DreamWidth: Always the Bridesmaid

[bobquasit]

It was awesome, watching one subreddit after another go dark last night. I don't imagine that it will affect Reddit's IPO at all, of course; money doesn't care about the wishes of ordinary human beings. But with any luck at least SOME permanent damage will be done.

I set up new accounts on Lemmy, kbin, and BookWyrm - all part of the Fediverse, which I'm hoping is resistant to the cancerous corrosion of venture capital. I did try to suggest DreamWidth as an alternate destination, but nobody seemed that interested. They never are, although I'm not sure why. Apart from being privately owned, DreamWidth seems an outstanding alternative to me. But what do I know?

Comments

[coffeetime]

Hello, (kind?) stranger. I have a bad Reddit dependency and I'm looking for an idiot's guide to the Fediverse. So far I have failed to create a Lemmy account (it just spins, forever, maybe one of my privacy extensions is holding it up?).

I suggested to my favorite subreddit yesterday that we consider migrating to an already-existing community on DreamWidth and nobody even pretended to be interested. Probably because there's no mobile app.

[bobquasit]

Hi! Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I've been trying to think of a good analogy, but there doesn't seem to be one.

The Fediverse isn't really as complicated as it seems. You can think of it as being like Reddit in a lot of ways, but divided up among a bunch of different servers (or instances, as they're called).

Anyone who has an account on ANY instance can read, comment on, post to, or subscribe to any community - no matter what instance the community started on or where it's hosted. In that regard, it's like email; if you have an email account, you can write to anyone else with an email address. And they can write to you.

Okay, that's not 100% accurate; there are some exceptions. But you're unlikely to run into them often.

As for your difficulty signing up for an account, there are two likely explanations.

1. There are a huge number of Reddit refugees pouring into Lemmy right now. The servers are overloaded, or at least some of them are.

2. Some servers are more overloaded than others. Think of them as train-coaches hooked together; each one can only hold so many people, even though they're all going to the same place. Some are WAY too full right now. If you picked one of those, it might not be able to handle you.

But there are lots more coaches, and they can all get you to the same place. So look for an instance with fewer members, and try signing up for that.

I'm BobQuasit@Beehaw.org in the Fediverse, by the way. Hope to see you there. Or here. It was a nice surprise getting a message on Dreamwidth!