this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

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Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)

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Mastodon. It’s much better than Lemmy.

[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 points 14 hours ago

"use" might be a stretch.

I have a mastodon account I check occasionally
I have a pixelfed account I use rarely
And a loops account I think I logged into once

[–] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

Just email dan lemmy. I dont care for social media. I havent had one for a long time. I just dont see the appeal. I registered on peertube but its pretty lackluster.

[–] mlody@szmer.info 3 points 19 hours ago

Matrix, XMPP, Mastodon, Lemmy,

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

Nah that kind of thing isn't important to me unless the product is polished and as good as the original it's replacing including the amount of content available

[–] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 0 points 14 hours ago

Maybe make onboarding easier or the fediverse dies a slow death

But nah, why bother making it easy for users to join when you can just gatekeep everything into low engagement

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 48 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Drewmeister@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] arakhis_@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

its the dot

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Everyone is mentioning email. I also use the World Wide Web.

[–] Osan@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

DNS is also super cool can't imagine my life without it

[–] hitstun@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago

Besides Mbin, I've been using Sharkey a lot. It's really nice! I also want to use Peertube and Owncast more.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I use Mastodon and Pixelfed mainly. But I also have an account on Friendica and Loops.video, but I rarely use them. And does Matrix count?

Oh and I forgot about Funkwhale for putting your music collection online.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Matrix certainly counts as "federated" which is whats in the title, but its not using activitypub so its not "fediverse". Email is also federated and i assume you have that too lol

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Good point.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is the only federated software that I use because it is the only one in a format I enjoy using. I liked reddit for the threaded forum kinda format, so lemmy was an easy transition.

Never liked facebook/twitter/instagram or those formats so no interest in a federated version of them. There could be something out there I would also like, but thst would require trying more things and I gave up after bouncing off a few.

[–] JakobFel@retrolemmy.com 5 points 1 day ago

Mastodon and Pixelfed. Mastodon is my main (Retro Gaiden) but I'm experimenting with the Fediverse to see what works for me and what doesn't.

[–] Snoopy@piefed.social 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I use :

microblog

  • mastodon for political content as it allows me to avoid lenghty and tendious discussion with its 500 character limit. But...i stopped using it for a while due to current news on climate change and fascisme. And i'm not fan of its UI
  • IceShrimp. I love its colorful UI. For me it one of tge best UI pn the fediverse. It also have a good balance between lenghty text and short one. It also support markdown. 3000 character is enough

forumverse

  • lemmy, it was good when we migrated from Reddit but over time i prefer PieFed.
  • Mbin, i tried it but i dunno why i don't use it as much as Lemmy whereas there were much more functionalities and cool ideas.
  • PieFed i'm starting to use it much more than Lemmy. There are plenty great ideas as downvote management, tags, poll, multicommu, support peertube and a.gup.pe. It is better each week.
[–] yuki2501@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Mastodon. Lemmy is good for discussions, but Mastodon is more Twitter -like so you can follow friends and see what they're up to.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I host: GotoSocial, Bookwyrm, Matrix, and a number of self hosted git related services (Radicle/Forgeo). Some awesome emulators of more modern game consoles are over on the federated git (not GitHub) nowadays.

I also made a UI that transforms mastodon to look more like lemmy/piefed/etc..., where hashtags are the communities. Its not really ready and very bare bones.

I have a funkwhale account. I wish I used it more.

Most of the above have an rss feed so thats how I keep up with it all.

the common stuff (email, telephone), mastdodon, mbin, loops and i have many more accounts

[–] gatohaus@eviltoast.org 6 points 1 day ago

Mastodon but not nearly as much as Lemmy.

Bookwyrm but not nearly as much as Mastodon.

I really wanted Bookwyrm to be more useful for me. But it’s really not geared towards what I want in keeping track of books. ymmv

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] openrev0lt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

what’s the difference between mbin and lemmy?

mbin lets you access all of the lemmy content (the threadiverse) as well as the microblog stuff like mastodon and universeodon. its also a bit more reddit-like

example: https://moist.catsweat.com/

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 5 points 1 day ago

I use Lemmy and PeerTube. Host a version of both myself. I use Loops a little as well and will probably pick up Pixelfed at some point.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Mastodon on my pen name.

Piefed for the hell of it.

Used to use one of the "key" forks, but the instance I was on shut down, and I never went back.

Haven't really bothered with the rest because they don't fit any needs, and tend to be based around things that aren't my personal interests enough to use regularly. Peertube, I'll never put videos up, but I use it when other people link to it.

That's really it. I don't want/need the kind of services friendica is for, nor whatever the name of the Instagram clone is, and loops is totally not my thing.

I don't have anything against them, mind you, I just don't use those kind of platforms

[–] trinsec@piefed.social 5 points 1 day ago

Sharkey. Piefed. Pixelfed. In order from most used to least used. I don't use Lemmy.

[–] missingno@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago

This account is Mbin rather than Lemmy, and I've got another account on a Pleroma server for my microblogging. Thinking of trying Piefed, some of its features sound promising and it looks like development is going pretty rapidly, I may end up switching off Mbin.

Just Peertube. I've been orphaned from my Mastodon instance and I don't think I'm going to sign up for another one.

Matrix and Email :D

[–] small44@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Besides lemmy only pixelfed

[–] Fitik@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

I don't use Lemmy, I am reading this post on MBin

[–] nico198X@feddit.nl 1 points 1 day ago

Mastodon, Lemmy, Peertube, Pixelfed. Soon, Owncast.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

Tried them all, I think. Lemmy is the only one I like this far.

[–] darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

In times past, when it was still thriving, I was an avid user of Usenet.

[–] emb@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Mastodon, but I've largely dropped it for Bluesky. I'm no purist about full decentralization, and I think it's enough that the latter both has users, and isn't currently awful.

I've used Bookwyrm a bit. I kinda like it. But it had some UX issues imo, and didn't keep me hooked.

Also tried Pixelfed. It's pretty slick, but I just can't see the point. Like Instagram, seeing a feed of just pictures wasn't all that interesting to me... though I probably just haven't followed the right accounts.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 day ago

XMPP is great. Movim.eu is a nice webclient for it that also does macro-blogging.

Akkoma serves me well for the micro-blogging part of the Fediverse.

[–] Fingolfinz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I will if I end up caring more but for now, lemmy suffices all my needs

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Excluding email, nope. Seeing as no one else in my friend group uses Federated services, and they're all still too small to cover most niches, there isn't really anything for me.

[–] LEVI@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

Catodon, same as Firefish but with haptic feedback (and other stuff)

[–] Hamiller@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

I have recently started to explore Nostr.

[–] Tealk@rollenspiel.forum 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Mastodon, Writefreely, Flohmarkt, Mobilizon all self-hosted

[–] Berin@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

I use Mastodon and Goblin

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 points 1 day ago
[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 1 points 1 day ago

In addition to Mastodon and Pixelfed, I have a Friendica, Hubzilla, Yacy, and Nextcloud.

Federated Services

Federated Services are services which many instances form a network to provide a greater whole than the sum of their parts, each participant in the Fediverse is an “instance”. A message or other item made available on one instance is visible and available on other instances.

We make these services available to all people who do not abuse it in order to promote the values of Free Speech, and those of the United States Constitution First Amendment. A free republic is not possible without free speech and commercial mainstream media do not provide it. We also get some advertisement benefit from hosting these, it is our hope that people who see how fast and responsible our services are will decide to do hosting or use other paid services here.

There are numerous federated services available, we offer Macrobloging platform Friendica, Hubzilla; Microbloging services Mastodon, Misskey, a federated search engine, Yacy, and a federated cloud service, Nextcloud.

Macrobloging services are message systems that allow long form posts similar in format to Facebook. These allow for works of fiction, poetry, technical papers, news items, short stories, and more. These formats are most useful for discussion of social issues.

Microbloging services allow only short form posts similar in format to Twitter. While you can link to larger articles elsewhere, you have a relatively short character limit and so can not post them directly.

Censorship, is handled much different on the fediverse than on mainstream media like Twitter or Facebook. On the fediverse, each individual instance is responsible for content available on that instance, but does not censor the rest of the network. Thus if you find the rules of one instance too constraining you can move to another.

Federated search engines are analogous to federated message systems in that each instance chooses what portion of the internet it wants to crawl. When you enter a search term, the local instance queries all of the federated instances, collates and sorts the results and presents them to you. As with messages, each instance can have it’s own censorship policies but no one instance can censor the entire network.

Given the wild-west nature of the fediverse, it is probably not suitable for children under 14, and you’re guaranteed to find some material that will offend virtually everyone. With federated search engines, material that is inappropriate will usually be flagged sensitive or nsfw (not safe for work) so as long as you don’t expand material marked as such, you can avoid this sort of material. There are occasionally people who violate these rules, we do our best to remove such individuals none the less some will get through.

We offer the following federated services:

Friendica.Eskimo.Com
Friendica is a decentralized long format macrobloging message network. It is similar in format to facebook however there is no centralized censorship. Also, it is able to federate with all other federated message systems which use ActivityPub protocol and also we have extensions that allow it to speak to several other networks via other protocols.

Hubzilla.Eskimo.Com
Hubzilla is similar in message format to Friendica in that it allows long posts. However, it specializes in it’s ability to provide connectivity to multiple protocols and so we include it in our mix of federated services primarily for the better connectivity it offers. Hubzilla provides a great deal of interoperability between many networks though ActivityPub is still it’s primary protocol. Hubzilla gives you a greater degree of control over privacy than some of the other networks. You can create private channels that are served between hubzilla instances and other compatible instances.

Mastodon.Eskimo.Com
Mastodon is first and foremost an alternative to Twitter. While Twitter has Tweets, Mastodon has Toots. The format is very similar. Mastodon toots have a limit of 500 characters. Similar to the short limit of Twitter. This is why this platform is referred to as a Microbloging format. Mastodon interacts with other ActivityPub instances however when a long form blog post from another instance arrives, you are only shown a short portion with a link to follow to see the full post on the originating site.

NextCloud.Eskimo.Com
If you are a customer of Eskimo North, your login credentials will work without a domain extension to access Nextcloud. If you are not a customer you can apply for a Nextcloud account using your choice of login and password, in this case the login should include your originating network. Some features require an Eskimo North shell account to take full advantage of.

Pixelfed.Eskimo.Com
Pixelfed is a federated pixel gallery. A place where you can share your photos to the widest audience possible, and you can view what others have shared. Instance is new as of April 6th, 2025.

Yacy.Eskimo.Com
Yacy is a federated search engine. There are several thousand instances on the Internet. Each instances crawls whatever portion of the web the administrator requested. It is also possible for the administrator of a site with relatively few resources to request a larger site to do crawls on their behalf. Unfortunately, it does not provide a method for an end user to initiate a crawl, but if you send e-mail to support@eskimo.com and request a crawl, we will initiate a crawl on your behalf.

If you enjoy these services, please consider supporting us by taking advantage of our paid services: https://www.eskimo.com/