Linux startup screen showing the text lines as various modules are loading at boot time In the world of Linux, few debates have stirred as much controversy as the battle between the traditional System V init system, often known as SysVinit, and the newer
In the world of Linux, few debates have stirred as much controversy as the battle between the traditional System V init system, often known as SysVinit, and the newer systemd.
systemd is a system and service manager, first introduced in 2010 to replace the traditional System V init system. It was designed to improve boot-up speeds and manage system services more efficiently. Today, systemd is the default init system for many popular Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Despite the name, systemd is not a daemon. Instead, it’s a software suite that provides a number of system components for Linux. Its goal: to standardize servi
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In the world of Linux, few debates have stirred as much controversy as the battle between the traditional System V init system, often known as SysVinit, and the newer systemd.
systemd is a system and service manager, first introduced in 2010 to replace the traditional System V init system. It was designed to improve boot-up speeds and manage system services more efficiently. Today, systemd is the default init system for many popular Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Despite the name, systemd is not a daemon. Instead, it’s a software suite that provides a number of system components for Linux. Its goal: to standardize service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions.
Personally, I have no preference at all. It’s there, and I use it sometimes when I need to change or troubleshoot something. My take on it really is that Linux has many options and therefore there will always be differences of opinion, just like we also have for all the “best” Linux distros. When do you ever hear Windows users passionately debating for or against the Yellow and Blue version of Windows? You don’t, because they don’t have those options. And for macOS, of course, Steve knows best…
I think most newer Linux users have not really experienced the pre-systemd era, and also probably don’t delve much into where systemd is actually changed much. With modern Linux there is less and less reason to delve down into systemd unless you are in the habit of experimenting, learning, pulling things apart. But sometimes the topic flares up, so it is interesting to hear a bit about what and why.
the major problem with systemd is that it was pushed by lennart pottering when he was working at red hat, and little by little it is phagocyting (extending and embracing) the entire system. He'd already made a name for himself when he built an overlay to alsa that created more problems than it solved. so red hat has a stranglehold on mass distribution, and surprisingly ibm buys red hat and closes down red hat enterprise's sources.
if you add the attack launched by windows with WSL and the FSF's , the "woke" attack on free software (free as speach), linus and stallman. it stinks.
that's what needs to be explained, not that it's easier to have a unified system that allows a single person (or company) to produce for all systems. if you're looking for a unified system, go to windows or apple. don't try to make linux the next windows or apple.
from my point of view, to send a signal to ibm, you need to eject pulsaudio and systemd from distributions. It's not about being simple, it's about being free AND independent.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
@Danie For Linux, whatever, Devuan GNU, Void Linux or Alpine exists. Or FreeBSD. My personal worst case is SailfishOS on the mobilephone, there is systemd for sandboxing.
As the old saying went: Friends don't let their friends run Windows, or Systemd. 🙂🙃
I find it both hilarious and sad that so many people confuse the 'init' process and what it really needs to do with all the other things that modern systems must run to provide all the fancy features we expect of them today.
As is that article seems, at least to a Linux outsider such as myself, to present a rather narrow, limited, and system-centric view of the greater problem.
NetBSD all the way for me, at least anywhere where I have to or want to work on the code!
It's more than just another init daemon. Listed among "pro" traits in the article is "Respect for the Unix philosophy." The opposite is true. It's no longer "Do one thing and do it well," it has become "One ring to rule them all."
so many people confuse the ‘init’ process and what it really needs to do with all the other things that modern systems must run to provide all the fancy features we expect
there is a gap between what companies and geeks think about fancy features expected and what is really expected. there is a bunch of people that want look and feels but they have macos or windows. Let's keep linux safe of those craps to keep linux users happy instead of trying to convert those who do not care about privacy or freedom yo import their feelings in our systems.
is it interesting that people thinking about how to import windows users or companies (lennart with pulseaudio and systemd OR de icaza with mono) BOTH work at microsoft now? are/were they friends or ennemies ?
According to Richard Stallman, Facebook is a “monstrous surveillance engine” and tech companies working for patent reform aren’t going nearly far enough.
W.r.t. "fancy features", I don't think the vast majority of the past couple of iterations, nor the current iteration, of software developers have any capacity whatsoever to implement those features in an elegant, efficient, and well structured way.
For example Linux has (primarily, in most distributions) ended up with GNOME, which is arguably a bigger horror show on the inside than anything Microsoft has ever produced.
If Gates and Jobs had paid more attention to the innards of the Xerox Star then maybe we'd be in a slightly better place today, and maybe the likes of systemd would be entirely unthinkable to the vast majority of developers, but that's blue-sky dreaming.
Check the ref, Stallman was talking about using systemd. As noted he uses it everyday.
I have been using it too, for eight years now, with no issues and quick boot times.
It's free software, you can download and read the source code, use it, modify it or fork it if you like. You are also free to use something else if you prefer.
It started with [KB9ENS] looking into paints or coatings for passive or radiative cooling, and in the process he decided to DIY his own. Not only is it perfectly accessible to a home experimenter, …
[Jeff Geerling] has tried building his own network-attached storage before, but found that the Raspberry Pi just wasn’t able to keep pace with his demands. He’s back with a new all-flas…
So, you know how every time folks shift from Twitter to Mastodon, there’s always a bunch of grumpy peeps?
They’re all like, “Mastodon doesn’t have all the fancy-schmancy features Twitter has!”
Well, here’s the deal, my friend: you’re here in the Fediverse because of one particular dude (Elon, we’re looking at you) who went ahead and bought Twitter.
But guess what? The Fediverse ain’t up for sale, my friend. Nope, not happening. It’s a fortress of decentralization that can’t be conquered by cash.
So, while we admit that the Fediverse may not be the smoothest ride right now, let’s get some perspective, shall we?
The beauty of this place is that it’s immune to all the craptastic ways Elon messed up Twitter. He can’t lay a finger on the Fediverse—ever!
So, kick back, relax, and enjoy this wild and untamed oasis of online freedom. Elon-proof, forever!
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So, you know how every time folks shift from Twitter to Mastodon, there’s always a bunch of grumpy peeps?
They’re all like, “Mastodon doesn’t have all the fancy-schmancy features Twitter has!”
Well, here’s the deal, my friend: you’re here in the Fediverse because of one particular dude (Elon, we’re looking at you) who went ahead and bought Twitter.
But guess what? The Fediverse ain’t up for sale, my friend. Nope, not happening. It’s a fortress of decentralization that can’t be conquered by cash.
So, while we admit that the Fediverse may not be the smoothest ride right now, let’s get some perspective, shall we?
The beauty of this place is that it’s immune to all the craptastic ways Elon messed up Twitter. He can’t lay a finger on the Fediverse—ever!
So, kick back, relax, and enjoy this wild and untamed oasis of online freedom. Elon-proof, forever!
There's something about the method that Friendica uses to generate timelines that I find really compelling, and that doesn't seem to be talked about much.
Friendica's timelines are "post" centred, with replies appearing as a tree attached to that post, in a similar way to Facebook. It's distinct from the more Twitter like method common on most of the #microfedi platforms, in which there is no real difference between a post and a reply.
The reason that I find this framework so compelling is that it means you always have context and full conversations in view. If someone you follow replies to someone else you follow, the whole post and all of the replies appear in your timeline again, with full context at a glance.
Similarly, when you're reading your timeline, everything is grouped together. Everyone in your timeline that replied to a post is there on that post with full context. And if you're not interested, it's trivial to just scroll past.
Compare this to Mas
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There's something about the method that Friendica uses to generate timelines that I find really compelling, and that doesn't seem to be talked about much.
Friendica's timelines are "post" centred, with replies appearing as a tree attached to that post, in a similar way to Facebook. It's distinct from the more Twitter like method common on most of the #microfedi platforms, in which there is no real difference between a post and a reply.
The reason that I find this framework so compelling is that it means you always have context and full conversations in view. If someone you follow replies to someone else you follow, the whole post and all of the replies appear in your timeline again, with full context at a glance.
Similarly, when you're reading your timeline, everything is grouped together. Everyone in your timeline that replied to a post is there on that post with full context. And if you're not interested, it's trivial to just scroll past.
Compare this to Mastodon, Misskey etc and their forks, where you tend to only see one branch of a conversation, and often have the same conversation showing up in your timeline multiple times depending on who is involved.
It's an option for interacting with timelines that I'd love to see implemented in other FediVerse platforms!
@Ada @Ada Gotcha. With all the forks there are, it's hard to keep track of what they add, and then there's all the little pieces like #Epcyon and #micropub
Just something as simple as the little Link to source button(?) on each post that Friendica has would be quite welcome in any of the other interfaces. But maybe one that links to the full thread or at least shows the original post.
If you open the ""source"" links for each your Akkoma reply, Seph's Friendica, and Ada's Mastadon, you get three different flavours of the same conversation. Absolute ridiculousness!
That's the main feature, i use friendica. I had a Twitter-Account for years... never used, because i always missed the context... That's why i used facebook before the fediverse... because i need context and space to make short or even very long ansers... in one posting. That's also, why i use friendica.... looooooong answers... and images inside the text.
For the vast majority of #Mastodon users, Mastodon and #TheFediverse are one and the same. It was hard enough for them to comprehend that Mastodon isn't one website for everyone and everything, a monolithic service like the #birbsite. And they won't get #Pixelfed or #PeerTube into their heads until their timeline is being bo
For the vast majority of #Mastodon users, Mastodon and #TheFediverse are one and the same. It was hard enough for them to comprehend that Mastodon isn't one website for everyone and everything, a monolithic service like the #birbsite. And they won't get #Pixelfed or #PeerTube into their heads until their timeline is being bombarded with posts from these; probably not even then.
It gets even worse with other microblogging or macroblogging services which, unlike #Plume or #WriteFreely, don't mimic classic blog platforms. It's too easy for the average Mastodon user to take them for Mastodon as well.
I'm on #Hubzilla. Something which, I guess, even the majority of #Friendica users has never heard of, even though it's the direct successor to Friendica, and both had the same creator. For typical Mastodon users, especially those who came in from #BirbSocial, it's just as incomprehensible as Friendica.
Generic example of a dialogue between a typical Mastodon user and me (look at my original post for more text formatting):
"Oh wow, how can you write such long toots?"
"I'm on Hubzilla."
"Oh cool, so their admins must have raised the limit."
"I'm not on Mastodon, I'm on Hubzilla."
"Still cool to have such a liberal instance."
"Listen. I'm not on Mastodon. I'm on #Hubzilla. An entirely different project than Mastodon which is also four years older than Mastodon. You can read my posts on Mastodon, but I am not on Mastodon."
"Buh... but... how..."
"The magic of the #Fediverse. It doesn't only connect Mastodon instances with one another, it also includes wholly different projects."
The same people may have had posts from #Pleroma, #Akkoma or #MissKey in their timelines without noticing, at least not if these posts were short enough.
Hubzilla is a powerful platform for creating interconnected websites featuring a
decentralized identity, communications, and permissions framework built using common webserver technology.
@defcon42/Mirko I think it is also a matter of taste as well as habit. I myself also find the microblogging view very confusing because the context is missing and the text tidbits all get jumbled up.
But for those who like it, Mastodon or other microblogging software is certainly a good choice.
It's just a pity that many of the services are not made known to the outside world outside the Fediverse. There are also many people who use or have used Facebook, Google+ and the like. But it is hardly known that there are alternatives in the Fediverse that go in this direction and have more or different functions.. @m@thias.hellqui.st @Ada
I came to the Fediverse on Mastodon. I'm an admin on a Calckey, Friendica and Lemmy instance and maintain accounts on them all. I still have my original Mastodon account too, though I don't use it much anymore.
The reason I make posts like this is because it's the diversity that excites, it's the fediverse that excites me. It's the fact that it's open and expanding and people can find whatever experience they're looking for.
I want people to share my excitement about the future of the Fediverse, whether they're on Mastodon or another platform!
@Ada @defcon42/Mirko @m@thias.hellqui.st To me, it sounds more like some #Mastodon users, especially those who came in through the #TwitterMigration, actually can't stand there being something else in the #Fediverse than their beloved Mastodon. When they caught their first glimpse of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, they reacted much like the people of Krikkit when they caught their first glimpse of the universe beyond Krikkit: "It has to go!"
They make themselves and each other believe that Masto
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@Ada @defcon42/Mirko @m@thias.hellqui.st To me, it sounds more like some #Mastodon users, especially those who came in through the #TwitterMigration, actually can't stand there being something else in the #Fediverse than their beloved Mastodon. When they caught their first glimpse of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, they reacted much like the people of Krikkit when they caught their first glimpse of the universe beyond Krikkit: "It has to go!"
They make themselves and each other believe that Mastodon is superior to any other Fediverse project in just about any regard imaginable while apparently completely refusing to learn about those other projects. They're supported in their belief by mass media only ever writing about Mastodon and the number of Mastodon users.
However, mass media only write about Mastodon because they simply don't know a thing about the rest of the Fediverse, and they didn't know a thing about Mastodon until the #TwitterTakeover had actually happened, and the second wave of former #birbsite users had come flooding into Mastodon in such numbers that it was impossible to ignore even for those who act as if #FLOSS doesn't exist.
As for the numbers of Mastodon users, they're so high because I guess more than 90% of all Mastodon users still don't know that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, because they have never heard of anything else in the Fediverse. Mastodon was pretty much the only Fediverse project advertised on #BirbSocial when this was still possible.
There are various reasons why Mastodon users don't spread across the Fediverse in masses. None of it is because Mastodon is superior to everything else because, truth be told, it isn't. I'll come to this later. One reason is, again, that the vast majority of them still don't know anything else. Another one is because it was hard enough to get used to Mastodon after years of using #Twitter, and they don't want to get used to yet another platform. And another one is that it's hard to move from Mastodon to something else and take your account or at least your connections with you.
Another reason may be because people don't need anything beyond microblogging, and that's what Mastodon does. Now, sorry for all those of you who fight tooth and claw to defend Mastodon against the competition, but #Akkoma does microblogging, too. With extra features beyond Mastodon, some of which Mastodon users have been pestering Eugen Rochko to include in Mastodon for ages (e.g. "quote retweet"). All while being more lightweight and requiring fewer server resources than Mastodon. Oh, and it federates with Mastodon.
Other Fediverse projects aren't even competition for Mastodon because they specialise in something else. @Pixelfed specialises in posting pictures, much like #Instagram. @PeerTube specialises in video upload and streaming, not too dissimilarly from #YouTube. #Plume and #WriteFreely specialise in distraction-free traditional blogging, much like #Medium. #Lemmy specialises in groups and posting and discussing news, much like #Reddit or #HackerNews. You can't claim that Mastodon is better at each of these things than these platforms.
And then there are the jacks-of-all-trades which are usually filed under either "macroblogging" or "like #Facebook ". They weren't launched to have something that goes beyond Mastodon because their history reaches far back before Mastodon. Mastodon was launched in 2016 (and not 2022 like many believe). #Friendica was launched in early 2010, even before the crowdfunding campaign for the development of #Diaspora started. And in that early stage, Friendica, then still named #Mistpark, was vastly more powerful than Diaspora* ever got and also vastly more powerful than Mastodon 13 years later.
#Hubzilla, created by the same man as Friendica, is the most extreme one of them all. For starters, it eliminates the need for multiple accounts by having multiple independent channels with separate identities on the same account. Each channel can have multiple profiles like on Friendica so you can present your channel differently to individual contacts or groups of them and differently again to the general public.
It can do micro- and macroblogging with 50,000 or more characters and just about everything that can be done with #BBcode (italics, bold type, underline, lists with bullet points or numbers, quotes, code blocks), and you can embed as many pictures as you want in your posts where you want them instead of them automatically being attached to the end of the post.
Group handling in Hubzilla is much easier than list handling in Mastodon. You never have to type the name of a contact to find them. You can edit contacts and add them to groups or remove them, and you can edit groups and add or remove contacts, all with a few mouse clicks. And while Mastodon shows a maximum of four lists on the main page, Hubzilla will give you easy access to all your groups.
On top of that, you can have
very fine-grained access rights control with pre-definable contact roles
forums (just like Friendica, Hubzilla has #Guppe built in)
more elegant macroblogging with articles which, in addition to BBcode, support #Markdown
simple webpages (or not so simple if you're the admin of a hub, and you can expand it further)
wikis (I'm not even kidding)
a public calendar
a virtually unlimited number of private calendars with #CalDAV connection
a virtually unlimited number of address books with #CardDAV connection
a file server with #WebDAV connection with its own access rights management which also ties in with the Photos and optional Gallery app (Mastodon drops your pictures somewhere, Hubzilla lets you upload them to your personal cloud space where you can access them whenever you want)
All with one run-of-the-mill Hubzilla account. And once per channel, separately.
And as if that wasn't enough, Hubzilla introduced the #Zot protocol and with it a concept named #NomadicIdentity.
Mastodon and Friendica let you have multiple accounts, even on separate instances. They also support migration from one account to another, and unlike Mastodon, Friendica lets you take all your content with you. Hubzilla (and #Streams, the successor of its slimmed-down successor, still created by the same guy) goes even further: Not only can you easily move from one hub to another, you can have channels on multiple hubs and automatically keep them fully in sync! If one hub goes down, it doesn't matter because you've got everything on all your other accounts.
Last but not least, both Friendica and Hubzilla federate with almost everything that moves, even far beyond the #ActivityPub Fediverse. This could be Diaspora*, this could be #GNUsocial, this could be #Wordpress blogs with or without the ActivityPub add-on, this could be RSS feeds (and they both generate feeds themselves, so this is bidirectional, too), this could even be Twitter until the API is shuttered. Friendica even used to federate with Facebook until Facebook put rocks in the way; this is the only connector that Hubzilla didn't take over.
The obvious downside is that for someone who just came in from the #birdcage, all this is utter overkill. In fact, people who are used to Mastodon may find Friendica borderline unusuable due to its many features. And Hubzilla is so infamous for its own clumsy UI capitulating before its sheer power that even Friendica users find it hard to use, fresh converts from Twitter to Mastodon even more so.
Some design decisions may be hard to understand for outsiders. Converts from other Fediverse projects to Hubzilla regularly fail at something as seemingly similar as connecting to users on other ActivityPub-based projects until you tell them that ActivityPub is an optional app on Hubzilla that has to be activated first because Hubzilla concentrates on Zot with its Nomadic Identity.
Also, just because these projects offer so much power, that doesn't mean that everyone needs it. If you do, it can be convenient to have it all under one login. But if all you're looking for is a bit of microblogging and online socialising, you don't need to drag a CMS and a full-blown cloud server with all bells and whistles along with you that just clutter up the UI. In that case, projects like Mastodon and Akkoma win because they're more approachable.
And while Friendica, Hubzilla & Co. can do threaded discussions and even have something like forums, Lemmy can do this more elegantly because it specialises in it. While you can use Hubzilla's private calendar feature for event planning, it's easier to do the same with #Mobilizon which, again, specialises in it. Or you can host podcasts on Friendica, Hubzilla & Co, but you can host them better on #Funkwhale and even better on #Castopod.
Wanting the Fediverse to be only Mastodon hinders development, namely the development of new projects within the Fediverse that may be able to do all-new things that we haven't seen in the Fediverse yet. Things that, sorry to say again, you'll never be able to do with Mastodon.
P.S.: For extra kicks, don't just read this on Mastodon. Open my original post; there you can see what Hubzilla is capable of, and what Mastodon strips away.
@jupiter_rowland @peertube @m Thanks guys.Having joined essentially as part of the #TwitterMigration in early Nov, I do want to say cut us some slack 🙂 and that some of us *do* grasp the potential of the #Fediverse and take to it like a "duck to water" 🦆 ... but still it takes time to expand one's social network worldview from a very locked-down Twitter micro-blogging/chat view, to a whole new #Fediverse dynamic? It's a journey, and #Tumblr moving onto the #Activitypub may be a huge sign of things to come
Keep promoting the opportunitites e.g. @ada has got me interested in moving onto CalcKey in future, and I'm looking for an additional platform for an occasional longer piece. Perhaps Medium (with add-ins) or perhaps #Friendlica or ... or ... choices?😎
Mass/mainstream media struggle to even conceive of a non-commercial/non-advertising revenue driven platform *at all* so tbh even #Mastodon sends their minds in a headspin eg. this kind of article?
If you can live without comments, you may take a look at #WriteFreely. Or if you can live with on-and-off developer activity and the recurring feeling that the project will be abandoned, try #Plume which does have comments and a built-in image hoster for your convenience. Both use Markdown, by the way.
Essentially, anything that's labelled something with *blogging and that isn't Mastodon can do longer pieces. #Hubzilla even has an "articles" app just for that which comes with the side-effect that mobile Mastodon apps will always open links to articles in a Web browser and show them like they're supposed to look. But you always have some distraction around the text whereas WriteFreely and Plume are at least as plain and clean as Medium.
@jupiter_rowland Thanks, I had #WriteFreely on my list to look at for this ... will look at the other options too 👍
Even Calckey seems to have a hundred additional options vs Mastodon and it's taken me 5 months to uncover in Mastodon I can follow a group of hashtags in a column eg (Cats + Caturday+ CatsofMastodon), but only if I use the Advanced Web Interface ...
I mean there's a LOT to unpack "here" in the as it's totally (totally) not a Twitter replacement despite the MSM calling it such, which is just plain wrong
@defcon42 (Mirko) :fediverse: Yes, certainly there is a large target audience for whom #Mastodon is the appropriate choice. Those who like microblogging with the essential functions and like the way it is displayed are well served with it. But for months now there are calls from (new?) Mastodon users complaining and wining about what Mastodon can't do and demanding that the developers should finally implement it immediately (quoted posts, groups, chats, more poll options, more list functions, etc.). All the functions, which are then so painfully missed, are possible with almost all other text-oriented #Fediverse softwares, partly even with Mastodon-Forks or even with another instance, which e.g. increases the character limit (there are also public ones).... show more
@defcon42 (Mirko) :fediverse: Yes, certainly there is a large target audience for whom #Mastodon is the appropriate choice. Those who like microblogging with the essential functions and like the way it is displayed are well served with it. But for months now there are calls from (new?) Mastodon users complaining and wining about what Mastodon can't do and demanding that the developers should finally implement it immediately (quoted posts, groups, chats, more poll options, more list functions, etc.). All the functions, which are then so painfully missed, are possible with almost all other text-oriented #Fediverse softwares, partly even with Mastodon-Forks or even with another instance, which e.g. increases the character limit (there are also public ones). Who points out that there are already some alternatives and that they can try them, often gets aggressive reactions (not from you @defcon42 (Mirko) :fediverse: : Who is satisfied with Mastodon, that's good. But from those who explicitly want something else, but don't want to hear that (exactly) that already exists)? What exactly the background of these reactions is, I do not know. Possibly it plays a role that through the media coverage the expectation was created that people here may join a Twitter only without Musk, that they can consume passively? And that then overload occurs when it is seen that there are many more possibilities? That the Fediverse is not equal to Mastodon, but that it is much much more @m@thias.hellqui.st @Ada
@Ada That is exactly what I think every time I use e.g. #Tusky or another #mastodon focussed app: "Where does this post come from, where is the #context?
Connecting the #Watchy to WiFi was pretty easy. Didn't have to use the buttons to type in an SSID & password. It broadcasts its own AP, so I could set it up in a browser.
🐧 I wrote a new blog entry listing all the changes I made to turn the Lenovo Yoga 370 into my mobile GNU/Linux digital painting device. It's long because it contains detailed instructions for beginners. I hope it is helpful.
Lovely writing, as always, and a great source of information for newcomers too! I will be looking for the display calibration device (second hand, as you said)
it is sick... Since my comment i have read it (your post) second time, then i realised that it doesnt matter that i would NOT use it in your - artistic - way, but it would be great tool to make notes in my homeoffice. Now these laptops used can be found for about 250€ so - for me - it is better option then (for example) reMarkable - for ONLY homeOffice use. AND without any other subscriptions and closed software shit.
@elfi Thanks. I also have a Surface Pro 3 here, but be careful: the N-Trigger (not sure if I spell it) tech of the stylus is super laggy and slow. That was one of my fail test on Linux , along with a Samsung tab Pro. Device with a stylus well built-in for low input lag are actually rare. A lot of devices with "toy styluses" around. I hope yours is a model that will have a good support!
@torbuntu It's not maintained by Krita team, and big libs and frameworks using it are not patched to fix specific issues. It's not as stable as the appimage...
They don't understand that we never agreed to any of their TOS/policies, they don't understand that we don't use their API. What now? Things will continue normally until they can't anymore. Assume ...
@Fediverse News This is another post to demonstrate what is possible in #Hubzilla posts and how much of it, if anything, arrives on instances of other projects. It also demos the functionality of Hubzilla's NSFW app; if you've installed it, it should give you a content warning.
For those who don't know yet: Hubzilla is a fork of #Friendica, created by Friendica's own creator, Mike Macgirvin. Friendica, then named Mistpark, was launched in summer 2010, six years before #Mastodon, already as a free-as-in-free-license, open-source, decentralised, distributed, federated alternative to Facebook. Basically what Mastodon was to Twitter six years later.
F
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@Fediverse News This is another post to demonstrate what is possible in #Hubzilla posts and how much of it, if anything, arrives on instances of other projects. It also demos the functionality of Hubzilla's NSFW app; if you've installed it, it should give you a content warning.
For those who don't know yet: Hubzilla is a fork of #Friendica, created by Friendica's own creator, Mike Macgirvin. Friendica, then named Mistpark, was launched in summer 2010, six years before #Mastodon, already as a free-as-in-free-license, open-source, decentralised, distributed, federated alternative to Facebook. Basically what Mastodon was to Twitter six years later.
Friendica was geared right away towards macroblogging with forum functionality on top. Its capabilities were chosen accordingly, including no character limit, image embedding (with included manageable file space to upload images to) and text formatting through BBcode.
Hubzilla, then named Red, was forked off Friendica in 2012, four years before Mastodon. It was converted to a whole new protocol which Mike had conceived in 2011 with capabilities previously unseen on the #FederatedSocialWeb, now known as the #Fediverse, especially #NomadicIdentity. Otherwise, most of the features were kept the same, and even many more came on top. Hubzilla turned from a distributed social network into a nomadic social content management system.
While neither Friendica nor Hubzilla uses #ActivityPub internally as their protocol, both have built-in "translators" that enable them to connect to Mastodon and other ActivityPub-based Fediverse projects.
The main intention behind this post is to show Mastodon users in particular what Fediverse projects that aren't Mastodon are capable of. It shall also demonstrate how Mastodon cripples posts coming in from non-Mastodon instances.
Again, when Mastodon was launched, Hubzilla already had these features, and it had had them for four years already.
The Mastodon users amongst you will only see the crippled form of this post and probably wonder what I'm talking about. If you're using Mastodon through a Web browser, click on the date/the age of the post, and it'll take you to the original (as opposed to the mangled Mastodon output). For your convenience, especially that of those of you on mobile apps, I will also stitch together screenshots of this post and additionally publish it as an article.
Five images should be embedded in this post. All are stored on the file space built into my Hubzilla channel.
The #demonstration starts right below ↓ this horizontal line ↓:
Centred text.
Link to the Hubzilla website which runs on Hubzilla itself. Bold type. Italics. Bold and italics. Underline. Strikethrough.
Text in a generic sans-serif typeface. Text in a generic serif typeface. Text in a generic monospace typeface. Text in Courier. Text in Arial (if that's installed on your device). Text in Helvetica (if that's installed on your device). Text in Free Sans (if that's installed on your device). Text in Arial with Helvetica and Free Sans as fallbacks.
Very large text. Extra large text. Large text. Small text. Extra small text. Very small text. Size 12 text. Size 20 text.
Headline 1.
Headline 2.
Headline 3.
Headline 4.
Headline 5.
Headline 6.
An in-line code block.
Multiple-line
code block.
Code blocks can also highlight 20 different languages.
Red text. Blue text. Dark blue text. Teal text. Fuchsia text. Olive text. ]Text coloured in #005387 (RAL 5005 signal blue). ]Text coloured in #[url=https://social.trom.tf/search?tag=789922]789922 (like >greentext on 4chan).
[hl=yellow]Text highlighted in yellow.[/hl] [hl=#008351]Floral white text highlighted in #008351 (RAL 6024 traffic green).[/hl]
↓ Here goes a picture of the 7-segment digit 1. Alt-text should be, "7-segment digit 1." [url=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/acec8c7b-2d3c-4f83-83e6-a5d1da7c717e] ↑ Here goes the picture.
Jupiter Rowland wrote:
This is a self-quote.
This is a quote, too.
This is a quote, three.
This is a spoiler:Now the spoiler is open.
↓ Here goes a picture of the 7-segment digit 2. Alt-text should be, "7-segment digit 2." ↑ Here goes the picture.
↓ Here goes a table.
First table header
Second table header
Table content
More table content
Even more table content
Still more table content
↑ Here goes a table.
↓ Here goes a picture of the 7-segment digit 3. Alt-text should be, "7-segment digit 3." ↑ Here goes the picture.
Bullet-point list.
More bullet-point list.
Even more bullet-point list.
Numbered list.
More numbered list.
Even more numbered list.
Roman numbered list.
More Roman numbered list.
Even more Roman numbered list.
Minuscule Roman numbered list.
More minuscule Roman numbered list.
Even more minuscule Roman numbered list.
List with letters.
More list with letters.
Even more list with letters.
List with capital letters.
More list with capital letters.
Even more list with capital letters.
↓ Here goes a picture of the 7-segment digit 4. Alt-text should be, "7-segment digit 4." ↑ Here goes the picture.
↓ Here goes a picture of the 7-segment digit 5. Alt-text should be, "7-segment digit 5." ↑ Here goes the picture.
Special features of Hubzilla and (streams): Your name: [observer.name] Your short name: [observer.webname] Your hub: [observer.baseurl] Your profile picture, automatically embedded: [observer.photo]
Your channel, automatically embedded and clickable: [observer.url]
Overview of the decentralised Hubzilla Social Network
Watch an overview of the user features as well as admin features for the decentralised and federated Hubzilla social network. Hubzilla can be considered a worthy alternative to Facebook, and it has a unique feature for cloning its channel elsewhere to act as a live backup in case the primary hub is no longer available. It has posts, photos, events, calenders, chats, wikis, webpages, and plenty of 3rd party add-ons.
Intro: 00:00 Multiple Channels/Profiles 03:55 Privacy from Admin 05:55 Forums/Groups 06:23 Redundancy / Nomadic Identity 06:52 Main Feed Stream 10:22 Post Reactions 12:24 Profiles 15:43 Privacy Groups 17:40 Channel Management 18:40 User Settings 19:19 Hub Admin Settings 21:48 Security / Federating 25:23 Feature Settings 27:01 Add-Ons 29:19 Twitter API 33:04 Local User Directory 35:39 Friend Suggestions 36:04 Edit Friend Permissions / Filtering 36:52 Booking Events 38:40 User Apps 42:30 Photo Albums 45:25 Chat Rooms 47:10 Guest Access 48:35 Notes 49:35 Web pages 49:54 Wikis 51:51 Creating a Post (Encryption/To Twitter) 53:00 Wrap Up 58:05
@Den Hårfagre I don't know. Hubzilla doesn't have a usable mobile app.
I've written the post and my comments on Hubzilla's Web interface through Mozilla Firefox on a desktop PC running Debian GNU/Linux. Nothing mobile involved here.
I think the most important take away (at least for me) is the limited attachments Mastodon shows to their users. Content is being dropped without the user's knowledge.
#Hubzilla, #Friendica, #Misskey, #Calckey, and of course #Pixelfed, to mention a few, can attach more than four (4) images. But once it shows up in a Mastodon-powered instance, attachments 5 and up are discarded to the void.
Sadly, I can't test how it looks like in Pleroma and forks. I tried it in two Soapbox instances, the first one unfortunately is too slow (not sure what happened to that instance), and in the second instance, your post is not showing up even if searched via URL.
@Lapineige Not too shabby. I'm not sure which of the limitations have to be contributed to Akkoma itself, to Mangane or to the mobile platform.
Okay, Akkoma seems to interpret the UTF-8 in the summary as ASCII, or it doesn't expect punctuation.
Mentions and hashtags look like on Hubzilla. The title is recognised and converted; I guess it contains a link to the original, and if that's the case, that's nice.
Horizontal lines work, bold type works, italics don't, underline does, strikethrough doesn't. Typefaces don't, but I didn't really expect this to work easily everywhere, especially not on mobile devices. Text sizes and headlines don't work either.
Both types of code block work, and they're shown differently. I would have loved to demo code highlighting, but I had no reference code at hand.
Text colours and highlighting colours don't work.
The digits are surprisingly huge, they should be 40x60 or so. But they are where I've put them, only that I
... show more
@Lapineige Not too shabby. I'm not sure which of the limitations have to be contributed to Akkoma itself, to Mangane or to the mobile platform.
Okay, Akkoma seems to interpret the UTF-8 in the summary as ASCII, or it doesn't expect punctuation.
Mentions and hashtags look like on Hubzilla. The title is recognised and converted; I guess it contains a link to the original, and if that's the case, that's nice.
Horizontal lines work, bold type works, italics don't, underline does, strikethrough doesn't. Typefaces don't, but I didn't really expect this to work easily everywhere, especially not on mobile devices. Text sizes and headlines don't work either.
Both types of code block work, and they're shown differently. I would have loved to demo code highlighting, but I had no reference code at hand.
Text colours and highlighting colours don't work.
The digits are surprisingly huge, they should be 40x60 or so. But they are where I've put them, only that I didn't centre them.
Quotes work including names and nesting. Spoilers are recognised, but open by default.
Again, I didn't expect tables to work, but I'm surprised to see the same huge gap on top as on Hubzilla.
All lists are converted to bullet points, but lists work.
Video embedding doesn't, but it gives you the URLs.
If the Hubzilla trickery had worked, I would have been very surprised.
On a sidenote, I am actually surprised to see your pictures in the correct order, even though they're all put above the text again. Above posts from Mastodon and MissKey, they come in reverse order. I guess another bug report is due.
for your information this is a desktop screenshot, not mobile.
I can try later with Akkoma/Pleroma default front-end.
Try the reverse should be interesting. I'm not sure Hubzilla interprets markdown formatted content from Pleroma/Akkoma/Misskey/Calckey with 100% compatibility.
@Lapineige It'd actually be interesting to see posts from other non-Mastodon instances with all officially supported BBcode/Markdown/HTML tricks in use.
If you edit a post that someone has already #boosted, they will receive a notification informing them.
I actually like it. It stops people from posting something, has it boosted, and then changes the content.
Other users can only see an "edited" tag. They can't easily see what the original content was, but you will be able to do it with the #Mastodon #API, I think.
@♾️ 스노 (雪亮 Yuki) 🔏 🌟 Thanks for your demonstration. It's also interesting to behold on Hubzilla itself because it basically reverses both your Mastodon and MissKey posts: The pictures come first in reverse order, then comes the text.
@mickdarling Yikes! Way to wipe out a big chunk of my buffer. CWs don’t work the same in all clients. In #bitlbee (a text client), we just see the CW as the 1st line, almost like a subject line, then all the content that follows automatically.
The start post as it first appears on Hubzilla. The yellow button belongs to an automatic content warning hider which was triggered by "NSFW" in the text.
Hubzilla will show this comment itself hidden behind a content warning.
Also, notice the title. You can't see anything like this on Mastodon.
This and the following screenshots were taken in Firefox on Debian GNU/Linux on a desktop computer.
The start post as it appears on Hubzilla after clicking the yellow button and thereby getting past the content warning.
What is shown additionally now is what is known as a content warning or CW on Mastodon. On Hubzilla, this very same feature has been a summary for very long posts since before Mastodon was launched.
The blue label below has to be clicked to get past the summary and see the post itself.
The start post after getting past both the content warning (not what would be a content warning on Mastodon, but the yellow button above) and the summary (which Mastodon understands as a content warning).
I've manually stitched this together in GIMP from about ten screenshots.
Way down, you'll discover a closed spoiler. The next picture will show it after having been opened.
Hubzilla refers to this as a "summary" and not a "CW"
I really appreciate the effort you put into this. I think it helps people to understand that the Fediverse isn't Mastodon, which is I think a very healthy & important thing to understand if the fediverse is going to develop in a way that can hope to counterbalance commercial social media stacks. @fediversenews
to get rid of the huge gap above the table, bring all bbcode onto one line, without linebreaks. something like [table border=1][tr][td]text[/td][/tr][/table]
May be a "ChatBotHubzilla" (a'la ChatGPT) trained with this and other valuable articles by Jupiter Rowland can spread the benefits of Hubzilla much more efficiently than posts that streak the Fediverse night sky like meteors and often just disappear without being noticed?
Hubzilla refers to this as a "summary" and not a "CW"
yes, Hubzilla is clearly the better product, but I fear it will share the fate of Video2000: it was clearly the better product, but VHS was more successful anyway...
Hubzilla refers to this as a "summary" and not a "CW"
Your comment (not quoted here for reference) is hilarious. There's no end to any possible development in open source social media.
You are talking about two commercial products, with ad budgets & profit interest involved. And no say whatsoever for customers using these products. All measured just in money.
Federated social media doesn't work like this. Luckily. Here you can have impact, if you act. Take that chance and use it.
@_jayrope @benny Also, keep in mind a few more things:
Video2000 was incompatible with VHS. If you wanted to use both standards, you needed recorders and tapes for both.
#Hubzilla is compatible with #Mastodon as our posts prove. You can connect to just about everyone on Mastodon while still keeping using Hubzilla.
Besides, Hubzilla isn't just fancier Mastodon. Hubzilla isn't just microblogging. If you switched from Hubzilla to Mastodon, you'd lose more than text formatting. You'd lose boatloads of features which Mastodon can't realistically hope to replace, from multiple channels on one login to articles and wikis to full and proven #NomadicIdentity.
You're so nice (to me being a HZ user/admin). BUT: Let's be fair. All of those different ideas of most probably a similar concept should coexist and interact at their best, not fight.
sure, you are right with all you say. I know Hubzilla already from times when it was Red Matrix and had my own hub several times. The last one went down when so many people fled twitter and I kept following more and more nteresting people. The server wasn't strong enough for all the traffic. Now I went to a new server and use yunohost for my online stuff, but I haven't yet figured out how to migrate my old install to the yunohost instance
another problem is: most contacts would be on Mastodon and hubzilla messages come across crippled, as you have pointed out. When I still had Hubzilla I've been called out several times for my shares which come across strangely, especially when you are used to boosts and have been told that this is all that's possible...
@Zach777 That's my server space provider's business. The last outage took 18 hrs (water in the data center, oops) Data was fine afterwards. Got to mention, that it was the first of such outages in 20 years, though. Hoster is hostforweb.com, account type is Business Pro, you'll have no root access, but terminal for HZ and a Cpanel to assist. Has a git. Sympahic Russians in upstate NY.
Neat. Although I will be self hosting with a computer in my room. How well does mirroring work? Maybe I can self host at home while mirroring non private stuff elsewhere.
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\m/ Excellent! I've yet to have any luck getting waydroid to cooperate consistently. I did have no issue doing the same/similar with anbox but it was mad slow. Maybe I need to take another stab at waydroid, it's been a few months since I last played with it.
@Potung Thul @Stefan Bohacek @Chris Trottier Language is always changing, i'll bet it will hit the dictionary soon. Verbing words weirds language as calvin put it.
@potungthul Bit off topic, and probably best in a language group (are there any? There should be), but it’s too late. It’s well established that all nouns can be verbed. And now prepositional adjective phrases can be nouned. You will probably be unhappy if you learnt the etymology of many words that were imported, misheard, butchered, re-engineered with local grammar and set loose to breed more words.
@MetalSamurai I am unhappy about the unnecessary ambiguity caused by ignoring grammar of the parts of speech. For example, the word hammer can be verb or noun, but if you take the verb, and convert that to a noun, you could mean the action of hammering, or the actual tool the hammer itself. In this case, "on board" as a verb may mean to be on board, or the action of becoming on board. Ambiguity, all because we were too lazy to say "bring on board".
@potungthul Please do not check the definitions of cleave, sanction or bi-weekly. I have given up throwing my hands in the air when Americans say they want to “table something” at a meeting and promptly remove it from the agenda instead of correctly *adding* it. Words are made of amorphous goo and fighting it will end in tears.
@MetalSamurai You are absolutely right. I protest only because it is my nature to balk against creating even more ambiguity where previously language meant something.
Eventually language will degenerate into a single word that will mean anything of which we happen to be thinking at the moment: "smurf!"
@potungthul If you’re interested you could join the campaign against “I could care less”. Canute, Sisyphus and the little boy with his finger in the dyke have all said they’d lend a hand just as soon as they’ve finished the thing they’re in the middle of just now. With all this support, I’m confident about this one.
@MetalSamurai I know it seems hopeless. Still, it's the principle of the thing, not to take the rest way out. That's why I am here and not on the bird site.
@Potung Thul, @Kevin Davidson, the increasing popularity of the ignorant leads to the death of the proper meaning of words. I love to verbinate words or add some silly adjectivication to them. I do so purely for the comedic affect, it's fun to play with words. Luckily I'm not admired by many and therefor have very little influence over the way people speak. 😁
Suffixes help label the part of speech of a word, so I have no problem with getting an invitation, just an invite. There will always be lazy people in the world, and there will always be a place for those who show how it's supposed to be done.
Every single service is a new and often weird word, so that’s not plain language. Example: People care about their Twitter network, which of the five weird names should they choose to replicate Twitter? There’s no indication. Not to mention none are all that similar to Twitter user base, which leads to disappointment.
So why is there a statement like if you like Twitter try one of these 5 random services. Like I said it’s setting up a new user for an expectation that is almost 100% going to end in disappointment.
I don’t know if you’re arguing just to argue but I’m just at my patience limit. This newbie explainer is implying EVERYONE is reachable on the fediverse, that it’s universal like email.
@kynyc Comparing by function and comparing by community are both useful. Without explaining the distinction, the site as is may make more sense to a technical audience than a general audience.
@slowenough @kynyc It's impossible to say, "This is what this service's community is like" because the reality of federation is that each server hosts a different community.
@kynyc "the reality of federation is that each server hosts a different community"
Any intro to mastodon or fediverse which didn't communicate this would be incomplete, no? (Unless you, say, recommend and assume the community of mastodon.social and similarly-run big servers if you're talking about Mastodon.)
@slowenough why are you even talking about mastodon? Other than being 1st why would a user of that page choose that over the the one that sounds like a spreadsheet or any other of 5.
You state: in easy-to-understand words -- what the Fediverse is, how it works, and what to try.
All the names are gibberish and also there’s a ton of them. What to try, well sure there’s not differentiating between them and also what you try will not be similar in experience, but this is obscured.
I have a fediverse account but for some reason, I can not reach anyone in the world, as claimed. Nor my friends or any celebrities not named mark ruffalo.
Either only Mastodon instances will be suggested because "Mastodon is the standard"/"Mastodon is the default"/"The Fediverse is Mastodon"/whatever, maybe actually because whoever designs something like this doesn't know that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon.
Or you get some more or less hidden setting that allows you to choose an instance of another project. If you don't, you only get Mastodon. Result: still 99.99% Mastodon instances being chosen.
Either only Mastodon instances will be suggested because "Mastodon is the standard"/"Mastodon is the default"/"The Fediverse is Mastodon"/whatever, maybe actually because whoever designs something like this doesn't know that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon.
Or you get some more or less hidden setting that allows you to choose an instance of another project. If you don't, you only get Mastodon. Result: still 99.99% Mastodon instances being chosen.
What should actually happen is all projects being treated equally, at least all with the same purpose. If there's an Akkoma instance or a CalcKey instance that fits you, then it should be suggested. And if someone demands quotes or text formatting, then they shouldn't get Mastodon slammed into their faces over and over and over again as if there was nothing else.
Or if someone is looking for a replacement for Facebook or Instagram, they shouldn't only get Mastodon instances to pick. The Instagram replacement in the Fediverse is Pixelfed. And the number one Facebook replacement is Friendica, and it has been that since 2010.
It is an amazingly attractive quick introduction to the Fediverse and it guides people to open Fediverse alternatives for the closed platforms that they are currently used to.
@Stefan Bohacek Mobilizon is an event planner. But that's it. It will not cover the social networking and microblogging aspects of Facebook, and I'm not sure how well it does Facebook-style discussion groups.
@paulschoe How many people remember the 90's? Back before corporate controll? I do and I remember being able connect a jabber server to a Yahoo chat service to a Google chat service to facebook chat to twitter ....
@Alexx9811 @m @mahaska Unfortunately, I do not believe that people chose on features. People choose on 3 items: 1) Hype 2) Recommendations. 3) Ease of signing up
Based on hype, I expect that BlueSky will get the largest initial growth. That despite the fact that Jack Dorsey has even said that he likes to replace 'likes' by financial endorsements (mini payments), which he calls: real commitment. This clearly shows what a wolf in sheep's clothes BlueSky is.
@Alexx9811 @m @mahaska 2/2 Based on Ease of signing up, Mastodon comes clearly behind those centralised solutions even though decentralised is what I think people really want.
That means that I put my faith in recommendations. Unfortunately, most of these only occur once people have been burned by choosing based n Hype or on Ease of signing up.
@paulschoe @m @mahaska That makes sense. I'm kind of interested in Calckey as it looks like it might have some things that look pretty cool.
I think it ultimately comes back to what's been said before, the reason Twitter and such are so popular is the plug and play nature of it.
One signs up and they can follow their friends and in cases like Twitter, celebrities and whatnot. Until that's easier anywhere else, I see Bluesky being the most popular.
I believe that in order to improve the onboarding UX, fediverse apps should not be more complicated than Bluesky. We need to empathize more at the app client level and prioritize safe defaults for new users to learn the ropes with the app, even if it means risking the preferences of long-time users
I think that says a lot about how Dorsey sees the platform (and how he saw Twitter): A place where celebrities / influencers provide content to consumers, not a network of peers. He's not building a social network, he's building a parasocial network.
@mnemonicoverload @mahaska @paulschoe @m Wow, that's a really excellent and powerful turn of phrase, I like that a great deal, and it really feels extremely accurate. Very well said.
@beans @paulschoe @m @mahaska 100 percent agree with this. I think the average user just wants to land somewhere that they're up in two seconds and can be connected to people in some fashion. I think some current Fediverse folks are a little resentful because on the one hand they want to grow things, but they want people more committed to being a part of the community, not to have everything led by celebrities and influencers.
@paulschoe @beans @m @mahaska Thanks for that. I set up an account years ago, but wasn't on it a lot after the early going, so I've got a lot to learn about all of this. But I do think the Fediverse is an amazing concept and I'm very excited to learn more about all the myriad possibilities it may hold.
@Alexx9811 @paulschoe @m @mahaska I wish we could meet in the middle, right now the conversations in mastodon are amazing, this one for example. But I fear that what we have right now will perish if we sense those friends that didn’t land here or weren’t geeks in a way, start having meaningful conversations outside of the fediverse because of UX
@Alexx9811 I think the level of perceived complexity is part of it - both my spouse and I are tech types. I found it fairly easy to get up and running in about 10 minutes - one of the local Twitter folk posted he was starting up a server, and the address. Easy to sign up for me, and when that was shutting down, migration was relatively easy. My spouse, not so much. The fact it took a checklist to do the migration for me was a major obstacle for her. Not intuitive
@beans @Alexx9811 @paulschoe @m I'm about to abandon over 2K connections on Fakebook and another 2K+ on Twitterdumb. I've set the date for July 4. Been on Mastodon since November I think. They won't get here, nothing else to do. 😭😭😭
@mahaska @Alexx9811 @paulschoe @m I'm sorry, for centralized social networks theres not much we can do :/
However, there are talks of having a bridge between AT proto and ActivityPub. So, lets say the influencers go to Bluesky and a meaningful fraction of my friends too. We could have an app that fetches those posts and add them into your feed
Totally agreed. What does complicates things somewhat is that Mastodon due to its dominant position has grown an ecosystem of connected apps that other systems don't really have.
So when you give new users the option to choose between the main server software options, but then also include 3rd party app support in the list, I do think people would choose Mastodon. If we compare vanilla server software, Mastodon would be last on my list. But once we factor in things like @phanpy@hachyderm.io it becomes a nobrainer option for Mastodon again for me. Not because of Mastodon, but because Phanpy is simply that good.
And yeah, I'm very much waiting until Phanpy supports other services (or the services implement masto API fully), because that'll be a real gamechanger imo.
Maybe it only backfills after following? I haven't checked the profile of a followed user. It seems to function pretty much identically to how it's been on Mastodon, at least for me. Maybe I'm just not sure what profile backfilling is, if not filling in posts from before...
also I'm pretty sure my handle having "calckey.social" gives away that I'm using calckey 😆
I've looked at this as the difference between a social network and social Media. A network is where everything and everyone talks to each other, whereas social media tends to be a feed of dubious quality quasi-information.
@m @mahaska @paulschoe Thank you for that. It's cool to hear people's thoughts.
I am naturally curious about tech, but often my reach exceeds my grasp in terms of understanding everything. I feel like I know more than a casual social media user, but I'm definitely not as well versed as many people on here who really get this stuff at a level I don't.
One largely disseminates information from whichever person happens to have a microphone at any given moment in time to people who absorb and react to information, whereas the other is people trading or sharing information amongst themselves as a peer group.
Yes, the idea of the media (newspapers, television, movies. etc.) is typically uni-directional.
However, a network is typically multi-directional... There maybe nodes or branches in the pathway, but even the lowest leaf can communicate with along any path of the tree efficiently.
There are quite a few analegies that can be used for thiese types of structures.
@m I’m trying different combinations. I have a bunch of computers, but the screens are full of work stuff, so I don’t really use them for social media. I use mobile. I’ve got CalcKey/Kimis, Friendica/Relatica and Mastodon/Ice Cubes
So far the Mastodon/Ice Cubes combo is the fastest and most generally useful, but I’m annoyed I’m missing out on long posts when I want them, and not seeing/sending emoji reactions.
@m @MonaApp Ice Cubes fetches all the replies. It’s been a long time since I used the Mastodon web interface as it annoyed me too much, and that was definitely one thing that I felt was broken, along with the absence of threading (I see that’s coming in the next update). It would be nice if Ice Cubes supported some of the other platforms. I was using Mona with Friendica, but it was a bit odd. I’m hoping Relatica will more closely match the native UI.
@feld Adding to that, it needs communities in general! And #Mastodon isn’t meant for communities, it’s for posting. How do ya get more people to embrace #Fediverse community platforms such as #Friendica and #Hubzilla?
@feldNo, it doesn’t. Nostr is one big hugbox and it sucks because they’re too unified on Bitcoin worship. AT is still far behind both and it’s been 3.5 years since they started.
I think this is a big mistake. What made FB and Twitter and Youtube cool once upon a time was that they didnt run on advertisements or charge anything.
Once they started doing that, things went downhill. I feel like this is going to turn individuals into advertisers.
Im trying to be very vocal about my opinion on this. But I dont want to come off as rude. So forgive anything that might sound harsh.
It would be nice if the different platforms all agreed on things. Good for end users, if there were a wider range of mobile clients that all just worked with whichever platform you chose. I wonder if it would slow down the diversity of new or experimental features. Also, turns out bikeshed.party is blocked by my Mastodon instance, but I realised I was missing some replies.
There are lots of opinions about algorithms. I might be convinced to try something minimal and open source. Say to maybe weed out spam/bots. But buy-in-large I am going to stay away from anything that rewards users for engagement.
@twizzay @mahaska @Alexx9811 @paulschoe @m I find that filters (as mastodon has) as well as the occasional block/mute/disable boosts from user is more than enough for me right now to remove any spam... I used to use reddit a lot around when I joined fedi and when I started using fedi seriously it was quite surprising to see how little I actually needed any "omniscient algorithm" to control what content I saw
@fediversenewsThe Twitter algorithm is not perfect, but it works and they’ve already open sourced part of it. Just a matter of time before someone experiments with it here, let alone whatever Blue Sky tries.
Idrc as long as there are options that don’t suck. It seems like there will probably always be instances somewhere that keep a classical, chronological feed, just because a lot of people hate algorithms.
@fediversenewsIf I had to guess, just from surface level, the main thing that Twitter is doing manually is creating topical categories, which are not very useful. They’re mostly for promoting celebrities.
What is useful are the posts it promotes from people your follows follow, and important posts from people you follow. It’s much easier to find new people through that than it is on sites without it.
I think there is probably significantly more work that goes into it than that. But I dont really know for sure either.
You might persuade me to try something like that but it would be a pretty hard bargain. I think hashtags, instances built on topics, and search queries are doing fine just the way they are at helping me fund cool people.
@Trenton Matthews @feld First step: Stop mollycoddling newbies by dragging them all to a few huge Mastodon instances and implying that Mastodon is the Fediverse.
Stop making Mastodon or even mastodon.social the frontpage of the Fediverse.
Have people know how big the Fediverse is. Have them know that there's more in the Fediverse than Mastodon, and I mean right away. Don't let them spend half a year on their huge instances in the belief that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.
The longer they live with the mindset there's nothing else out there, the more they'll see all the other Fediverse projects as shoddy knock-offs of their beloved Mastodon. Or competition. Or intruders into their nice and cosy "Mastodon network" which isn't even an enclosed network.
This should also concern tech media and mass media. They have to stop talking about Mastodon as an enclosed
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@Trenton Matthews @feld First step: Stop mollycoddling newbies by dragging them all to a few huge Mastodon instances and implying that Mastodon is the Fediverse.
Stop making Mastodon or even mastodon.social the frontpage of the Fediverse.
Have people know how big the Fediverse is. Have them know that there's more in the Fediverse than Mastodon, and I mean right away. Don't let them spend half a year on their huge instances in the belief that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.
The longer they live with the mindset there's nothing else out there, the more they'll see all the other Fediverse projects as shoddy knock-offs of their beloved Mastodon. Or competition. Or intruders into their nice and cosy "Mastodon network" which isn't even an enclosed network.
This should also concern tech media and mass media. They have to stop talking about Mastodon as an enclosed network or even a monolithic, centralised website. They, too, have to treat Mastodon and everything else in the Fediverse the same.
The phenomenon is not Mastodon. The phenomenon is the Fediverse.
Oh, and I can name three active Fediverse projects that are older than Mastodon. So Mastodon wasn't the first either.
@Trenton Matthews, I've seen a decent approach being used by folks creating guppe groups to unify their conversations. I don't know that discoverability of these groups is as easy as the creation of them though. Seems like it'd be quite easy to wind up with groupname, group-name, and group_name, all having the same conversations.
@eshep @Trenton Matthews Guppe seems to me like a dirty hack by someone who wanted to introduce groups/forums to Mastodon but didn't know at that point that more powerful solutions already existed (Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams)).
Group discoverability on Guppe is hit-and-miss. It depends on how popular your group is, for Guppe only lists 50 groups whereas Friendica lists all of its forums.
@Jupiter Rowland, yes, a very hacky solution, and yes, I know proper forum-like implementations exist in Friendica, they're fantastic! Equally great is Lemmy being presented in Friendica as a forum. However, being that none of those have a very wide scope of discoverability, it's virtually impossible for a common Mastodon user to find one, much less know about them to begin with. It also wouldn't surprise me to see Guppe preferred over it because other platforms are seen as ""rivals"" or ""clones"" of Mastodon, and Guppe seen as something internal to it because that's how it's been presented to them.
If only there were a way for folks to see what features exist on each platform before committing to one. Simply telling folks this≈that helps but just isn't quite enough. Nor does the "just join here cause it's what I use"' approach.
And hacky as it may be, I'm happy to see folks wanting a bit stricter conversation control have found a way to do so across the fediverse. It helps those looking for a more intimate atmosphere to find a home here.
@eshep Well, the discoverability of forums themselves is better on Friendica than on Guppe. As I've said, Guppe only lists 50 forums, Friendica lists them all.
But in order to use Friendica, you need to know it exists.
Almost all newcomers to the Fediverse spend their first three to six months "knowing" that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.
Then they start discovering stuff that's bolted onto Mastodon. Like Guppe.
Then they start discovering stuff that's actively being advertised on Mastodon by its creators with thousands upon thousands of boosts. This only applies to Pixelfed and maybe PeerTube. Still, to them, Mastodon is the only one of its kind.
Even later, they may stumble upon other ActivityPub-based microblogging projects. Not even all of them yet. If their worldview wasn't shattered in the previous paragraph, it is now.
And unless this happens through one of my posts, chances are it'll take them even longer to discover projects that a) go
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@eshep Well, the discoverability of forums themselves is better on Friendica than on Guppe. As I've said, Guppe only lists 50 forums, Friendica lists them all.
But in order to use Friendica, you need to know it exists.
Almost all newcomers to the Fediverse spend their first three to six months "knowing" that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.
Then they start discovering stuff that's bolted onto Mastodon. Like Guppe.
Then they start discovering stuff that's actively being advertised on Mastodon by its creators with thousands upon thousands of boosts. This only applies to Pixelfed and maybe PeerTube. Still, to them, Mastodon is the only one of its kind.
Even later, they may stumble upon other ActivityPub-based microblogging projects. Not even all of them yet. If their worldview wasn't shattered in the previous paragraph, it is now.
And unless this happens through one of my posts, chances are it'll take them even longer to discover projects that a) go beyond microblogging, b) aren't based on ActivityPub while still speaking it and c) were even created before Mastodon. All three apply to Friendica. Seriously, I wouldn't wonder if many of those who have added @Fediverse News think it's on Mastodon.
Reactions upon the discovery of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon vary, especially if they come with being told that the Fediverse is not just Mastodon plus shoddy Mastodon knock-offs, but there's stuff in the Fediverse that's better at what Mastodon does than Mastodon itself. Some people react with disbelief, some react with out-right denial, and some react the Krikkit way and want everything that isn't Mastodon to be shut down or at least excluded from the Fediverse.
You've already written it: Guppe was created as a Mastodon add-on. Friendica is six years older than Mastodon and out-classes Mastodon in just about everything. Of course, those who have discovered Mastodon to be nice and cosy and perfect don't take the revelation that there's something that's better than Mastodon kindly, so it's only natural that they prefer Guppe.
Also, Guppe has the "advantage" over Friendica of not requiring another user account, another login, potentially another password to memorise. A killer feature for casual Mastodon users.
@queenslight @feld Friendica has super weird and counterintuitive user onboarding. And I'm a veteran Fediverse user. I would never send a new user there.
I count myself as one of the lucky ones. Having come from diaspora looking for a bit more in the features department, I did a fair bit'a shoppin round before settlin on Friendica, then a bit more before finally choosin who ran it.
@jupiter_rowland “Seriously, I wouldn't wonder if many of those who have added FediverseNews think it's on Mastodon.” And those who do know - why would we care? Since it’s set up as a public federating group, I can interact with it trivially on Mastodon or pop over to Friendica for a different user interface. Not sure how the membership & moderation work though - if I were a problem, does the group just ignore me? Does that carry to mstdn?
@Bruce G_NS Those who know aren't part of the problem.
It's those who are fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon and who may go haywire when you tell them that they are already using a non-Mastodon Fediverse project by being connected to Fediverse News.
I think it's a hack who wanted to introduce groups to Mastodon users. Because Friendica and Lemmy and Hubzilla and whatever aren't where the people are.
And telling the people that those features they're looking for exist over there hasn't been a super effective strategy.
@jupiter_rowland Respectfully, sir, does it make a difference? If what I’m seeing on my Mastodon feed works for me, but there’s a better interface for some activity (pixelfed, for example), but I can still see it on Mastodon even if I can’t thumbs up/down it, and reply, I think the distinction is moot. This is sounding more and more like the neverending “which email tool to use on my phone” in our house. Different UIs enabling different features
@Bruce G_NS Okay, let me explain it to you with a fictional dialogue between me and a Fediverse News subscriber who's convinced that all of the Fediverse is Mastodon.
Me: You're literally using something that isn't Mastodon, but in the Fediverse. Fediverse News is on Friendica.
Them: But Friendica is a Mastodon server.
Me: No, it isn't.
Them: But it has to be. How else can I possibly use it if it isn't on Mastodon?
Me: Because Mastodon and Friendica speak a common language, ActivityPub. Still, Friendica is an absolutely unrelated project. Face it, there's more in the Fediverse than just Mastodon.
Them: WTF? Then Friendica is a group add-o
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@Bruce G_NS Okay, let me explain it to you with a fictional dialogue between me and a Fediverse News subscriber who's convinced that all of the Fediverse is Mastodon.
Me: You're literally using something that isn't Mastodon, but in the Fediverse. Fediverse News is on Friendica.
Them: But Friendica is a Mastodon server.
Me: No, it isn't.
Them: But it has to be. How else can I possibly use it if it isn't on Mastodon?
Me: Because Mastodon and Friendica speak a common language, ActivityPub. Still, Friendica is an absolutely unrelated project. Face it, there's more in the Fediverse than just Mastodon.
Them: WTF? Then Friendica is a group add-on for Mastodon?
Me: No, Friendica has got literally nothing to do with Mastodon. It's wholly independent. Actually, it can do everything that Mastodon can do.
Them: So it's some shoddy Mastodon knock-off that can do forums?
Me: No. Friendica can do all that Mastodon can do without Mastodon, it can do it better than Mastodon, and it can do even more on top that Mastodon can't do.
Them: Lies. Why are you fucking lying to me?
Me: Oh, and Friendica is older than Mastodon. Mastodon is from 2016, Friendica is from 2010. When Mastodon was launched, Friendica had been around for a whopping six years already.
Them: Like. What. The. Ever-loving. FUCK?!?!?! Stop bullshitting me! Friendica is nothing but a fucking Mastodon clone, and all that's good about it is the forums, and I don't want anything else than that!
Me: I'm not bullshitting you. If I am, then so is Wikipedia. Release date: July 1st, 2010. That's a fact. Deal with it.
Them: So... there's... like two Mastodons, and they're both in the Fediverse? WTF?
Me: There are many projects in the Fediverse that are like Mastodon but with more features. Pleroma, Akkoma, MissKey, CalcKey, FoundKey... There are many other projects that aren't like Mastodon. Friendica is more like Facebook. I'm on Hubzilla which is even more powerful than Friendica and still older than Mastodon. And they can all communicate with Mastodon.
Them: What... WTF... NOOOOO I DON'T WANT ANY OF THAT I WANT MY FEDIVERSE TO BE ONLY MASTODON AND NICE AND COZY AND CUDDLY AND I DON'T WANT NOTHING ELSE IN MY BELOVED FEDIVERSE MAKE IT GO AWAY I WANT MY MASTODON-ONLY FEDIVERSE BACK NOOOOOOOO THIS IS TOO MUCH SOMEONE PLEASE FEDIBLOCK EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T MASTODON
End of demonstration.
I'm not even kidding, I've read a story about someone from the "Fediverse = Mastodon" crowd who actually blocked a Friendica user for telling them that the Fediverse is not just Mastodon and for allegedly "intruding" into their timeline with some black hacking magic or something.
Sometimes I wish I could go around, grab every single one of those who have joined since the #TwitterTakeover by the shoulders, shake them and tell them, now listen here, #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse. Tell them there's more to the #Fediverse than #Mastodon until they understand why my "toots" look so weird. Also tell them it isn't worth fighting for Mastodon to include certain features. There are more microblogging services in the Fediverse, and they all have these features already, and they all connect to Mastodon.
So you want quote-tweets? Stop pestering Eugen Rochko for including something in Mastodon which he firmly rejects. Go join e.g. #Akkoma instead, and you've got your quote-tweets. And you can always reconnect with all your Mastodon friends just the same as on Mastodon.
Many are positively surprised when they learn that. They've spent some four months in the Fediverse, thinking Mastodon is all there is to the Fediverse. It feels like a whole new world to be explored.
But I've come to the realisation that millions of Mastodon users don't want any of that. They don't want to know about other projects in the Fediverse. It confuses them. They've spent their entire online lives in monolithic, centralised, corporate data silos like #Facebook, #Instagram and #Twitter. It was hard enough to wrap their minds around Mastodon's decentralised architecture with lots of independent #instances, now called #servers.
All they wanted was a Twitter clone without #ElonMusk, but otherwise identical to Twitter. When someone showed them mastodon.social (which isn't even the official Mastodon website; this is), they expected to find just that. And then they first had to learn what instances are and afterwards choose one because mastodon.social didn't let them in. They're still shell-shocked from that. In fact, many of them still wish there were no instances, and Mastodon was a centralised silo like Twitter, for that'd make things easier.
Worse yet, there isn't that one fully-featured mobile app on Apple App Store and Google Play Store that bears the same name as the whole project. There is one, but it sucks, and everyone urges them to use a third-party app that isn't even named Mastodon. So they have to pick something again, and then they have to remember the name of their Mastodon app because it doesn't have "Mastodon" written under the icon.
And then folks like me come along and tell these people that the Fediverse is #NotOnlyMastodon. That some of the instances out there aren't on Mastodon, but parts of wholly different projects. Now, they've just gotten used to the Fediverse being decentral and made up of lots of independent instances of Mastodon. But then someone overthrows this hard-to-grasp world view once again by mentioning that it is, in fact, not only Mastodon that the Fediverse is made of. Worse yet, that someone starts rattling down name after name of other Fediverse projects.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. That's too much. Too much information for someone who came to Mastodon expecting an iPhone app for another black-box internet platform.
Mastodon had just started feeling cosy to them. Well, except for too much #Linux and #FLOSS technobabble. And except for still being hard to use with all these instances and a lack-lustre official mobile app. In fact, except for this lack-lustre official mobile app being the only available iPhone app for Mastodon until recently because everyone only made apps for Android for reasons that don't belong here. They feel like they finally know the Fediverse, that they don't have to learn anything about it anymore, and they've come to love what they know.
But all of a sudden, all these other Fediverse projects burst into their lives. All at once. More nerdy tech information is being shoved down their throats. And the Fediverse doesn't feel the same anymore, now that they know that not everything is Mastodon.
Again, yes, some may look at me in curiosity, their chin resting on their palms, and say, "That's intriguing, tell me more!"
But many others reject this entirely. They cover their ears and go, "La la la la la, I don't want to hear it!" They're those people who speak of the Fediverse as if it's only Mastodon, whom you tell that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon, and who then continue speaking of the Fediverse as if it's only Mastodon. They want it to only be Mastodon because that's easier to understand, and they ignore everyone and everything that says otherwise.
Truth be told, they may have an additional justification. And that's the kind of people who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon, and whose posts come "flooding" into Mastodon. Weeaboos, furries and other weirdos on #Pleroma. Worse tech geeks on #Akkoma and #CalcKey than even those on Mastodon. On top of that, even worse tech geeks in the shape of the "supremacist" old guard from #Friendica, #Hubzilla and #Streams who play key roles in all rallys against centralised services that'd make Mastodon easier to use for former Twitter users.
A closer look may reveal that all their projects are "unusable" for someone who is used to Mastodon, even more so for someone who freshly comes over from Twitter or Facebook. And yet, all of them even claim that what they use is better than Mastodon. Another reason to not like a not-only-Mastodon Fediverse.
Another reason, in fact, to want the Mastodon-only Fediverse "back" that never even existed in the first place.
However, you can't really protect these people from the parts of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, even if you want to. For a user of something that isn't Mastodon, this is even more difficult. In particular, you can't pretend to them that you're on Mastodon when what comes out of your instance clearly doesn't look like it came from Mastodon. And I'm not necessarily only talking about character counts. You can't help but go on confusing them. That is, unless you want to sacrifice all the extra features of the project you use and move to Mastodon itself.
In all honesty, I expect a campaign for fediblocking everything that isn't Mastodon to emerge before the end of the year. And no, the campaigners won't want to hear that this is nigh-impossible. They'll want it to happen, no matter how.
@Christopher As I've said, there are many Mastodon users who have joined during the big migration in November who are still blissfully unaware that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon. You'll first have to tell them that.
Then they'll have to accept it.
Then you'll have to get into their heads that "Fediverse" means that everything connects with everything, and they can interact with Friendica or Lemmy from their Mastodon accounts. It sounds like black magic. I mean, it's the same as following someone on Facebook or Reddit while you're on Twitter yourself.
Also, many of those who joined Mastodon in late 2022 are so happy and giddy about it that they can't for the lives of them imagine that something else in the Fediverse could possibly have any advantage over Mastodon.
I've had someone tell me that everything that isn't Mastodon has to suck because only Mastodon is "feature-complete". I could have replied to him by pitting Mastodon against Hubzilla in f
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@Christopher As I've said, there are many Mastodon users who have joined during the big migration in November who are still blissfully unaware that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon. You'll first have to tell them that.
Then they'll have to accept it.
Then you'll have to get into their heads that "Fediverse" means that everything connects with everything, and they can interact with Friendica or Lemmy from their Mastodon accounts. It sounds like black magic. I mean, it's the same as following someone on Facebook or Reddit while you're on Twitter yourself.
Also, many of those who joined Mastodon in late 2022 are so happy and giddy about it that they can't for the lives of them imagine that something else in the Fediverse could possibly have any advantage over Mastodon.
I've had someone tell me that everything that isn't Mastodon has to suck because only Mastodon is "feature-complete". I could have replied to him by pitting Mastodon against Hubzilla in features and listing up dozens of features that Hubzilla has that Mastodon doesn't while also stating that there's almost nothing that Mastodon has that Hubzilla doesn't. But I didn't.
Also, I think that whoever invented Guppe knew neither Lemmy nor Friendica nor Hubzilla at that point nor any of the other "Reddit clone" endeavours that were pretty much stillborn (Lotide, anyone?).
This is why it's dangerous to build "Fediverse projects" when you still think the Fediverse is only Mastodon.
Yeah, that's why I said that telling them hasn't been a super effective strategy. I've been blue in the face for five months now excitedly informing users that things they want are right there, if they just take a step in that direction.
It's clearly not how people want to come to the information. They don't need to be told or shown from strangers they encounter in a new land. They need to find it through some other channels.
@jupiter_rowland OK so you’re talking with one of the batshit crazy types (also, see straw man argument). Still comes down to as a mastodon user (this hat) I can interact with the forum using my current tools. If I discover that I want different features, I can move to a different hat. Most users don’t care about the back end plumbing, and the technical argument that “this is better” doesn’t fly. What’s easy to use for *me*? Upsell for stuff I don’t know if I need fails.
@Bruce G_NS To you, it doesn't matter. I've understood that long ago.
Still, there are people who go completely and utterly stark raving bat-shit insane over there being something else in their nice and cosy Fediverse than nice and cosy Mastodon.
Luckily, you are none of these people. Also, you know that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon. And you acknowledge that.
Re-inventing the federated wheel because you don't know that wheels exist
I keep seeing lots of people who are totally giddy about the #Fediverse, who are gushing over it, who want to promote it, who want it to spread.
And who want it to advance. To learn new abilities. To grow new features.
That's all fine and dandy.
But almost all of these people are still fully convinced that the Fediverse equals #Mastodon. And nothing else. At least not until Tumblr and P92 join the fray. Okay, maybe the #WordPress plug-in that's the talk of the town now that it has become official. Okay, maybe a few of them have also heard of #Pixelfed and/or #PeerTube because their makers are all over the Fediverse.
When these people are talking about the Fediverse, they mean Mastodon. And when they're thinking about the Fediverse, they're only thinking about Mastodon. Because that's all they know.
So these people want new cool features or even new cool use-cases in the Fediverse, stuff that Mastodon doesn't have. They want Mastodon to have it, or they want new projects to be launched that have these features.
If only they knew.
If only they knew that everything, literally everything they propose has already been done. Yes, in the Fediverse. In projects which are fully federated with Mastodon. Why don't they know? Because they've never heard of any of these projects, much less what they can do.
So they want "quote-tweets" in the Fediverse. Which means they want Mastodon to introduce them.
Tell you what: Mastodon is the only microblogging project in the Fediverse that doesn't have quotes. Not only will Eugen Rochko never introduce them, but all the other projects have them with Mastodon forks #GlitchSoc such as being the exception. #Pleroma has them. #Akkoma has them. #MissKey has them. #CalcKey has them. #FoundKey has them. #GoToSocial has them. The old heavyweights #Friendica and #Hubzilla have them, and so does Hubzilla's youngest decendant, the #Streams project. Et cetera.
You want "quote-tweets"? Switch to something that isn't Mastodon, and you've got "quote-tweets".
Or text formatting in posts like bold type, italics, underline, strikethrough, code blocks etc. Would be great if Mastodon had that, in spite of other people saying they don't want it.
Again: Pleroma already has it. Akkoma already has it. MissKey already has it. CalcKey already has it. FoundKey already hasit. GoToSocial already has it. Friendica already has it. Hubzilla already has it (look at this post at its source in a Web browser and weep). (streams) already has it. And so forth. This time, even Mastodon forks have it.
It has been done. It has been done many times. It has actually been done before Mastodon.
Next, long-form blog posting. We need something like #Medium in the Fediverse that isn't Medium itself. Mastodon's 500 characters are too few, and Twitter-like threads are inconvenient.
Except we already have that, too. #Plume and #WriteFreely are about as close to Medium as Mastodon is to Twitter, including clean and distraction-less layouts. Oh, and Hubzilla can do that, too.
By the way: Again, Mastodon is the only Fediverse project that can do microblogging that has a 500-character limit. Pleroma, Mastodon's oldest direct competitor, raised it to a default of 6,000. MissKey and its forks have 3,000 as a default. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have character limits of "go ahead, drop your short story in one post in its entirety," so virtually none at all. And yes, Hubzilla has long-form writing on top of that.
Speaking of Hubzilla: Most recently, there has been the idea to uncouple one's online identity from a specific instance. Your online self should no longer be firmly tied to any one server exclusively. Now, this sounds so ambitious, it might just as well be science-fiction.
What if I told you that just this very thing already exists as well?
No, really. No, I'm not making this up. But you should know by now that I'm not.
Better yet: It was conceived as early as 2011. By the guy who launched Friendica in 2010. He invented a new principle named #NomadicIdentity and a new protocol named #Zot. In its early stages already, even with no technical implementation yet, Zot was more powerful than ActivityPub is today.
In 2012, Zot became reality as the basis of a Friendica fork which later became known as #RedMatrix and, upon its 1.0 stable release in late 2015, which is still prior to Mastodon's initial release, Hubzilla. Hubzilla is still being developed and improved, and it has a fledgling but growing "successor of a successor" named (streams) which offers nomadic identity, too.
Now, what does this nomadic identity even look like? Well, not only does it let you move your channel(s) around from instance to instance with ease and, unlike on Mastodon, with absolutely everything on it. No, it also lets you have your channel on multiple instances at once. Identical clones, automagically kept in sync in real-time, all with the same identity, the same content, the same connections.
Your identity is no longer strapped down to one instance. Not only that, but your channel, your posts, your content is no longer hosted on only one server. This means that if one instance with one of your clones goes down, you still have spares.
Okay, so how about community groups/forums? That'd be cool.
Well, for one, there's #Guppe. It's basically bolted on Mastodon, and in practice, it's centralised because there's only one instance. But it's impractical to use.
Besides, this is becoming a running gag here, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have exactly this built-in and open for the rest of the Fediverse.
Better yet: There's also #Lemmy which amounts to a federated #Reddit or #HackerNews clone. So not only does Lemmy offer this, it specialises in it.
Hubzilla alone can provide Fediverse feature suggestions with "has been done" for years to come. Not to mention what elsethe Fediverse has to offer. Even if someone should want a free, non-commercial, decentralised, federated #GoodReads clone in the Fediverse, it has been done: #BookWyrm.
Let's make social media free, federated and fun! Fediverse.Party is your guide into the world of decentralized, autonomous networks running on free open software on a myriad of servers across the world. No ads and no algorithms.
@Bruce G_NS, @Jupiter Rowland, the fact that some tools are objectively ""better"" than others only makes a difference to the user who wants that betteryness. The best thing about the Fediverse is that choice we all have to use the interface that suits our needs, be it an interface that already exists or one that has yet to be realized.
The part of this that's a problem is when new folks join Mastadon, find the interface doesn't work for them, and when they ask for assistance or clarification, they're told "that's just the way it is" instead of "here's a few other ways you could enjoy the Fediverse". Simply because the person they asked only knows the word Mastadon and has no idea what a fediverse is. The root of it all is the Fediverse being advertised as Mastadon instead of Mastadon being advertised as a way to interact with people in the Fediverse.
@kichae@kitchenparty.online, @Jupiter Rowland, where the people are is the #fediverse, not #Mastadon. Yes, the mass of fediverse users may be using Mastadon but the entire point of it speaking #ActivityPub is interoperability with other AP things. Thereby making #Friendica's forums, or #Lemmy's forums/threads(?), or #rss feeds, or #PeerTube channels or #Pixelfed albums(?), or #Funkwhale stations(?), or #Guppe groups, or whatever else, all easily accessible to everyone in the fediverse if people are simply given the proper information from the start.
as it's totally (totally) not a Twitter replacement despite the MSM calling it such, which is just plain wrong
![The start post of this thread after clicking the yellow content warning button, now revealing the writing 'Hubzilla refers to this as a "summary" and not a "CW"' displayed by Mastodon as a content warning and a blue label below.](https://social.trom.tf/photo/link/160239 "The start post of this thread after clicking the yellow content warning button, now revealing the writing 'Hubzilla refers to this as a "summary" and not a "CW"' displayed by Mastodon as a content warning and a blue label below.")
![A cropped screenshot of the part of the start post which shows the spoiler. The spoiler tag has been clicked, the spoiler has been opened, and it reveals the text, "Now the spoiler is open."](https://social.trom.tf/photo/link/160241 "A cropped screenshot of the part of the start post which shows the spoiler. The spoiler tag has been clicked, the spoiler has been opened, and it reveals the text, "Now the spoiler is open."")
agree with this. Curating your own feed is not that difficult. We have the tools. We have the network. We do not need an algo.
fine just the way they are at helping me fund cool people.
Adam Hunt
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herve_02
in reply to Danie • • •the major problem with systemd is that it was pushed by lennart pottering when he was working at red hat, and little by little it is phagocyting (extending and embracing) the entire system. He'd already made a name for himself when he built an overlay to alsa that created more problems than it solved. so red hat has a stranglehold on mass distribution, and surprisingly ibm buys red hat and closes down red hat enterprise's sources.
if you add the attack launched by windows with WSL and the FSF's , the "woke" attack on free software (free as speach), linus and stallman. it stinks.
that's what needs to be explained, not that it's easier to have a unified system that allows a single person (or company) to produce for all systems. if you're looking for a unified system, go to windows or apple. don't try to make linux the next windows or apple.
from my point of view, to send a signal to ibm, you need to eject pulsaudio and systemd from distributions. It's not about being simple, it's about being free AND independent.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
like this
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Kenny Chaffin
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Adam Hunt
in reply to Danie • • •Danie likes this.
Harka
in reply to Danie • • •Danie likes this.
herve_02
in reply to Danie • • •@Harka
Adam Hunt
in reply to Danie • • •The Ubuntu Diaries Part II
web.ncf.caDanie likes this.
tom s
in reply to Danie • • •Greg A. Woods
in reply to Danie • • •As the old saying went: Friends don't let their friends run Windows, or Systemd. 🙂🙃
I find it both hilarious and sad that so many people confuse the 'init' process and what it really needs to do with all the other things that modern systems must run to provide all the fancy features we expect of them today.
As is that article seems, at least to a Linux outsider such as myself, to present a rather narrow, limited, and system-centric view of the greater problem.
NetBSD all the way for me, at least anywhere where I have to or want to work on the code!
ℝ𝕠𝕓𝕚𝕟
in reply to Danie • • •herve_02
in reply to Danie • • •there is a gap between what companies and geeks think about fancy features expected and what is really expected. there is a bunch of people that want look and feels but they have macos or windows. Let's keep linux safe of those craps to keep linux users happy instead of trying to convert those who do not care about privacy or freedom yo import their feelings in our systems.
is it interesting that people thinking about how to import windows users or companies (lennart with pulseaudio and systemd OR de icaza with mono) BOTH work at microsoft now? are/were they friends or ennemies ?
Adam Hunt
in reply to Danie • • •Stallman on systemd
"I know it's free software, so ethically speaking, it's not an issue – it's just a convenience question." - Richard Stallman (2015)
It should be noted that Stallman uses Trisquel which has used systemd since 2014.
Stallman joins the Internet, talks net neutrality, patents and more
Network WorldDanie likes this.
Greg A. Woods
in reply to Danie • • •W.r.t. "fancy features", I don't think the vast majority of the past couple of iterations, nor the current iteration, of software developers have any capacity whatsoever to implement those features in an elegant, efficient, and well structured way.
For example Linux has (primarily, in most distributions) ended up with GNOME, which is arguably a bigger horror show on the inside than anything Microsoft has ever produced.
If Gates and Jobs had paid more attention to the innards of the Xerox Star then maybe we'd be in a slightly better place today, and maybe the likes of systemd would be entirely unthinkable to the vast majority of developers, but that's blue-sky dreaming.
herve_02
in reply to Danie • • •@Adam Hunt
stallman on red hat's... could be
Adam Hunt
in reply to Danie • • •Check the ref, Stallman was talking about using systemd. As noted he uses it everyday.
I have been using it too, for eight years now, with no issues and quick boot times.
It's free software, you can download and read the source code, use it, modify it or fork it if you like. You are also free to use something else if you prefer.
Danie likes this.
antonymIC
in reply to Danie • • •Adam Hunt
in reply to Danie • • •