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 :-) )
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.
I thought I was getting the hang of this until I read your comment and learned about all these cool technologies in the fediverse. Thank you, I found this super helpful.
Do I need to setup accounts for these other ones like mastodon, pixelfed?
No problem :)
It really depends on your intention…if you intend to just interact with (for example) Mastodon users that appear occasionally in the Lemmy communities you’re a part of then there’s no need at all. Or if you want to communicate occasionally with a Mastodon (or any other type of software) user then you could use their Mastodon handle to do so - for example go to the Search box on your Lemmy instance and type in @Mastodon@mastodon.social (which is the ‘official’ Mastodon account on the mastodon.social server but it can be any handle) wait for a few seconds (or longer depending on the speed of the server) and the user account with the ability to private message them appears. There are currently some issues but it used to be possible to post directly to a Mastodon user’s timeline from Lemmy. Mastodon users can post to Lemmy. It’s worth remembering that Mastodon is a LOT more mature as a product than Lemmy, which is still in its infancy.
For now, at least, Id say if you’re looking to spend a lot of time on each different software type then register an account at an instance of it. The integration will come, but the fediverse is young, Lemmy in particular is very young so it’ll take time.
Thank you for this explanation! Lemmy really needs an award function to allow me to give people awards for going above and beyond.
No need :) if you’re not already, make a donation to the instance you’re on instead.
I really appreciate this comment. So many of us are still trying to learn exactly how this all works, so it’s very helpful for people like me. Here’s a cool wallpaper
Technically, no, but you may want to. All of these services are federated and interact with one another. Mastodon users can interact with pixelfed posts and lemmy communities and anything else in the Fediverse. In reality, though, these services, and their clients, are built for specific types of content. If you’re spending much time at all on those other Federated communities, the “round peg, square hole” nature of using a Reddit-like app to use a Twitter-like service (as an example) may start to chafe.
I’ve seen numerous posts trying to explain what is going on here but this is the one that made sense to me. Thanks.
No problem :)
This is how my poor grandmother must feel all the time. I’m slowly trying to understand it all. I’ve got most of lemmy figured out so far I think. But there’s a lot more to this.
Just abstract it in your mind - Lemmy is software. Microsoft Word is software. Mastodon is software. Photoshop is software.
You can install copies of all of these pieces of software on different machines. Now just imagine if all the various copies (instances) of MS Word installed on peoples PC’s around the world were able to talk to each other. And so were all the copies of Photoshop. And then further imagine that all the copies of Word were also able to talk to all the copies of Photoshop.
That’s all the fediverse is. Multiple copies of the same software able to talk to each other and also able to talk to multiple copies of different software.
Have a look here, put a tick in the ‘ActivityPub’ protocol tickbox and you’ll see the software that can (theoretically) talk to each other.