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Wed, 14 Jun 2023 07:50:25 +0200

maegul@hachyderm.io

If there isn’t much cross-platform engagement between the #threadiverse and #mastodon, and Reddit migrants leave because of insufficient activity … is this a failure of sorts of the #fediverse ?

I’m leaning yes. If cross-platform activity is essentially irrelevant but more of a minor awkward perk at times then the fediverse doesn’t exist (yet) at the level of being a social media platform or space.

Instead, it’s a tool for FOSS platforms to scale through decentralisation.

@fediversenews

show all 76 comments

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:00:27 +0200

Jon

jdp23@indieweb.social

@maegul to the contrary: there’s a bunch of activity on multiple fediverse platforms and people are mostly enjoying it, so that’s a success for the fediverse! And there’s plenty of cross-instances activity in the #kbin/lemmy world (despite the DDOS attack causing federation problems for Kbin.social) so it’s a decentralized success. Still plenty of rough edges of course but it’s actually gone much better so far than I would have predicted … ixnay on the egativitynay! @fediversenews

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:07:28 +0200

Mastodon Migration

mastodonmigration@mastodon.online

@jdp23 @maegul @fediversenews Absolutely. Plus, the fact that they all are based on #ActivityPub means that #Mastodon server operators are spinning up #kbin and #Lemmy instances. Adding capacity to meet any surge is not going to be a problem. Early days on content interoperability. It is all very exciting.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:12:25 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@jdp23 @fediversenews

Really not trying to be negative, and actually just thinking out loud. So far, and I might have missed it all, I haven't seen much activity from #mastoverse platforms, especially given how many there are.

Obviously "failure" is in the eye of the beholder and a strong word. But my general axe-to-grind is to ask what it means if a platform/format is mostly left to fend for itself and what it means for how to think about what can/should be built here.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:22:08 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@maegul That might be because many many #Mastodon users, especially those who have been willingly railroaded to #MastodonSocial without even being told about decentralisation and instances, don't even know that the #Threadiverse exists and still think that the #Fediverse is only Mastodon.

They don't know the accounts and channels where Fediverse projects other than Mastodon are the talk of the town, much less follow them. And the signal-to-noise ratio on the public timelines on the big general Mastodon instances doesn't let posts about Lemmy etc. through or about how they federate with Mastodon.

I mean, it's been a while since the last time I had to tell someone that #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse, or since I saw someone learn it in a thread. But many many Mastodon users still don't know.

(@Jon: How come it's your #Diaspora account out of all of them that's at the top of my auto-completion list?)

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:29:42 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@mastodonmigration @jdp23 @fediversenews

Exciting yes. I'm really trying to frame things beyond just "ActivityPub will auto-magically make things happen"

For instance, I'm not sure ActivityPub is really a factor behind admins spinning up parallel instances, its the user demand for the platforms IMO.

And while it's early and exciting days on interoperability, I think it's fair to ask what it really means or doesn't mean to have 10M users.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:41:42 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@mastodonmigration @jdp23 @fediversenews

Another rant I've had on this platforms v protocols conversation in a very interesting thread on the topic too: https://calckey.social/notes/9fxvpr90yg5apr22

Many are dreaming of what "the protocol as a meta platform" looks like, and I think it's worth talking about where we actually are on this, because I'm not sure we've even started yet, and it matters, IMO, for the growth and quality of the fediverse at large.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 09:27:07 +0200

hubzillar

hubzillar@tiksi.net

@maegul

https://calckey.social/notes/9fxvpr90yg5apr22

Threadiverse? Seems there is a lot of ignorance of hubzilla.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 11:33:04 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@hubzillar @maegul Yup, I don't know how #Hubzilla is seen by people who have never directly used it. My guess is still mostly not at all because they don't get that name shoved into their faces on a daily rate, much less actual interaction with it that doesn't feel like it might just as well come from elsewhere.

But there's one more reason why Hubzilla isn't seen as part of the #Threadiverse. Hubzilla does have forums, quite active ones, even. But almost all traffic on these forums comes from within Hubzilla because all active Hubzilla forums that I'm aware of are about Hubzilla. Most of the few users of these forums who aren't on Hubzilla are on #Streams which, by the way, should count as part of the Threadiverse just as much as Hubzilla.

The complete lack of activity between ActivityPub users and Hubzilla forums actually lead to nobody knowing for sure if, and if so, how well users of ActivityPub projects can interact with Hubzilla forums because they never do. This, in conjunction with the growing of the Threadiverse, is why I've suggested the creation of public test forums on both Hubzilla and (streams) so that experiments in cross-project, cross-protocol federation don't disturb the activity on other forums.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 12:54:48 +0200

stuart

stuart@social.brainsys.com

@jupiter_rowland

Patience. Mastodon servers are all having issues retaining new users because it's all a bit complicated. Explaining it is even more complicated doesn't seem a great strategy.

Mastodon.social is the busiest instance which partially negates the 'not as busy as' #Twitter complaint. It isn't a bad choice for a new user. Some will grow and appreciate they are gateways to great #Fediverse offerings and migrate to other communities.

More serious is it politically having more clout.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:09:38 +0200

Torb (old account)

torb@octodon.social

@maegul @fediversenews No. This wish for everything to interact for the sake of it is geek wet dream technical masturbation.

ActivityPub is a very general protocol, but that doesn’t mean that everything should interact.

Don’t get me wrong. Being able is cool, but then again I’m a geek.

There wil be AP systems that make more sense to interact than others. That’s natural and to be expected.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:26:30 +0200

♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) ? ??️

youronlyone@calckey.social

@maegul@hachyderm.io @fediversenews@venera.social

If they leave because there is not much interaction between link-aggregator types of software (as Wikipedia calls it) and Mastodon software, then it is the failure of those software, not the #Fediverse.

Always remember, the fediverse is ALL software communicating through the #ActivityPub protocol. Mastodon is a software. Lemmy is a software. Kbin is a software.

If your question is about the fediverse, then I don't see how this applies:

I’m leaning yes. If cross-platform activity is essentially irrelevant but more of a minor awkward perk at times then the fediverse doesn’t exist (yet) at the level of being a social media platform or space.

Because there is a lot of engagement happening in the fediverse network. It is not a “minor awkward perk at times”

You have to reshape your thinking about what the Fediverse is.
1. The Fediverse is not Mastodon.
2. Mastodon is just one part of the Fediverse network.
3. This so-called “threadiverse” is only one part of the Fediverse network, it is not a separate thing.
4. There is no “mastoverse” or any “-verse” because they can all interoperate, engage, communicate, with each other through the ActivityPub protocol.

Your current thinking, if I may, is like this:
a. There is a yahooverse (ref: threadiverse).
b. And email (ref: fediverse) and gmail (ref: Mastodon) are interchangable.
c. And sometimes it can also be called gmailverse (ref: mastoverse).

There is no “insufficient activity” in the fediverse network. There are already some people who left who said there is too much noise, and it is so hard to keep up with everything.

If Reddit migrants leave because of a supposed “insufficient activity”, it probably is due to the software they are using. Maybe the software has a bug. Or, maybe the software chose not to show to the users how very active the fediverse is, and their only interaction with the fediverse is if someone replies to their “Thread”. (And as an aside, this is where Kbin wins because it shows the wider fediverse through its “microblog” feature/tab.)

---

I hope it makes sense. It's hard to explain things if English is not not one's primary language, and with that I apologise if it was confusing or too wordy.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:47:10 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@torb @fediversenews

Ha! Fair!

I do wonder, and this was the underlying point of the question, how possible the "wet dream" is.

Can we get to a point where users "surf the protocol" without worrying about what "system" or platform they're on?

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:53:47 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@youronlyone @fediversenews
Yea, I don't think I agree.

By "fediverse" I'm referring to the collective quality of the whole, however much any part is responsible.

I'm also presuming (accurately enough AFAICT) that interaction between mastodon users and #lemmy/#kbin is not high compared to interactions internal to #lemmy/#kbin.

Sure, the software has problems, but much of the attraction of the #threadiverse depends on the level of activity and number and size of communities.

1/

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:58:03 +0200

Torb (old account)

torb@octodon.social

@maegul In general? No.

Not for technical reasons but for UI/UX reasons.

I suspect some kind of functionality could arrive (and some is here already) for certain niche use cases.

Like for example you want to follow someone on Lemmy and you don’t want to follow a community there. So you follow from Mastodon.

I think said use cases would be rare tho.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:58:33 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@youronlyone @fediversenews

Part of the problem with getting a community based platform off of the ground is how to get sufficiently active communities. This is where the "fediverse" comes in. If the federation is a "killer feature", then arguably activity should spread across platforms and formats so that newer spaces and platforms become easier to seed over time.

You highlight that the problem is software not the protocol. I agree! But then ask what value the protocol provides.

2/

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 16:02:23 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@youronlyone @fediversenews

Generally, I'm probing at the possibility that too much is made of the protocol and not enough of the importance of getting the software right, not just specifically to a particular platform, but globally, in terms of the overall structures and designs of the platforms that are being built.

I think we might agree here somewhat.

Otherwise, you highlight that much activity occurs over the protocol. But that's between similar platforms. Lemmy<->Masto?

3/3

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 16:10:19 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@torb

Yea ... you're probably right and certainly more qualified ... but my intuition is that there's a promise in a social-activity protocol that requires some creativity to fulfill and we're kinda too stuck in old structures and tightly-iterative engineering cycles to see it. Terminal CLI -> GUI is *loosely* analogous to what I'm thinking.

May all be "wet dreams" though.

In the end though, my ultimate point was the point you made in response about AP not providing everything. Agree.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 16:14:21 +0200

Torb (old account)

torb@octodon.social

@maegul I might very well be wrong and I’m definetely not more qualified. They are opinions I hold strongly, but more than that! ?

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 16:53:27 +0200

♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) ? ??️

youronlyone@calckey.social

@maegul@hachyderm.io @fediversenews@venera.social

you highlight that much activity occurs over the protocol. But that's between similar platforms. Lemmy<->Masto?

Just to clarify, because I think I am not understanding you correctly:

1. When you are using the trademarked name “Mastodon”, are you referring only to the Mastodon software?

2. Are you strictly speaking about the Lemmy software and the Mastodon software in your “Lemmy<->Masto” example? You are not talking about in general, say, “BookWyrm<->Calckey” or “Pixelfed<->Akkoma”? Just strictly “Lemmy<->Masto” software, correct?

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 18:01:17 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@youronlyone @fediversenews

I'm happy to approximate most of the fediverse as "mastodon", and there are numbers to back that up. So any "masto" reference is both "mastodon" and loosely the microblogging fediverse at large.

As far as my issue of whether the fediverse's large membership is seeding new platforms and spaces, it's sufficient IMO to just talk about mastodon.

In the case of mastodon<->Akkoma/Calckey etc, they're similar platforms and don't count, though there are also issues there.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 18:55:33 +0200

CynthesisToday

CynthesisToday@sfba.social

@youronlyone @fediversenews @maegul

Thank you. This was helpful. The part about #ActivityPub being a protocol was a key piece I was missing.

Your bulleted points examples (1. 2. and a. b.) were very helpful in describing the misunderstanding.

Now I'm starting at https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ to learn more.

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:03:44 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@maegul @♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) ? ??️ Again, that's because we have 10 million #Mastodon users who haven't even heard of #Lemmy, much less #kbin. They can't use what they don't even know exists.

On top of these, we have at least 1.9 million Mastodon users who have at least heard of Lemmy, but who don't know that they can use their already existing Mastodon accounts to join Lemmy communities and /kbin magazines.

If you want more interaction between Mastodon and Lemmy, then people on Mastodon with gajillions of followers like Eugen Rochko, Greta Thunberg or George Takei would have to advertise Lemmy and its Mastodon compatibility and link to the Lemmy community browser once a week for at least half a year until everyone and their dog knows.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:13:06 +0200

Jon

jdp23@indieweb.social

@maegul think of it in terms of the ecosystem, not the protocol. The fediverse has admins with experience and infrastructure to spin up good-size instances quickly, which means there’s a lot more capacity to absorb an influx than there was ever last fall. It’s certainly a good question about what it really means to have 10M users but that’s different from characterizing things as a failure @mastodonmigration @fediversenews

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:15:55 +0200

maegul

maegul@hachyderm.io

@jdp23 @mastodonmigration @fediversenews

Yes, for sure, "failure" is a strong word ... though some might have a perspective and ambition against which it might not be insane to speak it.

Excellent point about the infrastructural expertise ... seeing mastodon admins put up #threadiverse instances has been awesome and likely vital!!

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:24:17 +0200 zuletzt bearbeitet: Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:25:40 +0200

Sim

0xSim@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland @maegul

> but who don't know that they can use their already existing Mastodon accounts to join Lemmy communities and /kbin magazines.

How? By using your mastodon account to follow lemmy/kbin communities, and have a messy and subpar experience?

You can't use your credentials from instance X to login on instance Y, so if you want to correctly participate on lemmy/kbin, you need an account on one of these instances.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:43:42 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Sim :blobfoxcomputer: :ferris:

How? By using your mastodon account to follow lemmy/kbin communities, and have a messy and subpar experience?

(Deliberately used the quote feature here.)

And the alternative would be to put the proverbial gun to Lemmy's chest and force them to adapt to Mastodon's "standards" for the convenience of Mastodon users?

If Mastodon can't handle threads and posts with over 500 characters as properly as just about everything else in the #Fediverse, the problem isn't on the side of #Lemmy or #kbin. It's on Mastodon's side.

Likewise, if Mastodon can't properly display quotes like the one above, and I've just demonstrated it can't, the problem is on Mastodon's side and not on the side of the many projects that do support quotes.

Mastodon users tend to demand the whole rest of the Fediverse cut down on its features so that it works better with Mastodon and justify it with Mastodon having magnitudes more users than everything else combined.

Also:

You can't use your credentials from instance X to login on instance Y, so if you want to correctly participate on lemmy/kbin, you need an account on one of these instances.

(Another quote which Mastodon can't display. Blame Mastodon. #Hubzilla here works perfectly well.)

To take Hubzilla as a different example: So you want to only log into hachyderm.io, then go to hub.netzgemeinde.eu and create a wiki or a long-form blog or a photo gallery or set up a cloud storage with WebDAV, CalDAV and CardDAV right away, all with your hachyderm.io login? Is that what you want?

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:52:42 +0200

Sim

0xSim@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland

> Mastodon users tend to demand the whole rest of the Fediverse cut down on its features

No? Different apps have different UIs to fit their different features and ways to communicate.

> So you want to only log into hachyderm.io, then go to hub.netzgemeinde.eu (...) Is that what you want?

I want to use my Mastodon creds to login into any #Lemmy or #kbin instance. That's all I want. Not jump through hoops. I don't know if ActivityPub protocol permits this, but it should.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:58:00 +0200

Sim

0xSim@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland

Also:

> (Deliberately used the quote feature here.)

> (Another quote which Mastodon can't display. Blame Mastodon. #Hubzilla here works perfectly well.)

> Mastodon users tend to demand the whole rest of the Fediverse cut down on its features

That's now how you'll get newcomers feel welcome and try your oh-so-superior hubzilla. Touch some grass.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 20:02:03 +0200

Blake Leonard

blake@fosstodon.org

@0xSim @jupiter_rowland
> I want to use my Mastodon creds to login into any Lemmy or kbin instance.

This doesn't and can't work the way you want it to. The closest you could get, in theory, is using your Mastodon account as an OpenID to create an account at the other service, which is a nightmare for several reasons, which is probably why it hasn't been implemented.

The closest you get in practice is using your Mastodon account to interact with Lemmy/Kbin groups/threads.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 20:07:20 +0200

Sim

0xSim@hachyderm.io

@blake @jupiter_rowland Ah yes, I was looking for the word "OpenId". I understand it's not trivial to implement.

So like I said, it's disingenuous to pretend that you can use a single ActivityPub account to use *all* the fediverse apps. They all have UIs that fit different usecases and ways to communicate. Yes you can technically do it, but you'll probably have a subpar experience.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 21:47:18 +0200 zuletzt bearbeitet: Wed, 14 Jun 2023 21:47:30 +0200

Austin Willis

austinwillis@sfba.social

@blake @0xSim @jupiter_rowland Would it be possible for a Mastadon and Lemmy/Kbin instance to share a user db? I think it would be great if you could go to something like kbin.fosstodon.org and interact with threads more naturally

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:06:33 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Sim :blobfoxcomputer: :ferris: At least I've seen Mastodon users demanding that everyone who is not on Mastodon make their posts so that nothing about them disturbs Mastodon users.

This means no actual quotes because Mastodon doesn't know quotes. This means no bullet-point lists because Mastodon doesn't know bullet-point lists.

This means not more than four images because Mastodon has to convert images from certain projects to file attachments and attach them behind the end of the post, and Mastodon can't attach more than four files to one post.

In fact, this means only one picture because Mastodon seems to order file attachments and pictures the wrong way.

And this means no sensitive pictures at all because Mastodon can't hide them behind a CW when they come in from outside of Mastodon.

Oh, and it means posts no longer than 500 characters.

As for your other paragraph, there are two possible solutions for this. One is halfway realistic.

The realistic one means to introduce #SingleSignOn in the shape of #OpenWebAuth (also invented by @mike) to Mastodon, Lemmy and /kbin. Then Lemmy and /kbin would recognise your Mastodon login. Also, this would require modifications to the Web UI for "guest users" as which you would count. Then you could do the same you can do now remotely from Mastodon, but on the Web UI of whatever Lemmy or /kbin instance you're currently on.

But you would not have all features that users with a user account on that instance have, i.e. you can neither create nor moderate Lemmy communities or /kbin magazines.

If you wanted these, too, this would require the second, impossible solution, namely the automatic creation of one user account for each Fediverse user on each Lemmy instance and each /kbin instance. This could be combined with OpenWebAuth, too, and automatically log you into your account on that respective instance. But whenever someone starts up a new instance, it would have to a) know all 12,000,000++ Fediverse accounts and b) immediately create one local account for each one of them.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:09:01 +0200

american

jeff@federated.fun

@jupiter_rowland @0xSim @maegul @mike mastodon hates long posts? skill issue tbh.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:09:51 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Sim :blobfoxcomputer: :ferris: Quotes aren't exclusive to Hubzilla.

Lemmy has quotes.
/kbin has quotes.
Akkoma has quotes.
MissKey has quotes.
CalcKey has quotes.
Friendica has quotes.
Hubzilla has quotes.
(streams) has quotes.
The various dead projects between Hubzilla and (streams) all have quotes.

Just a few examples.

Pretty much only Mastodon and Pleroma don't have quotes.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:10:33 +0200

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

That is outside the scope of ActivityPub. There's a fediverse single sign-on solution called OpenWebAuth to do this. Currently supported by Hubzilla, streams, and Friendica - and pull requests have been provided for Mastodon and Pixelfed to join the party. I don't know if either has been merged or rejected - I wasn't involved, but this is the kind of thing you need. Streams has an identity manager to link all your fediverse identities together and also aggregate the content you produce into a single channel (if desired).

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:13:25 +0200

Kainoa

kainoa@calckey.social

@jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu This. Even forks of Mastodon like Fedibird have quotes.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:16:37 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@mike Mastodon as well?

If that pull request makes it into master, this will turn the Fediverse upside-down because everyone else would want it.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:17:24 +0200

Sim

0xSim@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland it's absolutely not about the quotes. It's about the tone of your response, and the passive-aggressiveness you show when someone suggests that maybe we should be able to use the same login throughout the fediverse and use the apps we want.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:31:18 +0200

Golda

gvelez17@mas.to

@jupiter_rowland oh or you can search for things like

!newcommunities@lemmy.world

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:33:30 +0200

bipolaron

bipolaron@scholar.social

@maegul @fediversenews kbin is not federating yet. I literally have an account there and cannot follow it yet.

I don't know what it will look like but judging today seems very premature.

I'm very curious to see how it's even conceivable to map the logic of mastodon and a forum with persistent posts and voting and magazines on separate instances.

I feel like most of the trouble is figuring out how to display content in ways that are organized in each of these different ways.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:35:37 +0200

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

@Pascal (Streams) did the work on the pull requests.

I just wrote the identity manager because I frankly got tired of listening to all the whinging. We've had internet-scale single sign-on in the fediverse since 2010. It's not something that's new or revolutionary.

> "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
> -- Howard Aiken

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:38:48 +0200

Riley

riley@social.audiovalentine.com

@bipolaron @maegul @fediversenews to be fair Kbin was federating and they only disabled it yesterday because of the increase in traffic. It does work.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:43:05 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@bipolaron @maegul In case you're on kbin.social, it does federate. It's just so overloaded and overrun that it sometimes doesn't get to do anything. After all, it was created by the developer as a testing instance on a cheap VPS.

I sincerely hope that new instances will outgrow kbin.social soon.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:52:18 +0200

bipolaron

bipolaron@scholar.social

@jupiter_rowland Normally my response would be...

New instances shouldn't outgrow kbin.social soon, there should be a bunch of instances that are small enough that losing one is tolerable.

I need to read more about it to understand, is there a logical way for magazines on different instances to connect so that posts can seamlessly federate?

1/2

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:52:31 +0200

bipolaron

bipolaron@scholar.social

@jupiter_rowland The answer I read seems to indicate that no, not unless you're "following" the poster of the comment and that even then there is no context.

If each magazine is like 500 people and each instance's version of the same magazine is silo'd, you really *do* want one big instance probably...

2/2

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:54:34 +0200

bipolaron

bipolaron@scholar.social

@jupiter_rowland aha, and now I *can* add my kbin.social account here so I can see how it works in each direction first-hand...

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 22:57:35 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@bipolaron If you want to join a magazine, you don't have to be on the same instance as the magazine itself. Unless you're aspiring to become a mod.

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 23:40:06 +0200

bipolaron

bipolaron@scholar.social

@jupiter_rowland Sure, I'm just saying that if there are 100 competing magazines about TTRPGs it will be harder to get a good conversation going. If it was magical it would somehow merge all of the magazines into one megazine.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 01:59:47 +0200 zuletzt bearbeitet: Thu, 15 Jun 2023 02:03:47 +0200

Strypey

strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

@0xSim
> I want to use my Mastodon creds to login into any Lemmy or kbin instance... I don't know if ActivityPub protocol permits this

It does... but only if the full spec is implemented, including the client>server part. John Mastodon has consistently refused to implement the c2s part of AP, preferring his own bespoke C2S API. Given the size of Mastodon, most other projects have followed his lead. so once again, Mastodon decisions are the reason we can't have nice things.

@jupiter_rowland

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 03:27:17 +0200

Zach777

Zach777@fosstodon.org

@jupiter_rowland @mike For the logging in to multiple services with one account, I really think there should be a push to make a universal ActivityPub + friends display app that just shows you the content like the native app for that service but lets automatically sends a post you make from your chosen account.

That way sites don't have to bother with supporting login from anywhere.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 04:23:14 +0200

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

Back when Eugen and I were the only two people on the planet using ActivityPub I brought this up. I even suggested that Mastodon might want to use 'Note' for their text/plain implementation and we could provide HTML using an 'Article', since HTML is actually the prescribed language of ActivityPub. That way everybody could co-exist in harmony. I even provided a Mastodon compatible HTML-Purifier ruleset to accomplish the task.

He responded (8 months later) by removing all the content from incoming Article activities and providing a link to the content instead - and closing the issue as "fixed". Suddenly you couldn't see **any** of our ActivityPub content on Mastodon - only links.

That was the last time I asked him for anything. Now I just treat Mastodon as damage to the internet and route around it.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/5022
https://github.com/swicg/general/issues/20

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 10:28:30 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 10:37:40 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Sarah Brown

Like, you can federate full blogposts and suchlike, but Mastodon will strip away all the inline images and then just display the first 4 in a grid at the end.

The last four, actually. In reverse order even. At least in the cases I'm aware of.

At least you can circumvent this on Hubzilla by writing long-form stuff with lots of embedded pictures not as posts, but as articles in the "Articles" app. Mastodon users will only get a link to the article which will then open in their Web browser which, in turn, will display it the intended way.

It's still a pity that you have to take such measures and refrain from using the features Hubzilla offers at post level to their full extent because that'd confuse 12 million users of a deliberately feature-lacking project. And users on, for example, Friendica and (streams) aren't so lucky because they don't have a separate long-form-writing method at hand and have to rely on external projects like WriteFreely which means one more account and one more login. On top, there's the effort of following your own blog and resharing each new blog post notification to your followers because not even 2% of them will follow your blog. Not to mention countless whining iPhone users because they have to have Safari start up to read your long-form posts.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 13:22:30 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@jupiter_rowland @goatsarah It sounds like you want to force Mastodon to support features that are out of its scope because "your software" does them. As far as I know Mastodon doesn't try to pretend to be anything but a microblogging platform and that comes with some constraints. Perhaps you need to develop a capability exchange protocol to determine what can be exchanged and then work out a solution within those constraints? Of course Mastodon would point you at its instance API.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 13:46:35 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@goatsarah @jupiter_rowland yes my point was that at the moment if you ask Mastodon to do microblogging stuff within its advertised constraints then it works. If you expect it to do "out of scope" stuff then expect the unexpected if anything at all.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:16:21 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@goatsarah @jupiter_rowland whether or not it does it poorly or not it still seems legit that it can call itself part of the Fediverse. This conversation illustrates it.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:48:36 +0200

maegul

maegul@calckey.social

@markrprior@ohai.social @goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu which maybe circles back to my point at the top of the thread… do we have clear and consistent estimates of the value of being on the fediverse versus how much of a factor the software/platform is.

The “mastodon” perspective tends to be that being on the fediverse is everything which is undercut by mastodons dominance making it seem like fediverse=mastodon and that mastodon itself is the basic vanilla base line. People on any other platform tend to be aware of boundaries around their fellow users and other user spaces.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 15:03:33 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@maegul @goatsarah @jupiter_rowland I'm not sure it's a "mastodon" perspective but rather one based on the type of service you are expecting. I imagine that a large % of people on Mastodon instances have come there for a Twitter like experience and are happy with that. If they interact with someone on another instance type and they don't notice then is that a problem needing to be fixed?

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 15:37:57 +0200

Joseph Quigley

quigs@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland I wrote a Fediverse integration for Ghost, excited to share my full blog posts on Mastodon and was disappointed to find out that wasn’t going to happen. But y’all non-Mastodon users get to enjoy it in its fully formatted glory. ?

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 15:52:36 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Joseph Quigley Well, there are two theoretical ways of sharing formatted long-form blog posts through the Fediverse, either the content itself or as a link to a Web page with the actual content, akin to tweeting a link to an external blog post.

I'd say that at least for Mastodon users the latter is better. The former means that they're confronted with posts a dozen times as long as a toot could normally grow in which embedded pictures are no longer embedded, no longer where they belong, and which lack half of their appeal and a great deal of readability because they've been stripped of all formatting.

The latter means the inconvenience of having the Web browser pop up when you only want to use your Mastodon app to surf the Fediverse, but it also comes with the advantages of your blog post looking pretty much exactly like what you intended and sparing the "hard cap at 500 chars plz kthx" crowd from unexpected walls of text which they might not even want to read anyway.

This is also where making a difference between notes and articles makes sense.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 16:04:42 +0200 zuletzt bearbeitet: Thu, 15 Jun 2023 16:27:32 +0200

Joseph Quigley

quigs@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland Yeah. I haven’t tested it outside of Mastodon, but I post the full posts as Article and I pull an excerpt out for the summary (which mastodon displays better since it’s plain text) and include a link.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 16:31:00 +0200

Joseph Quigley

quigs@hachyderm.io

Screenshot of a post from the Ghost integration I wrote. It shows a blog post excerpt that gets truncated after roughly 500 characters and then a link to the full post.

@jupiter_rowland It works decently on Mastodon but it could be so much better if Mastodon just displayed the rich text:

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 18:06:13 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Joseph Quigley Ghost doesn't happen to support , does it?

If it adds the beginning of the blog post itself to the notification post, this could be used to define where that excerpt ends.

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 19:02:43 +0200

maegul

maegul@calckey.social

@markrprior@ohai.social @goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Depends on what they think the fediverse is. If they feel like it’s some sort of all encompassing social internet, then there’s probably some tension there that they may not realise.

For instance, calckey had a hype moment where many came here or looked around somewhat enamoured with what they saw as a completely different feature rich platform. Many didn’t stay because it wasn’t right for them or is still too rough around the edges, but they were really just struck by the idea that microblogging could be more than just Twitter and that whole other platforms and designs existed.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 00:08:12 +0200

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

This isn't about Mastodon doing microblogging stuff. They can do what they want. But when it comes to interoperability with other software using an internet standard protocol, this is about Mastodon supporting the specifications of that internet standard protocol.

https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-content

> By default, the value of content is HTML. The mediaType property can be used in the object to indicate a different content type.

Note it doesn't say the default value of content is "text/plain with 'a' tags". It says "HTML". From memory, HTML supports a few more tags besides 'a'. That's in a different set of specifications, if you want to verify. Specifications are important for standard protocols if you want different things to work together.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 06:01:40 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@goatsarah @jupiter_rowland @mike Prefixing this with the comment that I haven't read the ActivityPub spec nor the Mastodon source but based on my experience developing Internet standards.
Mastodon Clients are communicating with Mastodon Servers via the Mastodon API (with some nodeinfo API thrown in to know it's Mastodon probably). This will define what they see as the content of a message and how they render a message. It won't matter to them if the message started out in a richer format.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 06:04:05 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@goatsarah @jupiter_rowland @mike The Mastodon server has done a transformation of the message it received via ActivityPub and has stored it as a Mastodon formatted message. It is serving this message to its clients and not the original message.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 06:08:07 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@mike @jupiter_rowland Except it is about microblogging. Mastodon is a microblogging service. If I send a richly formatted email message to a SMS gateway there is no expectation that the SMS gateway will send me rich text. It will attempt to send me the text part and will toss the rest. Mastodon is no different.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 08:20:14 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Mark Prior @mike Nonetheless, #ActivityPub officially supports text formatting and explicitly names Rich Text as the format to use. All projects that internally use something else (BBcode, Markdown) are forced to convert their messages to Rich Text prior to sending them via ActivityPub.

Also, absolutely everything else in the #Fediverse that has anything to do with *blogging or Facebook-style social networking supports text formatting, as do all Reddit-style link aggregators. #Mastodon is the one single exception. And still, this one single project which wasn't even the first Fediverse project seems to try to define "no text formatting" as the one and only valid microblogging standard in the Fediverse and push this "standard" through by means of sheer user numbers ("We've got tons more users than all of you combined, what we do is the norm!").

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 08:48:05 +0200

Jon

jdp23@indieweb.social

@kainoa Yep. Hey wait a second, I'm noticing a pattern here! it's not the only place where Mastodon is out of sync iwth the rest of the fediverse but I agree with @jupiter_rowland that it's a remarkably stark one!

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 08:50:02 +0200

Jon

jdp23@indieweb.social

@mike oh wow, I hadn't heard that story before -- but I'm not surprised. Can I add an excerpt and link to the ActivityPub section of https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/#activitypub ?

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 10:45:48 +0200

Mark Prior

markrprior@ohai.social

@jupiter_rowland @mike at least one Mastodon iOS app supported markdown during its beta. I haven’t noticed evidence of posts with it outside that beta period when it was announced so perhaps it’s just not something the majority of users think they need and so resources are being committed elsewhere

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 03:52:40 +0200 zuletzt bearbeitet: Sun, 18 Jun 2023 03:52:58 +0200

Joseph Quigley

quigs@hachyderm.io

@jupiter_rowland It does not put those in, but in the Ghost Content API there's a excerpt JSON object that I use for the Mastodon summary field.

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 22:08:43 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

The biggest problem that I see is that it is poorly funded. Right now, you mostly have some volunteers that spin up a server and let people onto them. Some accept donations, but not all. And if you wind up with some users who harass the admins, it winds up not being worth it for the admins, and some of them even rage quit and just shut it all down.

The other problem is that social media does not have the same dynamic as a discussion board. A discussion board has a like-minded community attached to it, and posts are made to the community, rather than your followers. There is a sense of what is appropriate or not based on the community you join.

Social media is all about the individual instead of the community, and that means a server typically winds up with a more diverse set of members, some of which don't like each other. This makes it more awkward for the admin to intervene, because the admin either has to upset one side by taking sides, or they risk upsetting both sides by refusing to take a side. This puts added stress on the admin.

And, quite frankly, many of the admins are not really suited to be admins, mostly because they don't have realistic expectations of what it means to run a healthy community. I had an interesting conversation on Reddit with a sever admin, and he was basically banging his own head against the wall, and then wondering why his head was bleeding. He was creating his own problems and refused to listen to advice of anyone else. Guy sounded like he was on the verge of rage quitting and even called his users beggars. It was sad.

Things will change once we get more serious operators that have a plan on how to pay for their servers and who run it in a professional manner. That time will come soon. But I doubt it would be using Mastodon. It would be using some other fediverse platform with more flexibility.

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 22:59:27 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

@Jupiter Rowland We definitely need some more forums on different topics. I think that would change things a lot and start to put Hubzilla and Streams on the map.

In my experience, to jump start a forum, you need at least two people who post and engage in conversations everyday. If you have some interesting or useful conversations, people will join the forum and jump in. People just can't help commenting on stuff. After awhile, you build a community, and have regulars posting frequently. After that, you need at least one person who logs in daily, preferably the admin or moderator, to engage in the community.

This is similar to how a social media account needs to post frequently to attract a following; a forum has to have frequent posts to attract a community.

So it does take dedication to start a discussion community on any platform. We may want to join forces and start creating forums on different topics, with at least two people dedicated to engaging in discussion on the forum everyday.

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 23:03:59 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

Until sites in the fediverse start adopting OpenWebAuth, or something similar, there will always be a barrier to entry between platforms. For example, I would love to comment on many of the posts you linked to, but since I don't follow them, I don't see their posts in Hubzilla. And even if I followed them now, I won't see any of their old posts in Hubzilla. Whereas, if I could use OpenWebAuth to sign into their website, I could comment directly on these posts.