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2024-11-28 19:58:18

tchambers@indieweb.social

My take on the current #Bluesky, #Threads, Mastodon / #Fediverse Landscape: https://www.timothychambers.net/2024/11/28/a-quick-snapshot.html

show all 9 comments

2024-11-28 21:39:02

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Tim Chambers It's sad that it's always Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon. The Fediverse is only represented by Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon, as if there's nothing else. Always.

The Fediverse's quality in microblogging is always measured in what vanilla Mastodon can and can't do. If Mastodon lacks something, the Fediverse lacks it.

But the Fediverse is not only Mastodon. Not even in terms of microblogging.

Pleroma is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
Akkoma is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
Misskey is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
Firefish is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
Iceshrimp is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
Sharkey is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
Catodon is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
Mitra is microblogging, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
And that's only a selection.

None of them are related to Mastodon. None of them have even a grain of Mastodon in them. They're fully independent developments.

Feature-wise, they all blow Bluesky and Threads and Mastodon out of the water. In fact, if you want "the Fediverse", read, Mastodon to have a certain feature, Misskey probably has it right now. If Misskey doesn't, Iceshrimp or Sharkey may have it. And that doesn't say anything about the more Facebook-like and even more powerful parts of the Fediverse yet.

If Mastodon wants to evolve, it will first have to catch up to the rest of the Fediverse.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Catodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

2024-11-28 23:42:51

Tim Chambers

tchambers@indieweb.social

@jupiter_rowland Tried to wire up Threads, Matodon/etc, where I could….to include non-Mastodon microblogging like Misskey etc….

2024-11-29 05:04:25

Tim Bray

timbray@cosocial.ca

@tchambers Do you think Threads will actually join the Fediverse? That story seems to have gone cold.

2024-11-29 05:18:58

Johannes Ernst

j12t@j12t.social

@timbray @tchambers they are rolling out new features all the time. Small steps but steps. Here’s an update from September: https://spectra.video/w/p/q1BXeNF5PWFipFy5f44v9h

PS you might like FediForum.

2024-11-29 16:54:45

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@neurer

Looking at the numbers, Mastodon is the fediverse.

Mastodon's dominance in numbers comes from only Mastodon even receiving any exposure outside the Fediverse and, in fact, even within Mastodon.

People who want to leave 𝕏 are only being told about Mastodon. Mostly from Mastodon users who, in turn, have yet to learn that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon itself.

Tech media like @heise online, mass media, even many bloggers talk about Mastodon, but they barely even mention the Fediverse, and they almost never mention anything else that's in the Fediverse. Except maybe if it's commercial like Flipboard, or if its self-advertisement is as ubiquitous as Pixelfed's.

Only Japanese 𝕏 escapees join Misskey which is the reason why Misskey is not exactly small.

Literally nobody from outside the Fediverse ever joins Pleroma. Or Akkoma. Or Firefish. Or Iceshrimp. Or Sharkey.

Not because they're bad. But because literally nobody even knows that they exist. Because nobody is being told about their existence. Because those who communicate to people outside the Fediverse mostly don't know themselves that they exist. Or if they do know, which is super rare, they don't talk about them to keep things nice and simple.

If Facebook should ever end up being so enshittified that a mass exodus kicks in in spite of all that "but muh friends are here", all the Facebook refugees will end up on Mastodon, too. Literally absolutely all of them.

Not because Mastodon is perfect for them. The Fediverse's primary Facebook alternative is Friendica and has been since 2010. It's worlds closer to Facebook than Mastodon.

But the migration wave will be driven forward by thousands upon thousands of Mastodon users, almost none of whom have ever heard of Friendica, much less that it's connected to Mastodon, the vast majority of whom is fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon, and the tiny rest of whom hates Friendica with a burning passion for having the audacity of being so different from Mastodon.

That and the fact, that AP services do not work well together.

Well, part of this comes from Mastodon's refusal to be more compatible with the rest of the Fediverse and insistance in adding more and more non-standard, proprietary features which aren't compatible with the rest of the Fediverse.

In addition, Mastodon is so dominant that the vast majority of Fediverse users sees it as the one and only ActivityPub gold standard. Even if they learn about the Fediverse outside of Mastodon and stop denying its existence, they still think that Eugen Rochko has invented not only Mastodon, but also the Fediverse and ActivityPub because it couldn't possibly have been any different. So to them, everything that isn't Mastodon was made after Mastodon as an add-on bolted onto Mastodon.

From this come two misconceptions.

One, everything works just like Mastodon. If it doesn't, that's a bug that needs to be fixed. Including, for example, the way literally everything that isn't Mastodon or one of its forks handles conversations (or the fact that it handles conversations at all).

Two, everything is made to work with Mastodon. Mastodon users expect being able to follow Lemmy users. Because Lemmy is Mastodon's Reddit-style add-on, right? What do you mean, you can't follow Lemmy users? That's a bug that needs to be fixed, and as long as it isn't fixed, Lemmy is bad and broken. Never mind that Redditors can't follow other Redditors. It's a Mastodon add-on, and so it has to work by Mastodon's rules.

And that's only the raw technological side. On top comes the tendency of many Mastodon users to try and force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's "Fediquette" upon the rest of the Fediverse. A culture and an "etiquette" that have both always completely ignored the whole rest of the Fediverse because they were largely coined by Mastodon users who, at that point, were blissfully unaware of Mastodon being connected to anything that isn't Mastodon.

More than 500 characters? Not allowed in the Mastodon Fediverse. @crossgolf_rebel - kostenlose Kwalitätsposts, Calckey user with thousands of characters at his disposal, was once commanded by a Mastodon fundamentalist to either limit all his posts to a maximum of 500 characters or get the fuck out of the Fediverse. True story.

Text formatting? Disturbing, makes "toots" harder to read, but most of all, un-Mastodon-like, thus not allowed.

Replying to people who haven't mentioned you, and who aren't mutually connected to you? Perfectly normal everywhere else and integral part of the culture of Fediverse projects that pre-date Mastodon by years. On Mastodon, it's reply-guying, an offence so grave and severe that it may justify moderation to step in.

Now, as a Mastodon user, you may wonder what's so bad about all this. I mean, all of us non-Mastodon users could easily adopt Mastodon's culture. And throw the culture of what we use overboard. No matter if it's years older than Mastodon itself, not to mention Mastodon's current culture. No matter if it's better geared towards what we use. Oh, and, of course, stop using 80-95% of the features of whatever we use.

Well, what'd you say if more and more Bluesky users demanded Mastodon users keep all their posts at 300 characters or below? Or what'd you say if Threads federated fully, and then Threads users started trying to push Threads' culture upon Mastodon on the ground of Threads users being the majority now?

I guess you'd defederate. While protesting loudly.

Well, then don't complain about users of Friendica (over five years older than Mastodon and federated with Mastodon for as long as Mastodon has been around) who are angry about obnoxious Mastodon users who try to force them to use Friendica like Mastodon.

And don't complain about Hubzilla or (streams) users loudly announcing that they turn ActivityPub off on their channels with the explicit intent of keeping Mastodon's toxic and ignorant supremacy out. (By the way, I know one (streams) discussion group that actually does have ActivityPub off for this very reason.)

CC: @Tim Chambers

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

2024-11-29 17:19:26

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@neurer In an interesting twist of fate, some say that Misskey and the Forkeys are closer in UX to Twitter than Mastodon is. So the reason why they're so "unpopular" is not because Mastodon has the better UI/UX, but because nobody in the Western world knows they exist.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Misskey #Forkeys #UX

2024-11-29 17:48:39

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@neurer

plus they are mostly in Japanese and full of culturally very alien content -- which doesn't help; even though it shouldn't be an issue.

Misskey, maybe. CherryPick, definitely because it has got exactly one instance that's hosted nowhere near Tokyo or Seoul.

Calckey? Firefish? Iceshrimp? Sharkey? Catodon? Nope.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #CherryPick #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Catodon

2024-11-29 18:49:13

Julian Fietkau

julian@fietkau.social

@j12t @timbray @tchambers There's a more recent hint on the topic by a Threads engineer in a discussion on the Bridgy Fed issue tracker: https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1471#issuecomment-2474092931

2025-01-07 04:56:12

Linux Is Best

Linux_Is_Best@misskey.de

@jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

You forgot CherryPick, which is a wonderful fork of Misskey.

https://github.com/kokonect-link/cherrypick

#CherryPick #Fedi #Fediverse #Misskey #GitHub #Foss #OpenSource