this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Privacy Guides

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I found it complicated at first (didn't know which instance "will last", where to register to not lose anything when instance admin decide to turn it down), but now it's going good. We are missing mobile apps though.

What's are your thoughts about Lemmy/kbin?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I am very happy to see people trying to use federated apps, it's a movement back to the old days of internet, when communities and real people make things, not big corporate companies with ad based model bulding sites to collect massive amounts of data.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've been using the Jerboa android app today, it works pretty well. It reminds me of reddit mobile apps 10+ years ago, which isn't a bad thing.

I'm excited to see how it turns out though and what fediverse/social platform will end up being the most popular.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Second Jerboa. Used reddit Sync and they feel very similar.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Likewise. I miss swipe to dismiss/read and to come out of comments. That's about it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same just wish there's a way to jump to a person's reply when viewing the reply in the messages area

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed, that would be a nice enhancement. I'm actually not sure if the desktop/web app has this feature. Unless I'm doing it wrong, it just takes me to the overall post instead of the specific thread or context.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If you're on the latest version (0.0.34), you're able to do it by clicking the little link button between the downvote and mark as read.

I think the F-Droid and Google Play versions are on version 0.0.33 for some reason, probably so they can get verified or something.

GitHub and IzzyOnDroid have the latest version.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Honestly, Jerboa in alpha is already better than the official reddit app for me. It's no TPA reddit app, but the number of contributors (in github) has risen by a lot so I'm expecting/hoping development will pick up and it'll get better fast.

I appreciate the community the most in here. They've been very welcoming and minimal, if any, toxicity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Its great, but I still want comment sorting before I start to prefer it over webui.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's coming in the next update.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still haven't figured out how to look up a community on Jerboa... The desktop site works well enough, though a little slow.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You can search via the hamburger icon in the bottom left, to the right of the home/house.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I think it's missing a few things. Notably, for me at least, an option to block communities directly in the feed instead of having to go in to the community to do it, and the option to hide posts from the feed. Unless i've missed something. It does all remind me of old reddit before it got flooded with users and it started getting filled with memes and joke comments prioritising karma instead of discussion. I'm sure I'm not the only person who noticed that subs on reddit had a critical limit of users, that when reached tarnished the quality of the posts on the sub. I like that all the instances have their own communities which I think will help with that problem. Some instances might not care too much and let the users be joke tellers while others will want to keep quality up. The idea with most instances beeing NSFW-free with a dedicated NSFW instance is a really good one. There's still so much I need to learn about the fediverse, but the decentralised nature of it all will hopefully keep the money out of it. Overall, I'm enjoying it so far.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like the idea and general functionality, my biggest concern is what happens if the owner of Lemmy.world gets hit by a bus? Eventually you'd lose your account, all your subs, etc. Same goes for any other instance really. It's pretty much my only reservation at this point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yeah I'd like to see a mechanism to move subs and accounts between instances at will. If that also includes the ability to merge subs it'll fix 90% of the things everyone is worried about.

There is an open issue for adding a mechanism to move instances, people should go vote for it

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3057

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think merging subs is necessary, I would like to see a user based grouping function. That way you can add duplicate communities to one group and see them all while maintaining the benefits of decentralization (primarily redundancy whether through server issues or power hungry mods). Plus it would allow you to group any type of communites you see fit (gaming for multiple gaming subs, sports for multiple teams you follow, etc) without forcing it onto others

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This would be especially great if apps like Jerboa allowed automating the grouping process (opt in by user maybe). Some sort of maintained lists of equivalent communities across instances, so the app can easily allow you to subscribe to one community or, in a more Reddity way, a federated set of communities with one tap.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for linking that issue, I've voted on it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I expect a small boom of loudly announced instances, that will be essentially unmaintained, half of them will silently disappear while taking users identities with them in less than a year, and the rest spliting the federation in half by implementing ideological blacklists, some properly shutting down when the money runs out, or lawsuits and takedown notices starts to flood in.

Let's hope I'm wrong.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every party needs a pooper. That's why we invited you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Glad to be here! :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Lemmy for us was very broken, having many bugs. Kbin works a lot better, even though we had some issues with federation. Overall, the platform itself is quite nice and smaller communities are still fun!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think having your account tied to an instance without an option to move is a huge issue. Now I'm still dependent on the instance owners rules and willingness/ability to keep it up. Just like reddit oranzy other centralized network. Accounts need to be movable including history and linkage to posts. Same goes for communities. We are just hyper fragmenting now. Communities need to.be able to span instances tobincrease performance and uptime as well as resiliency.

Jerboa works fine for me. The overall experience and peoeple are nice enough. We just have technicalities to iron out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

There is a younger project called Nostr, that came up as a twitter / mastodon replacement. It deals with user identities in better, more sustainable way. Thle client generates a keypair for you locally (you can back it up and use it to "log in" with any other client). Then you choose relay server (or even multiple relays) that will save and forward your posts to others.

Most of the client software resembles twitter UI, but there are some with more *chan/reddit like look.

Since the Nostr protocol is built primarily by people around bitcoin related projects, there is software ready for the relay operators to accept payments. Most of them are currently free, but thanks to bitcoin lightnong network, paying for a relay is pretty fast, and trustles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'd like to see new posts to my subscribed communities, without having to go to each one to check. Maybe it's there and I just haven't found it. I can't stand anything on my phone, so this is only referring to the website.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of the communities only seem to have like 50 subscribers. I know a lot of people are exploring options other than Reddit, so I'm confused where everyone is at.

Or maybe I just have weird taste. I am not so interested in shitposting, memes, politics, news; this may be where where everyone is? I'll give it time to see who trickles in. I like the forum/discussion board style of this as opposed to Mastodon, which is obviously more timeline/feed based, but can feel like a random assortment of things.

On the other hand, since many of the communities are empty, I either do not have interesting topics to yet follow, or am not quite sure where I feel comfortable posting. Somewhat opposite ends of the spectrum, but okay that there is differentiation. Would like to see the fediverse group together (Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, whatever else believes in this approach), as alone there may not be power, but together, maybe something impressive can be made.

Imperial theme looming in the background...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

What did you sub to on reddit? I've found a music-related instance with just a small handful of people, but I'm already enjoying the feel of it. I hope it turns into something slightly larger, but time will tell. I'd suggest looking for communities that are similar to your tastes and stick around for awhile. The party is early, and I think many are too shy to make a move to break the ice. The more active a community seems, the easier it is for newer people to start sharing as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think its great. Joining remote Communities can be a bit iffy but its okay and the UI is a bit janky but that will improve by time I hope :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm in the same boat as you. Now that I've spent a day on Lemmy & Kbin I feel much better about using both sites and it's been a fun experience learning something new.

I personally am treating them as betas so I'm willing to forgive them not being as smooth experiences to browse as I'm used to on Reddit. Also because of this, I'm hesitant at this stage to suggest them to a lot of my friends until more kinks are sorted out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Actually, I think there is a a dedicated instance for the kinks and other NSFW communities lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't care about what instance will last too much. I'm not that active contributor so if my comments/topics will disappear the world will not end. I always can create a new account on another server.

I chose Lemmy for now because Kbin seems to be not mature enough. I don't like some background of Lemmy devs that I was reading about, but I'm still not sure what make of it... Does it matter much? I support freedom of speech, and from my perspective people can have opinions very different from mine and still provide great value for community.

I'm currently exploring available communities and subscribing to stuff that I was subscribed on Reddit. Considering creating some communities too, but not sure how that works yet and how much involvement it will need.

Regarding software - using Jerboa. Overall very usable, but there are some UI issues that are irritating.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don’t like some background of Lemmy devs that I was reading about, but I’m still not sure what make of it…

@pound_[email protected] – out of interest, what have you read? 👀

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yup, that what other person replied. There was a post on r/privacy which I cannot look up today due to the boycott - it was about Lemmy developers being very radical communists.

The software being open source makes this less concerning, but in case original devs start doing something crazy it will damage the project significantly.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Lemmy developers have communist figures as avatars. They manage the lemmy.ml instance, which other instances tend to defederate.

That should not prevent people from using a platform they don't manage (Lemmy.world or Beehaw) and they can't influence in anyway. The code is open source anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It seems to be working well enough. There will be growing pains, but I'm more than willing to live with some bugs & limitations while this all matures and grows. There's a risk of losing all comment history & whole communities if an instance decided to shut down, but that's true of centralized sites today. I'll take the chance on something less centralized that one single asshole corporation can't screw up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lots of people here with the opposite opinion of me, which is that I like the website and not the mobile apps, but overall yeah I'm pretty convinced this format is probably the best poised alternative to replace Reddit for a lot of people. Maybe not everybody, but I am willing to "settle" for quality over quantity ;)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Not quite sure yet. I just joined Kbin, but am having trouble getting a handle on how to get my content viewable on other Fediverse instances (although remote content seems to load here just fine)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

it's nice :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

honestly, once I wrapped my head around the idea of federation (which is very easy given I've been active in the P2P torrent field before- federation is but a simple extension of that concept) lemmy has pretty easy to use. It's simple. The interface is clean and has what I want right in front. I search what I want, deal with a couple minor bugs, and then look at what I want to look at.

My only biggest concern with Lemmy longterm is community fragmentation. As more instances spin up with the user influx, and Lemmy being (currently) limited in horizontal scaling of individual instances, we are going to have cases of tens, maybe even hundreds, of instances all ending up with identical, but separate, communities. Federation of a single instance's community can only work so well, if we're expecting users in the millions, and such fragmented communities that may or may not end up federating with one another can artificially make the service feel a lot less active than it really is and/or potentially lead to a lot of content being missed by some users.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I miss downvotes. How do I get a post that I have no interest in to leave my feed?

Other than that, pretty happy.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

After finding the right instance (which doesn't block any other instances) I'm really happy. I'm surprised how many communities exist that existed before on reddit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy.ml needs to lose "default" status. I changed servers due to their load and inability to deal with it. They're practically unusable right now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They kind of have taken away their default status. They removed lemmy.ml from the list of instances on join-lemmy.org.

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