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Fri, 11 Nov 2022 10:42:24 +0100

Hubzilla Support Forum

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

Ruhrwellenreiter :kubuntu: schrieb den folgenden Beitrag Fri, 11 Nov 2022 10:42:23 +0100

Screenshot from Streams Connections page

@support I've been successfully setting up my StreamsHub (nexxtsocial.de) but I'm pretty sure I'm missing something as I apparently can't connect or respectively be accepted as a connection. The first is a Mastodon account and the latter is... well, you know. ;-)

Any hint where to look is much appreciated! (I'm guessing it could be in the .htconfig - but what do I look for?)

show all 34 comments

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 10:56:50 +0100

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

You are on version 7.8.1 which had a bug in the activitypub inbox. Uodate to the most recent version and reconnect.

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 11:51:58 +0100

tonnerkiller

tonnerkiller9200@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Mario Vavti I had the same effect trying to connect to you a few minutes ago. My hub is Version 7.8.4
Or is this related to you having to approve first?

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 11:52:50 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Mario Vavti Speaking of which, do we have to reconnect all ActivityPub connections we've already had prior to 7.8.1?

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 12:02:15 +0100

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

@Jupiter Rowland no

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 12:03:12 +0100

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

@tonnerkiller yes, i have to approve

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 19:15:13 +0100

I didn' get to thank you for your advice. So let me just follow up by telling you that the hub is well and I just deleted my Mastodon account.

Merry XMas everyone!

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 22:58:06 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

@Ruhrwellenreiter (Streams) I can’t imagine why you would want to go entirely and exclusively on HZ. I’m strongly considering going the other way and deleting Hubzilla.

So please, enlighten me! Mastodon is vast and interesting. HZ seems only able to talk about HZ.

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:33:53 +0100

Scott M. Stolz

scott@hubzilla.monster

@Crow With the PubCrawl addon, you can talk to Mastodon, so by using Hubzilla, you aren't missing that vast and interesting world

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 05:18:07 +0100

Adam Robertson

adam@stream.digio.space

Mastodon is vast and interesting. HZ seems only able to talk about HZ.

on Mastodon I have thousands of easily findable, interesting people to talk to.

??

None of what you have said has been in my experience with Streams, Hubzilla, Red matrix, or Friendica over the course of the last 12 years.

In fact, Streams (the most recent version of all the different softwares) has been the most simple, expansive and least resource-consuming network I have had yet. I wonder in the opposite direction: why would you use Mastodon when you could just use Streams?

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 09:44:48 +0100

Well, sure, @Crow , I seem to get why you're asking, but you realize yourself, that you are talking about "people" here and not "software"... and for that what you see looking at it from the vintage point of a user, it might even be accurate - but not true.

While Mastodon gives you only the "public", "unlisted" and "direct" options of limiting the visibility of your posts, Hubzilla/Streams gives you very granular privacy options / lists / groups / forums / and whatevernot to limit the reach of a post, respectively, to steer it only to the supposed audience - instead of blasting everything out on public timelines (which you can do as well - then it's just a "public" post).

So what you see from Hubzilla/Streams is just what the people using it decided to make "public". And that's also why they are using it - because the software is build around "privacy" and communication, while Masto is build to be a public square.

Don't judge the software by it's public appearance (which - oh yeah! - needs a serious UI overhaul since a long time) or the nerdy inside talk you get to find when you look on public timelines).

It's just software - actually a whole software toolboox. If you want to see it as a brick or a screwdriver, is up to you - but you know Maslow's Hammer ... - you decide what you make out of it!

I've got me around 350 channels carried over from my Masto account. That's a lot. Sometimes to much. But that's all I need as much as public conversations are concerned on the public square. And I have less than 10% of that number when I count the people who "follow me back" and with whom I can have "private" conversations in a variety of groups, forums or 1:1 in this part of the Fediverse... - or from/on Mastodon.

That's why I don't need an account over there.

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 10:07:46 +0100

Oliver

oliver@hubloq.com

@Adam Robertson

None of what you have said has been in my experience with Streams, Hubzilla, Red matrix, or Friendica over the course of the last 12 years.

Same here.
(Unbelievable! I have actually been in the Fediverse for 12 years!)

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 10:20:41 +0100 zuletzt bearbeitet: Mon, 26 Dec 2022 10:21:28 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

@Crow
The main personal preference of hubzilla is the ability to connect across the fediverse.
Agree that since mastodon is more popular, there are more people to find, but the ability to connect to diaspora, misskey etc. from hubzilla is the personal reason to use it.
Also the ability to control content hubzilla connections is better than from a mastodon account.

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 23:40:26 +0100

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

Once one gets away from the corporate silos, brands completely disappear as having relevance to "social reach" and are replaced by protocols. Mastodon can communicate with people using protocol 'A'. Hubzilla can communicate with anybody using protocols 'A', 'B', 'C', and 'D' (as well as any brands that can be reached via API plugins). So, Hubzilla actually has the larger social reach. This is basic set theory. One can of course decide to use any software they want for any reason they want... .

But let's put this "more users of a brand means software with better reach" myth to bed.

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 23:58:48 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

@Adam Robertson all I can go by is the directory my site gives me. The vast majority of people on it are FOSS guys with nothing to talk about besides FOSS.

The one guy who seemed like he might be worth following turned out to not have posted in over two years.

How does someone new go about finding interesting people, if that new person's idea of "interesting" does NOT involve arguing about whether Arch is better than Red Hat?

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 00:21:58 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

@mike yeah sorry I just don't buy it. The mid-tier Mastodon server I signed up on has more users than the entire Hubzillaverse, at least as far as I can tell. (Is there a better tracker than https://hubzilla.fediverse.observer/list ?) And it's **easy** to find interesting people through Mastodon, even if they are interesting because of extremely specific hobbies.

Of all the people I follow on Hubzilla who post more than once a month, one, and only one, is actually interesting to me, and guess what? He talks about Hubzilla almost exclusively. (He's interesting because he spends a lot of time talking about how he plans to fix HZ's UI problems.)

I concede your point that Hubzilla is *theoretically capable* of reaching a much larger audience through its technology, but that larger audience is largely invisible to someone using the Hubzilla interface. Or else I'm missing something HUGE here, which would be a whole other problem. It's bad enough that clicking "view friend suggestions" takes almost half a minute to load.

And here's the thing: I'm stubborn. I'm technical (though not a Linux guy.) I'm not going to just toss up my hands the moment something doesn't make sense or work the way I want. This post, and the original post that garnered these responses should show that. I recognize the potential in Hubzilla. But I'm SO CLOSE to just shutting down commonworlds.org and putting up a WordPress site with the ActivityPub plugin instead.

What then, is a potential user's experience of Hubzilla if that user wasn't any of those things? In other words, if, like 80% of computer users, they were daunted rather than challenged by an interface they don't understand?

I would love to see HZ become a vibrant, diverse community. I just don't see how it's doing that.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 00:55:47 +0100

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

Yeah, the Hubzilla directory needs a bit of work. You might see if one of the streams servers has a directory open to the public. You'll find a whole lot of interesting and diverse channels (who have posted recently) and the prevalence of Linux heads drops to less than 10%.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 01:00:31 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

@mike If only the directory servers themselves were browsable. And I have no idea where to look for Streams servers. Recommendations?

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 01:26:03 +0100

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

I don't use Hubzilla and I created the thing. Too many complex moving parts. I've simplified my life and I'm doing something completely different. You on the other hand seem paralyzed by hate for something I did years and years ago. My sincere apologies. Some people love it. Some don't. If you're one of those who don't, just toss it in the dumpster and get on with your life. Cheers.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 10:01:22 +0100 zuletzt bearbeitet: Tue, 27 Dec 2022 10:02:15 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Crow Finding #Streams instances currently requires a lot of detective work, not to mention knowledge where to look in the first place. But I'll guide you (and everyone else who reads this) through it.

The hardest part is to find one instance based on Streams because that's where we'll start from. You could also try #Zap or another Zotlabs product, but I expect them to slowly go extinct next year; those that are still taken care of are likely to be upgraded to Streams. At least a few Zap instances are listed on Fediverse sites; Streams isn't at all.

Luckily, we have @Mike Macgirvin, and knowing him, we should expect him to have his own Streams-based instance. And indeed, macgirvin.com is based on Streams, even though it identifies as Zap. Streams-based instances can identify as whatever they want whereas #Hubzilla always identifies as Hubzilla, Zap always identifies as Zap and so forth.

There's one sure-fire way to tell that this instance is based on Streams. Open the burger menu, and you'll find an entry named "Communities". Zap and the other Zotlabs products have "Sites" instead with the same functionality, look at zap.dog for example; Hubzilla has the page, but no link to it.

I'd say that experienced eyes may also be able to tell Streams-based instances from their colour scheme, but as you can see, my own channel mimicks Streams' colours, so this means little.

The Communities page lists all instances that have ever connected to the one you're currently on. And this is where we'll look for Streams-based instances now. By the way, you don't need Mike's instance, you can do that with any instance, but Mike's one was easy to catch right now.

On the left, there's a "Community types" column. It lists what projects the connected instances are from, e.g. #Mastodon or #Akkoma or #Friendica. If you click one of the entries, you only get connected instances from that particular project.

Now, with Streams, the trick is not to look for Streams. As I've said above, Streams-based instances can identify as anything down to their own custom icon. So, the trick is to look for Streams and, on top of that, anything that doesn't sound like a Fediverse project. It may hide a Streams instance.

"-get"? What's that? Click on it, and voilà, a Streams instance. A public one even, one of the few ones.

What's "Platypus"? Why, that's another Streams instance!

"Bunny"? Bam, Streams again.

"Blurglefroosh"? Guess what.

You may also look at the Zotlabs projects (Redmatrix, Osada, Zap, Misty, Roadhouse). It's possible to upgrade all of them to Streams, and then you end up with a Streams-based instance that still identifies as what it used to be before its upgrade. For example, you can start with Zap and end up with a Streams-based instance which still identifies as Zap on Communities pages. As I've said, Mike's instance does just that.

Especially Zap is worth looking at because Zap instances have the highest probability of all Zotlabs products of still being maintained by the admin. If you look under Osada, the instances listed there are most likely to be either neglected by the admin or dead and gone (unless some prankster comes along, sets up an instance based on Streams and has it identify as Osada down to the icon).

Once you've found a few Streams instances, go to their Communities pages and look through them. Mike's instance isn't federated with everything out there. Also, look through the Sites pages of a few Zap instances.

Mostly, this is for statistics, for a rough estimation of just how many Fediverse instances based on Streams are out there. Don't expect many public instances, most of them are personal instances. But one or two public instances with open registration exist, so you can try them out before setting up your own and moving your channel. Remember that Streams is every bit as nomadic as Hubzilla.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 10:30:08 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

The impression from hubzilla is that the technology attracts those interested in experimentation, i.e. the demographic you described memorably earlier. The fediverse may be "invisible" to the hubzilla user (at first), but personally prefer to start with nothing. From observation of the people that have joined mastodon from twitter, some already want to implement twitter type functionality; it seems inevitable that the problems of unsolicited content from undesirable people will occur within that part of the fediverse. Hubzilla is really useful in this perspective; to date, no hateful content has appeared. It is nice to see mastodon content, but selected based upon your own connections. Every time ecmascript is annoyingly activated to see full content of a thread on a mastodon server, the "noise level" increases (personally, too much). It would be a shame to see 'commonworlds' closed, since the fediverse benefits from more diversity, but who am I to tell what to do? My two pennies...

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 15:18:43 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

@citc

Hubzilla is really useful in this perspective; to date, no hateful content has appeared.

Uh, I have to point to a regular contributor on the support forum site whose domain is a racist slur that I won't repeat.

A big part of why my questions about 10 days ago were all about blocking.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 17:10:32 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

Were you successful in achievement of the (domain) block?
What about the actions (if any) of the hubzilla support forum?

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 19:18:32 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

@citc I have no idea if the person is blocked by @Hubzilla Support Forum. I just know they weren't.

They're blocked from my domain. Creeper even had the gall to try Connecting with me.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 19:29:02 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

@Scott M. Stolz I do have pubcrawl active on my site.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 19:30:30 +0100

Crow

crow@commonworlds.org

So what is this page, if not a streams page? It only offers moving off Streams to Mastodon.

https://stream.digio.space/chanview?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmastodon.social%2F%40Sassinake

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 19:47:37 +0100

Oliver

oliver@hubloq.com

@Crow

So what is this page, if not a streams page?

ok, now I understand what you mean. Yes, you are on the streams site digio.space, but you want to jump from there to a Mastodon site. This Mastodon site is just listed in the directory and has nothing to do with digio.space.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:33:18 +0100

Adam Robertson

adam@stream.digio.space

@Crow Genuine question here: It sounds like you want to just move to Mastodon. Is there something holding you back from that?
If you are just exploring/brain-storming then I suggest cloning your Hubzilla channel and install Streams and import your channel in.

It is a tad confusing to me when you are saying things like "there are more people on Mastodon" because I have had no problems at all in finding loads of people to connect with from Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla and Streams.
In fact, I had to implement filters because too many people from Mastodon were flooding my stream.

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 10:19:01 +0100

tonnerkiller

tonnerkiller9200@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

you can filter the stream?

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 16:53:43 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@tonnerkiller Go to your connections page: /connections. Edit one of your contacts. You'll see two text fields way down below, a whitelist (if you only want to see posts with certain keywords or hashtags) and a blacklist (for keywords or hashtags which you don't want to see). If you fill them, use one line per keyword/hashtag.

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 17:01:30 +0100

tonnerkiller

tonnerkiller9200@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Thank you

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 23:39:45 +0100

Scott M. Stolz

scott@hubzilla.monster

I do think there needs to be a better directory solution for both Hubzilla, and the fediverse at large. Viewing an unfiltered directory that isn't even paginated, much less categorized, does give a distorted impression of what Hubzilla and Streams communities are.

The communities listing at https://forum.statler.ws/communities sounds like an interesting way to introduce people to communities, and once people get involved into those communities, they start seeing individuals that they may want to follow or connect with.

I think the better approach is to help people find communities rather than try to give a a list of individuals.

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 01:49:12 +0100

Agnessa

agnessa@futurenow.agnessa.pp.ru

@Jupiter Rowland
Is it possible to filter out reposts?

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 20:44:05 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Agnessa Not to my knowledge, but maybe other users know how to do this.

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 22:40:55 +0100 zuletzt bearbeitet: Thu, 29 Dec 2022 22:44:11 +0100

Mike Macgirvin

mike@macgirvin.com

Is it possible to filter out reposts?

This should work in a deny rule. The first one catches ActivityPub "boosts" and the second catches quoted reposts:

?verb == Announce
[/share]