Can I just rant a little to you all?
I’ve tried numerous times to help people from reddit set up an account and get started on Kbin (and lemmy), but 4 out of 5 times people can’t seem to grasp the concept of registering an account and starting to use this platform. Even breaking it down into 2 steps, with direct links… They get angry, and then ragequit their attempt in a huff saying how it’s too fucking complicated and it will never take off because it’s so hard.
Ok, I get that the fediverse is complicated if you think deeply about all the interconnectivity and federation etc, but there is no reason you even have to think about any of it to create an account and get started. Like, at all.
It reminds me so much of my 70/y old mother-in-law not immediately knowing how to work a tv remote and shoving it at me after 1.5 seconds saying “here, I can’t figure this out”. When in reality all she had to do was press the fucking big red button…
I’m just so frustrated with people’s complete lack of ability to help themselves.
It is confusing. Simple as. I have an account on lemmy dot ca, but I don’t understand how to view or participate in kbin content so I just don’t
You are literally participating in kbin content right now, commenting on a thread on a kbin magazine posted by a user registered to kbin.
Tbf, I think that underlines what he was saying. He has no idea where he is, or that he is already participating kbin.
Compare that to reddit, and it’s more complicated.
It also underlines what the OP is saying. The average user doesn’t need to do anything or think about anything special to use the platform. Simply making an account and interacting with whatever is on front of you will work.
It’s only complicated if you’re constantly comparing it to reddit in your head and trying to recreate the exact experience here.
Why do they need to know?
See a post, upvote it, comment on it. It’s functionally exactly the same as where they came from. The nuances are dramatically unimportant unless or until someone decides they want to use the platform in a more advanced, detailed way, which is going to be like 5% of us.
There’s literally no reason to explain the concept of federation at all unless someone specifically asks “Hey, how can I do this more advanced thing?” The cat pictures are all right here, on my screen, and I can comment on them the exact same way I did on reddit. The only difference is that the interface is a little rougher around the edges at the moment.
The important part is that it isn’t actually that important. You aren’t having much of a clue about how Reddit’s algorithms work either, you just partake in what’s presented to you, and same goes for the fediverse. Eventually you get a better grasp about things, but overall it’s not a requirement to actually use any of the platforms. People just make things more complicated for them than they actually are.
I also did not know what a kbin is as of a few minutes ago, but the great thing is, that I really didn’t need to know. I guess it feels “complicated” because there is much that can be learned but you don’t necessary have to.
People also did not know how the Reddit backends work and just used it but apparently they feel that they HAVE to learn how the fediverse works on day 1.
The funny part is, you’re viewing and participating in kbin content right here. This is a thread posted to kbin. My reply will look to you as if it was made in lemmy, but it’s not. I have a kbin account, and that’s the magic at work.
The best analogy I heard so far is email; everyone gets that you can send an email from gmail to outlook. We are just not used to that websites can interconnect with each other but give it some time and it will be second nature to people
Please stop with the email analogy. It really doesn’t help with anything. You send emails to an email address, people don’t think of the back end of that process at all and can’t make an analogy to social media where posts just… go out into the ether.
The only reason this is confusing is that tech-heads in these services can’t shut up about federation despite federation being largely irrelevant to the experience. The fact that the poster above didn’t even notice that the interaction is happening cross-service but still was confused about how to interact cross-service tells you that the way to help people get over how “hard” understanding federation is would be to shut up about it.
I mean, that won’t help with people not being willing to just make an account on a place at all, but yeah, everybody is so pleased about the interoperability thing that they make the day-to-day use of federated services seem a lot more convoluted than it is in practice.
Looks like you figured it out by accident, this is a kbin thread lol. It’s functionally identical to taking part in Lemmy threads, the complicated stuff is happening in the background as our instances communicate. Threads from all instances show up in the “All” tab and you can participate in them just the same as if they were from your own, for the most part. Since you’re on a relatively large instance as well, you should be able to search for just about any community you want using Lemmy’s own search bar and be able to find one without having to worry about if it’s in another instance or not. Chances are, whatever instance its on has been visited by someone else before, so the link between the two already exists. I hope this helps!
Also, there’s kbin, lemmy, squabbles.io (speed- and layout-wise my favorite) - each with several „federated“ instances. Which to chose? For many, the appeal of a social media platform is that you have ONE place where you can be sure to see/read and reach all others.
And instances are sometimes „unfederating“ or the federation is incomplete, you‘ll never know. Just look at this (on reddit, sorry) : https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/149sm0n/beehaw_defederating_from_lemmyworld_and/
If the admin of one instance decides to de-federate, you’re suddenly cut off.
I’m enjoying my time on kbin.social and I genuinely support the idea of federation, but… This is honestly the only major issue I have with the Fediverse. Most of my Reddit/social media posts are related to three or so niche interests. My first Mastodon account was on the central hub for one interest that later defederated with the central hub for another interest. Not being able to interact with 1/3rd of the people I want to interact with just defeats the whole point of joining these kinds of platforms. Moderators just carving out a chunk of the Fediverse for their users is just unacceptable.
That happened to me too in the beginning with lemmy coming from kbin, until I discovered the very bottom of the page where it showed me which community I‘m in (odd place to put that).
I made some strange posts like linking to a community I was in. Gets better with time.
What community you’re in is right in the URL and can be found at minimum twice in the sidebar. Just look for @[sub]@[instance], or the previous with @[username] in front of it.
Thank you, all that is so good to know!
I didn‘t see any of that, cause the back of the URL is a bit painful to look for on my phone’s browser and the sidebar part is collapsed by default. Now that I know what to look for I‘ll hopefully not get lost again.
