donuts
You’re absolutely right that we have a bit of a terminology issue here, but one slightly advanced and techy thing to understand about the fediverse is that the fediverse itself is the “platform”:
Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, Calckey, etc., are software projects or processes that are running on some server somewhere, and ActivityPub is the protocol (kind of like a language) that all these processes use (to varying degrees) to speak with each other. As users, we interact with a specific server or service (like beehaw.org or kbin.social) that is running that software and sharing info with other servers through a protocol.
This is totally different to Reddit or Twitter, which are both the names of the service AND (probably, but we don’t now) the software that the service is running behind the scenes. Naturally that makes it a bit easier to talk about, because we don’t have any access to or knowledge about the software or protocols that they use, and we can just talk about the services.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that Kbin and Lemmy are replacements for Reddit (the software) while servers like kbin.social or beehaw.org are replacements for Reddit.com (the service), except they also talk to each other somewhat seamlessly. I’m logged into the server “kbin.social”, which runs a software called “Kbin”, which communicates over a protocol called “ActivityPub” to a bunch of users who are on other servers running other software.
In other words, Google searching for “Lemmy” isn’t exactly a good metric, not only because Reddit is one of the biggest websites around and Google knows this, but also because “Lemmy” isn’t the actual name of the service that we are using right now, just the software. If you tell someone to go over to a specific server (like beehaw.org, kbin.social, etc.) then they’ll have a much easier time finding something that they can actually use.
Most of us are guilty of kind of glossing over all this stuff to keep things simple and easy to understand, but there are some layers of nuance to the fediverse here that make this a little bit more complicated than you’re making it out to be imo.
On top of that, we can’t expect communities to POOF into existence.
We have to be part of them to build them, which means making them if they don’t exist yet as well as posting and commenting in the ones that do exist. I hope that people who are used to lurking on Reddit will go out of their comfort zone a bit and start to participate in fediverse communities so that we can build things up more quickly.
Corporations have as much power to fuck up the Fediverse as Microsoft has to prevent Linux from being a thing. They can try (and most definitely will), but ultimately will not be able to stop the FOSS community from taking things where we want to go. Propaganda about “safety” is definitely on the cards, but things like making community-run instance illegal are far fetched (in the US at least, because that would seem to be pretty clearly unconstitutional wrt the 1st amendment.).
So, I’m not necessary disagreeing with you, but I think the fediverse might be our last and only chance to pull the internet back into the hands of the people, at least somewhat. If the Fediverse reaches a critical mass of users to the point where it has become a big business on its own merits I think we can expect a lot more corporate interests from seeping in, but just like Linux that doesn’t necessarily stop the community side of things from existing.
Cool designs! I ultimately voted for #1, but I like #5 and #6 too. #4 is also goo, but I think I prefer the ones with the more simplified and stylized shapes.
I don’t know, and I think that’s a fair point…
Of course, part of the reason that Reddit is so easy to find on Google is because it’s already a huge and established website with lots of traffic. It’s never easy for a new site to compete with established players in terms of search engine results, and I think the bulk of that problem lies with the search engine providers themselves.
I’m not really sure… but the way I see it it’s probably fair game.
Communities aren’t something that somebody (reddit, specific moderators, etc.) owns, they are just concepts that people latch onto. And, for me at least, I would rather see popular communities exist here if people want them to, especially since you can have multiple communities under the exact same name on different servers in the fediverse.
In other words, if you want to bring over a specific reddit community I think you should just do it.
One of the most important things to learn about programming is not to make things from scratch unless you have a very good reason to, imo. Programmers build off of the things that other programmers make, for example using some code library to achieve a specific task or building a game on top of one of the many solid engines that are out there. (Godot, Unity, Unreal, etc.)
Writing software is hard, and making a fun and functioning game is even harder, so unless you have some very specific reason to write a game “from scratch”, I would just get something like Godot or Unreal and start learning the ins and outs of game development and design.
Why Godot and Unreal over Unity? Because having source code access means that, if you at some point want to learn more about game engine development specifically, you can start by browsing and hacking away at the source code of an existing engine. So, do yourself a big favor and just start learning how to make games using an existing engine.
Godot and Unity are pretty comparable in my opinion. Unity is a bit more mature and a lot more popular, but Godot is my preferred engine because it is fully open source and has a node-tree/server based system that resonates with me. If you have experience with Python, then learning GDScript will be a breeze for you. Godot also supports C# from what I understand (and can even be used with other languages through something called GDExtension) but I don’t have any experience with that stuff so I can’t really say if it’s good or not.
If you’re looking for a job you will likely have an easier time with at least some Unity experience under your belt (because it’s extremely common and popular with small and mid-sized studios still), but Godot jobs are becoming more common and Godot experience is both increasingly valuable and also somewhat easily transferable over to Unity, should you need to.
