I downloaded fedilab from fdroid and it looks on the surface as though it can access instances of the fediverse as well as lots of other stuff - like I can see lemmy.world and lemmy.ml but not lemmy.ee but I’m not sure how to see individual communities - unless there’s a post I can see to follow.
So my basic understanding of all this - coming from reddit, is that these instances all federate together - as one, so to speak.
I’m just getting a little confused here. So can anyone explain just how this piece of software works please?
Thanks.
I wasn’t familiar with Fedilab but I’m pretty sure that it’s just a way to see and interact with instances you’ve already joined. I think where you’re getting confused is, you don’t join “The Fediverse” with one instance, they may not communicate well yet. I’m not sure if there are issues with choosing an instance on Lemmy (with the reddit style that might make it confusing) with Pixelfed (where it’s all pictures) and Mastodon (where it’s microblogging). Also, Lemm.ee might be defederated or not able to communicate with all the places you want to go. I would try different types of instances and maybe another instance on lemmy to see if that works. Growing pains.
Indeed, growing pains - and we’re all getting to make sense of it all. I can only speak for myself, but at times I find this change confusing. Thanks.
On that note, another really confusing thing about the fediverse (maybe just lemmy) is that if you want something from another instance, you have to search for it on your instance. This is because they may not have connected or stored that particular info yet, so it has to do a thorough search to connect to it and then you can subscribe. I know they’re working on ways to make this simpler and communicate better, but it’s just not there yet. It’s kind of fun to me to see how everything interacts but it can be weird at first. We’re helping it get better by asking for what we want, the apps have been getting better and better. I find Voyager and Liftoff great apps (both free and open source) to start off with but Liftoff shuts down quite a bit. Each app has things that I want from the other apps, lol. Keep trying different stuff.
A year from now we’ll all wonder why people just don’t get how easy it all is to understand.
I agree, Reddit has a lot of quirks that we all got used to. Everyone is working really hard on making this a viable solution and are moving quickly. I’m already leaning in that direction.
Ya I had a hard time using reddit at first.