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2025-06-10 15:06:39

roknrol@beige.party

Protip: If you include the actual text of the image in your #AltText , people with vision difficulties can summarize it themselves. If your AltText is just a summary, not only will those same people not get the full picture, but I won't boost the damned thing.

show all 7 comments

2025-06-10 21:16:21

Erik :disabled_heart:

bright_helpings@mspsocial.net

@roknrol THANK YOU. I find this SO irritating, and I won't boost them either.

2025-06-11 08:54:10

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Erik :heart_agender: @Roknrol What if I transcribe text within my image (for any definition of "text within my image") in a long image description in the post itself which I write in addition to the actual alt-text? And the alt-text explicitly mentions the long description at its end? E.g. "A more detailed description including explanations and text transcripts can be found in the post."

I often have so many bits of text to transcribe (in addition to describing where in the image they are) that I can't fit them all into the 1,500-character limit for alt-texts that Mastodon, Misskey and their respective forks impose on the whole Fediverse.

I'm not talking about screenshots from social media or something. I'm talking about renderings from 3-D virtual worlds where there may be 20, 30, 40 or more bits of text strewn across the scenery within the borders of the image. The rule says that all text within an image must be transcribed 100% verbatim, and it doesn't explicitly mention any exception, so I do have to transcribe them all. In addition, if they aren't in English, I must additionally translate them as literally as possible. There's no way I can fit all this plus a sufficiently detailed and accurate visual description into 1,500 characters.

But if you (or others) insist that all text within an image must be transcribed verbatim in the alt-text, and if you sanction image posts that transcribe the texts in the image elsewhere than in the alt-text, then I simply won't be able to post certain images in an appropriate way.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts

2025-06-11 09:36:56

Erik :disabled_heart:

bright_helpings@mspsocial.net

@jupiter_rowland
it's always fine for the image description to say "text is transcribed in the post."

I've never seen hashtags and @'s displayed in such an inaccessible way as in your toot here, so I don't know how many people who benefit from image descriptions your habits are gonna matter to anyway. :)
@roknrol

2025-06-11 11:13:16

Roknrol

roknrol@beige.party

@bright_helpings @jupiter_rowland Exactly this.

2025-06-11 13:20:54

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Are you referring to my mentions being @Erik :heart_agender: and @Roknrol rather than what you're used to, namely @⁠bright_helpings and @⁠roknrol? Using the long name rather than the short name and keeping the @ outside the link rather than making it part of the link? Likewise, the # being outside the hashtag link rather than being part of it?

This is because I'm not on Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been. So this is not a toot.

No, really. This is what I post from: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland, https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/profile/jupiter_rowland. I ask you: Does this look like Mastodon? Have you ever seen Mastodon look like this?

Where I am, this style of mentions and hashtags is hard-coded. And it has been since long before Mastodon was even an idea.

I'm on something named Hubzilla. Hubzilla is not a Mastodon instance. Hubzilla is not a Mastodon fork either. Hubzilla has got absolutely nothing to do with Mastodon at all.

It is its very own project, fully independent from Mastodon (https://hubzilla.org, https://framagit.org/hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla).

Hubzilla has not intruded into "the Mastodon Fediverse" either. The Fediverse is older than Mastodon. And Hubzilla was there before Mastodon.

Hubzilla was launched by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ in March, 2015, eight months before Mastodon, by renaming and redesigning his own Red Matrix from 2012, almost four years before Mastodon. And the Red Matrix was a fork of a fork of his own Friendica, which was launched on July 2nd, 2010, 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon. (https://en.wikipedia.org/Friendica, https://friendi.ca, https://github.com/friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica)

Friendica was there before Mastodon, too.

Here's the official Friendica/Hubzilla timeline on Hubzilla's official website to show you that I'm not making anything up: https://hubzilla.org/page/info/timeline. Scroll all the way down and notice all the features that you may right now know for a fact that the Fediverse doesn't have, but that Friendica has introduced to the Fediverse 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon was launched.

Again, Mastodon has never been its own network. The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. When Mastodon was launched in January, 2016, it immediately federated with

GNU social, the successor to @Evan Prodromou's StatusNet from 2008 (the actual start of the Fediverse, eight years older than Mastodon)
@Mike Macgirvin ?️'s Friendica, now maintained by @Tobias and @Michael 🇺🇦
@Mike Macgirvin ?️'s Hubzilla

Friendica has been formatting mentions and hashtags the way I just did for 15 years now. When Mastodon was launched, Friendica has been formatting them that way for five and a half years already, and Hubzilla has done so for ten months. It is hard-coded there. It is not a user option.

That's because not everything in the Fediverse is a Twitter clone or Twitter alternative. [b]Friendica was designed as a Facebook alternative with full-blown long-form blogging capability. And Hubzilla adds even more stuff to this. This is why Friendica and Hubzilla don't mimic Twitter.

Another shocking fact: As you can clearly see here, Friendica and Hubzilla don't have Mastodon's 500-character limit. Friendica's character limit is 200,000. Hubzilla's character limit is 16,777,215, the maximum length of the database field. And it's deeply engrained in their culture, which is many years older than Mastodon's culture, to not worry about the length of a post exceeding 500 characters.

One more shocking fact: Friendica has had quote-posts since its very beginning. So has Hubzilla. Both have always been able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot, and they will forever remain able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot. And Mastodon will never be able to do anything against it. (By the way: In 15 years of Friendica, nobody has ever used quote-posts for dogpiling or harassment purposes. Neither Friendica nor Hubzilla is Twitter.)

You find this disturbing? You think none of this should exist in the Fediverse, even though all this has been in the Fediverse for longer than Mastodon?

Then go ahead and block all instances of Friendica and Hubzilla as well as all instances of Mike's later creations, (streams) (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams) from 2021 and Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) from 2024.

Or you could go ask @Seirdy / DM me the word "bread" and @Garden Fence Blocklist as well as @Mad Villain of @The Bad Space to add every last instance on any of these lists to their blocklists for being "rampantly and unabashedly ableist and xenophobic by design" due to not being and acting and working like Mastodon and just as rampantly and unabashedly refusing to fully adopt and adapt to the Mastodon-centric "Fediverse culture" as defined by fresh Twitter refugees on Mastodon in mid-2022 as well as refusing to abandon their own culture which is disturbingly incompatible with Mastodon's. Essentially try and have four entire Fediverse server applications Fediblocked once and for all because they're so disturbing from a "Fediverse equals Mastodon" point of view.

Or you could go to Mastodon's GitHub repository (https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon), submit a feature request for defederating Mastodon from everything that isn't Mastodon by design and then go lobbying for support for your feature request.

As for why I have so many hashtags below my comments, here is what they mean. Many of them are meant to trigger filters, including such that automatically hide posts behind content warning buttons, a feature that Mastodon has had since October, 2022, that Friendica has had since July, 2010, and that Hubzilla has had since March, 2015.

#Long, #LongPost = This post is over 500 characters long. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see my or anyone else's long posts.
#CWLong, #CWLongPost = CW: long post (over 500 characters long). Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see my or anyone else's long posts.
#FediMeta, #FediverseMeta = This post talks about the Fediverse. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone talk about the Fediverse.
#CWFediMeta, #CWFediverseMeta = CW: Fediverse meta. Or: CW: Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta. Or: CW: Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone talk about the Fediverse.
#NotOnlyMastodon, #FediverseIsNotMastodon, #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse: This post talks about the Fediverse not only being Mastodon. Create a filter for either or multiple or all of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about the Fediverse being more than Mastodon. Otherwise, click or tap any of these hashtags to read more about it in your Fediverse app.
#Friendica: This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse named Friendica. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Friendica. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
#Hubzilla: This post talks about the Swiss army knif of the Fediverse named Hubzilla. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Hubzilla. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
#Streams, #(streams): This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse commonly referred to as (streams). Create a filter for either or both of them if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Friendica. Otherwise, click or tap either of them to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
#Forte: This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse named Forte. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Forte. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
#AltText = This post talks about alt-text and/or contains an image with alt-text. It is primarily meant for post discovery.
#AltTextMeta = This post talks about alt-text. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about alt-text.
#CWAltTextMeta = CW: alt-text meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about alt-text.
#ImageDescription = This post talks about image descriptions and/or contains an image with an image description. It is primarily meant for post discovery.
#ImageDescriptions, #ImageDescriptionMeta = This post talks about image descriptions. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about image descriptions.
#CWImageDescriptionMeta = CW: image description meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about image descriptions.
#Hashtag, #Hashtags, #HashtagMeta = This post talks about hashtags. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about hashtags.
#CWHashtagMeta = CW: hashtag meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about hashtags.
#CharacterLimit, #CharacterLimits = This post is talking about character limits. It is primarily meant for post discovery. But if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about character limits, create a filter for any of these hashtags.
#QuotePost, #QuoteTweet, #QuoteToot, #QuoteBoost = This post talks about quote-posts and/or contains a quote-post. If this disturbs you, create a filter for any of these hashtags.
#QuotePosts, #QuoteTweets, #QuoteToots, #QuoteBoosts, #QuotedShares = This post talks about quote-posts. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about quote-posts.
#QuotePostDebate, #QuoteTootDebate = This post talks about quote-posts. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about quote-posts.
#FediblockMeta = This post is talking about fediblocks. It is primarily meant for post discovery.

Lastly: Having all hashtags in one line at the very end of a post that only contains hashtags is the preferred way in the Fediverse. For one, hashtags in their own line at the end of the post irritate screen reader users much less than hashtags in the middle of the text. It's actually hashtags in the middle of the text that are ableist. Besides, Mastodon is explicitly designed to have a separate hashtag line at the end of the post.

2025-06-11 13:36:55

Erik :disabled_heart:

bright_helpings@mspsocial.net

@jupiter_rowland
Cool story bro.

I don't think Mastodon is the fediverse. I've interacted with all kinds of non-Mastodon accounts here. I've never seen a toot formatted as inaccessibly as yours have been.

That's your choice, that's not the software.

Have a nice day.

2025-06-11 13:56:54

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Erik :heart_agender:

I've never seen a toot formatted as inaccessibly as yours have been.

Then what exactly makes it inaccessible?