t/Android is now on the Fediverse

In respect to you guys modding the original r/Android, I will leave this up, unlocked. But please, don't make any more new posts here advertising r/Android V2.

~~Let the games begin I guess.~~

Edit: Please read this.

We didn't post this one up! I posted on /r/android shortly before bed and felt it would've been in bad taste if we had posted here without discussing with you folks first (I also admittedly slept in, as it's a holiday today for Canada Day Weekend).

I was actually hoping to reach out to you and Mike to see if you're interested in joining our mod team on !android@lemdro.id. We hope to carry forward the same kind of content philosophy from /r/android prior to our lockdowns, namely discussions and items of collective interest, and avoiding specific, technical support questions that can overtake large communities - and think you both align pretty well with our overall emphasis on keeping it civil and cordial.

For a bit of background on the instance, @cole@lemdro.id has been spending quite some time getting lemdro.id setup and optimized for us with a focus on ensuring backend scalability to handle load. The hope was to have an instance where major tech and other subreddits could feel comfortable moving to, without the significant performance issues that could leave folks with bad first impressions (a number of us were around for the waves of migration from Digg to Reddit).

Folks are currently reaching out to their respective mod teams at other large tech subreddits to see if there's interest in joining Lemmy as well. We also have a number of developers with us exploring opportunities to contribute code improvements and fill gaps within the Lemmy ecosystem (e.g., accessibility improvements, moderator tools, fighting spam), with at least one bug fix already contributed to the Lemmy Github!

If you and Mike are interested, please do reach out! It would be great to have you both. Given Lemmy doesn't support group PMs or Modmail, let me know if you want to connect somewhere else - I'm on Telegram, Discord, and Element but would be happy to chat anywhere.
- Thanks Jeff, I appreciate the candour and respectful response here. I confess I was initially miffed that somebody would promote a 'competing' c here, but I quickly realised I'm not interested in rivalries here. Life's busy enough as it is!
  
  I think we're doing pretty well here, but the idea of an instance dedicated to tech is appealing. Happy to chat about it. I'm @mikestevens on Telegram.
- Thank you for clarifying and for the consideration, I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.
  
  Regarding my response earlier, I made that reply on the assumption that it were you guys who put this up as a way to take some users back, which taking a step back now, I see that I was very wrong.
  
  I'll be making a new mod reply to this post, which should clarify any misunderstandings to prevent new people viewing this post from accidentally making the same assumption I have made.
  
  If you need to contact me, shoot me a DM and I can share my Telegram details there :)
Why shouldn't they do "r/Android V2" posts? Is android@lemmy.world "The Android community"? Are we going to put a non-compete rule in writing or spirit for this community? How tone-deaf would this be in the current Reddit upheaval context? The Fediverse is literally about anti-monopilization. !android@lemmy.world just so happens to be one community named "Android" among others on other instances. It also happens to be on the largest instance for now. But a successful, large community doesn't have to be on the largest instance. That's not how federation works. Ultimately all of us users check the number of user subs before we subscribe or we just sub to all. Being the first to register this community on this instance isn't what's gonna determine that. Whichever "The Android community" becomes on Lemmy, it requires moderation work and likely that will determine the final result. If the /r/Android mods want to tell us where the new version of it is, they can do that in a lot more channels than "!android@lemmy.world”, like the various tech or Reddit related communities across the instances. Someone posting this here shouldn't trigger any special feelings in my opinion as it's no different or significantly more influential. The battle for creating a Reddit alternative is much bigger one than who's gonna claim they own this or that piece of land. So I'd welcome every free labor team (mod teams) from Reddit to Lemmy and help them get started even if it means that I have to cede some space. We supported these folks during the blackouts, why should we stop doing so when they decided to migrate? Isn't that the logical continuation of the same events?
- Let me explain my reply.
  
  From my POV, OP's post initially came across as advertisement, but targeted. Imagine that this community is an Apple store. To me this post seemed as if Samsung or Google had put up an ad directly in the middle of the store, trying to take back some customers.
  
  It was my mistake to assume that OP posting was one of the mods.
  
  I'm 100% ok with both communities co-existing, after all, the more content there is, the more likely the Fediverse will succeed. The only reason I was annoyed at first, was because of an advertisement for a similar community that came out of nowhere, with no notice/warning whatsoever, which in hindsight is completely understandable as this post wasn't at all made by the mods over at !android@lemdro.id.
  
  Tl;dr I just wasn't comfortable with how the advertisement just appeared, as it seemed like a direct attack to steal people, but I was most definitely wrong with my assumptions. My reply was made solely on the assumption that the mods of !android@lemdro.id had posted this, and for that I am sorry.
A classy response to a less than classy move.

So we have separate Android communities running on separate instances. I can't see how this community splintering can be a good thing.

As time goes one community will emerge as the main one while other would dry up and naturally become obsolete (until people get angry with the mods of main one and start looking for alternative community, similar to how there are r/truegaming, r/true(x) etc for popular subreddits.)

There are many open PRs on lemmy github on how to aggregate similar communities. For example there is a suggestion of making an auto multireddit like thing, m/gaming for example, that would merge posts from every c/gaming community (not sure how this would work with defederation and stuff). With enough demand, something like that can be added to lemmy by an experienced dev.
Don't like the direction of one? You get options. Like them both? Subscribe to both. It's like getting Gamers Nexus and LTT, different perspective but overlapping community.
It's just like having different subreddits about the same topic. Just subscribe to both.
- I think what he meant is why launch a second exact same community, with merely 300 subscribers, when there's already an established one like !android@lemmy.world which has now more than 15k subscribers? I noticed that behavior with the r/neovim mods too, they refused to join an existing community. My guess is simply that they want to be in a community where they are still in charge of everything, they're too addicted to their mod "powers" to let go of them.
- But they're the same topic, so there's a good chance there's gonna be repeated content across both. Particularly if not everyone is subscribed to all instances.
  
  I'm subscribing to both, but will be interesting to see how duplicate content across instances are federated in the future.
- That'd be great if my subscribe hadn't been pending for days.
I get your point but there is a good solution for this.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113

Basically a feature request to have the option for multi subreddits or communities. This way we get centralized content without the disadvantages of decentralization.
This feels like the argument people made against Android when Google announced that any manufacturer could have their own separate distribution.
- And it was a huge problem
I'm with you. I'm already seeing duplicate posts/links shared across instances. Trying to work out how managing subscriptions will look as the platform grows.
I mean there's a subreddit for gaming and then there's a subreddit for console gaming and a subreddit for patient gaming and a subreddit for video games in the subreddit for PlayStation etc..

I understand a little confusion but if anything only having one subreddit for Android was a problem to begin with. And places like Android apps or Android gaming we're probably a little too specialized
What Wander replied. Also you can subscribe to which community has the most subscribers/most active. Having a couple communities of the same topic can also mean the communities can be smaller than one huge community. A smaller community can have better discussions than one huge community.
Friendly competition is always good.

Meh. For me, this community replaces r/android. No thanks you.

I actually like the idea of a lot of the bigger subs getting their own instances. Makes it easier to organize different topics than the flair by just creating separate communities.
- Yeah, I like this idea a lot. Just like programming.dev having a bunch of programming related communities.
  
  Also, it's a bit nice (imo) to not have EVERY community on Lemmy.world.
  
  In any case, I will just follow both.
Yeah, I feel like they're a little late to the party. They should have had this ready to go once they decided they were going to prolong their protest.
You know, you can join both lol
- Yeah but... It just feels weird that the Reddit mods came blasting here as if they were the true Android representatives from Google.
Same for me! 😁

So, if I'm understanding correctly... the mods from reddit, started their own instance are are trying to siphon users over to that?

I don't think this thread was created by one of them — the creator of this thread isn't listed as a mod over there.

Like @Devgard I was tempted to lock or delete this thread — I feel like it's a bit of a shitty thing to post — but it's pretty clear from the upvotes that most people are excited for it. So... Whatever will be, will be!
- No matter how it plays out this is a fucking hero response.
- Mate, correct response. Infighting makes us just as bad as Reddit
- Nevermind, my question was already answered itt
- Weird, it doesn't seem to have a subscribe button when I go to it: https://i.imgur.com/vws3HXX.png
  
  I run into all kinds of oddities with Lemmy.
  
  Also I got a JSON parse error when trying to write this comment here too lol

Update on the post This post was not made by the mods of @android@Android@lemdro.id. This was made by a fellow fan of r/Android and was not made to siphon/steal users as I and many others have incorrectly assumed, so please don't attack the mods of @android@Android@lemdro.id as they don't mean any harm!

Sorry for the late reply (I had not checked Lemmy for a while).

I am just an Android enthusiast and not affiliated with r/Android in any capacity. I genuinely failed to realise that it might be inappropriate and disrespectful towards your community to post this here. I saw the announcement in r/Android and got excited. I should have posted this in other relevent communities.

Apologies for any inconvenience or offense that I may have caused.
- It's all good :)

Crazy. Android was one of, if not THE first, subreddit I subscribed to when I joined Reddit. I was rooting my Galaxy S Edge.. Before a shitload of major subreddits were even created.. Here we are, almost 12 years later, starting over.

Crazy. I joined Reddit before Android OS even existed 😂

Great, subscribed.

Good stuff. Getting to used to using Reddit less and less.

I was part of that subreddit and welcome them to the Fediverse. But I'm in kbin and my efforts to join them are not working. Hope there is a fix for this soon.

Side question: Is there a website with a list of all interest/communities and its address so we could just search that website and add all the sites we wanted to kbin?

https://lemmyverse.net/communities Once you go to the site on the top right there's an icon of a house click it and set your local instance. From there you're free to search all communities by name and by instance location and once you click on them it will open using your local instance automatically. From there you simply have to subscribe
- Nice sumup,I will copy your message to promote it to other people from other services (with credits of you ofc)
- Thanks, this was very helpful!
I know of https://sub.rehab/ for finding fediverse alternatives to subreddits, but no idea about a more generalized use case site.
Lemmy Explorer

About time! 🙌

"Feels like old time already"

Libreddit link: https://libreddit.domain.glass/r/Android/comments/14p8vb7/were_now_also_on_the_fediverse/

Also, subscribed!

I should have used libreddit in the first place. Will update the post

HELL YEAH!

The link for those on kbin: https://kbin.social/m/android@lemmy.world

That's the link for the lemmy.world instance, but the android community seems to have launched their own instance at https://lemdro.id. That one seems to have trouble federating with us.
- r/android ~~community~~ mods
  
  Fixed.
  
  I think it's worth linking to this reminder: https://lemmy.world/post/323205
this is the way

test

For android to stay federated with other servers do they need to download all the posts from other servers to their server? I’m not too sure how the fediverse works.

Not quite. From what I've read, I think only text is downloaded, pictures and other media are just links. So not everything needs to be downloaded. Also to trigger/maintain this connection (federation) at least one person from your instance needs to be subscribed.

But you won't find this community in the search bar because you're not federated yet. So to trigger the initial federation you'll need to search for the full URL, the entire URL including "https://" (https://lemdro.id/c/android) It won't show up at first, so try again in a few seconds, and sometimes you'll need to try a lot of times if the instances are running slowly. But eventually your instance will find the other community on the other instance.

But at the time I'm writing this lemdro.id is apparently offline so it won't work at all right now.

Welcome to the party pal!

Doesn't seem to have federated with Kbin just yet. :(

I faced the same issue with other new communities as well and I think it's because of the new lemmy version 0.18? and it'll be fixed
- It doesn't look to be 0.18.0 (.1 is supposed to not have issues anymore iirc, that's why I'm specifying .0).
  
  This command was brought up in regards to the lemmy.ml issue:
  curl -I --user-agent "kbinBot v0.1" https://lemmy.ml/u/test
  
  When the lemmy.ml is replaced with any instance running 0.18.0, it'll give an OK response. With lemmy.ml it gives a Forbidden response.
  
  But with lemdro.id I get an Internal Server Error.
  
  The instance claims to be super fast, maybe they forked and optimized the code and broke federation in the process?
  
  Edit: Also they're on 0.18.1 anyway, so yeah, it's not the usual issues.
Bit late, but I can confirm it has now. Federation takes a while, lemmy was updating stuff, kbin was updating stuff.

Welcome! I was subbed over there and looking forward to participating more over here to get the community going!

Huzzah

Good move guys! Enjoy you stay here! 🎉🎉

Read the room, it's not a "good move", it's a dick move against !android@lemmy.world mods who built this community when r/Android was radio silent about us and never helped, it's disrespectful. It's only now after they saw Redditors migrating to Lemmy that they thought they should join too, but only by launching a tiny duplicate community because it hurts their ego to let go of their mod positions and join an already established Android community. What adds insult to injury is that they come here and astroturf as if !android@lemmy.world doesn't exist, hoping to absorb its users.
- Yea, I mean, if you're a mod, go apply to be one at the new community. I think a lot of new communities would welcome the experience the vet mods have.
  
  I modded a country sub and it's not my business to tell the sub where to go and when to go. It's their community, they make the decision themselves.
- Can you explain what the controversy is about? So the /r/Android mods tried to start an Android community on the fediverse but other people got to them first? How are they astroturfing?
Nah. The Android subreddit mods are so toxic. They banned me for preferring a Google Pixel.

Hope their instance fails, to be honest. They can die with Reddit. Power tripping assholes.