Hubzilla vs. Mastodon comparison, two weeks into Hubzilla use (1,333 words)
Back in March I did a quick test drive of #
Hubzilla, which I wrote about here:
https://social.coop/@dynamic/112116628610243658with an addendum here:
https://social.coop/@dynamic/112123974569355483There are a lot of details that I didn't get quite right in that first Mastodon thread, and I'm
not going to attempt to make systemic corrections here. However, after using Hubzilla as my primary Fediverse platform for two weeks, I'm somewhat better informed, and I'm providing some of my observations here.
For starters, a reminder that Hubzilla has a ton of features and is highly configurable. This is not a "deep dive" and I am not an expert on Hubzilla, nor do I expect to be in the near future, there's just too much to learn. What I can describe is my own experiences after a week of settling in and configuration.
Updated Comparison between Hubzilla and #Mastodon*
Connections: Mastodon provides one type of connection in each direction - "follows" and "followers"; connections on Hubzilla are two-way, with multiple levels of consent in each direction
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Privacy: On Mastodon the only privacy levels for Mastodon posts are "public", "unlisted" (public-lite?), "followers", and "mentioned people only"; Hubzilla permits fully customizable privacy levels, which I think can be managed through a couple of different platform "apps". I've been using an app called Privacy Groups.
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Content organization: All Mastodon posts, whether top-level or as replies, are owned by the person posting them, can be boosted in isolation, and will have privacy levels determined by the author of the post; Hubzilla posts are structured as "Conversations", which are generally kept together as coherent pieces, and (if I understand things correctly, which I might not) the privacy level of a Conversation is determined by the original poster. However, individual replies to Hubzilla conversations can still be boosted by readers in a Mastodon/Twitter-like manner
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Moderation: On Mastodon the only real moderation tools are the privacy levels noted above, which determine who can see which posts, as well as the ability to block or limit specific accounts or instances, which changes which logged-in accounts can view your content and whose content you can see; Hubzilla offers much more powerful moderation tools, evidently including comment screening (the ability to look at incoming comments before determining whether they should be visible to other readers), although I haven't tried it out. You can also evidently disallow commenting entirely. It should be noted these Hubzilla moderation features only work internally to Hubzilla (or possibly Hubzilla and '(streams)'); if you federate with Mastodon, there's nothing to stop people from interacting with your posts the same way they would with any other toot.
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Content warnings and summaries: If you want to hide the main content of a Mastodon toot, you use the "content warning" field. Canonically, content warnings are to enable users to hide content they might not want to see either because of emotional load, unwanted spoilers, or for long content, but the field is also sometimes used for post titles. The Hubzilla equivalent of content warnings is the "summary" field. Hubzilla *also* provides a "title" field, which specifies header text that appears at the top of the post (only on Hubzilla, not on the view from Mastodon). The title field does not hide content. The summary field does.
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Broken threads: As best I can tell, broken threads/conversations can happen on both Mastodon and Hubzilla, although because most of my connections are on Mastodon, I'm not sure to what degree the issues I've seen on the Hubzilla end are a direct consequence of federating with Mastodon/ActivityPub
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Display of images: Mastodon allows the attachment of up to four images to each toot, which are displayed below the toot as thumbnails. Hubzilla has an internal markup language that allows the inclusion of in-line images linked from outside sources, which (if you have the Photos platform app installed) can include links to photos in your Hubzilla image collection. When Hubzilla posts are federated to Mastodon, the inline images show up as image attachments below the post. When Mastodon posts are federated to Hubzilla, attached images show up *full size* at the *top* of the post. This is taking some getting used to, especially because with my "maximum post height" settings, the result is that any text included with the images is hidden until I click on the "expand" link.
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Alt-text: On both Mastodon and Hubzilla, you need to know what you're doing in order to add alt-text to images. On Mastodon, you first attach the image to a toot, and then use the graphical "edit" interface to add alt text. On Hubzilla, image links are created with the 'zmg' tag in Hubzillas markup language. The zmg tags are vaguely analogous to a the 'img' tag in html. The alt text should be entered between the open-tag and the close-tag. The graphical interface provides a tool for linking to images but does not provide a tool to help you add alt-text.
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Typesetting: Mastodon doesn't have typesetting beyond carriage returns. Hubzilla has its own markup language---which vaguely resembles html but with square brackets instead of angle brackets---that includes boldface, italics, underlining, quotes, and code.
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Polls: Mastodon poll features vary by instance, but the instances I've experienced allow up to 4 or 5 poll options, and the creator can specify whether multiple response are permitted through a fairly obscure interface. Mastodon polls remain active for 1-7 days depending on settings selected by the poll-creator from a drop-down menu. Hubzilla polls can have arbitrary numbers of options and there is an intuitive toggle to determine whether multiple selections are permitted. The period for which Hubzilla polls remain active can be arbitrarily determined by the poll-creator, although I don't think (?) it's possible to create an infinite-duration poll.
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Post length: Base Mastodon allows posts up to 500 characters long, although some forks of Mastodon can be configured to allow longer posts. Post lengths on Hubzilla are determined by the user, an can be specified at the "channel" level if desired.
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Tags: Mastodon post content can be labeled with in-line hashtags, starting with '#
', which count toward post length. Depending on your configuration settings, the Hubzilla post-editor can include a "Categories" field, in which post categories are listed as words or phrases separated by commas. These are separate from the main body of the text. Hubzilla also has tags, which is somewhat confusing, and as you can see in the left margin of the Hubzilla Support Forum (
https://hubzilla.org/channel/adminsforum), there is not consistency as to whether Categories begin with a hash symbol or not.
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Forums: Forums are not a thing on Mastodon. Tags and tools like Guppe groups (
https://a.gup.pe/) have been used to create workarounds for people to exchange ideas on predetermined topics, but ultimately everything is still organized as individual toots. Hubzilla "channels" can be set up as Forums that allow members to make posts that are only visible to other members of the forum. These forums can be followed in the same manner as individual user accounts.
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Configuration: On Mastodon, I use the multi-column interface through the default web client. Configuration tools that are not available through the main interface can be accessed through the gear icon on the upper left portion of the interface. This includes things like filters and block lists. Hubzilla a number of different interaction screens, which increases with the more platform "apps" you have installed. There are separate controls for the account level (how you log onto the system), the channel level (one or more identities that you manage per account), or the app level (which need to be configured for each channel separately). There are also a number of different ways of bookmarking access to apps and configuration tools. There's a definite learning curve to figuring out where all of the controls are, and it really helps to have people you can ask for advice (e.g. the Hubzilla Support Forum linked to above). I have not mastered this yet.
