Instance rot and closures wouldn't be as bad if you had clones

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Duothematic channel. Primary topic is virtual worlds/OpenSim, secondary topic is the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Follow me from Mastodon or anywhere else in the Fediverse.

Ort:: The Hypergrid

Geschlecht:: Männlich

Homepage:: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/profile/jupiter_rowland

Instance rot and closures wouldn't be as bad if you had clones

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 12:58:16 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

It's time ActivityPub includes nomadic identity; CW: long (577 characters) due to necessary content-warning-generating hashtags, Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta

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Sun, 07 Jan 2024 13:17:36 +0100

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

It's time ActivityPub includes nomadic identity; CW: long (577 characters) due to necessary content-warning-generating hashtags, Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta

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Sun, 07 Jan 2024 14:50:08 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@maegul Yes, ActivityPub isn't the only obstacle to overcome. The other one is getting it introduced to Mastodon.

Even if all *omas, all *keys and even old Friendica had introduced standard-compliant nomadic identity, Mastodon would either reject it or concoct something utterly incompatible while refusing to add a standard compatibility layer.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 14:54:10 +0100

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland

Yep.

I've argued this elsewhere, and I fear many don't realise it.

If you want to be able to connect to the majority of the fediverse, and to grow its user base ...

Then in many ways we're all on gargron's ship. His API, his feature set and policies ... where he goes so too the "fediverse".

Just by not having a feature, masto can kill it across the fedi, as the lowest common denominator matters in the same way a common protocol does.

IMO, the "fedi-platform" needs to die.

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 14:54:22 +0100 zuletzt bearbeitet: Sun, 07 Jan 2024 14:54:54 +0100

Scott M. Stolz

scott@biztechtonics.net

I think it is one of those things where people will have to learn the hard way.

And once we have an updated websites and documentation, we can explain nomadic identity's virtues better.

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:09:03 +0100

Scott M. Stolz

scott@biztechtonics.net

@maegul

IMO, the "fedi-platform" needs to die.

Mastodon does not need to die. It just needs some serious competition.

It's the "monopoly effect" in action. Whenever you have one single entity that dominates a space, they feel they can call the shots and do as they please. But when there is competition, and that competition is a threat to their market share, they start feeling pressure to comply with the needs of the larger community.

Even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recognizes that you need at least four major players in a market for there to be realistic competition.

Soon we will have Threads, Tumblr, and Flipboard. WordPress has already implemented support. Many smaller players, such as Hubzilla and Neuhub are organizing with the goal of becoming major contenders themselves.

Some people freak out over other platforms joining the fediverse, but the reality is that we need more major players, not less, if we want to prevent one platform from dominating everything.

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:36:55 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@maegul

Just by not having a feature, masto can kill it across the fedi, as the lowest common denominator matters in the same way a common protocol does.

In addition, Mastodon and only Mastodon dictates all culture all across the Fediverse, no matter where.

This means doing everything the Mastodon way. Content warnings for sensitive content in the summary. Friendica doesn't even have a summary field. Alt-text for all media which neither Friendica nor Hubzilla nor (streams) has a text field for or even only documentation on how to graft it into BBcode.

At the same time, doing anything that can't be done on vanilla Mastodon is bad. Quotes. Shared posts (= "quote-posts" = "quote-boosts" = "quote-tweets" = "quote-toots"). Text formatting. Code blocks. Bullet-point lists. Embedded links. Even only over 500 characters. All stuff that Mistpark 1.0 (now Friendica) could do as early as 2010, almost six years before Mastodon.

The key reason why Mastodon is so dominant is not only because it has twice as many active users as everything else combined. It's because it's the one and only gateway into the Fediverse.

Everyone who comes here believes that the Fediverse is only Mastodon because telling them that the Fediverse is more than that only confuses them. Hell, they wouldn't even join if the official app didn't railroad them hard onto mastodon.social because decentrality would scare them away even before they were forced to pick an instance.

Then they spend multiple months with that belief that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. And the Mastodon-only Fediverse is what they get used to. Their new, nice, friendly, cosy, fluffy home. It's also in that phase that the first-wave and second-wave Twitter refugees were in when they shaped Mastodon's culture, completely ignoring the rest of the Fediverse which didn't even exist for them.

Then they eventually come across the very first "toot" in one of their timelines which is somewhat weird. Mostly that's because it's very long. Or maybe it does stuff of which they don't know how to do it on Mastodon because they can't do it on Mastodon at all like italics without Unicode trickery. And whoever wrote that "toot" tells them it isn't a "toot" because it's not from Mastodon, it's from XYZ, and no, XYZ is not Mastodon, it isn't a fork of Mastodon either, and yes, it's absolutely normal and intentional and legal that you can post from XYZ to Mastodon.

And then they freak out because they're disturbed by someone who has intruded into their nice and cosy and fluffy Mastodon Fediverse. And they don't want this to happen ever again.

Still, I think the majority of Mastodon users have never knowingly come across anything from anywhere that isn't Mastodon. Those who say they know the Fediverse is more than Mastodon mostly only know the Fediverse beyond Mastodon from hearsay and name-dropping, but they assume it's basically Mastodon with different names, different UIs and maaaaaybe longer posts because they've read somewhere that you can post thousands of characters on this-or-that project.

So nobody on Mastodon takes the non-Mastodon Fediverse and its perks into account when shaping the Fediverse culture.

Everyone uses "alt-text" and "image description" synonymously because Mastodon toots are too ridiculously limited in size for proper image descriptions, so there's no other way in "the Fediverse" to describe an image more thoroughly than in alt-text which offers 1,500 characters. They're completely unaware that the circumstances are vastly different everywhere outside vanilla Mastodon and Threads because everything except vanilla Mastodon and Threads offers you thousands of characters by default.

The debates on whether or not to allow quotes or "quote-toots" should be possible on Mastodon are out-right hilarious. Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to both quote and "quote-toot" any post on Mastodon with no resistance from the very second that the first Mastodon instance spun up in 2016. But nobody knows that. The *keys are capable of both, too, AFAIK, but the greater Mastodon community is unaware of that as well and keeps debating only about Mastodon.

So it isn't much of a surprise that all behaviour rules for the Fediverse are made by Mastodon users for everything that connects to Mastodon, but completely disregarding the existing culture of whatever connects to Mastodon. Sometimes they disregard the capabilities of whatever connects to Mastodon, sometimes they forbid them because these capabilities are disturbing to those who want the Fediverse to feel like only Mastodon.

You're only exempt from these rules if you're on Hubzilla or (streams), and you've got Pubcrawl off. If at all.

Using nomadic identity is actually fairly safe. Mastodon users usually don't notice it unless you often post to the same people from your main instance and then from a clone. And besides, except for those who try to create imaginary scenarios of using nomadic identity as a harassment tool, those Mastodon users who know Hubzilla and (streams) offer nomadic identity envy them for their ease of moving instance and their resilience against sudden instance shutdowns.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 17:29:55 +0100

Tejan Ausland

tejan@hubzilla.monster

@Jupiter Rowland

In addition, Mastodon and only Mastodon dictates all culture all across the Fediverse, no matter where.

Some of us rebels don't care and just post what we want. If they are so sensitive that they would block me for posting more than 500 characters, I'm sure they would complain about everything else too. My attitude is that they don't have to follow me if they don't like what I have to say. But, then again, I was never one to cave under peer pressure, especially when that peer pressure is in the form of bullying someone until they comply.

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 02:16:05 +0100

Mike Macgirvin ?️

mikedev@fediversity.site

Relax. There are people working on this - myself included. The way it works in zot6 and nomad won't work for ActivityPub and the way identity provenance works in JSON-LD and other W3C initiatives has been evolving as well (dramatically), so this has taken a bit longer than anticipated. There are a number of ways forward. We will probably see some basic implementations this year. Content sync will take a fair bit longer, but if you recall - it also took a few years to sort that out in Hubzilla and streams. So the early efforts will likely be limited to profiles and connections. Still - it's coming.

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 14:54:41 +0100

Luca Sironi

luca@sironi.tk

@jupiter_rowland @maegul

For one feature, what's wrong with mastodon alt-text for images ? That seem useful to me and unrelated to message length.

If i pass from pleroma to friendica, that missing feature could maybe annoy blind people.

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 17:33:23 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Luca Sironi @maegul Nothing per se. The issues I've mentioned are different.

One is that Mastodon users, of course, expect everyone to add alt-text to all their images. That's easy for Mastodon users: Images are attached to toots, and you get a nifty text field into which you put your alt-text.

This is different on Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams). Not only do you embed images much like in blog or forum posts. No, you don't have an alt-text field either. You embed these images using automatically generated BBcode, again, much like in forum posts. If you want alt-text, you have to edit that embedding code and graft the alt-text into it. Manually.

There is no official documentation on this whatsoever for either of these projects. The knowledge about this spreads by word-of-mouth only.

So users of these projects risk being ostracised for something they don't know a) that they have to do, b) that they can do and c) how they could possibly do.

The other issue is "image description == alt-text, full stop, end of discussion". The assumption that "alt-text" and "image description" are always mutually fully synonymous with no exception.

This comes from Mastodon's post length limitation. 500 characters. These are for the actual post, for mentions, for hashtags and for the content warning which actually counts into the post length. Doesn't leave you much room to describe an image, does it?

But in alt-text, you have 1,500 characters. Per image. Always. No matter how much you want to toot otherwise.

With such a "high" limit, Mastodon users often don't simply add an alt-text of a maximum of 150-200 characters as defined in those many "how do I write alt-text for my static webpage with thousands of characters for explaining stuff" guides. No, they go well into detail. They give in-depth descriptions. They explain stuff. After all, they've got 1,500 characters of room.

Other Mastodon users love that, and they may do it themselves. Yet other Mastodon users see that the aforementioned Mastodon users love it and thus do it themselves.

With image descriptions of 700, 800, 1,000 or more characters, Mastodon users don't even question putting the descriptions into the alt-text. It's simply technologically impossible to do otherwise. So it doesn't even come to their minds. Image description == alt-text.

Okay, now here comes the catch.

First of all, you must never describe or explain something in alt-text that can't be accessed from anywhere else in the image.

That's because some people can't access alt-text, e.g. if they have a physical disability that prevents them from using a computer mouse, so they have to do everything with the keyboard, so they can't hover a mouse cursor over an image which is necessary to see alt-text in a desktop browser.

If they can't access alt-text, they can't access the information in it. If that information is only available in the alt-text but neither in the post text nor in the image, it's lost to them. Such information always goes into the post text.

Mastodon users are likely to be highly irritated upon reading that. How are you supposed to put that in the post text in the Fediverse?! Mastodon doesn't give you enough characters! You can only put a detailed image description into the alt-text!

On Mastodon maybe. But only on vanilla Mastodon. Okay, and on Threads if it supports alt-text.

But everything that is not vanilla Mastodon gives you either more characters in the post text than in alt-text or no limits for either.

Even Misskey gives you 1,500 characters in alt-text and 3,000 in the post which is 2,500 more than on Mastodon. That's a thread of at least six posts rolled into one.

The other Forkeys give you 3,000 by default. Pleroma, Akkoma and their other forks give you 5,000 by default.

Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) don't have any defined limits. Not for the post text and theoretically not for the alt-text either which, as I've explained above, is grafted into the post text and not put into a dedicated text field.

That's plenty of room for description and explanation, depending on how much you go into detail. In fact, you aren't even bound to a 1,500-character limit anymore!

I still expect Mastodon users to be highly irritated whenever I describe images. That's because my alt-text usually only contains a brief image description that doesn't actually describe anything. In addition, it says that the actual, fully detailed image description is in the post which is hidden behind a Hubzilla-style summary/Mastodon-style content warning combination.

I expect someone to try and educate me about all image descriptions always only belonging into alt-text because that's how it's done on Mastodon, yada yada yada. Regardless of the image description of even only one of the images being over 25 times longer than Mastodon's alt-text, so it wouldn't even fit in there.

Mastodon doesn't do it like this, so it's wrong everywhere else as well. Even though Mastodon doesn't do it like this because it can't, and everything else can, and Mastodon can happily display what everything else can.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 20:13:54 +0100

Luca Sironi

luca@sironi.tk

@jupiter_rowland @maegul

Awesome answer, thank you. Still, i think that this specific example is a minor change that is worth doing. I don't think people will try to educate you , if all relevant information is present on your post.