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2025-02-23 01:13:29

Shauna GM

shauna@social.coop

Is there a Fediverse service that allows you to only post to a list of people and/or custom group? Facebook has had this for ages but I believe Mastodon doesn't.

Being able to post to custom lists of follows would help me engage with people on here in healthier ways. For example, when venting, I'd love to be able to limit to friends who I trust not to "well, actually" me (or with whom I care enough to repair with if they do). Instead I often just don't post at all.

2025-02-26 20:07:31

Cătă

petrescatraian@libranet.de

@Shauna GM What you're looking for, maybe, is #Friendica.

Bild/Foto

When you create a post, go a tab next to the Permissions page and choose limited/private. Here you can select to only display your post to certain people, to a group, or to a circle. Not sure how friendly this is to Mastodon, but on Friendica it really works.

2025-02-27 08:58:25

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Cătă @Shauna GM There are also the "descendants" of Friendica, created as forks by Friendica's own creator over more than a dozen years now, which have even more advanced permissions systems.

One is Hubzilla, a fork of Friendica from 2012. The other one is called (streams) by the community, and it's a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla from 2021.

I've made a series of tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) in a number of categories.

Hubzilla and (streams) give you the following possible target audiences for new posts:

everyone on the Internet (Hubzilla, (streams))
all your connections ((streams) only; on Hubzilla, you can emulate this with a privacy group containing all your connections)
only the members of one particular privacy group (Hubzilla)/access list ((streams)) (think "Mastodon's lists on coke and 'roids")
only those to whom you've assigned a specific custom profile of your channel (Hubzilla; like Friendica, it actually allows you to have multiple profiles and show them to specific connections so that they see different sides of you)
only one specific group/forum (Hubzilla, (streams))
only an impromptu selection of connections of yours (Hubzilla, (streams))
only you yourself (Hubzilla, (streams))

The permissions systems of Hubzilla and (streams) are compatible to one another, i.e. one understands the permissions defined by the other. I'm not sure how well they and Friendica play with each other, though.

As for Mastodon: Any post that isn't public is understood by Mastodon as a DM and treated as such. Your contacts can't boost it, for example. The downside is that this kills any chances of meaningful discussions for Mastodon users.

So Hubzilla and (streams) have this advanced permissions system, and they understand threaded conversations and treat each one of these as an enclosed object with exactly one post and any number of comments. A thread always has and enforces consistent permissions all over, including all comments.

If you're on Hubzilla, and you send a post to Alice on Hubzilla and Bob on (streams), not only do both see your post, but both also automatically receive each other's comments, and they can comment on each other's comments.

Mastodon understands your post with restricted permissions as a DM. But Mastodon DMs only ever happen between two actors. This means: If Alice and Bob are on Mastodon, then both receive your post as a DM, but neither receives any comment from the other, and they can't comment on each other's comments either.

Also, fair warning ahead:

Neither of them is "Mastodon with some extra features". They're all very different from Mastodon. They all have steeper learning curves than Mastodon. Friendica's learning curve is significantly steeper than Mastodon's. (streams)' learning curve is quite another bit steeper than Friendica's because the permissions system is not optional, and not everything is public by default. Hubzilla has an even steeper learning curve.

Also, none of the three has a full set of dedicated native mobile apps. For Friendica, there are basically only Android apps. In the Apple App Store, there's nothing. Friendica can also be used with some Mastodon apps, but they only cover maybe 20% of Friendica's features, namely those that Mastodon has, too, so you'll be very, very limited. In fact, they do not cover any permission settings.

For Hubzilla and (streams), there are no phone apps at all. They don't support Mastodon apps either, and they never will. It simply wouldn't make sense because a Mastodon app would not cover important key features.

So if you're on an iPhone or iPad, or if you want to try Hubzilla or (streams), your only option is the Web interface, either in a browser or as a Progressive Web App. At least, all three have Web interfaces that adapt to mobile devices.

Lastly, you won't find (streams) on FediDB or Fediverse Observer. It's intentionally kept away from there, and it intentionally does not submit any stats. There are currently only two public, open-registration instances anyway, one in the USA, one in Hungary with a German admin who also speaks English.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Facebook #FacebookAlternative