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submitted 1 year ago by tfm@europe.pub to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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 1 year ago

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 1 year ago

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

[-] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 year ago

Is his first name John or Join?

[-] ElderReflections@fedia.io 69 points 1 year ago

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 1 year ago

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 1 year ago

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

[-] ElderReflections@fedia.io 2 points 1 year ago

Largely similar to what you have, but abstracting away the metalware and reframing as human-centric.

If the user is at the center, surrounded by more users, making primary & secondary connections, in an approximate circle shape. You can then show traditional social media owners as wedges of that circle, containing (owning) a fraction of the users & preventing connection to others, vs. Fedi that lets you connect to everyone.

[-] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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?

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 19 points 1 year ago
[-] tfm@europe.pub 9 points 1 year ago

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

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

(Sorry for the proprietary service!)

[-] RainbowHedgehog@50501.chat 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 1 year ago

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 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[-] EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[-] Fediverse_Champion@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[-] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.)

[-] therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago

GLOBALISTS ARE TAKING OVER

[-] Snoopy@piefed.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 :)

[-] tfm@europe.pub 2 points 1 year ago

Good idea. But I think it's better to explain that later, when people are already curious :)

[-] es_eskaliert@feddit.org 5 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Subscribing to user posts on Lemmy would be a fantastic feature

[-] Snoopy@piefed.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 1 points 1 year ago

hashtags don't work well on the Fediverse, a hashtag doesn't have an owning instance which means there's no way to push/pull the content by hashtag

[-] Snoopy@piefed.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

On masto that helped me finding new people or thematic discussion. It may not work very well but it does work with boost. From what i was able to achieve with it, it's an amazing tool 😊

[-] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 1 points 1 year ago

yea I mean it's fun to use and works well if you're on a large instance like mastodon.social, I use it even on a medium size instance

but communities/groups work better on the fediverse, and maybe something in between the 2 could be created, some kind of federated version of hashtags

[-] Snoopy@piefed.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not on mastodon social, i use it on

  • peculiar.florist an iceshrimp instance and their dev team want to support PieFed, Lemmy and Mbin
  • mastodon.tedomum.net and mastodon.zaclys.com they both belong to a collective of hosters.

And hashtag work well. I have a list where i follow hashtag as if i had a community around this keyword.

If mastodon supported group, they would include lemmy, mbin, piefed support. We can remplace a.gup.pe

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[-] tfm@europe.pub 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It needs a lot more people and lines connecting to the centralize services, like 6+. You have 14 dudes in the fediverse, you should have a similar number of dudes in the traditional centralized social media things. You need to make it clear that every connection between two people goes through that central server. With only 3 or 4 it looks like it's some kind of small community there, like you're just saying "communities exist on Facebook" rather than "on Facebook everybody connects to one central Facebook service". It would also be good to draw a black line around the edge of the bubble to indicate it's a walled garden rather than an open system.

For the Fediverse example, it would be good to have a slightly darker shaded bubble with people around their local fediverse instance. That would indicate that there are local communities, but that they can still communicate with all the other communities. And, maybe show that people can be part of different communities, show one person connected both to a mastodon instance and a Lemmy instance.

Edit: I just thought of something else to make it clearer. On the centralized networks you could also make a darker group of people who are a community on say Facebook, but show that that community has to connect to each-other through the central server.

[-] teri@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

In thie fesiverse graphic each person has exactly 1 connection to a fediverse thing. But in reality, there can be more. I guess in practice there are often more than one.

[-] PixelPilgrim@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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

[-] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Out of curiosity, has anyone found any more conservative Lemmy communities? I’m always worried that we’ll get folks splitting off of rumble to find purchase here. So far, all of the c/conservative communities have been deliciously consumed by memes, but more is more funni

[-] JOMusic@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Love it! I've saved a copy, because I think it'll make future explanations a lot easier. Thanks!

[-] tfm@europe.pub 1 points 1 year ago

Awesome! That's what I wanted to achieve :D

this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
506 points (98.3% liked)

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