I used to browse Reddit 90+% of the time from my phone through the RiF app, so after June 30th, here is what I did and what I recommend as a starter pack for others in the same situation:
- Create account on lemmy.world, so the browser part is covered
- Search for the information on which app provides the closest to the RiF (Apollo, etc.) experience
- Instal Liftoff and be happy - it is just like RiF :-) (for Apollo and others, it could be different - find your own favorite!)
- Dial back dramatically on using Reddit at all. I only load 4 subs in my phone’s browser, because I did not find the Lemmy / Fediverse alternatives yet
- Constantly look for the communities to replace the subreddits you are still visiting
- OPTIONAL - once or twice a week, look at /r/pics and /r/videos and laugh at the creativity of the still ongoing protest :-)
So that is where I am right now, posting this via the web browser on the lemmy.world site, by pressing “create a post”. Seems easy enough for now, but I find it a bit confusing that other people can post from Mastodon and other Lemmy instances… Do they see the same communities I do? Do I see all Lemmy communities if I use lemmy.world…? So many questions, but it’s exciting to explore this brand new structure.
Even after reading the Fediverse and ActivityPub articles on Wikipedia my head is spinning, and I don’t really understand how everything fits / works together, but here I am! An ex(-ish) Redditor after the APIcalypse, looking for cool new communities, and excited about the future that the Fediverse can bring!
(I’m willing to learn! Someone please link me a FAQ where I can find the answers to my questions :-) )
I would discourage telling everyone to go to Lemmy.World as not only could it overload the server, the centralisation problem starts all over again.
The vast majority of instances are federated to all the big ones anyway, so I would recommend looking around to see if there are any instances that better fit your wants before going straight Lemmy.World. You won’t lose anything from it, and you’ll be supporting the wider fediverse.
Spread out communities makes it easier to avoid a single admin deciding to go crazy. Like imagine if Reddit had been composed of different instances, so people were able to just pack up and leave the instance he was on and not lose all their communities by quitting the Spez reddit instance. So you make a good point. Maybe over time there will be topic based instances popping up like an instance for entertainment, and an instance for games. Which would be pretty cool over a swiss army knife do everything approach instance where everyone starts migrating communities too because it has the largest user base.
We’re kind of starting to get that, we just need to encourage people to spread out from lemmy.world and make communities in these other instances. We’ve got lemmy.film that’s TV and film focused, pathfinder.social and another ttrpg instance, star trek has an instance, the solar punk instance, there’s a couple tech, privacy, and hacker instances. I’d also like to see more local area communities in instances like midwest.social instead of all on lemmy.world, too.
Welcome to Lemmy. Here is your free Lemming:
Go wild!
Oh shit it’s Lemmiwinks
Lemmy is a piece of software. Lemmy software is a link aggregator - same as reddit.
So you’re signed up to a server that’s installed an instance (a copy) of the Lemmy software. Other servers also run the Lemmy software making them also instances of Lemmy. As well as you being able to talk to users in Communities (think subreddits) on the lemmy.world server, you can talk to users in Communities on other Lemmy instances. For example, lemmy.ml, feddit.de etc etc
KBin is also link aggregator software, just like Lemmy and Reddit. Same things apply there, same software on multiple servers, all able to talk with each other.
Mastodon software is a microblogging service - same as Twitter (and Threads). Just like instances of Lemmy, instances of Mastodon can talk to each other. So a user on mastodon.world can talk to (for example) a user on kolektiva.social which is also running the Mastodon software.
There’s also Pixelfed (Instagram), PeerTube (YouTube), Friendica (Facebook), Plume (WordPress) and a large variety of others.
Now, as well as all these different types of software (Lemmy, Mastodon, KBin, PixelFed etc) being able to talk to other instances of the same software on other servers, because they are all underpinned by a single method of passing information called ActivityPub, each type of software can also talk to each other - so you as a Lemmy user can also see posts and comments from a user on a server running an instance of Mastodon (or Plume, or PixedlFed, or…you get the idea). All these things are loosely joined together making a joined (federated) universe - the fediverse.
Newbie here and apologies if these are FAQs but just want one line answers
What’s an instance?
What’s a community?
What are federations?
Whats the difference between all these?
What’s mastodon?
What’s Kbin?
What’s ActivityPub?
Just jargon I’m trying to get my head around, I’m still confused on signing up to different communities?! I guess and yeah… a bit lost I suppose. If there are FAQs to all this please direct me to them, thanks!
I’ll give it a try, though I’m new here too:
What’s an instance? -> A server on which you can register your account
What’s a community? -> same as a subreddit
What are federations? -> Information exchange between servers
What’s mastodon? -> Twitter alternative. As lemmy is to reddit
What’s Kbin? -> Similar to lemmy, but kbin can interact better with Mastodon
What’s ActivityPub? -> the protocol used within the fediverse
Hmm I feel like I’ve seen this before 🤔
OP of GitHub repo in the house!
Optional extra point to add on to #5: if the community that needs to replace a subreddit isn’t here yet, MAKE IT. And advertise it, so it can get popular. Be the change you want to see!
This is something I need to get into my head because I’m shy on the idea of being the one to make communities.
For apollo: use https://wefwef.app, it’s nearly identical.
I’m not sure if I’m just technologically challenged, but I can’t seem to find a way to log into wefwef from a smaller instance. Does it only support the big four?
//edit: Turns out you can only pop in as a guest from the bigger instances. You can log in to any instance, and I’m just dumb.
