahaj.zone on the other hand has seen crazy growth! In the last week, our lemmy instance has gone from almost no members, to nearly as many users as our Calckey instance. The mind blowing part though, is that the lemmy instance isn't even close to being one of the largest lemmy instances. We don't even appear on the first page of Fediverse Observer! And the sheer number of lemmy instances online now is huge compared to where it was a couple of weeks ago.
And that's before we even talk about kbin and the threadiverse as a whole, of which Lemmy is only a part
I can honestly say that this whole thing has shifted my view of just what the future of the fediverse might be. I assumed it would always be microblogging centric, but now, I question that...
Is there something here about the intersecting dynamics between platforms and communities? Like, if the needs/desires of a community lead to alternative platform choices, does that community have more of a chance of thriving in an ecosystem with less of a dominant platform and central instance? Even though the "threadiverse" is basically #lemmy + #kbin, they're not at all dominant on the fediverse, and so most probably know about other things like mastodon etc, while how many mastodon users know about anything else?
I think there's interesting questions about whether "thrediverse" platforms (those more like forums/reddit than twitter, IE, the start with conversation threads rather than following users) are a better fit on the fediverse.
For one, there's the engagement problem. Arguably it's easier to find people when spaces based on interests are the essential structure.
Second, I wonder if it smooths over federation issues better by "chunking" what's seen and visible at a larger scale, that is at the community/sub-reddit/group level. I don't actually know how true this is technically, but I would imagine that once you follow a community/magazine on lemmy/kbin, you and your instance see everything from that community, not just some arbitrary sub-sample of replies like with microblogging.
Third, given the above, it maybe allows one to be more accurate when they say "it doesn't matter what instance you join"
Fourth ... there's a counter dynamic here which is that a community/group requires a certain threshold of activity to be compelling, which can be tough to get off of the ground. This is where /kbin is interesting as it fuses both microblogging and "threading" ... which IMO is the master format for a platform ATM.
Even though the "threadiverse" is basically #lemmy + #kbin, they're not at all dominyant on the fediverse
This is the part that I believe might change. I've seen several people effectively move from micro blogging to the threadiverse, as well as many people who never used twitter, and who are experiencing the fediverse for the first time through kbin or lemmy.
Combine that with the crazy growth of those spaces even before reddit shuts down the APIs makes me wonder if micro blogging might end up being "one of the features" rather than the default feature.> I don't actually know how true this is technically, but I would imagine that once you follow a community/magazine on lemmy/kbin, you and your instance see everything from that community, not just some arbitrary sub-sample of replies like with microblogging.
Bingo! And due to the dedicated interface, you're not trying to find a reply from amongst a timeline, but you instead have a sorted listed of threads, with the whole context right there at a click. It makes it much easier to drop in to a conversation that happened when you were asleep etc.
It's not as personal, so it doesn't give you the same "connecting with friends/audience" feeling that microblogging does, but by the same token, that makes it easier to drop in and out of without any existing history or connection to the space. > This is where /kbin is interesting as it fuses both microblogging and "threading" ... which IMO is the master format for a platform ATM
I agree! That is a killer feature. I am hoping that there is a way of changing the interface on the microblog posts to thread them in with the main posts, rather than hiding them away on a distinct tab, but either way, having both options there is fantastic! That is the killer feature of kbin, and also the reason that some people have been able to leave dedicated microblogging platforms in favour of kbin
So, I’ve been through a few of these tectonic plate shifts in my life on the internet, and I know that there will be others older than me with even more experience or alternate experiences along similar themes.
I am not even kind of an early adopter online. I tend to find something I’m comfortable with and stick with it for quite some time, and it takes a number of “throwing my hands up in disgust” events to get me to consider a change. From my own timeline of use, it was AOL as the “front page of the internet”, followed by 4chan for a very short while, followed by Digg, followed by reddit, and now it’s starting to feel like we’re on the brink of another plate shift. Is this something on that sort of scale? No idea. It would take someone with a far keener eye for these things to tell you for sure, but I can confidently say that if someone like me is here, then I’m certainly not the only one, and that means something’s up.
Make of all of that what you will, but it’s going to be increasingly interesting to see where this goes in both the short and the long term.
I'm the exact same way, and in all my time online this has seemed like the most likely event to topple Reddit. The exclusion of third party apps is the most tangible change to the average user, so unless Reddit can match Apollo or RiF in quality (or close enough for now), I think a lot of people are going to be leaving the platform on July 1st.
Time will tell though. I see a lot of talk about leaving Reddit but so far most of my subs haven't made an effort to migrate over. This could be the next "Voat migration" and just as easily fade away.
@ada did you have to do anything special to make this cross-post work -- like are you following the lemmy community from this account or something like that? or can anybody just tag the community and it posts there?
@jdp23 So, with Lemmy specifically (I'm not sure about kbin yet, as I haven't tested it), you just tag the community, and it posts directly to the community.
The only real consideration is that lemmy expects a subject line, so if you're posting from software that doesn't use a subject line, it will use the first sentence of your post as the subject instead. Which is why my post began with a snappy single line sentence :)
@dannekrose@ada@jdp23 I am also trying out how to federate content to kbin and haven't quite figured it out yet.
I created a post here in Mastodon and tagged the magazine "kbin":
metalhead.club/@caos/110508357…
However, the post does not appear in this magazine (as I knew it from Lemmy when a community is tagged).
But then I happened to see that it appears in the microblogging section of the magazine "Fediverse": kbin.social/m/fediverse/p/4021…
Does this have something to do with the keywords that it was automatically assigned to this magazine?
There is also a test magazine. More questions of this kind could be tested there: kbin.social/m/test
@caos@ada@jdp23 I’m still trying to figure some things out, too but I can say a few things.
Kbin threads are not notes like what Mastodon used to federate its posts out. I know that a Kbin article is of ActivityPub type “Page” instead of “Note.” So most microblogging posts will not be of a type that kbin uses when it creates a thread (article, link, image, or video). Posts are of the same type as Mastodon’s posts and will show in the microblogging section of a magazine.
Thus, right now, from Mastodon or other microblogging platforms, it’s not possible to create a “thread” but only a microblogging post.
As for routing to a magazine for remote content, I suspect there is an order of precedence for “new” content federated into kbin. That order uses hashtags as well as tagged magazines so I suggest trying without hashtags but tagging a magazine. Also, kbin tags accounts at the end of posts so that may affect the order of precedence when making routing decisions into a magazine.
@ada@jdp23 One small note: kbin doesn’t support authorized fetch yet so if your instance requires that, it won’t process it. I just a did few quick tests between Calckey and kbin from an account that was following a magazine and also with a magazine that it wasn’t following. It created microblog posts as long as I had disabled Secure Fetch in Calckey.
Thanks @dannekrose@ada ! It's really too bad that so much stuff doeesn't work with Authorized Fetch.
So anybody can just tag a community? On the one hand, yay federation, and I know that's how it works with Guppe groups. On the other hand ... what could possibly go wrong? 😁
@jdp23@ada Oh, and one more thing. As best as I can tell, one difference is that kbin does not auto-boost new content to all followers. So even if someone does decide to spam the group, it would only be visible to that person's direct followers (as any post) and to users with kbin accounts (and probably lemmy, too) subscribed to the group when they go to look at the microblog posts in the given magazine on their instance.
@dannekrose@jdp23 As far as I can tell, the microblog section of a kbin magazine is very similar to a Calckey antenna. It doesn't boost anything, but simply scrapes and collates content that it finds that matches the key words set by the magazine admin.
lemmy.ml is overloaded with new users, it's great that you didn't register there. You can still talk on this and other communities that are homed on lemmy.ml from your account on lemmy.one. Welcome aboard.
Nope! You can browse, comment, post, and vote on almost any other lemmy site. That's the beauty of federation.
If you're trying to go to a community but it's not showing up on lemmy.one, copy the full URL of the community and put it in the search bar. That will get the server to "discover" that community. Then try again.
Not at all! Basically, the difference is mostly that each instance has their own rules and expectations of their users. As long as you end up on an instance that aligns with what you want from an instance, then you'll be fine :)
@XLRV The Fediverse really took off in November when twitter jumped the shark. It's been around for many years longer than that, but the twitter influx really changed the shape of the community. And now the reddit influx is doing the same thing again
Yeah, I wasn't interested in Twitter, I've heard about Mastodon and the Fediverse, but the Reddit situation is what made me jump into it. I loved the Reddit format so Lemmy was a simple choice.
I hope you won't be too overwhelmed with the current boom of the Fediverse.
@maegul@XLRV Heh. I'm super dry with my humour, and often quite sarcastic, yet for someone reason, I invariably fail to identify it when I see others do it :)
Same, I've always wanted something community-powered to take off and finally actually draw users away from the corporate owned garbage, but it never happened. Now that the corporate platforms all decided to shoot their feet in unison, we're finally seeing some adoption of more user-friendly platforms and I'm loving it.
Yeah, that's why I'm a fan of free software, it's a collaborative effort to create and improve software for the community, that doesn't treat it's users like a product to be exploited. It's a noble cause. Corps like to attract user making a "good" product and when big enough, they switch to predatorial tactics to squeeze dry their userbase.
100% agree. Free and open software is free because the developers are also the users, the goal is to collectively produce something that is as good as it can be for the user. Proprietary software is created by a company and targeted at users who are not the developers, the developers usually have little to no stake in the usefulness of the software, it's just a means to an end. That end is always money, so exploiting the user becomes the goal.
True, when the dev is also the user, the software is made to satisfy both, and its sad for the devs that works in corporate too, because most of them want to make the best product too, but the higher-ups are the ones choosing what anti-customer shit they have to implement, and they often have to crunch too.
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