I've lost interest for now, I'm sorry to say. Loops is still not available on the browser, which I think should be the primary way to access a federated *web* service. Besides, the android app runs quite poorly on my otherwise capable android phone, so I've stopped using it.
Does anyone here know what's happening with Otakufarms, specifically their Peertube? For more than a month, it's had a warning about upgrading and to back up videos. Should I move?
@spycrab @shipwreckt Signal is a corporation (yes, it doesn't store your data or messages, so it's kind of safe) Matrix is a protocol, no one controls it; Like Activity Pub, people can build applications over it, just like " title=""/> and " title=""/>
@kyleirl @Andres @spycrab @shipwreckt @Mer__edith While Signal is very promising, and currently very secure, it is not federated services which leaves it vulnerable in case the business model changes, like if the intellectual property of the clients and/or servers would become subject to capitalisation. If so, it would be far from the first time that this happens in the history. As I just shared in another post I highly recommend giving this a peek: securemessagingapps.com/
This site compares secure messaging apps from a security & privacy point of view. These include Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Skype, Signal, Simplex, Google Messenger, Threema, Riot, Wire, Telegram, and Wickr
@dansup@mastodon.social well, @signalapp@mastodon.world too is #proprietary and #centralized and peddles a #Cryptocurrency #Scamcoin named #MobileCoin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJoO2uWrX1M
Use #XMPP+#OMEMO (i.e. @monocles@monocles.
@kkarhan @mortn @kyleirl @spycrab @shipwreckt @Mer__edith @signalapp i dont like signal either but its the best we have currently, we dont have anything better, matrix is actual garbage with worse problems than signal imo
@mwguy nah. I am all for it but my wife said “meh”. I joined this month and it’s… fine. But no one I know in real life is on it, there is no mobile app, and the setup can be a little off-putting. The fedi platforms have an incredible opportunity right now to take in a lot of social media refugees, but the ones without apps (friendica, loops, etc) are going to struggle to get traction with a population that is accustomed to convenience.
@VTDARKSIM Dang. I think I could get my wife and her family off facebook (because they're all a little fed up with it right now). But I'd need a solid replacement for facebook groups as they use to to coordinate family stuff.
@mwguy I’ve been pushing the fediverse for a while now, but the big 2’s fascist overtures lately have finally radicalized my wife to consider it. She happily joined #pixelfed and has convinced several friends to join.
I think that’s the key. If you/she can get a group to join together, and then they can convince someone else to do so, it will become a more attractive option. It’s the chicken & egg scenario right now.
@VTDARKSIM This is absolutely a big part of the issue. Additionally it's tough to explain that they need to have an account for Mastadon, Lemmy, Loops, Pixelfed etc... to utilize all the aspects of the fediverse instead of being able to "take you ID with you" across different tools.
@mwguy absolutely, though I will say I joined #mastodon first, then #pixelfed, then #friendica. Only then did I see I can sign in to the mastodon app with all 3 accounts. I don’t think it’s quite as universally seamless yet (for instance, the pixelfed app has the option to sign in with your mastodon account, but it wouldn’t work for me presumably because my instance hasn’t enabled it?), but I think it’s heading there.
It is not fair to put Mastodon, Pixelfed, Friedica, Peertube and Loops as analogous to Signal. Signal is centralized, Signal relies on closed source libraries, Signal is only distributed through PlayStore, Signal is not a federated platform.
If we want to have a messaging platform on that image, it should be XMPP.
it would be good if first of all pixelfed don't delay accepting new accounts, losing the momentum it is getting. also there is the usual bug where scrolling the home sometimes it freezes. it would be good to have a smooth pixelfed before of improving loops. but, instead of this, a third app is being developed. wish you all the best tackling things in a triune way.
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For people to really make the switch, it would be helpful to give them an article explaining what to do exactly. In German there is one by @blog - do you know of other languages? #GlobalSwitchDay koelle4future.de/?p=35767
For people to really make the switch, it would be helpful to give them an article explaining what to do exactly. In German there is one by @blog - do you know of other languages? #GlobalSwitchDay koelle4future.de/?p=35767
Du kämpfst täglich für Klimagerechtigkeit? Und bist noch auf Plattformen, bei dem Klimaleugnung, Frauenverachtung und die Verfolgung von queeren Menschen offen zum Geschäftsmodel gehört? Das muss nicht sein!
Komm dahin, wo Menschen soziale Medien aktiv und dezentral gestalten. Komm ins Fediverse, hier ist die bessere Party. Mach mit beim global switch day am 1. Februar 2025 und bring Deine Freund*innen mit. Empfohlen u.a. von @janboehm
So einfach geht das – probiere mal eins davon aus:
Finde ein Pendant zum jeweiligen antisozialen Medium
Kurznachrichtendienste mit Zeichenlimit und bis zu vier BildernTwitter (heute: niX mehr) –> Mastodon
Besuche social.cologne, das ist eine Mastodon-Plattform und erstelle Deinen Account. Eine detaillierte bebilderte Anleitung und Deine ersten Schritte haben wir Anfang des Jahres vorbereitet.
Teile ein bis 10 Bilder pro Beitrag und schreib dazu einen Begleittext. Instagram –> Pixelfed
Die Liste ist unvollständig, um Dir den Einstieg zu erleichtern haben wir pro Dienst nur eine von vielen dezentralen Servern angegeben. Weiteres findest Du z.B. im Beitrag Das Fediverse : Unendliche Weiten.
Am 23. Februar 2025 ist Bundestagswahl Klimaschutz ist Menschenschutz Gehe wählen! Wähle demokratisch! Wähle Klimaschutz! Die Termine unserer Kundgebungen (jeweils 11-14 Uhr (*)) 18.01.2025 Breite Straße/Richmodstraße, Altstadt-Nord 25.01.
I don’t think all those other apps are gonna replace anything (including this app and I don’t think rednote is gonna replace TikTok either) but they might be worth giving them a shot
@dausacker olha que legal essa imagem. (Pessoalmente não gosto tanto da ideia de uma plataforma de vídeos verticais federada... Mas a imagem não deixa de ser legal, não.)
I have started watching videos on peertube, but it is annoying that I have to manually skip sponsors, so it would be good if sponsorblock support some of the peertube website, ex: TILvids, PeerTube...
@caos @Daniel Supernault @ericbuijs1 @anubis2814 @Elena Rossini ⁂ @FOSDEM @Sanne Bjerg I actually spent an entire afternoon myself compiling this comprehensive post about Friendica. It was initially designed to be a megathread with resources, but I decided to also add an FAQ and, as a bonus, the list of all human-readable color names that are supported when formatting your text to be colored (because yes, you can format your text in whichever way you want).
Feel free to Ctrl+F anything in your browser to quickly jump to what you need, check the links as well if I did not cover it, and also ask on the forum (@helpers@forum.friendi.ca) if you still don't find what you need. Or you can ask here. I'm all ears 😀
Hello, everyone! As we know what Zuck's original project is going through, I decided to create a post with all the resources I found online all these years I've been on this place, in a bid to help more people board. Here we go:
no less important, The Friendica Wiki also available under the help section of your instance (click on your pic and name on the top-right where you're logged in -> help)
All of these should be more comprehensive than this guide.
Short Q&A with the most common problems
How do I post stuff? Easy, on your profile, click the button in the top right that looks like this:
A pop-up window will open, and you can type anything. Make sure to set the appropriate permissions by clicking the tab at the top. If you want your post to be public then choose public, if you don't, select limited/private and add the exceptions or add who can see it. Make sure you properly select these permissions, because you cannot change them later. If you format your post (see below), you can also check the preview pane to see how your post will look. This also applies for comments.
How to format my text?
Unlike Facebook, Friendica allows you to format your text, just like you'd do in a Word document. It uses BBCodes for text formatting like bold text, italic text, underlined text and many others. You can find more example on the usage of it in the Wiki or under https://your-instance-address/help/bbcode. You don't have to style your text, but you can do some nice stuff with it. You can also get suggestions for formatting by typing [ and selecting an option from the drop-down menu, or typing out your option to narrow your search. But do check the wiki, though. Generally, BBCode looks like [option]your-text-here[/option].
If there is any text where you don't want to add any tags on by accident, slide it between these tags: [noparse][/noparse].
How to upload an image (and how to add alt-text to it) Just drag&drop it into the composing page. Simple. Easy. No frills.
Also, to note is that you can also re-use an image you previously uploaded if you go to the Browser tab in the compose window.
Finally, you can link to any image you find online, without downloading&reuploading it in the 1st place. Right-click an image, click "copy image link", then go to your post and type [img]paste-your image-link-here[/img] (of course, you paste your image link instead, between the img tags). This is generally how images are displayed via BBCode.
I personally use an external site to host my media and link it this way, whenever there is something I want on the internet for as long as possible in order to save some space on my instance. I mostly use postimages.org, but I also used
Meta and now also Reddit like to change the URL string to the media posted on their platforms, so don't rely on these if you want your post to still stay relevant after a few days.
You can also add Alt-Text to your image if, instead, you type [img=your_image_url]Your Alt-Text here[/img]. Alt-Text is generally an image description that is displayed when the image fails to load/before loading, and is useful to visually impaired people using screen reading software which can read this out loud. The latter is the reason why it is highly recommended by many people all across the Fediverse (not just on Friendica).
How to upload a video or other media Just like you do with an image. However, the video will be posted under Browser, and then the "Files" icon:
Select your file, and it will be posted with an tag.
However, there's currently no user facing way to delete these as yet, so feel free to upload them on any other external service and share the direct link to the audio/video if you care about this.
You can use the tags [audio]your-link-to-the-audio[/audio] and [video]your-link-to-the-video[/video] for that.
How do I make a poll/vote at polls Polls are currently supported by a few Fediverse platforms, but not by Friendica fully, right now (you can see them, but you cannot vote on them and create them).
You can again use an external service for creating polls, such as poll-maker or Strawpoll.
Okay, but do I need to add a title?
No, you don't. I didn't add one either here. You can if you want your post to be more fancy and want to turn your profile into a more of a personal blog. Which would be cool, but it's not necessary. You do you!
How to post to a group
Groups on Friendica, as well as any other ActivityPub platform, are generally just some special accounts that automatically boost/reshare whatever post you added while tagging them. Therefore, just create a regular post and tag them with the ! or @ signs (one of these tags should suffice). The former one creates a post that is visible on the group but unlisted wherever else (i.e. in a public feed). The latter takes account of your permission settings. You will see how you can find groups somewhere below.
How to find various people
There are multiple ways; One is to use any of the established lists:
You can also go to Settings>Profile>Miscellaneous and scroll all the way down to add some tags to the profile. Then, you can also go to Contacts and choose "similar interests" in the left pane, get friend suggestions or a random profile.
Finally, you can also follow hashtags to get posts from people that also share your interests directly in your feed, and then follow them from there.
I'm posting stuff here, but how can people discover me?
Just like on Mastodon, you can enhance your posts with #hashtags. Other people who follow the same hashtags can find you and connect with you if they want.
But that's not the only way. You can also add yourself into the aforementioned Friendica Directory or to your server's one by going to Settings>Account>Security and Privacy Settings and check any of these two options:
This way, anyone can find you, depending on the public keywords that you set under Settings>Profile>Miscellaneous.
If, however you would like more privacy, you can check the following box below:
This limits the visibility of your content to only instances that are made aware of it, and people that have access to it based on your privacy settings. Unlogged users will not be allowed to find your content. E.g., open my profile in a new tab to see how this feature works: libranet.de/profile/petrescatr…
How do I find groups?
Same as with regular people. There are multiple lists:
Check out the servers of other Fediverse software like Mbin or Piefed. These are more forum-like platforms, centered around communities. Generally, each of these communities has a Fediverse address. Copy that, paste it in the search bar, and you should be able to find it. If it doesn't work the 1st time, try a few more times. If it still doesn't work, look whether the server is not on the banned list by accessing your-server-address/friendica, and/or contact your admin for clarification.
How do I use the search? Is it any useful beyond just searching for people and groups and other accounts?
Yes there are. From my personal experience, Raccoon for Friendica gave me the best results. Relatica is also a great option, as well as Fedilab (the latter is more of a Mastodon client, but you can disable the display of reply in the feeds and enable BBCode - fiddle out in the settings). There are other apps for various platforms as well. If you don't find any of them fitting, you can just access your Friendica server in your browser (e.g. friendica.world, nerdica.net etc.). It's very responsive and easy to use.
I hope this Q&A covers the most common aspects of using Friendica
Bonus: Text colorsOne aspect that hasn't really been touched on in the wiki is the colors. You can have text in any color if you type the text like this [color=color_name_or_value]your text here[/color]. Hex values are accepted, however there are also some human readable names that can be used (based on this thread): Antiquewhite Aqua Aquamarine Azure Beige Bisque Blanchedalmond Blue Blueviolet Brown Burlywood Cadetblue Chartreuse Chocolate Coral Cornflowerblue Cornsilk Crimson Cyan Darkblue Darkcyan Darkgoldenrod Darkgray Darkgreen Darkkhaki Darkmagenta Darkolivegreen Darkorange Darkorchid Darkred Darksalmon Darkseagreen Darkslateblue Darkslategray Darkturquoise Darkviolet Deeppink Deepskyblue Dimgray Dodgerblue Firebrick Floralwhite Forestgreen Fuchsia Gainsboro Ghostwhite Gold Goldenrod Gray Green Greenyellow Honeydew Hotpink Indianred Indigo Ivory Khaki Lavender Lavenderblush Lawngreen Lemonchiffon Lightblue Lightcoral Lightcyan Lightgoldenrodyellow Lightgreen Lightgrey Lightpink Lightsalmon Lightseagreen Lightskyblue Lightslategray Lightsteelblue Linen Magenta Maroon Mediumaquamarine Mediumblue Mediumorchid Mediumpurple Mediumseagreen Mediumslateblue Mediumspringgreen Mediumturquoise Mediumvioletred Midnightblue Mintcream Mistyrose Moccasin Navajowhite Navy Oldlace Olive Olivedrab Orange Orangered Orchid Palegoldenrod Palegreen Paleturquoise Palevioletred Papayawhip Peachpuff Peru Pink Plum Powderblue Purple Red Rosybrown Royalblue Saddlebrown Salmon Sandybrown Seagreen Seashell Sienna Silver Skyblue Slateblue Slategray Snow Springgreen Steelblue Tan Teal Thistle Tomato Turquoise Violet Wheat White Whitesmoke Yellow Yellowgreen
Other collections of resources about Friendica
A webpage that I created in Google Sites. While Friendica is quite flexible and allows for text to be customized and formatted in multiple ways, I think a website should also be nice (plus I wanted to mess my head with Google sites). Feel free to share it around - sites.google.com/view/allabout… It's currently just in English, but it will also be a Romanian version and whatever version anyone would provide a translation for 😀
Years ago I used to recommend a Fedi platform called Lemmy. However, in 2021 some very disturbing stuff about Lemmy's developers came out which totally changed my mind. Because of this, I did a thread to warn people about Lemmy and then never mentioned them again. Today a mod on this account's old server deleted the 2021 thread, without any explanation but apparently by mistake.
If you're looking for the thread, it's on the Internet Archive:
i really dont want to spoil the fun here. I appreciate the effort.
But although #signal is much more popular than #matrix their relationship is like #mastodon to #bluesky. Both bluesky and signal have a #proprietary backend. although their frontent is #OpenSource they technically have a single point of failure. server/cluster down == service down
Mastodon and matrix are actual fediverse services which are undestroyable since they are many federated, independent servers.
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I pulled up YouTube for the first time (I was signed out of google too) on my work computer to watch one funny video at work, and this is what autoplayed immediately afterwards. I’m fully switching to peertube now. It’s turning into a hate platform like meta and Twitter.
Wir sind noch #neuHier auf #Mastodon. Unsere Accounts auf X, Facebook und Instagram haben wir gelöscht.
Wir sind unseres Wissens der erste #AnwaltVerein im #Fediverse, aber bestimmt nicht der letzte.
Wir würden uns freuen, wenn noch mehr #Rechtsanwälte den Weg hierher fänden. Sprecht Euren Lieblings-, Haus-, Familien- und Unternehmensanwalt einfach auf's #Fediversum an. Es gibt ja für jede große kommerzielle Plattform eine freie Alternative, siehe die grafische Übersicht oben.
Dunno how well this is going to go - decentralized kinda misses the point of social networks, one of these requires you to run your own servers, and one is closed to new signups
The Fediverse needs better branding. Don't use 'Tube', it was already outdated when YouTube launched. Pixelfed sounds like it's a federal agency. Friendica? What? And don't get me started on 'Mastodon' which I think would have way more users if it wasn't called 'Mastodon'
@brawnybunkbedbuddy With Friendica you can also communicate with Diaspora users (+ and with Bluesky, Tumblr, ...). With Diaspora you are only in contact with other #Diaspora users and with Friendica and Hubzilla, but not with the rest of the Fediverse. @Daniel Supernault
I've been slowly converting family and friends over to #Signal for years now. Here's how usually I do that these days. When a conversation gets into some rather intimate topic - say talk on emotions, or psychology, or other highly private details - then I set a boundary, saying "I'd be willing to discuss this topic further, but only in a more private app like Signal." So I leave them an "out": I'm willing to stay on, say, WhatsApp, *but the conversation has to stay more shallow*.
I also run an #XMPP server (Prosody), but I've had very limited success in getting people to join. Frankly, XMPP is *only* for intrepid geeks at this time, who are willing to put up with several papercuts in usability. Apps like WhatsApp and Signal have "raised the bar" *a lot*, and apps like #Conversations and #Gajim have their work cut out for them to try to catch up to peo
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I've been slowly converting family and friends over to #Signal for years now. Here's how usually I do that these days. When a conversation gets into some rather intimate topic - say talk on emotions, or psychology, or other highly private details - then I set a boundary, saying "I'd be willing to discuss this topic further, but only in a more private app like Signal." So I leave them an "out": I'm willing to stay on, say, WhatsApp, *but the conversation has to stay more shallow*.
I also run an #XMPP server (Prosody), but I've had very limited success in getting people to join. Frankly, XMPP is *only* for intrepid geeks at this time, who are willing to put up with several papercuts in usability. Apps like WhatsApp and Signal have "raised the bar" *a lot*, and apps like #Conversations and #Gajim have their work cut out for them to try to catch up to people's sky-high expectations - they've been spoiled.
*A ton more testing and bug-fixing is still needed to iron out quirks that the different XMPP clients have, in talking to each other.* This goes especially for #iOS or #iPadOS offerings for XMPP.
Hi Dansup, first of all, you are a ⭐ thanks for everything you do! I have a quick question... I applied to pixelfed.art a couple of days ago, but no answer yet. Shall I wait more or resend the application? Please let me know if there is anything wrong. My username in the application was "skamu". Thanks!!
Never was on Xitter, but I'm here. Never been on "insta," or What'sApp, or TikTok. Debating leaving FB and not switching to anything. YT with ad blockers and a VPN for now.
Long interesting discussion! Another idea, while we’re at it, might be to buy a Fairphone with /e/os and resist the temptation of installing the ‘wrong apps’. They also sell tablets. Reasonably locked down Linux on your computer and you’re set. Am I the only one who sees the irony of choosing ‘safe’ apps but still using the machines and os’ of the beast? 😀. If you have to use them at work, wait till you get home to socialize online, or take your Fairphone on your pee break.
Mike Macgirvin, the creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, has made a whole tree of at least (...counts...) nine forks after Hubzilla, eight of which were nomadic. Two of them still exist.
One is intentionally nameless, intentionally brandless, intentionally not a project and intentionally released into the public domain. Since the community needed to address to it by something, they took the name of the code repository (which needed a name), put parentheses around it and called it (streams).
It's a fork (2021) of a fork (Roadhouse; 2021) of three forks (Osada, Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty, Redmatrix 2020; 2020) of a fork (Zap; 2018) of maybe another fork (Osada; non-nomadic; 2018; if Zap was forked
Mike Macgirvin, the creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, has made a whole tree of at least (...counts...) nine forks after Hubzilla, eight of which were nomadic. Two of them still exist.
One is intentionally nameless, intentionally brandless, intentionally not a project and intentionally released into the public domain. Since the community needed to address to it by something, they took the name of the code repository (which needed a name), put parentheses around it and called it (streams).
It's a fork (2021) of a fork (Roadhouse; 2021) of three forks (Osada, Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty, Redmatrix 2020; 2020) of a fork (Zap; 2018) of maybe another fork (Osada; non-nomadic; 2018; if Zap was forked from Osada rather than directly from Hubzilla;) of Hubzilla.
(streams) is reduced in features and connectivity in comparison with Hubzilla, but so were the first Osada and Zap. However, in terms of permission control and nomadicity, it's at least up-to-par with Hubzilla. In fact, it isn't quite as difficult to use as Hubzilla because permission handling has been adapted what the Fediverse of the 2020s actually requires as opposed to what a hypothetical Fediverse of the mid-2010s centred around the Red Matrix would require.
I've made a series of tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams). You can find them here.
The other still existing fork is Forte from August, 2024. Forte is a direct fork of (streams). It's highly experimental because all support for the Nomad protocol was removed, and it has to rely on ActivityPub for nomadic identity. Thus, it is not officially released yet, it does not have public instances, and it is not recommended as a stable, reliable daily driver yet.
I agree that Lemmy is a great alternative, personally I use my Sharkey instance to interact with Lemmy users and things still but if I could keep with my instance and make it look like Lemmy when I want to use those parts of the Fediverse, I'd love that.
Either way amazing to see more people use the Fediverse
friendica doesn't have a update in many years, on pixelfed.social nothing happens, and Peertube isn't interesting enough so people staying at th big tech crap
I have to say that I just really paid attention to the logos for Loops and Peertube and I think they’re brilliant. I have no idea if you intended for Loops to reference/riff Peertube’s design language, but it’s very good either way (Peertube evoking federation through the “play” triangle pointing in multiple directions while also itself being a “play” triangle; almost the same sized triangle in the negative space with the looping graphics for Loops).
@Andres @brawnybunkbedbuddy Matrix sucks and its a horrible platform with horrible UI and disjointed features between clients, main clients dont even follow the matrix protocol correctly.
@Daniel Supernault Just to hopefully assist from newbie perspective, I've been trying Friendica for a few days, I've never used FB so can't compare but I've found Fedilab works well though a little battery hungry and am just trying Raccoon which seems as easy to get around, I found the web interface confusing though. Hth
hmmm, I wonder if it's because you have a very low trust environment/you have endless opposition and your employees give zero fucks about keeping it under wraps 🤔
Maybe he should stop saying awful things and enabling fascist wannabes. He might be pleasantly surprised by the results of...you know...not contributing to and empowering the end of Democracy.
Says the man slurping up and monetizing everything everyone else says on or around a Meta-branded app. You did this to yourself, sentient toilet brush.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
… says the guy who literally sells as much of your private information as he can possibly gather. The lack of self awareness of all these grifters is shocking.
ach noooo poor wee tike, that moves me, that does, tis a bit like poor wee Elusk Mon complaining that he is fair attacked on X, people are so very mean, ken, to pick on them, you'd think, I dunno, that they do Nazi stuff and promote hatred or summat, heh... 🤯🙄😂🤣😂
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The owner of Meta wants more "masculine energy"? Well, I'm doing my best to bring my feminine energy to the Fediverse.
Hello! I'm Elena Rossini, an Italian filmmaker, photographer and FOSS advocate based in Paris, France.
Pictured here: at the Louvre museum after a portrait shoot (for a book jacket's author's pic: Monica Parker, The Power of Wonder). I'm proudly wearing around my neck my 3 cameras: a #Canon 5D Mark IV, a #Fujifilm X-T3 and a #Nikon Z fc (which has my favorite lens, a Sigma 30mm f/1.4).
I'm delighted to see Pixelfed growing into such a nice photo community.
Thank you! I've been here for a while, I just recently set up my own self-hosted Pixelfed instance (thus the joined in January 2025 description). If you're interested, I have a whole blog series about the Fediverse called #TheFutureIsFederated: blog.elenarossini.com/tag/the-… 🤗
The Future is Federated is a series of essays about the Fediverse with the goal of introducing it to people not familiar with it... and showing interoperability between projects for more advanced users.
I created my own Pixelfed instance yesterday and followed you, but your post didn't reach my Pixelfed account. Do you see Jerry@gr8.pics following your Pixelfed account?
hi Jerry! So nice to hear this. So, I am LOVING my self-hosted Pixelfed instance but federation has been a real issue. Like, any profile I click on shows 0 followers, 0 posts and an empty feed. I just copied and pasted your username and I'm now following you. The more accounts you follow, from the most varied instances, the better
Same at my pixelfeld account at pixel.sp-codes.de, I follow you but still listed correct but count is 0. @samuel_p fight a lot to fix the issues from #pixelfed (so still marked as test-phase at his side)
I've seen mixed reviews, but I'm sorely tempted to buy one only because of how much I loved my Nikon FM2 back in the last century. (Only camera I've had that worked happily at -40°C.)
For work I use a Canon 5D Mark IV and for everyday photos I use a Fujifilm X-T3.
I got the Nikon Z fc because I have an extensive collection of Nikon lenses and I wanted to be able to keep using them (they’re mostly a mix of Nikkor AI / AIS so I have an adapter for them). The Sigma 30mm is now always on my Nikon and I love its gorgeous bokeh - but focus can be a struggle
I loved what you said about feminine energy. I know that's a simplification but I totally understand it and I hope a lot of women bring that energy here. Welcome!
@_elena Following your Pixelfed with the hope to see your perspective of Paris. I lived there for three years, decades ago. I miss it. I close my eyes and still see its details.
@dzwiedziu@mastodon.social ha! I'm packing for #FOSDEM and I promised myself I would only bring one camera (my Canon 5D Mk4) but now I'm tempted to bring along the Fujifilm too LOL
@Wifiwits@infosec.exchange I love them all but some days I'm tempted to add Sony to the collection, LOL. And of course a Leica would be the ultimate dream 🤗
I have a temporary brainmelt when I switch Nikon to Sony or vice versa - regularly using a Nikon, a Canon and a Fuji at the same time requires some serious dedication for sure.
@mbpaz@mas.to thanks! my backup process includes batch renaming files to add the name of the camera at the end (in addition to the date at the beginning)... when I make selections, it's fascinating to see which camera wins out at the end for best pics 🤗
a bit late to the party but I must say I'm pretty pleased to encounter some feminine energy here on the Fediverse (if on the other platforms this is not a possibility) ;) keep up the good work, @Elena Rossini on Pixelfed!
Instead, I'm going to focus on my Mastodon bubble, where I already have more followers than I ever did on Facebook. And if you're on Bluesky, you can connect
Thing is, I haven't been able to make myself go there in the last few days, and I still want to teach people there about the bridge and all that.
But it's probably a vain hope.
I should post there today, and pull the plug next week. I have actually developed an aversion to it. (But I'm also scared of being pulled back in by seeing my old friends there.)
a suggestion, when you do cut the cord leave a message telling people where you went and how to reach you. That way you don't just disappear and hopefully people will follow you.
@ashtardeza more advice: don't delete. Leave it up. Not everyone is on FB all the time. Some might return in months or years and look you up.
Plus, it monopolises the name space on FB, so others can't imitate you. I made the mistake of deleting my MySpace page, which someone else grabbed. Next thing I knew, he was nagging me on Twitter to get that handle too.
I'm nowhere near finished with this, but I thought I'd share this test render I made of a terraformed Mars that I made in #Blender. I'm planning to redo the cover for one of my books.
General reminder: Do not discuss your ✨ crimes ✨ on Fediverse. Every six seconds, some tech bro announces an extremely effective scraper and indexer for Fediverse and gets trounced for it.
Those are the ones we hear about.
No matter the privacy level you set for a post here, you should assume it's public in some capacity.
First rule of the Internet: Everything is public. Second rule of the Internet: Everything is public! Third rule of the Internet: Everything is saved by someone.
This topic really rubs me the wrong way lately given those whose very existence is in danger of soon being criminalized. Where do you draw the line between personal safety and silent consent? I will not advocate silence if it leads to erasure.
@earthshine Since I'm one of the ones whose existence is in danger of being criminalized, I would expect that you would take my advice post in the spirit that it was shared in: admitting to specific criminal acts on the internet is inadvisable.
For those of us with privilege (which may or may not include you) now very much the time to ratchet up our support and be ever more vocal and visible allies. For those directly threatened, being quieter and not providing extra excuses for attack is perhaps wise, and certainly understandable. And admitting illegal acts online is never wise unless you are explicitly inviting a response in civil disobedience.
Honestly, always assume that social media is public, even on fedi. The general idea of social media is broadcasting information, and that concept in general makes it very difficult to keep tight control over that info.
Yay!!! I didn't realise this! Friendica.world has content filters enabled! This is fantastic! Now, I can add the political and other annoying words to it, and, with luck, I won't see such posts again!
These are the words I've included, minus the obscenities. I didn't want to include things such as revolution, class, or resistance, because I might miss things about records spinning at 33 revolutions per minute, or baking class, or the resistance of a key as you press it. But if I am missing any, please let me know. Most of these are geared toward the political left, but rest assured, if I saw lots of post from the extreme right, I would definitely add their vocabulary, too. Fortunately, I haven't seen them. I also only saw one religious person, and he was at least respectful.
sigh It's not working. At least, not on TweeseCake. I keep seeing all of this rot in my home timeline! This is beyond annoying! Fortunately, I hardly ever see it in my Notifications timeline. I was so happy when I saw the filters. It hought they would work.
The comment where you listed all the words that you block got collapsed for me: in my case, I got a "Filtered word: Trump", directly followed by a "Reveal/hide" toggle button.
Unfortunately, I haven't found an option to completely remove specific postings - only "completely block/ignore this profile", which is also a one-at-a-time thingie ...
@phle I found it under settings. There is an option for filter/nsfw, etc. I think each instance has the ability to set things as the administrator chooses. I'm using the TweeseCake client, so there is no collapsing of anything. But I am guessing that, if I were on the site, it would work. Who knows if it would even affect my screen reader or not. Sadly, I keep seeing the posts with the filtered words in TweeseCake, so it didn't work for me.
@Georgiana Brummell This really sounds like filters are purely cosmetic on Friendica and built into the frontend, so if you use a different frontend, it bypasses the filters. I mean, NSFW is of course built into the frontend, but I'm surprised about the actual filters.
I would have expected Friendica's filters to reject filtered posts, i.e. if you're the only one on your node who would receive a post or comment, but you filter it out, the entire node rejects it. That's how filters work on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte.
Anyway, I could suggest you a whole number of keywords that I use as hashtags in my posts and comments, so you're spared both from my Fediverse posts and from my virtual worlds posts. But there's a bit of a risk of "false positives", especially when I post about image descriptions.
But beyond that, OpenAI's level of hypocrisy is so epic, so truly monumental, one can only stand and stare at it in disbelief.
I mean, is using the *publicly available* dataset of one company really worse than stealing the intellectual property of millions of individuals? Is that the extent to which we've enshrined The Corporation in our ethical calculus?
I needed a good laugh this morning, Sam Altman complaining about data theft provided it. Burglar complains to Police after his stolen goods lock up is burgled.
@Remittancegirl This is just a repeat of "All property is theft" - at what point does the enclosure of the commons stop being theft? So OAI enclosed the commons and that was "Ok" because it was the "only way to do it". Now the Chinese come up, competing with them, and using OAI's product as a leg up, it's suddenly "NOT OK".
I personally think what it's allefed that DeepSeek did was "upcycling". If it was OK for OAI, it should be fair game for DeepSeek, but ultimately, I still think it's hyped up and of limited use. But at least it seems to have led to the release of a completely open-source LLM so the low-profit, high-impact types of LLM use that are "impractical" to monetise can now be implemented by parties that can benefit from it, and avoid making reverse-centaurs.
I'm reluctant to say this will result in the AI bubble completely bursting, but it's a rupture, for sure.
@Remittancegirl People have been writing computer programs since Charles Babbage - now that these are very complicated we call them AI's = much like how a bicycle developed into a BMW. And a BMW is just as likely to solve human problems as an AI
@cybervegan @Remittancegirl I mostly concur, other than that I'm a little less reluctant than you to say the bubble has burst. Why? Well, there's this. 👇
On which I believe the always-insightful @nullagent has the skinny.
But there's also the fact that "irrational exuberance" in markets is nearly always followed by its opposite. Hence a mere *rumour* of insolvency can cause a full-scale bank run, destroying the bank.
@joaocosta Well, it isn't outright plagiarism (usually at least) as LLMs do rephrase everything into that same bland, uninspiring, "middle-management memo"-style prose.
But they're still scraping vast amounts of other people's hard work, and monetizing it without the originators' knowledge or consent.
I don't think AI is overhyped—it's undoubtedly the next revolution. But China has shown it can be done more cost-effectively. People should be happier knowing AI can also be energy-efficient. The US has proven it can build giant industries for almost anything, but that's not always the best path. It reminds me of the Edison vs. Tesla rivalry—we all know who truly won.
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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.
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.
☝️ This is a great explainer of the difference between Mastodon and Bluesky, with one correction. At present there is only ONE corporate node, and the technology to create more has not been proven.
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.
@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
@mastodonmigration definitely not technically feasible for most people or even for most technically skilled hobbyists (I'm certainly not planning on running a relaying myself)
Cory Doctorow has written about the Sky one several times lately, but I think this piece is a decent verbal explication of what the graphic is representing visually (I'm not great with visuals; it took me a minute LOL): doctorow.medium.com/https-plur…
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.
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.
In my opinion, the apps for accessing the fediverse simply have much better features than BlueSky. Also, I block 20 bots on BlueSky for every human I find to follow.
@benjamin @janxdevil Facebook *never* federated, what they offered was client connection (which many people used pidgin for, which could have other accounts as well)
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.
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.
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.
Google did federate for a long time, but it was defederated by many deployements before they stopped the service, because it was effectively abandoned and not even supporting STARTTLS (which means everything went there in cleartext)
@ruud The fediverse is an emergent phenomenon. Individual communities operate the computers and software. To join the federation, they agree to follow the federation rules. Mastodon and the larger Fediverse are very much a covenant governed thing.
@effariwhy Do you have a link to the current status as a source? 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…
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...
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 fro
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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.
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.
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.
The green dots on the bottom image could be labelled "just an everyday person", "a small group", "a non profit organisation", "a media that has a vision", "an enthousiast hobbyist", "not a billionnaire", "a cooperative", #GeorgeTakei, "an association", " "just regular folks like you", "just an other everyday person" and so on.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
If you care about MAU, why not just join Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc? They have much bigger MAUs than BlueSky.
What exactly is the point of joining BlueSky at all as it is going down exactly the same path as Twitter, Facebook etc? What advantage is there to users?
Well, the tech aspect is interesting, but let's also discuss the UI experience. The BlueSky interface is much more rewarding to the user as we get to see much more content.
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.
Should that happen, I'll jump, just like I bailed from Twatter. Meanwhile, I find much more progressive content on BlueSky & my posts are much more effective.
I like how you cut through a lot of tech talks (I find it of some interest though) to the highlight key basic differences that actually reveal the true nature of the architectures (one requiring big money, hence needing corporations vs. simple architecture costing little money to run). Thanks! I also am watching Spritely to see how it goes!
love the explainer. To be fair though search and reliable distribution is hard in a decentralized network and search works pretty badly here. I’ll still take federated for the reasons you outline but we should be honest about the tradeoffs.
after spending a little time on both (Masto is my platform but I also have Bsky) I think the online cultures are wildly different, in a way everyone could describe differently, but Masto is DIY, and people seem more free to be eccentric out of the confines of online formality crossing over into those all too-keenly-aware professionalism and other hats that you see worn on Bsky, Fedi is more free in a lot of ways I think. Eccentrics tend to feel at home here and that gives me so much joy. Others feel like walls for thoughts but Mastodon offers more space for expression and community, I feel.
Aaand that's why the mainstream media won't cover the Fediverse even though they covered both BlueSky and Threads. It doesn't make money for the corporations that fund them.
@effariwhy I had my doubts about Bluesky and kept procrastinating ... And now I am not going to join. It's too similar to Twitter and I think it will have the same sad ending.
but the main reason I hear people join bsky is because it’s easier. Not sure #average_user is too clued in to the inner workings, or even cares about it all too much.
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.
sure, but what I’m saying is that in order to convince the masses to join mastodon over bsky, we need to make it not just theoretically better but also easy to use and connect. 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).
@effariwhy Oh man, Automattic alone being on there is like 🚨 because look what a shitshow Matt has made out of Wordpress and Tumblr. I know he's just investing, not owning, but he seems so capable of breaking everything he touches
@effariwhy He's continuing to double down. He tried to block WP Engine (it was WPE, not GoDaddy) from being able to access the plugin repository to update their plugins, a judge told him no, so he had a tantrum and said he wasn't going to update WP anymore, then when other people said they'd be happy to step in he blocked them from the repository, he's also been firing anyone who tells him to calm down
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.
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 #
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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.
@kryptec Right, but as a USER I have no way of knowing if the instance I am using has implemented any of those. How about publishing a list of such servers? And if you have no way of knowing which servers are using any of those various ways, then how is the user supposed to know? A solution that few instances are using and/or where users have no way of knowing if their instance (or any other) is using that solution adds a level of complication and annoyance that you don't have with the big corporate platform.
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
@skamu That is great and I hope you are able to fix and improve what is not working, but right now this is still a problem and it is something that would cause ordinary users (like me) to consider switching to Bluesky (or to just start with Blueskay in the first place). You have to realize that most users just don't care if they own data (probably better than half don't even seem to care about privacy, which totally blows my mind) so saying that they should use the Fediverse because of some philosophical argument about ownership isn't going to carry much weight, if they can receive most or all of the posts they want to see on another platform.
@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.
@skamu I hope you are right, but it will take a lot longer if people think that you shouldn't even try the Fediverse because any posts you make will only be seen by a limited subset of users, even if you include hashtags they are following. People who are frequent posters often desire that what they write will be seen by the highest number of users (or at least users interested enough to follow whatever hashtags they include), so they may not have much interest in platforms that limit their exposure. And factors such as who "owns" the post content may not matter at all to them.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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:
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:
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:
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".
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.
The problem is that Bluesky is lively. People respond. Here, other than this post of yours, almost nothing anybody posts here gets any comments.So ironically, there's no sense of community here. We are all just barking into the void.
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.
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...)
Nice diagram! How many other servers does a typical fediverse server connect to? Is there a min/max/mean? When two servers connect, is it an asymmetric flow or a symmetric flow? 🤔
We saw a swastitruck earlier today. The usual dull stainless steel (SS) color had been turned a dull dark olive green. It looked like a drivable helmet.
@violetmadder @GhostOnTheHalfShell We also live in an area with a very large number of Teslas. Most are driven by people concerned about the environment who were early EV adopters before knowing what Musk was. The regular Tesla sedans are one of the more affordable EVs on the market, surprisingly. I sure wouldn’t buy one now, but dumping a perfectly good, already purchased car isn’t a good choice for the environment. Just saying.
@ChrisWellens @troy Every time I see a Tesla of any model I can only think of Musk’s Nazi salute and I assume the driver is a Trump-voting fascist. Sorry to break it to you.
@troy Oh dear ... I did not know that. I got a Model 3 in 2010 and I named it "Snowflake Warrior" -- kind of a combo of Social Justic Warrioer and Snowflake. So I guess I am on Elon's hit list.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell I think "deplorian" and "wankpanzer" are more generic terms for the unnecessarily large vehicles that so many people drive these days.
Not going to comment on weak minds or small penises, I'm sure some people really need them, have their own plans for coping with the impending doom of climate change, and drive extra carefully to avoid the carnage that others with similar vehicles cause to other road users and pedestrians.
"Swasticar" and "swastitruck" I feel should be reserved for vehicles made by actual nazis such as Elon Musk.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @Drop Bear @David Penfold hahaha I once had a friend from Australia and one from Texas. They would tease each other about drop bears and all sorts of non-existant things. I found it hilarious!
¹ At least those from Bavaria. ² linke-t-shirts.de/25mm-button/… Edit: This is the Button. The sticker is out of stock. I'm not affiliated with them in any way.
Here is the Cybertruck font for those looking to add more customization. You will have to adjust the kearning (spacing between the letters) to your liking but i figured thats not too much to deal...
It's Golden Raspberry time again. Here are some of the noms:
Worst Picture Borderlands Joker: Folie a Deux Madame Web Megalopolis Reagan
Worst Actor Jack Black / Dear Santa Zachary Levi / Harold and the Purple Crayon Joaquin Phoenix / Joker: Folie a Deux Dennis Quaid / Reagan Jerry Seinfeld / Unfrosted
Worst Actress Cate Blanchett / Borderlands Lady Gaga / Joker: Folie a Deux Bryce Dallas Howard / Argylle Dakota Johnson / Madame Web Jennifer Lopez / Atlas
Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel The Crow Joker: Folie a Deux Kraven the Hunter Mufasa: The Lion King Rebel Moon 2: The Scargiver
Worst Screenplay Joker: Folie a Deux Kraven the Hunter Madame Web Megalopolis Reagan
I haven't seen any of these films so I'm not fit to judge. Have you seen any or all of them? What do you think? Leave a comment below.
...and I see something golden on the nature strip between the highway, on the left, and the mass of construction, on the right. As I near it, I realise that it's a statue of a golden Buddha. My question is why? Does it have something to do with the lunar new year? Or has there been a traffic incident and someone is paying their respects?
I'm also new to Friendica (although I've had a Friendica server for years, I rarely used it). I see a lot of people signing up, so if you have any questions or need help, post them to this group.
I've been looking that up twice now, so I'm just leaving this comment here to easily find it for the next time:
go to Settings → Profile, i.e. friendica.world/settings/profi… then top-right, choose drop-down menu Profile actions and then (either Change profile photo, or) Upload profile photo
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I had set this server up a while ago, but with the recent FB drama, we see a lot of new users registering. Almost a thousand, and counting!
Let's first introduce myself, I am Ruud, a database admin from The Netherlands who as a hobby hosts Fediverse instances like mastodon.world, lemmy.world and a lot of others. Together with @stux⚡ I founded a non-profit foundation for owning our instances: fedihosting.foundation.
The Friendica.World server isn't 100% ready, there's still some tweaking and polishing needed. For example we need to add a ToS and rules. They will be the same as on mastodon.wor
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I had set this server up a while ago, but with the recent FB drama, we see a lot of new users registering. Almost a thousand, and counting!
Let's first introduce myself, I am Ruud, a database admin from The Netherlands who as a hobby hosts Fediverse instances like mastodon.world, lemmy.world and a lot of others. Together with @stux⚡ I founded a non-profit foundation for owning our instances: fedihosting.foundation.
The Friendica.World server isn't 100% ready, there's still some tweaking and polishing needed. For example we need to add a ToS and rules. They will be the same as on mastodon.world/about
Also, we are still trying to resolve an issue where the jobs aren't being processed as quickly as we would like. We've opened an issue with the Friendica developers: github.com/friendica/friendica… Currently there are 612000 jobs still pending and daily this gets down by 39000 jobs, so after 16 days it should be at 0 and everything should be instantaneous. We're hoping we can somehow speed this up. Result of this issue is that things are lagging behind, like federation to other servers (mastodon, other friendica's etc), notifications etc.
Friendica tutorial Pt 1 of 6: Explaining Friendica/Facebook comparisons and how to join. Ver 2023.12
Since the internet was severely lacking it, This is a comprehensive tutorial on how you can do pretty much anything in friendica that you can on facebook. This episode covers how how to join friendica, how to customize your profile, how to make a post, and join a group. PS this is an atheist/liberal/leftish channel and my opinions and beliefs are not that of the friendica organization, so please do not let any of the examples I use have any impact on whether or not you decide to use the site.
The Skeptical Buddha the Tao of Science amazon.com/dp/B09NGRY4L6/ref=c… Also available in most european, North and South American nations, Indian, Japan and Australia Amazon website.
Twitter @Anubis2814 Fediverse(mastodon, friendica, etc) anubis2814@friendica.myportal.social Peertube ("new" old videos daily) Anubis2814@peetube.stream Leftish Peertube ("new" old videos daily) Anubis2814@watch.breadtube.tv Vaults of Anubis and After School Democracy Podcasts are Available on Stitcher, Apple podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify IheartRadio youtube.com/user/anubis2814 Also please support me on patreon patreon.com/Anubis2814anubis2814.wordpress.com/
It seems that there is a lot of background work going on. I'll have to follow this to see if it will be resolved, or if we would need more resources. Some updates may be delayed.
If you're hearing a lot about the fediverse these days, you should know: Mastodon is not the whole fediverse and the fediverse is not simply a Twitter replacement. The fediverse is an entire ecosystem, built on something called ActivityPub. Learn more: eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/leav…
This post is part of a series on Mastodon and the fediverse. We also have a post on privacy and security on Mastodon, why the fediverse will be great—if we don't screw it up, and how to make a Mastadon account. You can follow EFF on Mastodon here.
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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.
Wyvernsridge 🌻
in reply to skribe 🇺🇦 • • •Might be Ozzie, but we're still culturally aware 😎