Folks, perhaps the biggest Fediverse news of the week (the month? year?) is that the W3C @w3c, essentially the organization that manages the entire internet, has shut down its social media presence on Twitter and moved to Mastodon, and is encouraging others to do the same.
@mastodonmigration@w3c "the organization that manages the entire internet" No, absolutely no. This sentence is so absurd that you should correct your toot.
@ernest, I just have a quick question. Looking at the kbin oauth documentation on codeberg and swagger, I got the impression that an authorization client needs to be registered on a server before a user can start using the API. This would be fine if kbin weren't federated, but what if a user wants to sign in to a different instance that doesn't have the oauth client I set up? Basically, I'm asking if there's a way to use the API without setting up the oauth client, but still be able to login to an account. Thanks
bto, bcc to not exist or be broadly disabled in AP (edit, to clarify: I want to and cc to take the meaning of bto and bcc in general; the functionality is useful, but in a social network it should be the default behavior and we have other mechanisms to tag people in)
I'm not sure what the issue is, but it doesn't seem to be specific to any thread or page. Just that sometimes, all voting & boosting on a page just doesn't work.
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.
This isn't a hurdle because people typically aren't going to the fediverse with the idea of "I want a single app for all my social media." That's not how social media works outside the fediverse, so it's not really going to be a surprise that the Twitter replacement is a Twitter replacement and not one for 5 other platforms. If someone really wants to view Reddit-style threads, they're straight up better of making an account on a different platform (just like they would make a different account for Reddit) because Mastodon is a microblogging site.
Even the best attempt to incorporate all these different types of content into Mastodon is going to further complicate the platform and make more people dismiss Mastodon as too complicated of a Twitter alternative. This isn't a situation where there's no harm at best. And the potential benefit? Lemmy comments having the occasional Mastodon user?
Mastodon itself is a good enough introduction to ActivityPub without needing to make it support other things. It shows how people on different servers can share & interact with a pool of media through the same protocol. When people learn about other platforms on the fediverse, they can go check those out. Just promoting the platforms will do the job fine without complicating people's entry into the fediverse.
I had a similar issue responding to something in /m/random yesterday, and I ended up making a new mircoblog on programming.dev (and mentioning people) instead. They saw it (and mentioned me) but I didn't get a notification and their replies don't show up even now here on kbin (I see the replies on one of their instances). EDIT: I should say the replies aren't visible on programming.dev either, not sure if that's part of it
If people who want to be on BlueSky end up on BlueSky, and people who want to be in the fediverse end up in the fediverse, we'll all be happier.
Tech details aside, I understand that the culture of BlueSky is "Twitter without Elon." I came to the fediverse looking for the same thing, but I've stayed because our culture isn't remotely like Twitter before Elon, either.
@Sheril "When it comes to policy issues like climate change and public health, they frequently held the perception that scientists lack a broader understanding of how their recommendations might impact the economy, national security, or simply, the next election."
I mean, yeah OK but also people are dying and entire agriculture communities are at risk from global climate changes that politicians ignored and that are impacting the economy and national security.
@gmph postanowił zintegrować Mastodona jako system do skomentowania jego wpisu. Widzę, że komentarze wyświetlają się tylko chronologicznie - bez wątkowania w szeroko omawianym artykule, takim jak ten, gwarantuje to nieczytelny bałagan.
A, i testuję, czy wpis z /kbin pojawi się pod artykułem
