Question From Former Redditor
I came over from Reddit and I am confused!
Firstly, is Lemmy, Mastodon, and Kbin the same?
Secondly, can I see the same content on Kbin as I would if I was on, say, Lemmy? Like a “cross-post”. I’ve seen some posts where someone says “replying from Lemmy” on Kbin. So would I be seeing the same exact posts on Kbin as I would Lemmy/Mastodon?
I made accounts on all 3 but I am totally lost and confused. Can someone ELI5 (or something) to help me better understand?
- Former Redditor, Lost & Confused
P.s. is this post even allowed? I don’t know what I’m doing if you can’t tell. :, (
P.p.s. I am on mobile so if formatting is an issue or weird, that may be why…
Thank you kindly in advance, anyone!
@KoalafiedPonki hello and welcome to the fediverse (and to kbin).
Lemmy, Mastodon, and Kbin are three different “apps” or software that access the “fediverse”. Lemmy is like reddit, Mastodon is like twitter, and kbin is like a mix/combo of both. All three can interact with each other.
Each of these apps have “instances” which are a bit like an email website (gmail vs yahoo). You sign up to one website, and then can interact with the other websites. For instance, I’m on kbin.social and can speak to someone who is on lemmy.ml or lemmy.world. Similarly I can talk to mastodon users who are on mastodon.social.
The sites are sharing content/posts with each other so we can interact. but some sites/instances may block another for various reasons, at which point they wouldn’t see each other’s content.
You only need one account for most purposes.
As for “is this post allowed”, let me clarify what “this” is. You’ve posted a “microblog” here on kbin under the “redditmigration” magazine. For mastodon users, they simply see this as a “tweet” you made (as if you were on twitter). For kbin, we see it under the “microblog” section of the “redditmigration” magazine. The ettiquette is… yes microblogs are more personal so you’re free to use them as you wish. threads work like how they do on reddit.
This is a great explanation!
Lemmy is like reddit
tbh I’d say that Lemmy is closer to traditional forum systems than it is to Reddit.
For mastodon users, they simply see this as a “tweet” you made (as if you were on twitter).
Mastodon calls them “toots” :)
@dan Fair enough. admittedly I haven’t used lemmy at all haha. I just figured it was the “threads” part of kbin.
@Otome-chan@kbin.social thank you! And thank you for this helpful information! I feel not as lost. : )
As a fellow former redditor who has figured this stuff out (kinda) in the last week here’s my best gist of the situation:
Lemmy/Kbin are like reddit style interaction
Mastodon is Twitter style interaction
All three use the “ActivityPub” protocol, so all three can see posts and comments from all three systems.
Additionally, each system (Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon) can be hosted on “instances”.
Instances are like “servers” that can be linked to other instances.
Talking about Lemmy/Kbin first:
You can pick a “home” instance and sign up for an account there (like you did with kbin.social). You can subscribe to all their local communities (like subreddits).
On Lemmy, you can also go to the “communities” page and then click the “all” tab" and you’ll see all the communities from not only the local instance you’re on, but it will also have links to all the communities from all the other instances that your instance is “federated” (linked) with. And you’ll be able to subscribe to those communities as well.
What if you don’t see the community from the other instance that you want to join? Just go to that other instance, grab the URL of that community, copy it and paste it into the search bar of your home instance, and that will create a link where you can click on it and subscribe to it.
To see what instances your instance is federated with, click the “instances” link in the bottom-right of every page.
On kbin, it looks like you have “magazines” that you can subscribe to. The search function behaves the same way as well.
Mastodon - if you’re not into twitter, don’t bother. But basically, it’s twitter setup the same way, with instances instead of a server, and then you can follow other people from that instance or from other instances.
Mastodon also treats Lemmy/Kbin communities as if they’re “people” so you can follow lemmy/kbin communities and comment in them using the twitter-like interface.
Very good explanation, just to add to this, kbin has both “threads” like in reddit and microblogs (like in mastodon or tweets on twitter) which is very confusing at first.
@GuyDudeman thank you! This helps so so much! Can you tell me how to sign up for Kbin home? Since I have a Kbin social that seems to not be the same if I’m understanding correctly.
These servers are exchanging info with others.
One instance starts that exchange if its user or other instance user has subscribed to community on it. Since then it will send and receive all posts and comments for that community to over instances, which has subscribed users on it.
Some instances may become blocked on other ones, since then that community users will not see posts or comments from blocked community users.
You can check the list of your instances connections in the footer, under “instances”.
It’s like email where each provider can talk to every other using the same protocol. In this case lemmy, kbin, and mastodon should be able to ‘talk’ to each other if they are in the federation (each instance or server has different rules about who they want to federate or ‘talk’ too) As you can see I am posting from a lemmy server to you on kbin.
@sourcery thank you very much for this!
You will probably want to keep all 3 accounts as the content will diverge over time and how you interact with it will also.
Someone else used the analogy of countries and passports. You may travel and see travelers from various countries and you have access to 3 of them. You’ll have visitors and you can visit. That doesn’t make your country the same as theirs.
I’m direct terms, yes the underlying protocols are shared and the same content can be viewed by all of them at once if they are currently federated (connected) which right now they are.
@CodingAndCoffee thank you! I will keep all 3 for sure. This is very helpful!
