this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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Fediverse

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

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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.

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[–] JustJack23@slrpnk.net 107 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works 78 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 months ago

Is his first name John or Join?

[–] ElderReflections@fedia.io 70 points 2 months 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.

[–] tfm@europe.pub 18 points 2 months 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.

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

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

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[–] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months 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?

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] tfm@europe.pub 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)
[–] tfm@europe.pub 25 points 2 months 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.

[–] ApollosArrow@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months 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.

[–] vinyl@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

Yea, too much yapping

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

So good 👌

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 8 points 2 months ago
[–] tfm@europe.pub 9 points 2 months 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!)

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

(Sorry for the proprietary service!)

Ouch, brace yourselves, FOSS ninjas incoming 😄

[–] tfm@europe.pub 7 points 2 months ago

I'm not much of a designer 😅

[–] EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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.

[–] RainbowHedgehog@50501.chat 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 8 points 2 months 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.

[–] RainbowHedgehog@50501.chat 5 points 2 months 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.

[–] RainbowHedgehog@50501.chat 4 points 2 months ago

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

[–] Fediverse_Champion@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months 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.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago

Tumblr

Is it already working?

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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.)

[–] Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 8 points 2 months 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

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

[–] therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago

GLOBALISTS ARE TAKING OVER

[–] Snoopy@piefed.social 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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 :)

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[–] es_eskaliert@feddit.org 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 8 points 2 months 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.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 months 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

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Subscribing to user posts on Lemmy would be a fantastic feature

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago

Mbin has microblogging

[–] Snoopy@piefed.social 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

Yeah i do agree but sadjy, there is a reason some of us call it lemmyverse. We can see mastodon's content.

Since Lemmy doesn't really support hashtag, the core of mastodon discoverability, I think switching to a new software is better.

PieFed plan to support Mastodon this year. They already do it somewhat : you can follow PieFed user and a.gup.pe work well. You can also follow comment or post by setting up an alert.

Currently, only mbin can do that.

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[–] tfm@europe.pub 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Simply put your Mastodon profile URL into the search.

Eg. https://europe.pub/u/luislavena@mastodon.social

But it works better the other way around

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