This is just a reiteration of a comment I left on an earlier, probably more useful article, but I’m posting as its own article for visibility. I hope it can help make sense of the fediverse to at least a few more of my fellow migrants.

Basically, rather than having one Reddit with a bunch of subreddits, you have a bunch of Reddits each with their own set of subreddits. Each Reddit operates with its own admin, features, UX, etc. so you just join any Reddit that feels good to you.

Let’s say you make your account on “Reddit.one” because not only do they have killer memes, they also have a dark mode!

What makes the fediverse so great is that you don’t have to worry that “Reddit.two” actually has a far more active r/gaming community than Reddit.one, or that “Reddit.three” has the only r/catsatwork subreddit on the fediverse, because you can actually just subscribe to those subreddits from Reddit.one anyway. Now you can have r/memes as well as r/[email protected] and r/[email protected] all in your feed at Reddit.one with dark mode on!
Some reddits even let you follow your favorite twitter personalities as well!

It would be like being able subscribe directly to 4chan’s /b/ and then follow elon musk’s Twitter account directly from Reddit and vice versa. I don’t know why you would actually want to do those terrible things, but you’d have the freedom to do it at least.

Now imagine if Reddit.one’s administrator goes all u/spez on everybody and you just can’t even anymore. You can easily jump ship over to Reddit.two, or any other Reddit you prefer, and resub to all your favorite subreddits again. it would be like you never left.

Hope this helps. Feel free to set me straight on some points or just post your own explanation in the comments.

TLDR: Lots of different Reddits. You join the Reddit you like, but you can subscribe to any of the other Reddits’ subreddits as well!

  • Anon2971@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    Great explanation! Really well written and clearly explained. However…

    Forgive my bluntness, but people not into tech tend to be lazy and stupid about everything lol. I feel like they’d take one glance at that, think TOO MUCH TEXT, not read it properly and still complain about the Fediverse being confusing.

    Any kind of attempt at explaining the Fediverse seems to really confuse people, so IMO the best solution is to not even bring it up. Kinda dismiss it as no biggie, then sneak in a quick explanation at the end. Here’s my go:

    "If the word ‘Fediverse’ confuses or scares you, ignore it. Just join any Lemmy instance you like the look of. They all work more or less like Reddit. If you can’t find a community/subreddit you want on one, make it yourself.

    Or, alternatively, use this to see if one exists already. If it does, you can copy the community Lemmy address (it appears on the right in blue under the ‘create a post’ button in a form like ‘[email protected]’), search for it on your site’s search, then subscribe like you would any other subreddit.

    That cross-site subscribing is what the Fediverse is about - it’s a bunch of small, independent Reddit-ish clones cross-talking. But since they’re small, they’re struggling and slightly breaking with Reddit refugees at the moment. I’d recommend local communities only for now. Join the commuities you find via Feddit in maybe a few weeks or so once everything’s calmed down."