1. Still trying to wrap my head around exactly how the fediverse works. I understand it is decentralized. Are kbin and lemmy somehow intermingled? Meaning am I able to view lemmy content here on kbin and interact with it without having to create an account on beehaw or whatever?

  2. What exactly is the difference between the upvote (and downvote) button and boost? Is boost just upvote but moreso?

  3. Is there a “save” function like reddit had, where you can bookmark posts to your profile?

  4. Is there an android app(s) for kbin?

  5. What are tags and badges? I just left them blank for this post.

  6. Is there anything else that I’m not asking that I should know?

  7. Are the answers to any of this in the FAQ and am I fucking up by not reading it?

Thanks all.

  •  themadcodger   ( @themadcodger@kbin.social ) 
    11•1 year ago
    1. You have the right idea. A common misconception about the fediverse is “I have a Reddit account, so I should be able to log into everywhere with that.” It’s more the opposite. Your login only works on the instance you signed up on. But that same account can talk to other Reddits, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. so you don’t really need more than one account. Though I do have a kbin, Calckey (Twitter) and Pixelfed (IG) account.

    One other thing about the fediverse is that new instances don’t magically know all the other instances out there. Someone has to either specifically search for something from the instance or boost it from a different instance. Basically someone needs to be the first person to start the interaction.

    And with the fediverse, bad actors get blocked or defederated at the server level. That means they have no way of interacting with you. It they’re truly bad, and they do and have existed for a while in some form or another, they do eventually become an island no one will interact with besides other terrible people. So when you join an instance check their rules and make an informed decision.

    1. Upvotes and downvotes are meaningless beyond telling the author good job or fuck you. There’s not much of an algorithm in the fediverse; you are the algorithm. Boosts are where that comes in. They bump the post to the top of Active and add points towards Hot. If you go to Mastodon or Calckey (Twitter) you’ll see favorite and boost. Upvotes map to favorites and boost is the same. A common theme around the fediverse is to use favorite/upvotes liberally since they don’t mean anything and we all like being acknowledged. Use boosts to mean “I think people need to see this”

    2. There’s not a save yet, but anything you boost you can find listed in your profile. It’s a workaround for the time being.

    3. You’ve seen by now one is in the works. In the meantime I’m using the mobile web page as a PWA and it works pretty well.

    4. Tags are one place that kbin has an advantage over Lemmy. They don’t do much here, but it’s an important way of finding things in Mastodon/Calckey. When you create a ‘magazine’ whatever tags you put there, they’ll be pulled into the microblogging section of your magazine. That makes it easy for you to interact with people in the fediverse without leaving kbin.

    I haven’t figured out badges yet, but I also forget to look.

    1. Be excellent to each other. Seriously though, this is a new world for us, let’s shape it into something we can so be proud of.

    Also, this whole thing is being done by a guy by himself. There will be growing pains like there were when Twitter first started and when Digg migrated to Reddit. Be patient, he’s doing a lot of great things with limited resources. But this is open source, so if you have the capabilities, you can always lend a hand.

    Hope that solves some confusion.