All these “fediverse browsers”, like Lemmy and Kbin, are commonly referred to as fediverse software. (extra info: Wikipedia calls Lemmy, Kbin, and similar answers-type or Threads-type software as “Link-aggregators”.)
There is no “Mastodon network”. There is no “mastoverse”. There is no “threadiverse”. There is no “Threadinet”, or whichever -verse / -network people are coming up with.
Any software that is using the ActivityPub protocol is part of the “Fediverse network”. Just like how any software that uses the HTTProtocol is part of the Web.
That clear so far?
Now, we go to your question.
Q: I moved to lemmy.world and have noticed that lemmy.ml has been popping up as another featured instance. What differs from lemmy.world vs lemmy.ml? Is .ml more active?
lemmy.world and lemmy.ml are called instances (the terminology used to refer to a fediverse server/service). These two are only two out of many fediverse instances available. In paritcular, these two instances are only two out of probably a hundred Lemmy-based instances available.
What differs between the two? As far as features and functionalities go, none. Since these two Lemmy-based instances are using the same software, they have the same set of features. The only difference would be if one instance fell behind in Lemmy version upgrades.
Since lemmy.ml is one of two flaship servers of the Lemmy software project, naturally it will get the bulk of registrations and content.
For example, before the Reddit Migration, there were already existing communities for many similar Subreddits, and many of those are in lemmy.ml and are very active. So, when Subreddits started to migrate, some chose lemmy.world and other lemmy instances. Which allowed lemmy.world to catch up with the number of users and number of active communities that lemmy.ml already have. AND, some of these are about the same topics/fandom.
Fediverse-Serie: ActivityPub bei WordPress - einen Blog in ein soziales Netzwerk bringen
Das Plugin implementiert das ActivityPub-Protokoll in einen Word-Press-Blog, was bedeutet, dass Blogbeiträge im Fediverse verfolgt werden können. Darüber hinaus werden Antworten aus dem Fediverse automatisch zu Kommentaren im Blogbeitrag.
Tech Press don’t understand the #Fediverse, so how can they understand its growth?
To hear them talk, most of them believe that #Mastodon and the Fediverse are one and the the same. Some of them go so far as to call the Fediverse the “Mastodon network”.
Which means that they don’t have a clue about what the Fediverse entails, nor how it has grown.
Case in point: between Jan-May 2023, #Misskey and its forks grew by 300,000 accounts. No one in the Tech Press reported this.
Okay, perhaps they didn’t know because the bulk of growth happened in Japan. But still, this is fairly important to know since Misskey is now responsible for generating the bulk of Fediverse content. Even so, Tech Press think the Fediverse is about Mastodon.
And now, #Lemmy and #Kbin are experiencing lots of growth, with both collectively gaining 100,000 users in a week. This is quite a noteworthy event since the #RedditMigration is part and parcel of dissension on #Reddit – a pretty major Big Social platform.
Does the Tech Media report on this? Nope. But again, that’s because they don’t understand the Fediverse nor what it entails.
Then Meta signal that a new project they’re making, #P92 (a.k.a., #Barcelona), will be joining the Fediverse. There’s even screenshots that show this app interacting with remote Fediverse servers.
But instead of reporting about how this will affect the existing Fediverse, press such as the #BBC say this is an altogether different social network than Mastodon.
That’s right! Tech Press don’t even realize P92 will be joining the Fediverse – a social network that already exists!
Is this all ridiculous? Yes.
But this is why we have to be forthright about what the Fediverse is, what it entails, and why it all matters.
I'm not familiar with most of the other "things" like #Pleroma, #Akkoma, #MissKey, or #CalcKey, but I'll guess that those "things" (?server application projects?) are using a different sub-set of #ActivityPub protocol to service a different set of use case foci?
Different use cases might have different focus, such as microblogging (#Mastodon) or bulletin boarding (#kbin subbing for #reddit) or video streaming (#PeerTube subbing for #Youtube) or other use subset of social function?
In analogy to your last paragraph, if something doesn't work well on the Safari implementation of #HTTPS, it's Safari's problem.
Thank you for your thorough answer. While I personally don't know about a lot of the examples you provide, it made me think differently about how to frame questions.
It depends on how you look at it. There are thousands of fediverse servers, and there are at least a million active users in total.
Based on the context of this discussion thread/branch, those Lemmy servers mentioned would not even fall near the “dominating the network”, they are very far from dominating the fediverse network.
But, if you are referring to “Reddit-like / Stackexchange-like / Quora-lack”, then sure, those servers mentioned are “dominating” the “answers UI/UX” space. However, the fediverse doesn't work like that, and you probably won't even notice it while using any fediverse software.
In the fediverse, #Lemmy and #Kbin servers acts like a group. If you have used #Chirp and #Guppe groups (chirp.social and a.gup.pe respectively), then Lemmy and Kbin servers works similarly.
If I post to a Lemmy “community” or to a Kbin “magazine”, that post will be re-shared/boosted/re-posted to everyone who subscribed/followed that community/magazine. Anyone who replies to that post, it will be re-shared/boosted/re-posted also.
In other fediverse software, it will just appear as a regular status update thread. In Lemmy and Kbin, it will appear as a comment to a certain post.
It's the same for, say, #BookWyrm. The flagship BookWyrm server is “dominating” the “bookshelf UI/UX” space, however, outside of that, it's just another software. The only difference is that with BookWyrm, you get a shelf, track your book reading, leave reviews to a specific book, and so on.
However, everything else are the same… if you leave a comment or posts an update about the book you are reading, it is no different from using #Calckey, #Hubzilla, #Friendica#Misskey, #Rebased, #Akkoma, #Mastodon, #Pleroma, to post a new update that “I am not at page 879 of the book ‘Shaka. When the Walls Fell’.”
And as far as the fediverse is concerned, BookWyrm is far from “dominating” the network.
The below, incidentally is what happens if you don't run self-destruct when closing a fedi server.
The green line is the total number of "hey this server's dying!" pings that mastodon.bloonface.com has sent out. Total for today is about 278k. The red line is the number that have failed because the destination instances is unreachable. These are running at about 25% of total requests. On a dip sample, the servers that have failed have just gone down - simply deleted from the Internet.
If the self-destruct command had been run on all these instances, that'd be 25% off the total of about 700,000 requests, because m.b.c would already know that they're dead, and know not to ping them. I'd also have been using less disk space, since Mastodon will scrub all user and post records for dead servers once notified. I wouldn't mind so much but this is coming up to 24 hours just running these scripts and it'd almost be done by now if all these servers had shut down cleanly, and time is quite literally money here (since I can use a smaller Linode plan once m.b.c is gone, since even a Mastodon instance with nobody using it is a massive drain on disk space and system resources.)
Please, for the love of god, if you're going to decommission your Mastodon instance, whether it be because you can't afford it or you're sick of Mastodon or you're just bored... please run tootctl self-destruct (or whatever the equivalent is on #Pleroma/#Misskey/#Calckey/whatever) and wait for the Sidekiq queue to clear before doing so. It'll save everyone else a lot of aggro in the long run.
Having second thoughts about my self-hosted #Mastodon instance, it’s just too much of a resource hog for a single user / small instance on a 4 core / 4G vServer if you want to run other stuff (#writefreely is live, #pixelfed to be installed!) as well. On the other hand it is very nice that the software is stable, reliable and well designed. So either I need to move to a bigger server or decommission my self-hosted profile and look into other options for micro / macro blogging self-hosting again. I did like #gotosocial but the current version doesn’t install on my #yunohost properly. Tried #Akkoma and #Pleroma - weren’t my thing, can’t get over the design. I do like #Friendica and its possibilities but it is a bit clunky at times and I have some doubts if protocols other than the quasi standard #ActivityPub have much of a main stream future which kinda could make the additional Friendica features a little islandish. Same applies to #Hubzilla which I only start testing. Leaves #Misskey and #Calckey which could be good options but not sure about the reliability and gameplan there, I don’t want to tinker every night on my server so #Calckey probably need to become a little more stable first, #Misskey seems to have no current version on YunoHost, so need to explore other install options… Any thoughts very welcome! @fediversenews@fediversede
Trying out #Lemmy. First impressions are that it's a bit intimidating.
Much like moving from Twitter to #Mastodon, #Pleroma, #CalcKey, #Akkoma, or others, Lemmy intially appears rather sparse compared to #Reddit (or at least the instance I joined does). As with the rest of the #Fediverse, you have to seek out communities to join. However, the decentralisation of Lemmy introduces some friction there which isn't present on Reddit, and I haven't really experienced it on Mastodon either.
#lemmy seems cool and all but I really don't understand how it federates. I made an account on the #sdf instance but I can't seem to figure out how to view anything but the posts there. How can you subscribe to communities on other instances? How can I follow content with my #pleroma server?
Is any of that even possible? If not, why is it even federated at all? It's just another forum at that point.
I just read a blog post about how and why #Akkoma split from #Pleroma. What scares me is that our divisive human nature was the true culprit behind the free-speech vs FOSS debacle that caused the split. I have written on #Medium about how human nature's divisiveness is dangerous, but I would have never thought it would splinter a software dev team working on a platform for the #fediverse.
Question. If a media organisation wants to host a single-user (or perhaps a handful of own users, one per topic) instance mainly to publish to the #Fediverse (mostly #Mastodon and #Pixelfed in practice), what is then the best server software?
A full Mastodon server might be a bit overkill, is #Akkoma or #Pleroma a lighter solution for this particular use case?
The server would have to make posts that are both fully Mastodon and Pixelfed compatible (so include CW’s, image alt texts etc.)
@jax It sucks you can't subscribe to #PeerTube stuff from #Lemmy. Simply having the ability to pull hashtags into your feed would be a nice touch. Or just letting users subscribe to things via #RSS could help.
I comment on PeerTube stuff from #Friendica but don't see any (dis)like counts and only some of the comments. If the video post is looked at from #Mastodon, it seems to display all the comments, #Pleroma shows the same limited few as Friendica, and #Misskey shows most of the comments seen on PeerTube. But none show any (dis)like counts from PeerTube, the ones they do show are limited to how likes are distributed for that software.
As far as Lemmy votes are concerned, they display and function quite nicely within Friendica. I shows me the same number of both up/down votes as likes/dislikes as I see if I look at them on Lemmy.
Maybe one day somebody will unlock the secret for full interoperability amongst all ActivityPub services. Till then, we're just stuck trying to find ways around the limitations we have.
Something that really bugs me about #Pleroma and its forks like #Akkoma is that in the HTML they produce tag links do not have a rel=bookmark or whatnot attribute, so Mastodon does not recognize them as tag links and tries to produce a card for the first tag.
TIL there's limit to how many people you can follow with #ActivityPub. No one seems to specify what it is, but it could be as low as a couple thousand. I already follow 1.1k!
@Veritas Ohhh a wordpress like program you can easily install on any php web hosting provider for personal use, I don't know why so many #fediverse software (#mastodon, #pleroma, #misskey, #lemmy) missed the mark and went with ruby elixir and the like, I bet those are the languages devs are familiar with
I am confident many software could be refactored into php code (friendica and hubzilla already exist) and it could really help speed up growth and make some people feel in control of their data.
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How do you see the integration of link-aggregation and microblogging?
Thinking about the future where Microblogging and link-aggregation sites on the fediverse have grown, how do you see them integrating?...
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