The fediverse is more like different countries. Technically you can travel to every other country with your passport and talk to the people there.
But the people running the countries like to put up border controls so you can't go to countries that don't align with yours politically, and some ban you just because you've visited a country they don't like in the past.
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Fediverse memes
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I've always hated the email analogy, it only added to the confusion for me when I was first dipping my toe into Lemmy.
We should just stop explaining federation. If someone wants to give it a try, point them to one instance you like, and let them go there.
If they come from Reddit, it looks similar enough for them to use it.
I assure you, the alternative to the fediverse is not polite society, not in my experience. Unlike other platforms one is allowed to be wrong here and getting corrected doesn't trigger the fight, flight, freeze or fawn response.
The Fediverse is not like email, it's more like the various BBS networks of the 80s: Tons of anarchy, chaos, StarTrek, politics, lunacy, StarTrek... and cool as hell.
Please keep it this way.
Reminds me of this. There's a couple of roma towns/neighborhoods in Romania that look even more ridiculous. They're competing with each other to have the tallest house with the most number of little tower thingies or something because I've passed through there a couple of years ago and it seems to be getting more and more out of hand.
The funniest and most shallow thing about that is those houses are often empty on the inside
Well that's just fun.
Where might one find one of these “polite societies”?
That place looks pretty cool for sure!
Stop trying to sell me on it; I'm already here!
Yes. The fediverse is so great I've stopped telling people about it.
We fedis know how to keep a secret.
First rule of Fediverse...
Too much growth will kill the vibe in this place.
I prefer the analogy of a fleet of ships - free-traders and pirates alike. Some captains refuse to pass along messages to other captains, and that's alright, because consent should matter, after all, and someone's "right to free speech" does (or rather should) not trump my right to not have to listen to their crap, nor my right if I were a captain to not have to platform it.
So you pick a captain that shares your values, or perhaps you become one of your own.
PieFed has made huge strides in cross-community visibility (multi-communities and combining comments across cross-posts), and in explaining what each instance is all about (see https://piefed.social/auth/instance_chooser), and in migration of whole entire communities between instances.
The Fediverse is not like email. It's like self-hosting your own email server. 🤔😝 But it's getting better. And people will put up with complexity if they see the value behind doing so - it's just that with so little content, and what content there is being so toxic, especially to newcomers, that it's not worth much of a hassle for them to keep trying whenever they hit a hurdle. Lowering the barriers will help enormously with that, as will increasing the level of enrichment to power through.
Oh, I can exist in polite society just fine.
It's just that I don't want to.
“Polite society” ain’t.
Greetings!
Hello
What's broken besides piefed?
I didn't know piefed was broken, can you explain?
Crosspost comment consolidation helps with that issue.
Already available on Piefed, planned on Lemmy 1.0.
How does this interact with moderation? I never considered that viable because how wildly... Shall we say diverse .ml, .world, and the rest of the fediverses' moderation schemes are.
Each community's comments are separated although still on the same page. Here is a good example - https://piefed.social/c/technology/p/1765981/google-sent-personal-and-financial-information-of-student-journalist-to-ice
That's cool! I just wish the header was more subtle, but that's only a css thing
Oh, that's neat.
Thanks for the example :)
I must be missing something because I only see two main comments on that post and the sub comments.
I’m on voyager app tho so that’s likely a limiting feature even tho it’s supposed to be working on that comparability.
Can you show me a screenshot of what you meant to show?
You could just pop it open in your browser... don't even need an account.
Hypothetically yes, but I only ever accessed fediverse through non-apps briefly before I swapped to the app. I was part of the app-based exodus. That was the whole reason I came here; to support app devs.
If it’s not reflected in apps, lots of people will never see it. That’s all. I can go out of my way to see it but I don’t see it in my normal interface. Voyager is still working on full piefed support
I think some of us are just kind of used to checking things directly since certain features and concepts may not yet be implemented in things like clients due to being, essentially, the bleeding edge.
Yeah, I get it. You more techie people tend to assume everyone does what you do, and that’s fine, but totally unrealistic overall. I’m not nearly as techie as you probably are, but more than your average user, and tbh the barrier here is pretty high already, even without those assumptions of capability.
If they won’t do the work on other platforms, they certainly won’t here. Y’all need to stop pretending they will. It’s not doing any favors I’m sorry.
If anyone's curious:
By late 2016, construction work on the castles was behind schedule. This was initially attributed to the cold winter weather, then to a failed military coup that July.
This part is funny to me because that coup lasted hours. My parents made fun of me for going to bed right before it began and waking up after the coup was done.
It sounds more like they happened to find an excuse for delays by some divine luck. (Altough there were delay-causing events AFTER the coup)
appeared online in the early 2020's
I still cannot comprehend that it's now the late 2020s. FFS, it's 2022
I could exist in polite society, but why would I want to?
If it was polite I'd be existing there right now
This is funny but it's a very unfair comparison. That neighbourhood is fully abandoned with exactly 0 residents, and you know it would probably be shit even if it was finished as planned. The fediverse has at least some real people and is actually a fun place.
To be honest? For me it's the fun type of broken-and-hilarious. Once I got used to the Fediverse, most of the things I could complain about it are found in the equivalent closed platforms.
If u squint ur eyes it looks like a klan gathering
Then don't squint your eyes: problem solved 😂🤪
I'd say it's more like a big truck than a series of tubes.
I wouldn't say "driven" or "polite", but partially true, at least. Also, wasn't the fediverse always supposed to be a conglomerated mess? That's one of it's defining features.