Good morning, it's Wednesday. I have my coffee, my cats are racing around like they just did a few lines, and I have a small rant brewing. Well, not so much a rant as a reflection.
It's on unsubscribing - to pretty much everything.
1/
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I used to be a news junkie. This is a condition I inherited from my father, who was a journalist. For decades, I would start my day with caffeine and some international news service on in my house. CNN, BBC World, sometimes Sky. It often depended where I was living and what I had access to. Then I'd move on to print papers (in the past) and later online press - the NYT, WAPO, LA Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, South China Morning Post.
And from very early on, I was a paying subscriber. Gladly. 2/
Bernice Hillier reshared this.
In the last decade, I noticed an interesting change. I began to feel a gnawing anxiety that if I wasn't consuming news all the time, I'd miss something. The "thing" I'd miss was never really terribly clear. Which should have been a clue that something was fishy. But I was being haunted by the feeling I wasn't engaged enough, I didn't care enough, I wasn't being alert enough.
I won't call it an addiction - that superficializes the life-destroying reality of an addiction -but it was close. 4/
UkeleleEric reshared this.
By 2022 it had reached a fevered pitch. I'd start my day with CNN & BBC World, get through three international newspapers, and then spend the rest of my day consuming 'news' podcasts on my phone as I went about my work.
After November something flipped like a switch in my brain. It's quite funny, because I never rated Morning Joe on MSNBC as news, but it was their visit to Mar A Lago that ended up being the brick wall.
I unsubscribed from almost everything. 5/
I cancelled my subs to NYT, WAPO, LA Times, etc. I stopped watching news on tv completely. I went through my app and cancelled every newsy podcast subscription I had.
What I was left with was 5 minutes of BBC World Service News in the morning. And 5 minutes at night. Plus, I follow @fulelo and @w7voa on Mastodon. It's the only news I consume now.
And I'm not less informed about world events. I noticed that 90% of my consumption had been some thinly veiled sort of op-ed. 6/
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(1/2)
@Remittancegirl
> And I'm not less informed about world events. I noticed that 90% of my consumption had been some thinly veiled sort of op-ed
Ironically it was the time I spent as a reporter for Indymedia - about 2 decades ago - that make me start disengaging from most legacy news media.
I was doing actual reportage, from the field, and I lost count of the number of times their articles directly contradicted what I'd seen with my own eyes.
@Remittancegirl @w7voa
@fulelo
It probably has a lot to do with the beat you're covering. I was generally reporting on protests and other activism-related stuff. Which were often directly targeting the corporations who were profiting from the social or environmental ills being protested.
I almost boosted that, but then read your bio!
I generally don't read or watch any legacy media, it's just such a colossal waste of time. You end up better informed just doing what we're doing now: engaging with both online and afk communities.
Reading a lot of books also helps give context to current events that can prompt further research, i.e. actively seeking out information rather than just passively consuming it like "they" want us to do.
@ApostateEnglishman @fulelo @w7voa
Everyone makes their choices.
I don't consider getting news from entities set up to deliver it is a complete waste of time.
But mostly, that's not what anyone is being given anymore.
I kept my subscription to my town's local newspaper. And I did subscribe to ElPais. Principally because both are aimed primarily at in-country/ local news there's no way I'd get it elsewhere. And those journalists need supporting.
But the world isn't more opaque. Trump isn't more bewildering. Gaza isn't more obscene because I've stopped consuming all this news.
And I didn't need to hear 50 talking heads hold forth on the subtleties of whatever new horror had occurred. 7/
UkeleleEric reshared this.
I realized that I could be adequately informed of actual occurrences in those 10 minutes.
And the rest - the talking heads, the hot takes, the 'analysis' - which had managed to crowd out most of the actual factual reporting, informed me of nothing. NOTHING.
The only thing that was stopping me from forming my own conclusions or orienting myself adequately, or analyzing a confluence of events was this insidious, invisible sense that they knew better.
They were the subjects-supposed-to-know 8/
UkeleleEric reshared this.
I know exactly how shit things are. Tell me what new shit has occurred, and I will be perfectly capable of figuring out where that fits into the old shit. I don't require 50 'experts' to underscore how shit this new thing is. I've got a brain.
And so do you.
We all need to know about events in the world. It IS good to be informed.
But it is not good to be manipulated, gaslit, lured into artificially generated emotional spirals, wrapped in echo chambers, etc. 9/
UkeleleEric reshared this.
Get your news from whatever offers you a broad, crisp, unrepetitive (because that does its own work on your brain) reportage.
Get your sense of solidarity, your motivation, help in drawing your conclusions from people who care for you and who you trust, and don't make a profit of it.
Because the ethics of delivering news has radically changed. It's about generating a lot of things, and an informed populace is not really one of them.
/end
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"Did they get things wrong? Probably, but not as wrong as it gets when stretching everything to fill the entire day."
You make an excellent point that I didn't think of before: that repetition means the errors get compounded.
Exactly - and coupled with the incentive to keep making new errors (because when you're trying to make a 2-minute news story last all day things like fact checking takes a backseat), 24-hour news basically becomes a well-olied misinformation machine.
(reminder: Misinformation = Erroneous - Disinformation = Maliciously Untruthful - Malinformation = Technically Partially Correct but Deliberately Misleading)
What you describe could be called:
OMNISCIENCE DEFICIT DISORDER ...
Most westerners are afflicted by it at some time in their lives.
I'm old enough to remember (in Europe anyway) mass media news before the 'rolling news' channel format developed, and I often wonder if this development - rather than social media - was where the rot really set in.
In my youth news bulletins were short, and therefore of necessity perhaps pretty factual - supplemented by long-format documentaries more akin to investigative reporting. But with the rolling news format came the need to pad out breaking news stories with opinion, speculation, etc - off-the-cuff journalistic comment, or some 'expert' hastily called to the studio without any real examination of their credentials - hence we get endless repeats of the few known facts in an elaborate web of ill-thought-out nonsense.
Mainstream media is obsessed with misinformation in social media - but did the mainstream in fact do the rolling news shit on its own doorstep?
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I remember my first real experience of it, during the first gulf war. And at the time, that moment by moment stuff, reporting from inside Baghdad as it was being bombed seemed important. It seemed groundbreaking. It seemed like this coverage would hold power to account in profound and timely ways. It seemed democratizing.
Oh, what delusions we weave for ourselves.
Look, if there's a war between Rwanda and DR Congo, I want to know it. If China is building military posts on islands, I want to know it.
But I am informed enough to figure out what the implications of those things are.
It's entirely personal. The thread was just a personal account.
Thank you for writing this. I too was on a news-binge kick for a long time. I grew up in Singapore and my news feed was The Straits Times (quasi-government propaganda news), people posting news on FidoNet, and the BBC World Service, which I listened to on my FM/AM/Shortwave radio until I fell asleep.
You’re absolutely right that there’s not THAT much news per day on average, and just briefly catching up (on trustworthy outlets) is usually all you need.
Look, I do think it is important not to tar all news outlets with the same brush. And I hope I haven't done that and regret if I did.
My thread was aimed at examining my own consumption patterns.
I cannot change what has become of the media landscape. Only how I consume it. Hence the thread.
Meta has banned mentions of Linux on their platform—despite, you know, Facebook’s product depending on Linux.
This is a good time to encourage #Linux devs and users to set up communities on #NodeBB, #Mbin, #Lemmy, #Friendica, #Discourse, and #WordPress.
And enable #ActivityPub for greater visibility.
techradar.com/pro/facebook-is-…
Facebook is blocking Linux topics and channels with no apparent reason
Facebook has taken an anti-Linux stanceCraig Hale (TechRadar pro)
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Lemmy is not that great on many instances. I'll avoid, thanks.
Thought Wordpress had also been cancelled?
It is why I left. I got restricted for just saying that there is no best distro, just the distro that is best for you in a Linux group. Then I started seeing the other censorship that Meta is doing and said to hell with them.
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On Holocaust Remembrance Day, I'd like to share this clip of Sir Nicholas Winton getting to meet the grown-up children he rescued from the Nazis four decades earlier.
Many of you have probably seen this before. But I feel it's worth reminding ourselves that one person can make a huge difference, even in the darkest times.
#AureFreePress #News #press #headline
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Tech CEOs are literally incapable of describing "AI" use cases without immediately turning to automating love for their children
techcrunch.com/2025/01/27/meta…
Meta AI can now use your Facebook and Instagram data to personalize its responses | TechCrunch
Meta says it is rolling out improvements to Meta AI, including the ability to tap profile data from Meta's various apps.Kyle Wiggers (TechCrunch)
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Unllike Mr. Meta, I spontaneously dreamed up bedtime stories for 3 children and 3 grandchildren. I've forgotten most of the wacky characters I invented. Hmmm.
There was Tokopopsuhluh. She was the fastest girl in the world. There was Strawberry Fatcake. She lived on top of a hill with a frig full of ice cream. To visit any of her friends involved rolling downhill. My son who was born many years after my daughters got new stories all of his own. I recall a mad scientist kid named Gronky, owner of Gronky Tech. Lots of inventing and robots and who knows what else. Keep in mind that these characters and their stories were strung out over years of bedtimes.
I've had a long and interesting life, but if you asked me to name one thing that I'm proud of and always enjoyed, it would be the silly, ridiculous bedtime stories. Good memories and no AI needed.
😇
@bkahn
Right?! Like, yes, coming up with bespoke bedtime stories on the fly can be hard (especially if you just want to go to bed). But the kids ask you to do it because they want *you* to do it.
Such an impoverished conception of the human experience to outsource something like this.
B Kahn reshared this.
Sadly "impoverished" is exactly the right word, made all the more tragic describing a daddy whose wealth is beyond imagining. He's got more money than Strawberry Fatcake had ice cream cartons in her frig--and she liked to stock up!
so it seems that people in the Dark Tetrad ―sociopaths, narcissists, machiavellians and sadists― are really good at performative love.
they don’t know how to feel love, and i mean the very physical process of bonding with people to the point of wanting to do selfless acts for them. but they know what loving looks like in other people and so they mimic that.
ever since i’ve started reading more and more about the Dark Tetrad, it explains so much of fascism, esp the American kind.
It happens so often I swear they must be competing for some in-crowd prize for "who can get how much they hate their family in promotional materials the most" - like copilot literally launched with "AI can take the drudgery out of work" and the first example was planning a graduation party for your daughter
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Idk, not attending events doesn't really fit in to copilot's Microsoft Office system prompt, it would probably try to turn stuff down but end up coming out like some tortured Lean In version of Liar Liar
Hmm I am sure someone has done PvP LLMs before, but that's a good question
Yakyu Night Owl reshared this.
while I do think there are lots of legitimate cultural problems with the fedi, I also think a lot of ppl who bounced off in the 2022 wave because of odd replies and unfamiliar norms were at least in part not used to the preponderance of ND people on here. When I get a reply that rubs me the wrong way on here, I have found about ~half the time (when I'm in a good headspace) that I can resolve it by just asking them what they meant and what they thought I meant - like they just have a very idiosyncratic way of reading or expressing themselves but meant no harm. This is definitely the uglier part of the bad caricature of Mastadon on bluesky that is more or less explicit even if people dont know that's what they're saying (and that's not to play into any us v. Them bull shit, we have our own caricature of bsky that sucks in similar tho not equivalent ways).
Like I genuinely love reading some shit and being like "I have never had that combination of words enter my mind before and need to know more." I block relatively rarely except for like endless hashtag resist liberal posters because some of y'all got some fascinating things on your mind
Imagining his daughter like "no daddy I love Ariel not the abstract notion of a mermaid"
Everyone knows kids love to talk to their friends about custom-generated bland mermaid amalgam and not Recognizable Characters Their Friends Know Too
AstroMancer5G (she/her) reshared this.
TRUE STORY didn’t grow up being read kids books. it’s so weird, but my parents would just tell us stories about their childhood or their our ancestors.
so, of course, when i became a mom, i got all the kids books i never got, BUT! esp after THING2 started to talk, they would insert themselves in the stories, so we would end making up stories about the adventures of THING1 & THING2. very Borges-like, with their own names. a different superpower every time.
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Tech CEOs: My every passing thought is pure crystallized genius, my whims are the only moral arbiter worth considering, my every waking moment is worth a year's salary.
Also Tech CEOs: I cannot make up a story about a mermaid that is good enough to please a sleepy toddler.
Zuck can;t remember what his daughters like by himself, like parents have done for millennia?
Its oh so true that capitalism invents things no one needed and pishes them on you in order to make a profit.
Here you go, Zuck:
There once was a mermaid. Her father told the fishermen where to find schools of fish, because it was profitable. All of her friends died. The father never understood what he did was wrong.
See Mark? It's called using the meat between your ears.
I've had a lot of people ask how BlueSky compares to Mastodon and the Fediverse. I've tried to make the answer as simple and easy to understand as possible:
🦋 BlueSky is designed to give corporations and wealthy people full control of the network. All of its traffic has to flow through expensive-to-run corporate relays.
The Fediverse is designed to give ordinary people control of the network. All of its traffic flows directly from one cheap-to-run server to another.
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I only know this article (in german) from November: "Bluesky: How is a ‘decentralised ecosystem’ financed? Bluesky was launched as a non-profit organisation, and controversial names emerged in the latest round of financing"
derstandard.de/story/300000024…
Bluesky: Wie finanziert sich ein "dezentrales Ökosystem"?
Gestartet wurde Bluesky als gemeinnütziges Unternehmen, im Rahmen der neusten Finanzierungsrunde tauchten umstrittene Namen aufDER STANDARD
Tombe la pluie - Theespookje reshared this.
So... BlueSky Direct messages all go through a central server. And are not encrypted E2E anyway.
I don't like that.
Never thought about it but DMs in Mastodon are not E2E either.
I'm just learning about ActivityPub. How difficult would it be to E2E DMs?
Could you provide encryption keys on both ends. And make it to where something like the users pass decrypts DMs?
@txtechnician @caos @effariwhy
End to end encryption has been a problem in email that still is not solved. The problem is the key distribution.
I don't know how Signal, etc. do it but it would seem publishing the public key in the user profile would solve e2e for at least DMs.
@w_b @txtechnician @caos @effariwhy
Social networks in general aren't good for privacy, as far as I know none of them have E2EE. It's much better to use encrypted messaging systems such as XMPP with OMEMO, @briar etc.
There is discussion of how to bring E2EE to Mastodon at github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i… but it hasn't been updated in some time.
support zero-knowledge encryption for toots/DMs · Issue #19565 · mastodon/mastodon
Pitch The UI now warns us that: Posts on Mastodon are not end-to-end encrypted. Do not share any sensitive information over Mastodon. Would it be possible to use zero-knowledge encryption such that...GitHub
BlueSky is not a non-profit, it is owned by Bluesky Social PBC which is a for-profit corporation.
In October it announced that it had partially sold itself to Blockchain Capital, and the same announcement said they had appointed a blockchain/cryptocurrency expert to their board:
social.growyourown.services/@F…
This is in addition to their CEO being a blockchain/cryptocurrency person:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Grab…
AFAIK the board only has three people, so a majority are from blockchain.
This is why I have been trying to warn about #BlueSky.BlueSky has just been partially bought by a cryptocurrency company "Blockchain Capital" and appointed a blockchain / cryptocurrency expert to their board:
bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2…
The board member is a bitcoin researcher involved with NFT analytics.
BlueSky describe the tie-up with Blockchain Capital as a "natural partnership" and says the blockchain company has "a uniquely deep understanding of our decentralized foundation".
(via @jwz)
Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users - Bluesky
Bluesky now exceeds 13 million users, the AT Protocol developer ecosystem continues to grow, and we’ve shipped highly requested features like direct messages and video.Bluesky
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@jakeyounglol @voxel I mean they could tie it with movements towards more sustainable methods such as solar and etc, but they don't.
The real issue is these things are basically built to be scams and are being used as such. They scam people on the blockchain stuff itself and use the blockchain stuff to run other scams as well. It's not all as obvious as those who lose their livelihoods, but sneakier stuff like Bluesky eventually turning into another X and manipulating people.
If bsky goes the way of twitter, it would be better to follow them here via Flipboard and not have a bsky account.
I would rather see the AP and other news orgs actually support the #fediverse by having a mastodon account. Instead, they use commercial platforms, and this mastodon server displays their posts from them.
AP is not supporting #decentralized architecture, which is our only hope to break free of the endless cycle of corporate takeovers.
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Even if it was real, BlueSky could simply defederate from everyone as they have such a large share of the userbase. This is what Facebook did with XMPP interoperability, they kept it internally but switched off all external connections.
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@mathieui You could also federate over XMPP with iChat. In-fact, Mac OS X Server had an option to host a local version of the iChat server!
I am getting your point and of course, I promote Fediverse as much as I can.
But there are definitely reasons why users prefer BlueSky massively. I am not sure about their MAU, because they are centralized service, there is no way to verify independently, but they may be easily 10 times our MAU.
I think the need to choose the instance is not the main problem of Mastodon and Fediverse. It is quite easy to explain to newbies. The problem is quite simple and straighforward: it is UX focused on power users.
There are too many new concepts to learn. There is no reason, why end users should have to even know about federation: it is the implementation, that matters. Backfilling history of toots and timeline of other instances instead of "opening original page". Starter packs (ie. easy sharing of user-generated lists - no CSV imports). Propper scanning for all replies (somehow). Better search feature. Better explore feature...
Also, even if Mastodon may the best ActivityPub client so far, it is definitely not for everyone. It is quite complex chunk of code. The frontend is written in JavaScript, which is of course very standard and it is my fault I am not more familliar with it. But Ruby is pretty oldschool server side language and not among the most popular. This makes the backend quite unreadable... although probably still better, than node.js 🙂
Anyway, it is not easy for me to participate in development of neither frontend nor backend of Mastodon.
Writing completely different Fediverse application would be probably hard and I definitely don't feel one should attempt it as one man show. The team would need to start with such ActivityPub implementation, which would fix the issues like replies, and then maybe work with W3C to standardize account list sharing, so other Fedi implementations can join.
Good cellphone app would be a must. It would have to come with good instance selector. Etc.
Tombe la pluie - Theespookje reshared this.
You brought up MAUs as a reason to be on Bluesky.
I replied that if MAUs are your main concern, you can get even higher MAUs on Twitter etc.
As for going down the path, it's a matter of fact that Bluesky has adopted the same structure as Twitter, Facebook etc. Pretending it hasn't doesn't change this fact.
All I said is that many Bluesky users are quite nice and they have chosen the platform because lot of people went there and because it was straightforward to use.
I did my best, but Mastodon is simply not user friendly enough for most people. It offers some quite advanced features for power users, but at the same time, it lacks certain basics, which newbies would take for granted. The don't care about the architecture of the network, as long as they don't have to think about it.
We need to keep on trying and one day, Bluesky may seem boring to some and they will move here...
Ordinary users are attracted to a well-funded simple platform.
The trouble is this simplicity is what makes it easy for Musk etc to buy it out. And the massive amount of funding is what will eventually force it to start exploiting and manipulating its users, because the funding comes from selling itself to the funders.
There is no perfect solution, there are just a range of most or least worst options. It's up to each person to decide what is least worst for them.
yes, BlueSky is going to be bought out eventually. But maybe people already got used to being digital nomads and they will just move again, when it happens.
I created separate list of bridged BlueSky accounts and they just seem to use it and don't think about it too much. Maybe we are too meta here...
(and also, the funding of Fedi instances is open issue... small instances are admin sponsored, but as the instances grow, they may easily reach the point, when they will be too big to be sponsored but still too small to raise funds... we will see.... I wrote python scripts, which crawl explore Mastodon compatible Fedi on various TLDs and and I am going to put the charts online soon...)
You can see complete threads and complete search results on Mastodon if you have just one instance without any federation.
That's what BlueSky currently does, it's all on one instance.
But if you run on just one instance, it makes it incredibly easy for Musk etc to buy you out.
Sure, but as a practical matter, BlueSky can’t even connect, much less disconnect.
It’s also not clear whether they would make any connections, if it were a capability they even possessed, which they don’t.
@janxdevil
Precisely! For more on Bluesky's "vaporware" strategy:
mastodon.online/@mastodonmigra…
Returning to the #FreeOurFeeds (FOF) initiative discussion (for background see links below)...@pluralistic has a new piece (pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/cap…) that extends his "fire exit" analogy and discusses how it is not corporate ownership, VCs or profit motive alone that causes enshitification. It also requires captive users, and FOF will make it so Bluesky users are not captive. It all sounds good, but it's not realistic because the assumptions behind it are based on vaporware marketing.
more...
@janxdevil
For more on who actually owns Bluesky:
mastodon.online/@mastodonmigra…
So, to summarize what we've learned on the second day of trying to figure out:Who actually owns #Bluesky?
The company represents that Jay Graber and the employees own Bluesky. This is misleading. In actuality, Bluesky has a host of Tech VC shareholders (accessipos.com/bluesky-stock-i…) and is about to get more in a stunning funding round led by Bain Capital valuing the company at $700M (businessinsider.com/x-competit…).
So who are the current owners of Bluesky? Read on...
accessipos.com/bluesky-stock-i…
X competitor Bluesky's valuation jumps to around $700 million
Bluesky is raising new funding led by Bain Capital Ventures that would value the social media company at around $700 million, according to sources.Ben Bergman (Business Insider)
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Even worse then, isn't it! 😬
I've mainly put multiple relays on there so people can see even in the best case scenario, the AT protocol is still putting corporations in control of the network.
Mastodon Migration reshared this.
@mastodonmigration apparently several people have run their own relays for personal use but it's not for the faint of heart apparently you need several terabytes of preferably solid state storage and a very fast network connection and while the code for the relay server is public it isn't terribly well documented
Take a look at these links if you'd like to learn more
alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi…
These examples really just reinforce the technical infeasibility of the entire FOF scheme.
Doctorow seems to think that if there is a choice of corporate relays, that that will somehow make things okay. I admire him greatly, but respectfully think he is mistaken on this particular topic.
About the diagrams on my post, they should be explained by the text in the original post? Fediverse servers are cheap to run and talk directly to each other, BlueSky servers can only talk to expensive-to-run corporate relays.
2something likes this.
There is one key question I haven’t yet seen answered anywhere:
“[…] our proposed methodology here of networking through Relays instead of server-to-server isn’t prescriptive. The protocol is actually explicitly designed to work both ways.”
docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-gu…
QUESTION: What would that look like? Would each PDS have to crawl all relevant PDSes (=very inefficient)?
Whether or not AT Protocol can be decentralized hinges on the answer.
Federation Architecture | Bluesky
The AT Protocol is made up of a bunch of pieces that stack together. Federation means that anyone can run the parts that make up the AT Protocol themselves, such as their own server.docs.bsky.app
As far as I know, in the real world AT protocol servers cannot federate without being connected to relays.
There is also only one relay at the moment.
True! But (and I’m saying that as someone who thinks the Fediverse is the better choice):
It *sounds* like the protocol was designed to support true federation (vs. “big world” design based on Relays). What would that look like?
If that works well then, in principle, AT *could* become a reasonable and open alternative to ActivityPub.
If not (which is my current impression but I may be wrong) then there is no way of that ever happening.
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
It sounds more like a hypothetical thing in a document rather than a real world thing actually being implemented.
BlueSky are a for-profit corporation dependent on VC money, and they've given their staff shares. That gives all of them a huge financial incentive to create a network that can be bought out by billionaires etc.
It's difficult to see why they would do anything to endanger their ability to sell themselves to wealthy investors.
It’ll be interesting to watch for sure! They made a lot of promises w.r.t. openness.
There is also this group of people: freeourfeeds.com/
It’s interesting that, per their FAQ, they want to build a second Relay. That doesn’t sound like AT will ever be truly decentralized.
It feels like they could achieve their goals with much less money if they focused on ActivityPub instead of AT.
@liveloveintifada added the image to my post from earlier it tells the story straight, about time to, nice work.
My favorite part is when people say "Bluesky has no algorithm" (as someone who studied computer science, I hate that "algorithm" has become this dirty and evil word). This is false.
It does has a bunch of algo feeds that one can subscribe to
bsky.app/feeds
Things like "Discover", "Popular with friends, and so on."
Furthermore all Bluesky posts can be boosted by algorithmic feeds; there's no "unlisted" post setting. This is not good for someone who just wants a quiet social media presence.
Finally, blocks are public, which is a world of drama waiting to happen. There's even a block leaderboard clearsky.app
like this
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The standard. Bluesky servers can't talk to each other, they have to go through relays which are substantially more expensive to run.
I will stick to Mastodon, but even as technical minded user, it's way more frustrating to use. I can't even see half the content that is on other Mastodon instances, let alone comfortably interact with other protocols. It's confusing and badly communicated by the UI. Things need multiple times the clicks than on bsky.
I understand the limitations, and things are getting better. But realistically there is no way an average internet user can comfortably switch to Mastodon at this point.
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
BlueSky isn't showing things from other instances at all though.
BlueSky is currently just a for-profit centralised single-instance social network, like Twitter or Facebook.
Even if it eventually linked to other instances (which isn't currently happening), it would be through massive corporate relays that would need to exploit user data to fund themselves.
I understand that - and I'm not expecting bsky to stay a viable network for long (their lack of moderation will prob get them first).
But the fact that Mastodon, at it's current state, is not usable for tech-noobs, is true at the same time. I directly experienced that when trying to get some to use it.
Failing to mention that for the average (non-tech-savvy) user Bluesky is *significantly* more user-friendly than Mastodon and the Fediverse makes this not a very honest comparison.
Mastodon has real advantages and should in an ideal world be the main social network, but it is unable to reach that critical mass because Fedi-enthusiasts refuse to look critically at what could be improved (a lot).
Usability is simply not where it needs to be to reach a wider audience.
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
BlueSky is easier because it's centralised, like Twitter or Facebook. And it's going down exactly the same path to become just as awful as they are, because it is structurally the same: VC backers on a centralised for-profit corporate network.
Even if they "decentralised" with the AT protocol, it would still remain in corporate control.
If someone doesn't mind them becoming awful like this, then they might as well stay on Twitter or Facebook. What's the point of moving?
That's just one of the reasons it's easier.
It's orders of magnitude more usable than both ex-twitter and FB and it's not run by (or overrun with) literal nazis. If you want twitter without the nazis and other shit, that's Bluesky... if you don't mind jumping through myriad technical hoops and a much smaller audience, there's Mastodon.
I'm still detecting zero willingness to look critically at Fedi and its UX issues here.
"and it's not run by (or overrun with) literal nazis"
Because of the way Bluesky is structured, Musk could buy it tomorrow. There's nothing to stop Twitter happening all over again.
"If you want to be smug"
I'm not being smug, I am being deeply worried by what centralised corporate social networks have done to the world:
theguardian.com/technology/202…
This is caused by centralised networks run for profit. It doesn't happen at first when it's building up, but it happens eventually.
Rohingya sue Facebook for £150bn over Myanmar genocide
Victims in US and UK legal action accuse social media firm of failing to prevent incitement of violenceDan Milmo (The Guardian)
Yes, any private company could in theory be bought and change how it operates, but what *could* happen at some unknown point in the future is not what is happening right now, and this again does not address the real weaknesses of Fedi.
The fact is that for most people Bluesky TODAY is a better alternative than Mastodon. This is not because they are stupid, this is because for a non-tech-savvy user basic usability far FAR outweighs any potential advantages of open source independence.
I find this picture to be misleading.
It seems to imply that users are the green dots for BlueSky and they communicate with servers (red dots) which are (so far) run by corporations. No complaints, that's all pretty accurate.
But when you use the same green dots for the Fediverse on the bottom, it seems to imply that individuals are directly connecting to each other which is NOT accurate. Servers are still intermediaries on the Fediverse. I don't believe this is a minor distinction.
The green dots are servers, I tried to mention this in the captions and alt text?
BlueSky is a centralised social network, it is on one instance like Twitter or Facebook. It's inherently easier to navigate a single instance network, but it comes at the cost of making it ultra-easy to be bought out, Musk etc could buy it any time.
The BlueSky interface is paid for by selling itself to VC investors. The VCs will then be demanding lots of monetisation once they've gathered enough users. They're on the path to becoming as bad as Twitter or Facebook because of this.
It's totally your call what you do, I'm not trying to condemn people's choice of platforms.
However, if we keep jumping the problem will keep repeating, and many never jump so the problem never gets solved anyway.
We have to do things differently if we want to break the cycle.
BlueSky is advertising itself as if it is breaking the cycle, the point of the post above is that they're not really breaking the cycle.
And of course, every server can communicate with any server, not just its network neighbors.
In your diagram each circle would roughly correspond to servers which have mutual follows with another server (because of the bidirectional arrows). But to a first order approximation, any Fedi server can communicate with *any* other Fedi server.
So Fedi is even *far more* decentralized than your diagram makes it appear.
Thanks! 🙂 That was the aim, to make the explanation simple enough so everyone can see the issues at stake!
And yes, very keen to see what Spritely comes up with. 🤩
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Yup!
Been saying this for a while
People flee from one centralized place to another making endless accounts in the menanwhile
But ofc the Fedi is certainly too much work 
Ute S. reshared this.
@doc
You might not care about the workings of something, but you might care about the effects of something. No one cares about how a medicine works, but they care if it stops them being sick.
The structure Bluesky has chosen for its tech and its business is very likely to repeat all the problems that Twitter, Facebook etc suffer from.
The things that make people leave Twitter & Facebook now are going to get repeated on Bluesky with its current structure. Then they'll have to move again.
I’ve read the comments, spoken to colleagues who joined this then that, and the consensus is that “mastodon is hard, difficult UI” compared to bsky.
For context, my friends are scientists with very little time.
If they have no time or will to consider sustainability, then they will end up having these same Musk-type problems happen to them again and again. I'm not saying this with any sort of judgement against them, it is just the consequence of their choices.
It's much easier to use a single-instance network, but that makes it easy to be taken over.
It's much easier to use a network that has massive amounts of funding from VCs, but that makes it certain to enshittify and exploit its users.
that's a great graphic to illustrate a federated approach! There is a realtime variant that shows that exact same concept applied to real world chat servers that use the XMPP protocol. You can see it at xmppnetwork.goodbytes.im/
(It's getting rather big. On mobile, this webgl rendering typically had better performance: xmppnetwork.goodbytes.im/webgl… - there's also a link to a rather nice 3d version on that site).
From what I've read, bluesky is vulnerable to being scraped (?) by 3rd party bots/spiders, and may be that way for it to make a profit in the future?
Just start out on a big server on Mastodon, get the community of friends & hashtags you like, then if you want later, easily transfer your settings & follows to a specialized server.
@PamelaBarroway
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The thing that is missing from your diagram is that while #Fediverse servers CAN communicate with each other, not all of them DO. This is most noticeable when you follow a #hashtag - If you are on a large, well connected instance you will see many (maybe almost all) posts containing that hashtag. If you are on a small instance, or an instance that is not well connected (for whatever reason) you will see only a small percentage (maybe close to 0%) of the posts made using that hashtag.
In situations like that, from the user's perspective the #Bluesky / AT protocol is superior, because with the centralized server and corporate relays pretty much anything posted using a given hashtag will be seen by all those who follow that hashtag.
I'm not saying we all should move to Bluesky. I'm saying that this is a problem that needs to be solved by whoever writes the software for #Mastodon and similar Fediverse instances. And if there already is a solution but few instances are using it, what is that solution and where can you find a list of instances that are already using it? I understand there will always be some blockages because instance operators don't want traffic from certain types of instances, but I'm not talking about that, I am talking about cases where a post with a hashtag doesn't reach your instance because no one using your instance is specifically following the user that made that post.
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
There are various ways to make any Fediverse server see a lot more of the Fediverse:
fedi.tips/using-relays-to-quic…
Using relays, groups, directories and scripts to quickly expand a server’s view of the Fediverse | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediversefedi.tips
The idea isn't to have a listed set of features, it's just to provide more posts visible to the instance.
Also, the user themselves can implement things like following groups which totally bypass whatever their instance can see. If you follow a group, you will see the same posts no matter which instance you are on. It's the same if you follow a particular set of accounts, the act of a user following an account changes which posts are visible to the user's instance.
Well the problem with groups is that you first have to know that a group you are interested in exists, and then chances are if you do find one it's not specific enough. Say I am running some piece of software that is giving me trouble, I can subscribe to a hashtag with the name of that piece of software, which (hopefully) will only show me posts related to that software, although that is not always the case, for example if I want to see posts about Joplin (the note taking application) I could use (hashtag)Joplin and hopefully I would get mostly posts about that software and not Joplin, Missouri or Scott Joplin the composer.
But will there be a group about Joplin? Probably not. And also, as I understand it, groups follow users, not hashtags. And in that case you can get inundated with posts that are not about the topic of interest. I have tried to follow groups a few times and generally speaking I've had to turn them off almost immediately because they flooded my timeline with uninteresting and irrelevant posts.
I think we might be talking about different kinds of groups? 🤔 A lot of different services on here have used the name "group".
Groups from services like Guppe are basically just "super hashtags". If you mention the group, the post is distributed to everyone that follows the group on any server. You can make a new group just by mentioning it.
If someone spams the group with irrelevant content, they can be reported for spamming (just like they can be with hashtag spamming).
Well there is a chicken/egg issue there, far more people are likely to use a hashtag than a group mention, and that is because they are familiar with hashtags from the dead bird site and other existing social media platforms.
So again taking Joplin (the software) as an example, chances are there is no existing group for it, and yes I could easily create one but chances are all I'm going to get is crickets because other people who post about Joplin will be using the hashtag (with which they are familiar) and not the group identifier.
Basically what I am hearing is "we can't make hashtags work the way they are supposed to in the Fediverse, so here is this substitute that few users have heard of and even fewer will actually use", rather than "we really need to fix the fediverse software so that hashtags work as they are supposed to."
@maple ok, but having all the data stored in a single, owned, instance (like BlueSky) would potentially expose users to an unknown future... as it happened with the current "big tech". I rather prefer fix and improve what is not working in the fedivese, which is the real alternative. I wish a future were we always own data, regardless of the app/technology we use
Yeah, this is another worry. BlueSky's valuation is approaching 1 billion dollars, and part of that will be the user data they expect to hoard.
"I wish a future were we always own data, regardless of the app/technology we use"
I think @timbl has been working on something like this for some time with the Solid project?
@maple Hi Maple, yeah I get your point and I agree that most of the users don't care, and it is really sad.
I am also an "ordinary user" anyway, I am just tired of directly supporting huge corporation with my personal data. I have opened my eyes and I do believe that the rest of "ordinary users" (like us) will do the same in a point.
It will probably take time, but I really believe that the "fediverse approach" will be the future.
I am on a single user server and have over 200k followers. My other accounts on this server have 70k, 8k, 5k and 3k followers. It is possible to build a mass following without being on a large server.
"they may not have much interest in platforms that limit their exposure."
...if exposure is all they care about, why would they leave Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc? (Genuine question.)
@skamu You're in kind of a unique position because you are very well known, so people follow you directly.
"...if exposure is all they care about, why would they leave Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc? (Genuine question.)"
Well, I can think of two reasons, one is that they don't want some big corporation (or the evil owner thereof) owning or controlling or censoring their posts, and the other is that they don't want to share a platform with Nazis/fascists/anti-science types. But if they don't fall into either of those categories, I can't think of any reason they would want to leave one of those platforms. And right now, for the most part those things would not apply to Bluesky users (yet) so the case for leaving to come to the Fediverse is even weaker for them.
"You're in kind of a unique position because you are very well known, so people follow you directly."
I'm not though? No one knows me outside of these accounts.
"...one is that they don't want some big corporation (or the evil owner thereof) owning or controlling or censoring their posts, "
They already have a big corporation owning/controlling their posts. Bluesky is a for-profit corporation valued at nearly a billion dollars now.
That is true but they don't have the stink of Musk or Zuckerberg associated with them. People don't always think of big corporations as being necessarily bad, and more to the point, Bluesky doesn't seem to be trying to attract the kind of people that would make you avoid a bar or restaurant if you found it was filled with those kind of people. People are leaving the dead bird site and Meta not necessarily because they are run by big corporations (although that is the reason for some), but because they have become hangouts for the Nazis and the far right and the Christian nationalists and the anti science anti-vax crowd. And because even if they don't really want to leave, their friends and family are shaming them for staying there.
That is simply not the case with Bluesky (yet).
If you use a managed hosting service you can do it for a few dollars a month including someone doing all the technical stuff for you:
Pricing | Masto.host
Pricing for Masto.host fully managed Mastodon hosting plans. Starting at $6/month.Masto.host
It is more work to build up connections on here than on Bluesky, Twitter or Facebook. There are good reasons for this, because the structure here is designed to stop people like Musk taking over the network.
And once you do make connections on here, I would say the community on here is much more genuine, deep and friendly.
I've done some tips on how to discover accounts at fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accoun… and how to make your own account more discoverable at fedi.tips/how-do-i-get-more-fo…
How do I discover accounts to follow on Mastodon and the Fediverse? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediversefedi.tips
It's not a war, man. Be at peace.
I tried to post this to the Friendica support forum, but it kept timing out when I entered my information. I am now attempting to subscribe to their e-mail list. However, I thought I would write this here so that those who know coding, etc. might be able to offer a solution, or at least, to pass this on to the developers.
I joined Friendica in October of 2024, when Facebook decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app). I am totally blind, and their main page is a nightmare to use with a screen readre (NVDA in my case). I chose Friendica because of the huge character limit, the ability to edit and delete posts, local posting, extensive profiles with keywords, and the ability to connect with all sorts of accounts in the Fediverse. For the most part, I am enjoying my time here. However, I am noticing a lot of inaccessibility on the Friendica page. I am not a programmer, but I'm guessing this is at the core of the software and is not due to the instance I'm using (friendica.world). I am also guessing that the page is not written in HTML5 and does not follow WCAG guidelines, though I may be wrong about that. If not, I strongly urge the developers to review them and implement them if possible. If so, perhaps, some changes can still be made that would make this a more screen reader-friendly site. Note that I tried this with Firefox and Supermium (a direct fork of Chrome).
Mostly, I use TweeseCake to access the site, but there are some things I can't do with that client. All of the following refer to the site itself.
- There is a list of links at the top of the page that acts like a menu. This causes many problems while trying to perform basic tasks, particularly editing posts and handling notifications. I can't always activate said links/menu either.
1A. I can't stress how frustrating editing posts is. It sometimes takes over ten minutes. The "edit" option is a link/menu, and it can only be found via another menu. Once I finally find and activate it, I hear the sound indicating that I have entered focus Mode. Usually, this means that I am in an edit box and can type. However, in this case, I am taken back to the main page, as if I never entered the option to edit my post. Using e to try to find an edit box doesn't help, as it just sends me to the replies to different comments. So I am forced to find the post, and start all over again. The only way I can do this successfully is to try to tab through the links/menu at the top of the page (when it works), then through other posts, until, finally, I am placed in an edit box where I can type.
1B. When I go to the Notifications" link, I have to tab to "Mark all System Notifications as Seen". This isn't even a regular link, as I can't copy and paste the text from it. Once I tab to and out of that, I can then read my notifications. But here is what I have to do if I want to see follow requests.
1. Try to get the notifications link to work, then click on it.
2. Tab to marking notifications.
3. Perform a search for the word follow.
4. Click on the link of the notification that someone wants to follow me. I open this in a new window, to try to keep the original one available.
5. Make my choice as to whether to approve that notification, then close that window.
6. Return to the main window. Only now, I am not where I left off. Instead, I am placed back at the beginning of the page and the Notifications menu is not open.
7. Repeat steps 1 through 3.
Ideally, I should be able to go to a normal notifications link, perform steps 3 through 5, then return back to the link, and perform steps 3 through 5 again, as many times as necessary, without having to repeat 1 through 3.
- I can't just go to the site and enter an edit box to post. I must go through a menu to find the link to do so. Yet there is an edit box for searching for content, tags, etc.
- Some pinned posts don't always read properly. I can see my name, when I posted, that it's pinned, a public message, tags (if applicable), buttons for resharing, etc., and the number of comments. But I cannot simply read the post itself. ""Comments" is also a button, not a link. Even when I expand them, I still can't see my post, and finding the button again to close them takes a lot of time, as posts also have their own buttons. Note that unpinned posts are read properly.
- While the process of editing my profile is completely accessible, finding the edit option might be slightly confusing for new users, as it requires entering yet another link/menu, this time with the user name as the title..
- If I go to a profile of someone not on Friendica (usually Mastodon) and wish to reply to a post, after I enter my credentials, it takes me back to my profile, not to the relevant post. It only worked once.
- The Friendica app for Windows is basically the site itself. I don't understand this at all.
If you want to see a truly accessible site, try this link. I don't work for them, though I do have an account there.
Please, if any changes can be made, I urge you to do so. The site is otherwise a pleasure to use, but my frustration at not being able to easily perform such basic tasks is increasing.
#accessibility #blind #coding #Chrome #Developers #Dreamwidth #Facebook #fediverse #Firefox #Friendica #HTML #HTML5 #NVDA #ScreenReaders #TweeseCake #WCAG #Windows
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Programming Feed, BeAware, pataphysician, Noah Loren, slowmart, Laurel Jean Walden, Robert Kingett, Jupiter Rowland, Eugenio Monforte, the esoteric programmer, Svenja, The Yangsi Michael Dillon, Sozan, The Evil Chocolate Cookie, dasgrueneblatt, DamonHD, Jules and Walter Vermeir reshared this.
@Georgiana Brummell First of all, I've just noticed that you seem to not have joined the Friendica support forum yet. As far as I know, you can't post to a Friendica group/forum without fully connecting to it first.
As for the accessibility issues: To most people, it appears like Friendica has only just been made since they haven't heard of it before mid-January. But actually, Friendica is from 2010. And its frontend is largely stuck in the early 2010s, including technologically.
Friendica has always been a spare-time hobbyist project. It was mostly developed by one single man for almost two years. That guy is a protocol designer and not a frontend developer. Also, I think Friendica never had more than two regular developers, and it definitely never had any developer who really knows how to make a modern and appealing user interface. I mean, you've obviously never seen Friendica's user interface, but let me tell you that it's quite old-fashioned. It's just meant to do its job.
Hobbyist, spare-time developers of such an extremely niche piece of software who are not trained in Web UI design normally don't know a thing about accessibility. And truly, they don't care. If the UI covers all features, and the users don't have to SSH or telnet onto the Web server to use it, it's often good enough.
Friendica's regularly active user community has never been more than maybe a few thousand at a time, maybe even only a few hundred, as opposed to the over two million at which Mastodon has topped out. Thus, Friendica has never encountered blind or visually-impaired users yet.
You can see it all over the place. Alt-text is not part of Friendica's culture. Some Friendica veterans staunchly refuse to describe their media because they think alt-text is another Mastodon fad that Mastodon fundamentalists want to force upon the whole rest of the Fediverse with Mastodon's entire culture. Alt-text, to them, is like limiting your posts to 500 characters.
All this is why nobody has noticed yet that Friendica is not accessible at all.
I've got a suspicion that Friendica can only be made fully accessible by throwing the entire Web frontend away, developing an entirely new one from scratch and then also making all-new themes for it.
Also, it's only natural that TweeseCake doesn't support many of Friendica's features. As it looks to me, TweeseCake's Fediverse side is built against Mastodon and only Mastodon. If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, TweeseCake doesn't cover it either. Thus, TweeseCake probably only covers about 20% of Friendica's features because Mastodon doesn't have the other 80%.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #TweeseCake #A11y #Accessibility
Droppie [infosec] 🐨 reshared this.
@Jupiter Rowland Again, thank you for the wonderful explanation. I am not doubting you at all, by the way, just explaining something. Dreamwidth looks very much like LiveJournal, which has been around for longer than twenty years. I've been using computers for over two decades, and I've definitely seen many good older sites, including from the 2010's. As a matter of fact, many older sites are far better than modern ones, because they are mostly text, don't have hamburger menus, strange buttons, etc. The old Basic HTML version of GMail and even Facebooks Basic Mobile site are two more excellent examples of good sites, though sadly, both of them are gone now. To me, Friendica actually feels a lot more modern, and in a bad way.
Thank you for explaining a bit about Friendica culture and membership. I joined for the reasons I said, so I wasn't really thinking about that. Most of my friends in the Fediverse are on Mastodon, though a few do come from other places. I initially avoided Mastodon because of the 500 character limit, no local posting, and the inability to edit/delete posts. I later learned that some instances have very long posting limits, and that posts can be edited and deleted. I was considering Hometown or possibly Glitchsoc. I forgot why I chose Friendica over those. Now, I heard that many instances on Mastodon are very strict with what they allow. I don't post obscenities, graphic images, anything illegal, etc. but I also don't want to be thrown out simply for expressing an opinion that is different from those of the moderators. I'm perfectly fine with acting a certain way within groups, but on my own timeline, I want the ability to post as I choose without my work being deleted or being banned. I heard that Pleroma is good in that regard. If I did switch, though, I would need to choose an accessible platform and, I hope, to be able to take this account with me.
As for TweeseCake, it workss with almost everything. I can see and reply to posts, create, edit, and delete my own (it respect the long ones and allows me to use carriage return instead of posting when I press that), follow and unfollow people, block and unblock them, etc. But I can't edit my profile, pin posts, follow tags, go to a list of blocked users so that I can ublock them, filter out certain words and/or phrases so that I don't see them in my timeline (I'm not even sure if I can do that on Friendica), etc. I can sort read timelines such as Home, Notifications, Mentions, and Federated, and add specific conversations, favourites (that one doesn't work well here though it does on TwBlue), etc. But I can't create, edit, or delete circles.
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett I just saw this.
"Getting back to the cluttered user interface I was talking about. Friendica allows the user to make changes to the user interface. There are a couple of themes to choose from and the themes can be customized in color. Also the layout and the content of the stream can be adjusted. This way I was able to create a style that is easier to digest making Friendica a much better experience than it was for me in the past."
homehack.nl/when-to-use-friend…
Could this possibly help with my problems? By the way, this is a fairly good article that explains some of the differences between Friendica and Mastodon.
Here is an explanation of another site that I just found, called Akkoma. It sounds interesting, but also a bit complicated.
Between Friendica, Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, Hometown, glitchsoc, and the others, I am very confused. I didn't think I would have to be considering this again. It was bad enough when I lost all of my friends on Facebook (only one or two even talk with me outside of it) and had to find a new place to go to, because Facebook decided that accessibility didn't matter. Now, I may have to do it all over again! I really am trying to avoid this headache. At the same time, I need to know what my options are and if anything truly meets my needs.
the esoteric programmer reshared this.
@Georgiana Brummell @Robert Kingett You could try and ask the developers of both TweeseCake and TWBlue to implement full support for Friendica, not via the Mastodon client API, but by also implementing Friendica's own client API.
I wouldn't hold my breath for it, though. They may not even have heard of Friendica yet. And if you tell them what it is, they may still decide that if they haven't heard of it yet because it hasn't been the talk of the town for long enough, it's too obscure to bother.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #TweeseCake #TWBlue
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@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett Since I use TweeseCake 99% of the time, I am going to try to tag the developers here, and only use the tag for this part of the thread, so as not to annoy them. I also just read some absolutely wonderful news about the app being redesigned, so perhaps, some of the suggestions mentioned below are already part of that plan. As it is, it's a great client, so I can't wait to see what the future holds!
@TweeseCake The main post here describes problems with the Friendica site itself so can be ignored in your case. However, TweeseCake makes almost everything accessible, except the following.
- Editing my profile. There is an "edit profile" option, but I am not sure if this is for Friendica or the TweeseCake client itself. Regardless, I cannot see the main text of my profile from Friendica, and other features, such as keywords, aren't there.
- Accepting and rejecting follow requests. I can see who is following me, and I can also read notifications that someone wants to follow me, but I cannot act on them. Likewise, I can't go to my contacts and change channel notifications, such as seeing all posts, for example.
- Working with pinned posts. I can't pin, unpin, or see posts that I've pinned to my profile.
- Viewing posts or notifications on the main site. There is an option to view something on the web, but whenever I have tried to use it, it sends me to a "page not found" error.
- Seeing blocked users. I can block people, and I can unblock them if I am in a post where they posted. But I cannot see a list of my blocked users, so that, for example, I can unblock someone if I blocked him by mistake.
- Seeing favourites properly. Every time I try to activate that feature, they appear for a moment, then disappear.
- Using circles. I haven't used these yet, but I thought I should add it.
I realise that some of these features are specific to Friendica, and since TweeseCake was designed to work with Mastodon, it makes sense that some of them have not been implemented. But 1, 2, and 5 are essential.
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@Georgiana Brummell @Robert Kingett Well, GoToSocial is quite different from Mastodon and Friendica in one regard: It's mainly made for hosting your own personal instance. It isn't really for more or less big public, open-registration instances. As far as I know, it doesn't even come with its own built-in UI, so if you want a Web UI on your own instance, you have to choose one and add it yourself.
Still, there are some public, open-registration GoToSocial instances. And if you're going to use it with TWBlue, the Web UI shouldn't even matter beyond registering an account because you won't touch it anymore afterwards.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #GoToSocial #TWBlue
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@Georgiana Brummell Quote:
Could this possibly help with my problems? By the way, this is a fairly good article that explains some of the differences between Friendica and Mastodon.
End quote.
It depends on where exactly your issues are rooted. If the UI is too cluttered for you, it may help, but I'm afraid that the editor itself may not be accessible. But if the UI elements themselves aren't accessible, it makes no difference if you rearrange them or remove elements that you don't need.
As I've probably already mentioned, Friendica has changed a great lot since the last time I've used it, and my more recent experience is from Hubzilla and (streams). But while they let you rearrange all pages, they don't let you modify the UI elements themselves in detail and add accessibility features.
Also, I don't know if Friendica lets you change the layouts of the pages by editing the raw Comanche code that describes them. While this means getting used to Comanche, I can imagine this actually being more accessible than a purely WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor.
In this regard, it's interesting that (streams) doesn't offer drag-and-drop anymore. Either that, or Hubzilla introduced it after Osada and Zap were forked off.
Quote:
Here is an explanation of another site that I just found, called Akkoma. It sounds interesting, but also a bit complicated.
End quote.
Akkoma is a fork of Pleroma with a default UI that, I guess, isn't dramatically different plus compatibility with the same third-party UIs. One downside in comparison with Friendica, Hubzilla etc. is that you, as a user, can't choose a UI for your account individually because the UI is pre-defined for the whole instance. Also, both Pleroma and Akkoma are microblogging projects and closer to Twitter than to Facebook.
CC: @Robert Kingett
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Akkoma
@Robert Kingett Hubzilla started out as a Friendica fork by Friendica's own creator. He maintained it for twice as long as Friendica, until 2016. Since then, there are only two developers for much, much more code than Friendica has, and they're spare-time hobbyists, too, who only work on Hubzilla when they happen to find some time.
Thus, due to Hubzilla's massive backend, UI maintenance has largely fallen to the wayside. Hubzilla used to have a whole bunch of themes, but only one survived to this day because the two devs had to keep one theme alive. Its name "Redbasic" comes from Hubzilla's original name, Red. Apart from getting more settings with Hubzilla 9, it didn't change that much over time. Hubzilla kind of still looks like Friendica more than a dozen years ago.
It's mostly the backend that keeps the devs busy, too busy to take care of anything else. Example: The built-in help is half-useless because it's totally outdated and therefore partially incomplete and partially plain wrong. Features that have been available for several years aren't covered, but things that have been removed in the last decade are. Parts of it actually still refer to a "Red Matrix" which ceased to exist in 2015 when the Red Matrix became Hubzilla. The German and English help is currently being re-written by a user.
Alt-text has to be manually grafted into the BBcode that embeds an image in a post. There is no official documentation on that yet, and I'll have to check if the rewrite covers it. How it's done is only known because, I think, one of the devs looked it up in the code, then told us, and it's being passed on from user to user every once in a while.
In fact, I've once been told by a blind or visually-impaired user that at least Hubzilla's Articles app for non-federating long-form articles did not work in her screen reader at all.
Hubzilla's frontend must largely run on code from 2012 when it was matched with the completely re-written backend. Afterwards, new or changed features were only patched in. Hubzilla's UI is convoluted and confusing even for sighted users.
Also, Hubzilla has never had a run-in with blind users either because it's even more obscure than Friendica, and its community is even smaller than Friendica's.
Lastly, Hubzilla can only be used via the Web interface. There is no other way. It doesn't support Mastodon apps, and it never will.
CC: @Georgiana Brummell
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #A11y #Accessibility
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Thank you @Robert Kingett for your contribution. This feedback is extremely important. It would be great if you could accompany the changes already announced and support the project with suggestions for improvements.
@Jupiter Rowland Of course it is the culture of Friendica users to use alt tags. Please refresh your knowledge in other areas as well ;)
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@Matthias It is true that it is the culture of (many) Friendica users to use alt tags. But it would be good if it became even easier to create them. Unfortunately, it is not yet self-explanatory how it can be created and it is not integrated into the GUI everywhere.
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(to be able to enter the Alt texts directly during the upload?)
@Robert Kingett @Georgiana Brummell
@caos @Georgiana Brummell @Robert Kingett
Yes
I created an issue for.
What i need is an extension to the upload-form to add th alttext at the upload-moment.
Noe it is not possible from backend. So my uploadet can't add it.
Now you have to upload the image, the go to images, choose the new image, edit it, add alttexr, go back to posting, choose image from browser...
Or you upload it with the new uploader, add alttext in between of the ending img and url tag... but then it's not in the database... you can't reuse the image (what i do with som images!!!)
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Also, this original post has actionable suggestions already! How hard would it be to make a friendica work on more HTML 5 code? friendica.world/display/84b6ef… @feb @jupiter_rowland @dandylover1
I tried to post this to the Friendica support forum, but it kept timing out when I entered my information. I am now attempting to subscribe to their e-mail list. However, I thought I would write this here so that those who know coding, etc. might be able to offer a solution, or at least, to pass this on to the developers.I joined Friendica in October of 2024, when Facebook decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app). I am totally blind, and their main page is a nightmare to use with a screen readre (NVDA in my case). I chose Friendica because of the huge character limit, the ability to edit and delete posts, local posting, extensive profiles with keywords, and the ability to connect with all sorts of accounts in the Fediverse. For the most part, I am enjoying my time here. However, I am noticing a lot of inaccessibility on the Friendica page. I am not a programmer, but I'm guessing this is at the core of the software and is not due to the instance I'm using (friendica.world). I am also guessing that the page is not written in HTML5 and does not follow WCAG guidelines, though I may be wrong about that. If not, I strongly urge the developers to review them and implement them if possible. If so, perhaps, some changes can still be made that would make this a more screen reader-friendly site. Note that I tried this with Firefox and Supermium (a direct fork of Chrome).
Mostly, I use TweeseCake to access the site, but there are some things I can't do with that client. All of the following refer to the site itself.
- There is a list of links at the top of the page that acts like a menu. This causes many problems while trying to perform basic tasks, particularly editing posts and handling notifications. I can't always activate said links/menu either.
1A. I can't stress how frustrating editing posts is. It sometimes takes over ten minutes. The "edit" option is a link/menu, and it can only be found via another menu. Once I finally find and activate it, I hear the sound indicating that I have entered focus Mode. Usually, this means that I am in an edit box and can type. However, in this case, I am taken back to the main page, as if I never entered the option to edit my post. Using e to try to find an edit box doesn't help, as it just sends me to the replies to different comments. So I am forced to find the post, and start all over again. The only way I can do this successfully is to try to tab through the links/menu at the top of the page (when it works), then through other posts, until, finally, I am placed in an edit box where I can type.
1B. When I go to the Notifications" link, I have to tab to "Mark all System Notifications as Seen". This isn't even a regular link, as I can't copy and paste the text from it. Once I tab to and out of that, I can then read my notifications. But here is what I have to do if I want to see follow requests.
1. Try to get the notifications link to work, then click on it.
2. Tab to marking notifications.
3. Perform a search for the word follow.
4. Click on the link of the notification that someone wants to follow me. I open this in a new window, to try to keep the original one available.
5. Make my choice as to whether to approve that notification, then close that window.
6. Return to the main window. Only now, I am not where I left off. Instead, I am placed back at the beginning of the page and the Notifications menu is not open.
7. Repeat steps 1 through 3.
Ideally, I should be able to go to a normal notifications link, perform steps 3 through 5, then return back to the link, and perform steps 3 through 5 again, as many times as necessary, without having to repeat 1 through 3.
- I can't just go to the site and enter an edit box to post. I must go through a menu to find the link to do so. Yet there is an edit box for searching for content, tags, etc.
- Some pinned posts don't always read properly. I can see my name, when I posted, that it's pinned, a public message, tags (if applicable), buttons for resharing, etc., and the number of comments. But I cannot simply read the post itself. ""Comments" is also a button, not a link. Even when I expand them, I still can't see my post, and finding the button again to close them takes a lot of time, as posts also have their own buttons. Note that unpinned posts are read properly.
- While the process of editing my profile is completely accessible, finding the edit option might be slightly confusing for new users, as it requires entering yet another link/menu, this time with the user name as the title..
- If I go to a profile of someone not on Friendica (usually Mastodon) and wish to reply to a post, after I enter my credentials, it takes me back to my profile, not to the relevant post. It only worked once.
- The Friendica app for Windows is basically the site itself. I don't understand this at all.
If you want to see a truly accessible site, try this link. I don't work for them, though I do have an account there.
Please, if any changes can be made, I urge you to do so. The site is otherwise a pleasure to use, but my frustration at not being able to easily perform such basic tasks is increasing.
#accessibility #blind #coding #Chrome #Developers #Dreamwidth #Facebook #fediverse #Firefox #Friendica #HTML #HTML5 #NVDA #ScreenReaders #TweeseCake #WCAG #Windows
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I need to correct some things. I have spent a lot of time trying to make Friendica accessible. Many years ago I got in touch with a blind person who was working in this area. I made a lot of changes, but due to a lack of equipment to check them, I was never able to see if the changes were really good.
Last Thursday I had a two-hour session with an accessibility expert. She found a number of problems and said that, apart from three, the software as a whole was quite good from an accessibility point of view. In particular, she said that post creation was quite good compared to Mastodon.
However, there are some problems, such as the fact that some menu items aren't spoken. We also use the wrong aria roles for a lot of links. And we don't always use buttons and navigation elements where we should.
As for alt text: Of course we support the creation of this. As I have blind contacts, I'm very interested in this. However (as already mentioned) the interface can be improved a lot.
Also regarding the technology: Friendica has undergone some major overhauls of its internal structure. Just recently there was another refactoring wave that improved the whole class structure. This means that the core - although started 15 years ago - is quite modern (including a bunch of automated tests).
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Meeting with Robert Kingett - Robert Kingett
Screen reader users should navigate the below calendar in focus mode. Do not use the below calendar in browse mode.Calendly
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Just last week I got in touch with an accessibility expert. We had a two-hour session where she registered an account and went through the whole system. She was using an iPad with VoiceOver. There were three main problems:
- Some menu items weren't spoken
- Some icons didn't have titles
- Some of the headings were inconsistent
There were also some other things that needed to be fixed, see here for a summary: github.com/friendica/friendica…
I will try to work on this. I recently got hold of an iPhone, so I can now check with VoiceOver.
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I don't own any Windows devices, I use Linux. I now have an iPhone (just for testing), an Android device and a Chromebook. So I want to try to make it accessible for those devices. And I hope it will work with other screenreaders too.
After I've made most of the changes, I'd like to get some feedback, just to make sure I'm on the right track. So I may get back to you about this.
I can't say how much time I'll need, though. Working on Friendica is like trying to juggle a dozen things at once while solving a Rubik's Cube and reciting Shakespeare. I try to code new things, to maintain the system, search and fix bugs, provide support and update and maintain three Friendica installations (while also having a daytime job and some other spare time activities).
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@Georgiana Brummell
He is the lead developer of Friendica, bearing the main responsibility. However, it is not correct to say that he is the only one continuing the development of Friendica. It would be unfair to disregard the contributions of countless other individuals who provide input, conduct code reviews, or maintain the stable versions.
In fact, the web UI has received little attention in recent years. Engaging UX/UI experts for a FOSS project is always a challenge. However, there is currently a development in this area that is quite interesting.
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phle
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