this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
505 points (98.5% liked)

Fediverse

32328 readers
192 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What do you think about this graphic?

It should give an easy overview of the architecture of the Fediverse and what it differentiates from old social media.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's actually a good graphic. I'd put a legend explaining some of the fediverse icons. And 2 sentences explaining that each fediverse icon communicated with other fediverse icons

[–] [email protected] 106 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Maybe remove the fediverse in the middle, if I knew nothing about the fediverse it will seem like it is centralized?

[–] [email protected] 77 points 4 days ago (2 children)

John Fediverse is in the middle, holding all the fediverse conmections together.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

Is his first name John or Join?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

This doesn’t explain things well. Lemmy is like a bunch of Reddits communicating with each other. The graphic makes it seem like there is just one Lemmy. Also, are Lemmy posts on Mastodon? Mastodon was largely empty last I checked.

Edit: I just now noticed the second Lemmy

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Mastodon users can subscribe to Lemmy communities I think, but it doesn't really work very well. The Mastodon feed isn't really made to support threaded content so all the Lemmy comments will fill and mess up your feed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

I think the ATProtocol is better when it comes to connecting between different social media types. But I think ActivityPub makes better use of different servers.

Though I think something like Lemmy is difficult for both because of how different it is from most other social media types.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Also, I really like your username. I learned about that fish from Animal Crossing lol.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I'd say these fall into the same trap that most fediverse explainers fall into — too focused on implementation details, not the experience. The average FB user thinks they're connecting to friends directly, not really considering the system architecture that powers it.

I'd like a graphic that shows how centralised media blocks connections to others outside thier walled garden.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Interesting. How would you put this into a picture?

My friend (the average social media user) also didn't seem too interested in it. I can imagine something interesting for the average user in a video but not in an image.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I would add random instance names to the service icons, to show them that the websites are interconnected and not just the services

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The implementation details matter tho, your instance admin actively makes federation decisions that affect the content you see. I like to explain joining an instance as pledging yourself to a warlord in medieval Japan

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

But surely the average Zuckerbook user is not so dumb as to miss what this graphic is describing - a crazy utopia where they could talk to people on TikTok and Xitter as well as Zuckerbook?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I just got here but I've noticed this platform is much nicer compared to things like reddit. No bots, no ai softcore porn ads. I'll take the fediverse any day.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nice to hear. :)

What convinced you to join?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Some people in a left leaning subreddit told me it would be a good backup. Then just yesterday I got perma banned and the admins wouldn't tell me why. So now I'm here

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

Thanks ! They really were right when they said people here are much more pleasant than on reddit lol

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Needs more chains and walls between groups in the top picture. And maybe some ransom notes.

(This is more to try to make you laugh, than useful feedback, sorry. I don't have a very good idea how to actually include these concepts in a simple diagram.)

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's cool but I think that's too technical for the average social media user

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That's cool too, but way too much text for it to be quickly consumed on a small display. This is more for the second stage when people are already curious and want to learn more, in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

I agree, yours is simpler and to the point. It gets the general idea across quicker. The links for blaze would be follow up things people would look into.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Yea, too much yapping

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Here is the file link. Let's create multiple versions :D

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGjBaOKTmM/mVzeYlpGz2MwWMdMhFqQIg/edit

(Sorry for the proprietary service!)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

(Sorry for the proprietary service!)

Ouch, brace yourselves, FOSS ninjas incoming 😄

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

I'm not much of a designer 😅

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

My criticism is that it largely ignores the primary advantage of Fediverse services (Decentralizing services that are designed to operate Centrally), while mostly explaining what I've always considered to be the most pointless feature (Cross Service posting).

It's a mildly neat feature if you want to centralize your entire social profile under one account (which is my security nightmare but you do you), but its not really fundamental to using federated services and its implementation can be inconsistent and confusing.

Maybe have a bunch of "Lemmy" (or whatever) nodes arranged in a circle, the same color, with the same icon, and connected to each other through the middle of the circle (not connecting to the "fediverse", although I guess you could have a transparent "Lemmy" super imposed over it) Then have the users connected to each node. Or something...I'm on a bench and just broadly visualizing it.

The next trick is explaining the fault of centralized services in a graph.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There's no central authority here. But if it doesn't matter which instance you are on, then all the users on Lemmy are still just part of Lemmy.

On the graph I see other icons than Lemmy.

Are we able to see content from other social media? Or what is meant with that

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Certain other content crosses boarders. Mastadon especially. Whenever you see people replying to messages and it starts with some sort of @[email protected] tagging, you're probably eavesdropping on a Mastadon thread and you don't even know it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

GLOBALISTS ARE TAKING OVER

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

For the top services, I’d make each of the blue background circles a different color to better denote that they’re proprietary and incompatible.

For the Fediverse section, you could add Tumblr, and other services who also federate via activity pub to show our interoperability and expansive reach.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Tumblr

Is it already working?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe you can show that, we don't alway federate with every instance, with several drawing of this cloud network.

That's also part of our freedom :)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Okay maybe I don't get it but how can I access mastodon from my lemmy account?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Mastodon and Lemmy have only limited interoperability. You can't follow individual users on Lemmy, so most of it is one-way. Mastodon users can post to Lemmy communities by @-ing a specific community, and Lemmy users can then reply as normal and their replies will show up in the Mastodon users feed.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

That's why I'm always a bit reluctant to have an infographic with Mastodon and Lemmy fully connected. Sure, it's possible to interact, but it's not ideal.

Having another one with Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed servers could be better

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (8 children)

Subscribing to user posts on Lemmy would be a fantastic feature

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Mbin has microblogging

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Simply put your Mastodon profile URL into the search.

Eg. https://europe.pub/u/[email protected]

But it works better the other way around

load more comments
view more: next ›