What’s the BBC up to in the Fediverse? What have they learned so far from their experiments? And how is all this like the early days of the internet? In the latest episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO @mike chats with @Ianforrester, Senior Firestarter at @BBCRD. (How cool is that title, btw!)
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.
The point I'm trying to make is that you don't have to be able to read non-microblog stuff (Kbin threads, PeerTube, Writefreely, etc.) on a microblogging platform and that it's probably best for Mastodon to not have that functionality. Many people on Mastodon are going there for microblog posts, not threads. They want a Twitter alternative, not something that's also a Reddit alternative. Conversely, people on Lemmy & Kbin aren't making threads for people on Mastodon to view and interact with, as they're platforms for different types of content.
If you want to be able to cleanly view both threads & microblog posts, there are platforms that allow that, but I don't think Mastodon needs to or even should be one of them. If you make Mastodon support all these kinds of content from all these different platforms, people who go to Mastodon for a Twitter alternative will wonder, "Wait, why is there stuff from the Reddit alternative? Wait, I can see things from the Instagram alternative too? Why's that? And I can see full blog posts?" Mastodon, being an introduction to the fediverse and sought after as a Twitter alternative, shouldn't do all of that.
@carturo222 I didn't mention it due to a lack of familiarity, but if Friendica serves that purpose, that's great! People who want to interact with all of the fediverse with a single account should use that or a similar platform. The thing is that people are starting to advocate for everything to do what Friendica does — e.g., for Mastodon to be able to seamlessly interact with non-microblog stuff in the fediverse — and that's just not what Mastodon is trying to do.
Framasoft, the French non-profit organisation for open source software such as PeerTube, says that after 5 years, Mobilizon has reached maturity. In December 2018 the organisation announced their plans to develop Mobilizon, with the goal of creating an alternative to Facebook Groups and events.
Over the years, they have added multiple updates, such as federation in 2020 and searching across Mobilizon instances in 2020. This month, they are releasing their final update, v4, with a variety of new features.
Event administrators can now send private announcements to attendees, allowing them to contact all people who have registered for an event directly. This announcement is a one-way communications channel, intended for organisers to broadcast information. Besides that, a chat system for attendees is also implemented, which federates with the rest of the fediverse.
Another new feature is the ability to import and synchronise events from other platforms, such as Meetup and EventBrite. Framasoft created an import tool that allows you to import and synchronise event information from these platforms into Mobilizon. iCal event feeds are support too, so this even works with most calendar tools.
The big platform for importing events from is Facebook. Here, Framasoft has done the work to get it to work, and the ball is now in Facebook’s court to approve and validate. Framasoft is clear that they do not have a timeline how long this will take, and that they are unsure if Facebook will do so.
While Framasoft sees Mobilizon has having completed their vision, it is far from over for the project. Framasoft will hand over the keys to the French association Kaihuri, who has been maintaining a Mobilizon presence for a while. Kaihuri recently got funding from NLnet to continue development work on Mobilizon, focusing on the user experience and improving interoperability. Meanwhile, Framasoft is betting big on PeerTube for next year, and is currently organising their yearly donation drive.
#ActivityPub dev tip of the day: An inbox (or outbox) is not a queue. An inbox is reverse chronological (LIFO-ish) and maintains long-term references to items. A queue has FIFO behavior and items are dequeued/removed for processing. AP is difficult enough without equating the inbox concept with MQ middleware (which could be a useful internal implementation technique).
@Gordon_Freeman There isn't a crosspost button, but if two threads are similar, they'll show as crossposts of each other. I'm not sure exactly what the criteria are, but from what I can gather, two link threads will show as crossposts on Kbin if they have the same link. Otherwise, they need the same title (and maybe the same photo?).
@ThatOneKirbyMain2568 Thanks, I saw multiple threads with the "crosspost" below and was wondering how to do it since I didn't dound the button. It's cool it's done automatically
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.
"(...)Just like Lemmy won’t support Place objects, I’m not sure if any other platform will ever support Page objects, because Pages are much bigger in scope than anything most Fediverse applications ever deal with."
Article or Page objects are supported not only by Lemmy and /kbin (and Mastodon, but as link). It is a default object type on WriteFreely, can be used on WordPress, and is compatible with Friendica. Hometown (a Mastodon fork) also renders Pages and Articles in their entirety.
Pages represent web pages, whereas notes represent “a short written work typically less than a single paragraph in length”. In my opinion, using Page was a mistake on Lemmy’s end. Just like Lemmy won’t support Place objects, I’m not sure if any other platform will ever support Page objects, because Pages are much bigger in scope than anything most Fediverse applications ever deal with.
Using note was the mistake. Limiting communication to short quips, like Twitter does, is a fucking travesty. The fact that people routinely and often make multiple tweets to extend what they want to say proves this point. Twitter/X was the worst thing to happen to communication in the internet age by further reducing the attention span and ability of people to concentrate on longer bodies of writing, thereby making people even dumber.
Twitter/Mastodon should not even be a thing, honestly. They are dumb methods of communication for dumb people. You can always post something shorter in a long form system, but you can’t post something longer in a short form system, without making multiple posts. It’s fucking stupid and always has been. The primary reason for the short form, originally 140 char, was because you could text it in one message. This made a bit of sense… just a tiny bit, as it opened up communication where there previously wasn’t any. But as we moved away from that paradigm of 140 char text messages, the idea of a Twitter became more and more stupid, where today, we have Twitter/Mastodon as the bastion of the idiot regime who can’t think past 280 characters.
What concerns me about the #fediverse / #acrivitypub from a user‘s perspective, is the inflation of identities that will occur as soon as you want to use feature that the platform you started on does not offer.
I am aware that this also can happen, when you use closed services, but …
A) this on of the things that make Google or Meta attractive.
B) federation to me implies the integration of several services under one identity.
So, is a #FederatedIdentity something that is being considered?
@iamlayer8 the main issue that prevents this from being the case is that Mastodon (and the services that preceded it in some part) unified the client and server parts of ActivityPub.
Ideally an ActivityPub server should be able to accept multiple types of activities for different purposes and different clients can make use of different resulting objects. Ie, a Mastodon client can display textual objects in a twitter like format, a Pixelfed client would display image objects, etc.
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.
The term Threadiverse has nothing to do with Meta’s Threads platform, I think the term is actually older than Meta’s announcement. The Threadiverse refers to the platforms that organize things into threads similar to Reddit or forums, right now this mainly means Lemmy and Kbin
