Happy birthday to the accidental typo, John Mastodon! Started when a writer misread the Mastodon account that was banned from Twitter as "John Mastodon" instead of "Join Mastodon", John Mastodon may not be real but thanks for the memes and everything else. Let's celebrate John Mastodon's birthday by tooting about what you love most about the #fediverse. #JohnMastodon#Mastodon
what I'd love to see is #funkwhale also support basic posts ala #mastodon. I bet we could get a pretty cool pod going at ccmusic.social if this was the case. #ccmusic
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
With yesterday's announcement that Meta is starting to test Threads and ActivityPub integration, I see the #Fediverse is at an all time high again of whining and crying and being butthurt over it all.
I get stating your opinion about not wanting them here or whatever, but come on people, don't sound like a little 2 year old who lost their pacifier. It gets old, quick.
Just mute/block and move on and be done with it all. It's really that damn simple.
@nw@mike that’s a great question. I would also like to know if you can read #flipboard magazines and comments on Flipboard directly here on #mastodon. I know you can post directly from Flipboard to the #fediverse. Engagement would be much better if we can interact directly from both platforms. :flipboard: #Community#activitypub
I've been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon's responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that'll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn't be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can't have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they're probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there'd be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that's why they're separate to begin with. You don't see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don't necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the "All Content" tab if you'd like, they're styled differently enough that it's very clear when you're looking at a thread and when you're looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I've been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that's what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that's also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, "Wait, what's this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated," even if you tell them to ignore it.
It's probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I'm expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would've made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin's magazine system). However, this doesn't mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I'd love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn't mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
I just found this list of the current top 10,000 most followed users on the Mastodon part of the fediverse. It's interesting to see what the fediverse looks like from that perspective. I do wish we had something like this fediverse wide but appreciate the work that has gone into compiling this list specifically for Mastodon. #fediverse#mastodonmost-followed-masotodon-accoun…
I should take a break from whining about #ActivityPub to crow about my big breakthrough. Today, I successfully sent my first messages and replies between #Emissary and #Mastodon. And all it required was a complete overhaul the custom ActivityPub outbox.
It’s a small step forward, but a huge milestone for me. Hopefully, it will translate to big wins for other devs who can use my #Golang libraries in the future.
Do you need help with using Mastodon and the Fediverse? Especially if you're a beginner or unsure about techy things?
You can ask by messaging me or replying to this thread, and I'll try to help or find someone else who can help. Don't worry if a question seems silly or basic!
You can also look things up on the guide at https://fedi.tips, which has an "essentials" section at the top and a complete list of answered questions below that.
Do I know anyone here who is willing to share their experience deploying an institutional Mastodon server? A contact of mine is looking for someone to discuss the experience as he works on getting a government agency to deploy their own instance. Boosts appreciated #fediverse#mastodon
@Ernest has pushed an update which allows users to request ownership/moderation of abandoned magazines. Ghost/abandoned magazines were fairly prevalent after the initial wave of hype due to users either squatting magazine names or becoming inactive for other reasons. Now is your chance to get involved, if you were waiting to do...
I think it's great that you're interested in this! It may be scary, but it can also be pretty exciting. I would say to start small. There might be a lot of things to consider: establishing rules, the overall vibe of the #magazine, your audience, the type of content you want to see, etc. Pick on one, focus on that for a day or so. If you plan on making new magazine, you'll be free to take your time with this. Growing niche magazines tends to be on the slow side. IMO, that's better for those who are new to this, so they can have time to acclimate to the tools and considerations you'll be presented with. It may also allow you to really reflect on the direction you'd like to take your magazine.
As #niche#communities tend to start slow, people will be hesitant to post content. Unfortunately, when content is rare, people are less inclined to post. This is a problem that reinforces itself, as others are unlikely to post when there is no content. You'll probably need to be "the first on the dance floor", so to speak, if your goal is to grow your magazine. This will likely test your patience, as you will probably be one of, if not the only active posters in your magazine. Picking a magazine name that might see usage in the #fediverse and #mastodon might prove useful for #federating content via the #microblog section. However, if you wish to pick a more unique name, more power to you. Something to consider, is that you may wish to create a sibling magazine that can accept a tag that would federate posts with regularity.
For example, I run @learnjapanese. However, most people will be unlikely to write #learnjapanese on Mastodon. However, I also run @japanese, which federates the #japanese tag from Mastodon instances. You can add additional tags in the magazine settings menu, which allows the federation of posts that contain other hashtags. I've pinned a microblog in both magazines' #microblogging sections to point to each other to increase #discoverability and awareness of related resources. Speaking of discoverability, Ernest recently implemented a #crossposting feature to /kbin that further increases discoverability and accessibility. Posting the same link/image to related magazines will allow users to see other magazines this content is posted to. This appears in the comments section of the thread, directly below the content of the post itself. Ideally, this would generate additional traffic and increase visibility for the smaller, but related magazines. This has been an extremely welcome addition, as someone who is moderating smaller magazines and trying to bring awareness without spamming advertisements.
If you have any further questions, please let me know. I have also subscribed to your magazine. Good luck. :)
Et si on disait « adresse » Mastodon au lieu de « compte » ?
Personne dans le grand public parle de son compte mail, uniquement de son adresse, je pense que le concept d'instances multiples passerait mieux avec ce vocabulaire.
Le grand public comprend que le mail n'est pas une application sur laquelle on a un compte, mais juste un protocole, même sans connaître le terme de protocole.
It is nice he thinks ActivityPub is the Internet of the future, calling it "the post-platform" world in which journalists, individuals, organizations all run their own ActivityPub services rather than create accounts on platforms like Ex-Twitter or Facebook. But his perspective is still limited to a world where all applications run on the HTTP protocol with DNS identifying services. He talks about the "Post On (your) Own (host), Syndicate Everywhere" (POSSE) model, and how organizations and individuals can deploy Mastodon instances on their own servers. They also interviewed @pluralistic (Cory Doctorow) which was nice.
They really should have interviewed the @spritelyinst folks to see the real Internet of the future, in which HTTP is replaced with the Object Capability Network (OCapN). But to be fair, this tech is still pretty new and maybe not yet to the point where tech journalists at The Verge would be interested in doing articles about it.
And it doesn't need more users from lousy corporate sites.
But it could do with some new features I think.
Don't you think it would be cool if #Mastodon had a giveaway / exchange feature, maybe even a place to sell things.
Maybe there could have some myspace style page thing for creative people to make a page. Or at least, if that already exists, a little promotional thing to get people to use it more.
A case for preemptively defederating with Threads (kbin.social)
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
To those genuinely interested in moderating (kbin.social)
@Ernest has pushed an update which allows users to request ownership/moderation of abandoned magazines. Ghost/abandoned magazines were fairly prevalent after the initial wave of hype due to users either squatting magazine names or becoming inactive for other reasons. Now is your chance to get involved, if you were waiting to do...