I don’t understand how someone in the comments says they’re tech literate but can’t figure lemmy out. Federation is somewhat akin to email. It’s really not all that complicated, imo, just a bit of extra friction at the onset to pick an instance.
It’s similar to how Twitter users say Mastodon is “hard”. They want a 1:1 copy of Reddit or Twitter, and don’t want to learn new things because any kind of learning at all is unpleasant.
But that will change when—not if—the network effect of the social web becomes apparent.
I’m tech savvy and it took awhile to understand how Lemmy and federation worked.
Same — that’s why I tend to point people to a specific instance, instead of lemmy as a whole.
Weaponised incompetence.
They don’t want to try something new so they’re going to make it as hard as possible for themselves so they have an excuse to give up.
Then they’re going to post about it hoping everybody stays with them.
It’s laziness. Them being “tech literate” is probably akin to knowing how to use the internet and signing up for a social media site. Enter email, new password, verify account, done. Understanding how federated social media works should technically not be an issue for them, because it’s literally just an extra step (choosing an instance to sign up with), but they are just too lazy or can’t be bothered to do it.
I’m tech literate - I’ve been on the internet since I connected the university I was working at in the early '90s. I was a system/network engineer until around '15. Choosing an instance is a hurdle that can’t be overlooked. Now that I’m “in” it seems trivial, but it delayed my joining Lemmy for quite a while. No other social media has it, and it just felt wrong. And now that I’ve been here for 2 years I still don’t understand a lot about how it works - like, if I decide I don’t like the instance I’m on now, I assume I’ll lose my history of posts and comments if I move? Again, it’s probably trivial for me to go find out, but we’re just not used to putting any effort into our social media platform. It’s a good thing for that to change, but we can’t ignore the fact that we are asking people to change when they come here.
I assume I’ll lose my history of posts and comments if I move
You can’t move it to a new account.
You can link both of your accounts to each other in your profile and have the same username so that people can recognize you
And picking any of the big instances is fine and easy. The hard thing would be hopefully you don’t get a tankie instance.
This is my first day here . A link from reddit and random chatter over there brought me here . It is different but something a little more likeable in a weird quirky way.
So what is/ are an “instance/instances” ? Is it like a r/ ?
Welcome!
Welcome! No, communities are our version of r/. Instances are like the server your account or community lives on. Yours is .world, mine is sh.itjust.works. Look after the user name. .world that’s a pretty good one.
The instance admins can ultimately decide what sorts of things they want on their instance. Some will allow uploading large files but others won’t because it’s storage intensive. But you can embed from other sites too, so it’s not a big deal.
Most all the instances talk with each other, so once your set up, there isn’t much of a difference. Just make sure your using the ‘all’ (all instances) instead of the ‘local’ (only .world) tab.
Btw, you on mobile or desktop? Lemmy has a lot of good apps, I’m using boost right now.
OK thanks ! I saw a list of " instances " at the bottom of the page and it showed a list of 5000 randon terms like you described .
I am truly not tech savvy at all but I like to learn. Terms like embed are foreign to me but I can figure all that out :)
I’m on mobile , so if I download another app will the view be different or a better experience?
And not that it bothers me but while I got ya here … When I’m scrolling and open a thread then back out of the thread I have to scroll all the way back to where I backed out of (if that makes sense). Is that just a feature of the way the sight is set up / runs ?
I’m on mobile , so if I download another app will the view be different or a better experience?
There are very nice apps listed on https://www.lemmyapps.com/
Voyager, Arctic, Thunder and Summit are usually good recommendations depending on Android or iOS
No problem! Embed just means the picture lives on a different computer, and you get it from there.
I haven’t used the website much since I came from the Reddit blackout, but that issue sounds like an issue with the website. I think the apps are a better experience than the website. They let you save comment drafts, use volume keys to go up and down in the comments section, and get back to where you were before opening a post rather then back to the top.
Part of the learning curve… People should be shopping around anyway.
I was actually scrolling through a reddit thread last night (I was googling something and it came up) and I saw a comment talking about kbin.social, from 2 years ago, that hadn’t been removed.
Kbin.social removed itself unfortunately (sorry Kbin fans, Mbin is an awesome replacement!)
