It is not Lemmy or kbin, it is the fediverse. ( kbin.social )

I don't think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse. There are other platforms and will be more to come. Referring to a post on "Lemmy" or "kbin" is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.

We should be referring to it as...

  • I saw it on the fediverse.
  • Hey fediverse users ...
  • A thread on the fediverse...

New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.

edit: A better example is email. You wouldn't assume everyone is on Hotmail because that is the email provider you use. You say I'm sendingan eamail, not I'm sending a Hotmail.

favrion ,
@favrion@lemmy.world avatar

If I see a post on Lemmy World, then it’s from Lemmy World.

bvanevery ,

Now that gets me thinking, what the hell was Wally World anyways? Was that a Chevy Chase thing?

Doherz ,

You’re vastly overestimating the knowledge, intelligence and fucks given by the vast majority of people.

The fediverse is frankly too complex and convoluted for the normies. Whichever instance manages to remove the complexity, solve the onboarding process and get the content right will win out and be the thing the normies speak of.

bvanevery ,

Call it Verse. You'll win the branding wars.

howsetheraven ,

K. “I saw it on the internet.” You’re a big boy, you can figure out where.

devious ,

I don’t think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse

Does it matter? I saw this post on the Fediverse, but I also saw it on Lemmy, I also saw it on lemmy.world, I also saw it on LiftOff, I also saw it on my phone, I saw it on the internet, and I saw it while taking a shit. All those are correct and it’s only an issue using any of those if it confuses the conversation and in most cases your requested level of pedantry will not add anything useful to a discussion (unless maybe the discussion is about how the Fediverse works).

Mr_Will , (edited )

If I was browsing Reddit and saw an interesting video, I might tell someone "I saw an interesting video on Reddit the other day" even if the video itself was hosted on YouTube. The technical detail of exactly where and how the video is hosted is not relevant to the conversation. The listener wants to know how I found it, not where it is stored.

The same is true for posts on the fediverse. The various instances are the websites that we browse. The technical detail of how they share content and how it can be accessed from various different routes just isn't important most of the time. If you're a Lemmy user, you're reading the posts on Lemmy and there is nothing wrong with talking about it that way.

If I tell someone I bought a game on Steam or borrowed a book from the library, the fact that they are also available elsewhere doesn't matter. If I tell someone I read something on kbin, does it matter that the same post also exists on different websites? 99% of the time, the answer is 'no'.

New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.

I agree, but you've got it upsidedown. The fediverse is the platform that the instances operate on, not vice-versa.

bvanevery ,

Until they try to find it on Reddit and they cry. Cry!

Wooly ,

I’m not referencing the fediverse, it’s stupid. But also, lemmy isn’t a great name so I probably just won’t mention anything like that.

bvanevery ,

"The Fediverse is stupid."
"The Fediverse is stupid."
Negativeland said Christianity is stupid.
Christianity is stupid.
Communism is good!
[then a lot of chanting and noisemaking]

Enttropy ,
@Enttropy@kbin.social avatar

Who gives a fuckidi fuck?

bvanevery ,

Burkina Faso?

FixedFun ,
@FixedFun@kbin.social avatar

I say "Lemmy" or "Kbin" unless I wanna refer to both then I say the Fediverse.

HipPriest ,

Referring to a post on "Lemmy" or "kbin" is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.

That's not how language works. Language evolves naturally and in this scenario people would instantly know that the user had seen something on a fediverse platform without having to use another awful '-verse' word.

Likewise you can't police how people use language. People use whatever makes understanding for both sides easiest on both sides

If someone logs into a website called Kbin and sees something interesting, it's fair to say 'I saw something interesting on Kbin' without having to give unnecessary explanations about what the fediverse is.

And once again, no one likes the word fediverse...

darcy ,
@darcy@sh.itjust.works avatar

based antiprescriptivism

Entropywins ,
@Entropywins@kbin.social avatar

Tell my old English teacher you can't police the way people use language...

Madison_rogue ,
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

Mine as well, yet she'd then recite the first few verses of The Canterbury Tales in Old-English; pretty much proving that you can't police the way people use language.

bvanevery ,

And you can't language the way people use police either!

bvanevery ,

without having to use another awful '-verse' word.

They will stop using prefixes. They will just say verse.

WeLoveCastingSpelz ,

🤓🤓🤓 just use whatever

unefois ,

Actually, it's spelled 'faits divers'.

Mane25 ,

I like the name fediverse, but I think it’s too broad. I think we need a collective name for platforms like Lemmy and KBin (which are more like each other than they are like Mastodon).

stopthatgirl7 ,
@stopthatgirl7@kbin.social avatar

The nickname I’ve seen used for kbin and lemmy is the “threadiverse,” which I personally like.

Mane25 ,

Much too problematic with Meta’s new platform.

Madison_rogue ,
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

Calling it "Threadiverse" is walking right into Meta's playbook. Zuckerberg would want you to call it exactly that.

bvanevery ,

You could go all The Orville and call it the Zipperverse.

bvanevery ,

"forum". It's correct. Short for web forum. Social media forum if you really want to get picky.

Mane25 ,

No, “forums” are old style message boards from back when the internet was good, that people stopped using for some reason. If KBin/Lemmy can one day be half as good as real forums I’d consider that to be a success.

bvanevery , (edited )

What feature is missing from KBin or Lemmy to make them forums? KBin superficially looks like a forum, but I only just got here. My next step is to find out whether Lemmy devs are tenable people to work with on forum software development. They are Marxist-Leninists and run a M-L instance or two, it seems. I'm a socialist but not M-L and I've got run out of plenty of "tankie" subs on Reddit, so I'm worried about that. I don't enjoy being called liberal or a bootlicker.

Mane25 ,

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek with my nostalgia there, with some truth to it as well, but if anything it’s something intangible. KBin and Lemmy haven’t developed a culture yet, in my opinion a lot of damage has been done to online culture by the big centralised social media networks, and it remains to be seen if something good emerges here or whether the toxicity of modern social media creeps back in.

I personally wouldn’t worry about the political beliefs of the Lemmy developers, it’s open source software, anyone can use it and run an instance. Each instance sets its own content and moderation policies and decides who it federates with. There are over 1000 instances. The developers have made it clear that they don’t want their instance to be seen as the default one and discouraged people from registering there during the influx from Reddit.

bvanevery ,

My own personal interest was beyond running a server. It was getting features / policies into the software. I'm actually starting to think that developer's politics aren't the real issue. Might be open source dynamics are the real issue. Saw a lot of things in the bug tracker of someone saying, "Oh yeah that's a good idea" and I thought whatever feature it was, might pull people into more chaos in various ways. Chaos meaning, people don't stick with communities they want to continue to be in. It may be an inherent problem with writing software that uses the Fediverse. People may have rather different ideas about what the Fediverse is "for". Like I'm not trying to look at thousands of GIFs a day. I think that's what's basically wrong with social media. Big groups, big volumes of shallow posts, that mainly works towards advertizing business models and reducing the "user's" participation mainly to the act of "watching the new TV".

4am ,
@4am@lemmy.world avatar

Actually it’s “GNU/Linux”…

Sarsaparilla ,
@Sarsaparilla@kbin.social avatar

Personally I agree, but we all know what someone means when they say "posting on Lemmy" etc. I simply make it a point to refer to it as "the fediverse" in my own posts. Eventually people will catch onto the right terminology, especially as more software platform options become available for the Fediverse ... like Threads (though those ppl will probably always call it Threads because that will be all they know and understand of it).

WookieMunster ,

fediverse is too close to metaverse imo and thus it sounds dumb

CynAq ,
@CynAq@kbin.social avatar

And with Threads potentially federating, it's pretty ominous

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