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If something is part of the Fediverse and not Mastodon, always mention it is part of the Fediverse and connected to Mastodon! CW: long (almost 800 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse beyond Mastodon meta

If you write about something that's in the Fediverse but not Mastodon, most Fediverse users won't know that it's in the Fediverse.

Even if you write about e.g. your Hubzilla channel or your WriteFreely blog, hardly anyone will know that they can follow you there. Yes, even when you write about your Hubzilla channel from your Hubzilla channel. Especially Mastodon users won't know what Hubzilla is, they won't know that they can follow Hubzilla channels from Mastodon, and they'll assume that you've just posted from Mastodon.

So if you want people to know that whatever you're writing about is part of the Fediverse and connected to Mastodon, you have to explicitly mention both.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

If something is part of the Fediverse and not Mastodon, always mention it is part of the Fediverse and connected to Mastodon! CW: long (almost 800 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse beyond Mastodon meta

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in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

in reply to Ringwood Unitarians Co-organis

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

@Jupiter Rowland Even some popular accounts such as fedi.tips focus mostly on mastodon and this only perpetuates this belief. Not much we can do about it. Ignorance is bliss for most people.
in reply to SK

While @FediTips is on Mastodon and mostly posts about Mastodon topics, I would not say that they contribute to the belief that the Fediverse is only Mastodon:

fedi.tips/what-is-mastodon-wha…

There's even a section called "The Fediverse beyond Mastodon" which describes various platforms.

But as @jupiter_rowland said, only those willing to look for information can find it, and most people won't.

in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

I focus on how new people enter the Fediverse, which is almost always Mastodon.

I also promote alternatives to Masto such as GoToSocial, but it's difficult because the onboarding on other Fedi platforms is not as good so new people don't use them. (For example there doesn't seem to be any public server for GTS, I tried asking but no one could suggest one.)

I also have an entire account @FediVideo and site at fedi.video to promote PeerTube.

in reply to Fedi.Tips

GoToSocial is a great alternative to Mastodon for self-hosting, as it's just a single binary and supports SQLite. However, it does not provide a web interface and is not yet fully compatible with most Mastodon clients (at least last time I checked). So it may not be the best option for new people. So yes, Mastodon is probably the easiest way into the Fediverse at the moment 👍
in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

It's not just about having alternative software to Mastodon, alternatives also need an onboarding flow which includes:

-Friendly non-techy website that tells people how to sign up
-Human-curated list of instances that are relatively safe and reliable
-If possible, at least one app that people can install which includes this curated list of instances

I know an app shouldn't be needed, but apps are how non-technical people discover social networks at the moment.

in reply to Fedi.Tips

Good point about having a working mobile app in the Google Play and iOS app stores. You're right, that's how non-techies and especially young people find out about the network in the first place!
in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

I'm not a dev but I guess it wouldn't even need to be a new app? It could be a compatible app that has been branded with the name of the platform you want people to join? This could be done in co-operation with the dev of an existing compatible app, especially if it is FOSS.

I know at a technical level this makes no sense at all, but if people are using app stores as search engines for social networks then this is how to give them a way onto your platform.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Fedi.Tips

In principle you are right, it just depends on the compatibility between the application and the server API. Most apps try to implement the Mastodon API so that they can be used for this. Other platforms like GoToSocial also implement the Mastodon API, so all their apps should work. Misskey and its derivatives have their own API, so Mastodon-compatible apps will not work unless they also implement the Misskey API. @apps is the only application I know of that implements multiple APIs.
in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic Especially because they make it look like the Fediverse is a) Mastodon and b) all kinds of other stuff that actually doesn't really matter. As you've said, most of the time, they post about Mastodon and only Mastodon as if there's nothing else out there. Lumping everything that isn't Mastodon together, keeping it separate from Mastodon and only marginally touching it, if at all, makes it seem like the non-Mastodon Fediverse isn't worth bothering.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

Sure, you're absolutely right. Their main focus is definitely Mastodon and they cover things beyond Mastodon on the side. I would put this down to supply and demand, as many (inexperienced/non-tech) people join Mastodon.

But I don't understand why Mastodon is so popular. Is it just because of the Twitter crash? Sure, I also joined the Fediverse when I was looking for a micro-blogging platform, but that's not for everyone.

in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

reshared this

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

Interesting dynamic, thanks for the summary!

I still wonder how people coming from Facebook are not able to find out about Friendica, Hubzilla and co, as their experience with Mastodon must be very unsatisfactory. But then again, most people have no media competence whatsoever.

Apart from Mitra, I have actually heard of all these projects. But well, I'm interested in this stuff. As always, your posts are a great source of knowledge about the Fediverse!

in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

It's a shame. The concepts behind Hubzilla are amazing. But marketing and presentation are big factors. And the UI/UX design in Hubzilla is very outdated in my opinion. Neuhub seems to be able to provide a more modern interface and make Hubzilla more appealing and accessible when it's finished.

The people who are still on Facebook are probably not the type of people looking for a free/decentralized alternative. And even if you Google it, all you get is Diaspora and Mastodon...

in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic Come to think of it, way back in the olden days, Friendica had themes that tried to mimic diaspora*, Facebook and both.

In the meantime, as the name indicates, Redbasic is stuck in 2012. Although I love how customisable it has become with Hubzilla 9. The colour scheme on my channel is set up to match the background image in both day and night mode.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Hubzilla

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

Oh, I never noticed the color changing in your channel. I guess I always looked at it during the day (light blue). I will have to look into this, but many features and functions of Hubzilla are somewhat hidden, at least to a newbie like me.

I'm not surprised that Friendica had a Facebook theme. Diaspora also makes sense. Mastodon also has a Twitter-like theme (Bird UI by @rolle). I think this helps when people are migrating. Hubzilla, on the other hand, is too unique for that 🙃

in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

Oh, I never noticed the color changing in your channel.


It doesn't switch automatically, although that'd be a nice feature.

At least I can switch it manually in the burger menu, and I can specify whether day or night mode is the default.

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

Still a cool feature to be able to build something like that. The whole concept of being able to install apps on your channel and even build custom apps (if I understand this correctly) is mind-blowing. I have never seen such a level of customizability, and it's quite user-friendly for what it is.
in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

Still a cool feature to be able to build something like that. The whole concept of being able to install apps on your channel and even build custom apps (if I understand this correctly) is mind-blowing. I have never seen such a level of customizability, and it's quite user-friendly for what it is.


Some of us are taking Hubzilla in a whole new direction. You can even build custom websites and apps with it, which is what we are doing. We are also working on new themes.

For example, #^loves.tech/ uses a new theme we will be releasing soon. (Website is not finished, by the way.)

And

is Hubzilla. Looks like a website, but it is actually Hubzilla under the hood, with built-in decentralized social media. We can literally make Hubzilla look any way we want.

How about a fediverse-enabled project management system? We are working on that too.

Hubzilla is very customizable.

in reply to Scott M. Stolz

Cool, thanks for pointing out those examples. The theme used by techsero.com is indeed almost unrecognizable, except for the top bar. But is something like that maintainable? If I remember correctly, this is why you dropped the old Neuhub theme in favour of RedbasicPlus?

I like the idea of the fedi-enabled project management system you're working on.
I'm curious to see how this turns out 👍

in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

But is something like that maintainable? If I remember correctly, this is why you dropped the old Neuhub theme in favour of RedbasicPlus?


It is maintainable. It just requires more coordination with the Hubzilla dev team. And swapping out icon sets is unusual. That's what broke our theme. They remove Fork Awesome and replaced it with Bootstrap icons.

We can also mitigate those sort of problems by using your own templates instead of Hubzilla's default templates, and including our own icon packs.

in reply to Scott M. Stolz

That's great to hear! I think it should also be in the interest of the Hubzilla dev team to allow the creation of custom themes, as the Hubzilla UI is probably the thing that scares new users the most at the moment. You have to play around and get used to it or read the documentation, which most people do not do these days.
in reply to Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic They are fully onboard with that. It's just that they're refactoring Hubzilla's code right now, so there are potentially lots of internal changes that could affect us. Everything is moving forward and looking good. It just takes time.