this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2022
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Fediverse
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Can somebody ELI5 what the difference is between Lemmy and Mastodon? Is it just a different front-end to the same thing?
@nom_nom They both comply to the ActivityPub protocol, but they do very different things, as one is a microblogging platform while the other is basically an image board. You could say that what's different about them is simply their front-ends, but that wouldn't be correct, as each AP server allows their users to do different things. For example, you cannot publish standalone posts in communities (or groups) via Mastodon, while Lemmy doesn't let you publish posts without specifying a community.
@nom_nom Different servers realize different services, or at the very least they realize them in different ways. What's new is that these services are at least somewhat interoperable with each other: I can comment on this Lemmy thread via Mastodon, altough I cannot start threads in a Lemmy community. Other AP servers work much better with Lemmy. For example, Friendica (a Facebook clone) allows for the publishing of posts in groups (which is what Lemmy communities basically are).
Very interesting, and thank you for the excellent explanation. I think I understand a little bit more now: so they are different services but because of the shared protocol it allows for some interoperability between services, and the unique part about the Fediverse is that it isn't simply an API, but all federated services (lemmy, mastodon, friendica, etc.,) are all literally interconnected, but the exact functionality depends on the service itself. Did I get that right?
@nom_nom That's basically it. There are many kinds of AP servers floating around, and while most of them overlap quite a bit (what the Fediverse is mostly about is microblogging), there's also stuff like ForgeFed, which is an extension to the protocol that will eventually allow Gitea (a Github alternative) instances and similiar Forge servers to federate with each other. Of course, you won't be able to commit code through Mastodon, but you might be able to comment existing issues on a project.
@nom_nom Btw, here's a good article on the Fediverse https://axbom.com/fediverse/
It also explains that the Fediverse isn't really made of just one protocol: ActivityPub is the most popular one by far (mainly thanks to Mastodon, which has been widely adopted), but there are also a few others (the most notable one is Matrix, which allows private and decentralized instant messaging).
@nom_nom Friendica owns groups itself and can treat communities on Lemmy as its own groups.
@junbird
@junbird @nom_nom @hamiller_friendica That's actually the main thing I use this Friendica account for - Guppe and Lemmy groups. I might have to create a proper Lemmy account eventually though.
They are different platforms that can communicate with each other, and whose users can interact with, follow, and reply to each other. Mastodon is a microblogging service like Twitter, where everything is a short text post, and Lemmy is more of a link sharing/aggregation service where you can post links or text and others can comment on them. As far as I know, Mastodon users can comment on Lemmy posts, but their ability to post directly to Lemmy communities may be limited due to the platforms having a different feature set.
@f00fc7c8 It's because Lemmy requires a headline for posts to a community. With Mastodon, unfortunately, you can not create headings, so you can only comment from Mastodon.
I see, so you can view Lemmy posts and comment from Mastodon, but cannot view Mastodon posts and comment from Lemmy?
@nom_nom @hamiller_friendica You can view from Mastodon. You just can't create new lemmy posts from Mastodon.