this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023

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Fediverse

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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.

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Trying out Lemmy and kbin… And the #fediverse interoperability has lost me 😥 please #help ! (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by gauffke@kbin.social to c/fediverse@kbin.social

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Hey All,
I’m an (old 😉) IT guy, very excited by the #fediverse and trying to find my way amongst various services.

As an example, I started gathering topics I like on a Lemmy account. Then, I got tempted to create different accounts on smaller instances and try out kbin.

I’d love that my « subscriptions » follow me, so that I don’t have to scan all my « magazines » and re-register from everywhere.

Can someone kindly help me on how I can achieve that? Apologies if the question is naive, but given the decentralised nature of those services, shouldn’t each user have a « local » trace of what they follow (for example on a local app), no matter the service, so that they get « their view », their « window » on the #fediverse?

Many thanks for the #fedihelp and again my apologies for the probably basic questions!

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[–] ShadowRam@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I only have a kbin account,

but I can sub to

/m/memes
/m/memes@lemmy.ml
/m/memes@lemmy.world
/m/memes@anyotherlemmeyinstancethatexists.com

I don't need accounts on those other lemmy instances, I can sub to them from here.

For example, check out https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.ml and you can click subscribe

which is a different instance of the post you made here at https://kbin.social/m/fediverse

You can see that https://lemmy.ml/c/fediverse is the same as https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.ml

[–] CoderKat@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the key thing here is that you (and OP) should be only using one account (in both of your cases, your kbin account) on the site your account belongs to (kbin.social). The site takes care of the federation. There's generally nothing you need to do † and you don't even actually need to know how the federation works. Simply treat the @domain thing as part of a magazine's name (eg, it's never just "memes" but "memes@kbin.social").

† The exception is when you're the first person on your instance to subscribe to a sub on another instance. Right now this has a phenomenally bad UX and I'm hoping it will be improved quickly.

[–] stealthswor@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

You can also see Lemmy and Kbin users on Mastodon and vice versa. It all runs on the same protocol: ActivityPub. Sort of works like email in that sense.

[–] gauffke@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Everyone, I want to say a big thank you! The example you gave me really helped me out. For the sake of clarity, I indeed only need 1 account, and I’ll stick to kbin for now.

The things I still keep in mind, and feel free to comment if any of this is wrong or stupid 😅

maybe it’s better having 1 login on 1 smaller and more local instance than a huge one like kbin.social. If I get it right, kbin.social is a great instance to minimise the « entry cost », but the best is to keep instances reasonably small. However, the smaller the instance is, the bigger the risk is that it disappears (together with your account).
on the short term, I will closely follow the developments of those apps!
on the longer term, I’m curious whether there is a benefit to have 1 single account for all fediverse services (like mastodon AND kbin). On the one hand, it makes perfect sense, with « distributed login ». On the other hand, putting all your eggs in 1 basket seems to be , on the client side, the opposite of what we want to do at server at side: spread! In that aspect, profile backups will probably be key!

Thanks again guys!

[–] Chuck-Shepherd505@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Generally speaking you only need one account for one type of fediverse. It would've been better if there's a way to migrate from one instance to another but that hasn't been implemented yet.

[–] Eggyhead@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wonder if fediverse platforms can introduce support for exporting/importing a json list of subscriptions and follows so you can at least transfer/share those on your own.

[–] runefehay@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mastodon already supports account migration, so it is possible.

[–] gauffke@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Many thanks! Even if I must confess that since I’m confused on the question of Lemmy and kbin accounts, I don’t dare putting mastodon in the equation 😅

[–] asjmcguire@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

kbin isn't even classed as beta yet, it's early alpha. There is LOTS of work still to come - which is part of the excitement. The fact that it even works as well as it does right now - is a good indicator of things to come.

[–] somethingspecial@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I’ve got a few questions from this then:

Does this mean one account on any kbin instance, one account for peertube, one for mastodon? 3 accounts? Can I have one account across services?

If l self-host each of these services and have it locked to just me, and then post from my own server instance to other instances, who stores that post data? Does it reside on my server? If I shut it down, do my posts disappear or show [deleted] like Reddit did? If the posts remain because they’re also stored by the other instance, what happens if both are shut down?

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

I'm not quite clear on what you are trying to accomplish...

You don't need accounts on other instances to access their content. You can subscribe to them from your instance, using your one account.

[–] ZickZack@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

What you are alluding to is called "DIDs" = "Decentralized identifiers" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier).
The idea of most of these methods is that you identify yourself using a private key, while a public key is spread throughout the network.
If you want to log into a server on that network, the server would "challenge" your identity by encrypting something (e.g. a random number) using the public key, which you, the holder of the private key, can then decrypt and send back to prove you are who you say you are.

This method is already standardized by the W3C, but only has been for less than a year. You also have to keep in mind that all federalized social network systems (such as lemmy and kbin) are still in early development.

[–] brunox@feddit.cl 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

AFAIK there are no tools like that, yet. Keep in mind that Lemmy (and surely Kbin too as I think it's newer) are still very young applications (Lemmy is on version 0.17/18 currently). Development will probably accelerate now as it brought a lot of interest in developers and, as I understand it right now, the github is very active right now.

Mastodon does have migration tools to carry your follows with you, so it's definitely possible and are probably coming soon.

[–] simeon@thefuturesforge.social 1 points 1 year ago

@gauffke@kbin.social Thanks for asking this; I had a lot of similar thoughts/questions and learned a lot from the replies!

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