I have a draft designed for all types of fediverse software, but i narrowed it down to just threadiverse stuff
This is a guide meant to be linked for beginners, to explain the fediverse in as short time as possible.
Concepts
What’s “federation”?
In easy terms; it’s a concept where instances seamlessly integrate with each other. Users can talk to each other and participate in their communities. For example, my account is on lemm.ee and the community i am posting to is on slrpnk.net, yet i feel no friction.
What’s an instance?
An instance is a server running software, with users, and communities, etc. (Each of these is like a mini-reddit/twitter/etc!) The software part is important, since instances can either be forums, microblogs, video-sharing sites, etc etc. And they can all interact with each other!
What’s the “fediverse”?
The fediverse (federation + universe) is a coalition of federated instances running all types of different software, so a user from a forum instance (lemmy) can interact with a user from a microblog instance (mastodon)
Another example is bluesky, but that uses a different protocol, and is much less effective than ActivityPub.
Why should i use the fediverse over normal social media?
Many reasons. A few:
-
it can never truly die - People can always create software and run instances, and if one goes down, the others will still be up.
-
No one person controls the fediverse. We are all on equal grounds.
-
Unlike corporations who back social media platforms, fedi is 100% ran by normal people. You can talk to developers, instance hosters, the mods, all as normal people, and they (unless you use their server) have no control over you.
-
There is no need to appeal to advertisers
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Freedom of choice. Disagree with an instance’s values, or a developer’s? Easy, defederate or just don’t use their software. You will still have the fediverse as a whole accessible to you, without the parts you do not like.
I’m convinced! How do i begin?
Excellent!
First you must choose what software you want your instance of choosing to run:
- Lemmy if you care about apps
- Piefed if you care about features/fast development, or a lightweight instance
- Mbin if you want both your blog and forum account in the same place
Instances
Lemmy
- lemm.ee, discuss.online, sopuli.xyz for general instances
- jlai.lu for francophones
- feddit.cl for chile
- lemmy.ca for canada
- feddit.org for german speakers
- programming.dev for a programming instance
- slrpnk.net/lemmy.dbzer0.com for leftist/anarchist instances
Piefed
- piefed.social for the flagship instance
- feddit.online for an NA instance
Mbin
- kbin.earth, fedia.io, kbin.melroy.org, thebrainbin.org, moist.catsweat.com for general instances
- rimworld.gallery for rimworld content
- cesto.garden for a leftist [italian] instance
- m.a9press.com for a korean instance
Apps/clients [everything after this point is optional]
some people may not like the default frontends or want to access their instance through mobile, here is a curated list:
Lemmy
- Photon [PC]
- Alexandrite [PC]
- Tesseract [PC]
- Voyager [MOBILE]
- Mlem [IOS]
- Arctic [IOS]
- Raccoon [ANDROID]
- Jerboa [ANDROID]
- Connect [ANDROID, NOT FOSS]
- Thunder [MOBILE]
- Interstellar [ANDROID]
Mbin
- Interstellar [ANDROID]
Communities
Here are some good community recommendations, based on topics:
Memes
Software
Politics
Casual
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Knowledge
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
History
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Animals
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected] -
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Art
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Postface
That’s about all there’s left for you; have fun!
Finally… im done writing this…
Great stuff, but the opensource com on programming.dev is spelled without an underscore :) maybe also add https://reddthat.com/c/imaginary as a rec?
Oh my god, i just posted this from the old community and didn’t realize the errors… thank you!
will add your community, too :)
Really good post. Thank you for this
Thank you! :D
Thanks for typing this up!
Cool, we can add it to the wiki of [email protected]
We could also invite people to co-write guides. @[email protected] are you interested ? :3
And can you change jlai.lu to french speaking ? Shere are belgian, swiss too. :)
I’ve changed it to francophone, thanks
Thanks :)
I think I’ve written enough lately, thanks 😅
Ahah same but in french. Any guide you would recommend us ?
Collaborative editing can help us updating them and sharing maintenance of these guide. So i will turn them into wiki page on PieFed. :)
Maybe this comment? https://jlai.lu/post/15144478/12882694
I used it on /r/BuyfromEU, it had quite good success: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j0xkqa/lemmy_as_an_alternative_to_reddit_using/
Thank i’m copying blindly than rework it later. I will probably translate some of my french guide. They are more pratical :)
There’s also [email protected] as an alternative to [email protected]. It seems to be part of an effort by the moderator of the latter community to move the userbase to the newer community.
I like the more inclusive name.
Fixed! Thank you!
Also, please put alt text for your inline images. In case you’re not aware, it is done like

.Thanks, done.
If you are planning to send this to like Reddit, BlueSky, X, etc., and since you are mentioning location-specific communities like [email protected], you may want to add [email protected]. It’s not only helpful for Americans to know about, it’s helpful for non-Americans to have Americans know about, so as to avoid flooding every international community with content that would be a better fit there.
If only they listened… I’ll add it, thanks for reminding me :)