JupiterRowland

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

First, Bluesky's nomadic identity isn't worth shit if nobody knows that there's more than one instance.

Next, it has yet to be proven to work because nobody has daily-driven it yet.

Finally, if you want nomadic identity that's actually proven to work, don't join Bluesky. Join Hubzilla. Nomadic identity, established in 2012, some four years before Mastodon, daily-driven by probably hundreds or thousands of people since then.

I'm not even kidding. The Fediverse had nomadic identity four years before it had Mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

No, but it used to. And that's enough for some people.

I bet you that there are people who steer clear of anything related to BASIC not because it's a kiddy language, but because it was invented by Bill Gates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Misskey and the actual Forkeys are in TypeScript and Vue.js. And they all have the same bugs that you can't just simply get rid of.

Iceshrimp.NET is a rewrite of Iceshrimp in C#, that's why it's named Iceshrimp.NET. It promises to get rid of all issues inherited from Misskey because it doesn't have a bit of Misskey left in it anymore.

But maybe we need more rewrites in more languages to satisfy as many people as possible. A Catodon rewrite in Ruby on Rails for Mastodon fanbois and fangurlz, no matter what a chonker it'll end up being. Sharkey rewritten in PHP to satisfy those who like things as easy and lightweight as Friendica & Co. And even more because not few say that both C# and Ruby on Rails and PHP suck.

Or is there anything that doesn't suck at all? Go sucks because Google. Rust sucks because Mozilla. Python sucks because it's Python being Python. And so forth.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

People want a 100%, 1:1, perfect clone of immediate pre-Musk Twitter. They want Twitter without Musk.

Bluesky is a 100%, 1:1, perfect clone of immediate pre-Musk Twitter. It is Twitter without Musk.

It looks exactly like Twitter, it feels exactly like Twitter (both the Web interface and the official app), and it's for tech-illiterate dumb-dumbs.

Only recently has an instance selector been added to the sign-up process of the official app, but Bluesky still markets itself to its users as the self-same kind of centralised monolithic silo as Twitter and Facebook.

Mastodon has a vastly different UI and UX from immediate pre-Musk Twitter, but people don't want to learn anything new. And truth be told, I've read from Misskey/Forkey users that Misskey and the Forkeys actually have an easier-to-use Web UI than Mastodon.

Also, Mastodon advertises the fact that it's decentralised with lots of instances to choose from, even though the gGmbH would rather want everyone to be on mastodon.social. This freaks people out.

Joining Mastodon is actually no more difficult than joining Bluesky in practice because the official app railroads everyone to mastodon.social without forcing them. But people won't know until they've actually installed and opened that app.

The only reason why Mastodon grew so quickly to such an enormous size in late 2022 was because it was the only alternative to Twitter that anyone knew, including those who pulled Twitter users onto Mastodon. The only other advantage it had over anything else was that, unlike Twitter, it didn't have Musk and uncontained droves of Nazis. Had people been sent to Akkoma or Calckey instead of Mastodon, it would have exploded the same.

Inb4 "How can people use e-mail then?" That's because everyone's on Gmail, and many think e-mail is a proprietary Google product.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Good to know.

Strangely, people don't seem to mind.

I guess then a key difference is that Bluesky is presented to 𝕏 users as the same kind of monolith as 𝕏 whereas Mastodon is presented to them as a huge number of instances from which they absolutely have to pick one.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If it randomly mentions other users, and if it comes in such masses that Mastodon admins have to raise the shields and Fediblock the hell out of dozens of instances, then it's spam all right.

That said, the last spam wave was organised on Misskey again, but carried out by bots from Mastodon instances largely abandoned by their admins. At least partially, this was the case for the first big spam wave as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Always post in this format:

Thread title
(Blank line)
@Lemmy_community @Friendica_group/Hubzilla_forum/(streams)_group @Guppe_group (optionally more Guppe groups)
(Blank line)
Post body
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Hubzilla. Closely followed by the intentionally nameless fork of a fork...... of Hubzilla that's colloquially being referred to as (streams).

Perks of both (excerpt):

  • not based on ActivityPub, it's actually optional; you can turn/keep it off if you want to
  • nomadic identity; my channels are resilient against instance shutdown because they aren't restricted to one instance
  • multiple channels = IDs on one and the same account/login; no need to register additional user accounts for this, and you can easily switch back and forth between channels
  • OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, both client-side and server-side support
  • very extensive permission settings that let me control what I see, what I don't see and what others can see and do
  • per-contact permission settings
  • per-channel blacklist/whitelist filter plus per-contact blacklist/whitelist filters plus keyword-triggered, automatically generated, reader-side content warnings, supporting regex and (except the latter) a special filter syntax for extra features
  • what's "lists" on Mastodon is actually useful because you can use it both to filter your stream and to limit whom you send a post to, not to mention much easier to maintain
  • a concept of conversations, you can follow entire discussions, and you generally receive all replies to a post (something that at least Mastodon doesn't have, by the way)
  • not only native support for discussion groups/forums, but they can and do host their own moderated discussion groups/forums (Mastodon has neither)
  • no arbitrary character limits, characters only limited by the instance database (on (streams), that's theoretically over 24,000,000 characters for one post)
  • probably more text formatting options than your typical blogging platform and definitely more than any microblogging project in the Fediverse
  • full-blown blog posts rendered gracefully
  • non-standard BBcode tags for special features, often observer-aware
  • embedded links; no need to plaster URLs into your posts in plain sight
  • images can be embedded "in-line" within the post with text above them and text below them
  • no limit on how many images a post can have
  • unlimited poll options
  • multiple-word hashtags
  • post categories in addition to hashtags
  • tag cloud plus category cloud/list
  • quotes
  • "quote-tweets"
  • extensively customisable Web UI
  • built-in file storage with a built-in file manager, per-file and per-directory permissions settings and WebDAV support that's used for images and other media you embed in your posts (unlike on Mastodon and Lemmy, you know where your uploaded images land, and you can delete them yourself if you need to)
  • federated event calendar with support for Event-type objects
  • built-in CalDAV calendar server (headless on (streams))
  • built-in CardDAV address book server (headless)
  • support for OAuth and OAuth2
  • modular; can be extended with official or, if available, third-party "apps", widgets and themes

Extra perks of Hubzilla:

  • currently more reliable
  • more active development
  • easier to get new users on board because hubs are listed on various Fediverse sites, and more public hubs are available
  • newer and more configurable version of the Redbasic theme
  • switchable night mode
  • multiple profiles per channel which can be assigned to certain connections
  • you can configure new connections before you confirm them
  • can also connect to diaspora*
  • can also subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds
  • event calendar also doubles as a basic frontend for the CalDAV server
  • non-federating, long-form articles
  • "cards" that work largely the same
  • built-in wiki engine based on either BBcode or Markdown for as many wikis of your own as you want to, each with as many pages as you want
  • support for webpages (the official Hubzilla website is on a Hubzilla channel itself)

Extra perks of (streams):

  • more advanced
  • better integration of ActivityPub into the two supported nomadic protocols
  • contact suggestions also include ActivityPub contacts
  • new default theme in addition to an older Redbasic version
  • reworked, more powerful but easier-to-use permissions system
  • easier to use once you're on board
  • supports BBcode, Markdown and HTML within the same post
  • can set Mastodon's sensitive flag for images
  • built-in announcement/boost/repost/renote/repeat remover, no need to use filter syntax for that
  • extra protection against both mention spam and hashtag spam
  • alt-text can be added to images upon upload, no need to graft it into the image-embedding markup code
  • verification of external identities (available on Mastodon as well, but not on Hubzilla)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

It technically still is in development. But all the devs lack time, and the devs themselves officialy recomment WriteFreely on the Plume website.

Even though Plume has features that are nothing but TBD plans for WriteFreely (e.g. comments, built-in image storage).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Ackchually, most of the Fediverse runs on professionally-operated Hetzner rack iron at huge data centres in Germany.

Even if this comes from 22% of the Fediverse being mastodon.social.

 

I've noticed that there isn't a single Lemmy community, Mbin magazine etc. for Fediverse memes.

Is that because 99.9% of the Threadiverse came directly from Reddit, almost all Lemmy communities and *bin magazines are outposts of subreddits, and Reddit doesn't meme the Fediverse because hardly anyone on Reddit knows the Fediverse in the first place?

Is it, in addition, because especially Lemmy is too detached from the rest of the Fediverse to know what's memeable and to really understand memes about the Fediverse outside Lemmy?

Or is it simply because Fediverse memes go into other, more general communites/magazines where they simply drown in the flood of other threads?

I mean, I barely see any memes about the Fediverse anywhere on Mastodon. That may be either because your typical Mastodonian is not cut from meme-maker wood, or your typical Mastodonian doesn't know enough about the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, or next to nobody hashtags their meme posts. so they're impossible to find.

And so I thought that this is more common in the Threadiverse, seeing as how meme-happy Reddit is.

 

I'm asking because it is really difficult to find a place for discussing accessibility in Fediverse posts beyond the limits of any one Fediverse server application.

I'm looking for something

  • in the Fediverse
  • with technology that supports discussions
  • where users know the Fediverse beyond whatever software that particular place is running on
  • where users know something about how and why to make Fediverse posts accessible for e.g. blind users
  • where users take this topic seriously instead of seeing it as a gimmick
  • where it's likely enough for someone to reply to posts

Mastodon takes accessibility very seriously. But Mastodon users never look beyond Mastodon. Every other Mastodon user doesn't even know that the Fediverse is more than only Mastodon. Most of those who do have no idea what the rest of the Fediverse is like, including what it can do that Mastodon can't, and what it can't do that Mastodon can. Many Mastodon users even reject the Fediverse outside Mastodon, and be it because it "refuses" to fully adopt Mastodon's culture and throw its own cultures overboard. This would include using features that Mastodon doesn't have. You're easily being muted or blocked upon first strike if you dare to post more than 500 characters at once.

I myself am mostly on Hubzilla. Not only is Hubzilla vastly more powerful than Mastodon, it is also vastly different, and being older than Mastodon as well, it had grown its own culture before Mastodon came along. Still, three out of four Mastodon users have never even heard of the existence of Hubzilla, and many who do are likely to think it's basically Mastodon with a higher character count, extra stuff glued on and a clunky UI.

If you try to discuss Fediverse accessibility on Mastodon, you end up only discussing Mastodon accessibility with exactly zero regards, understanding or interest for what the rest of the Fediverse is like.

Besides, Mastodon has no good support for conversations and no real concept of threads. It is impossible to follow a discussion thread or to even only know that there have been new replies without having been mentioned in these replies. Thus, any attempt at discussing something on Mastodon is futile.

Hubzilla itself is great for discussions. It even has had groups/forums as a feature from the very beginning. In practice, however, it has precious few forums. The same applies to (streams) even more.

Discussing Fediverse accessibility is completely futile on both. They don't "do accessibility". To their users, alt-text is some fad that was invented on Mastodon, and Hubzilla and (streams) don't do Mastodon crap, full stop. In fact, their users hate Mastodon with a passion for deliberately, intentionally being so limited and trying to push its own limitations, its proprietary, non-standard solutions and its culture upon the rest of the Fediverse. At the same time, they don't really know that much about Mastodon, and they aren't interested in it.

Most of this applies to Friendica as well, but Hubzilla and (streams) users sometimes go as far as disabling ActivityPub altogether to keep Mastodon and the other ActivityPub-based microblogging projects out, and they don't care if Friendica ends up collateral damage. They hate the non-nomadic majority of the Fediverse that much.

If you try to discuss Fediverse accessibility on Hubzilla, nobody would know what you're even talking about, and nobody would want to know because they take it for another stupid Mastodon fad. They probably don't even understand why I accept connection requests from Mastodon in the first place.

Here on Lemmy, I've seen a number of dedicated accessibility communities. But they seem to be only about accessibility on the greater Web and in real life and not a bit about accessibility in the Fediverse specifically. I'm not even sure if Lemmy itself "does accessibility" in any way. And I'm not sure how aware Lemmy is of the Fediverse beyond Lemmy, /kbin and Mastodon.

Besides, these communities aren't much more than the admin posting stuff and nobody ever replying. So I guess trying to actually discuss something there is completely useless. If I post a question, I'll probably never get a reply.

The reason why I'm asking here first is because this community is actually active enough for people to reply to posts. But I'm not sure if it's good for discussing super-specific details about making non-Threadiverse Fediverse posts accessible.

 

I've stumbled upon a weird phenomenon here on sh.itjust.works.

A couple of days ago, [email protected] was launched. I was able to subscribe to it from Hubzilla, and I know that several people were able to subscribe to it from Mastodon.

Just recently, probably coinciding with the 0.18.0 upgrade the community seemed to have disappeared, just to resurface a few hours later.

Afterwards, I tried to post to that community from Hubzilla. I've successfully posted to test communities on various other Lemmy instances from the same Hubzilla channel successfully. This time, however, I didn't see the post appear, neither on Lemmy itself nor on Hubzilla outside my personal stream. Even 17 hours later, the post appeared nowhere.

@[email protected], creator and sole moderator of !opensim, said she couldn't access the community from Mastodon either. She couldn't even find it by searching for it.

I tried to search for it myself, both on Hubzilla and on a Mastodon account I use with a different identity. While I could easily find communities on other Lemmy instances, I could not find !opensim.

Strangely, I couldn't find !main either. Again, neither from Hubzilla nor from Mastodon.

At first glance, it looked like sh.itjust.works either had problems federating with anything that isn't Lemmy, problems other instances don't have, or it had massively defederated or something.

So I created an account here to report this issue. And even more strangely, all of a sudden, I can see posts in !opensim when I'm logged in, even one that was done before the upgrade. When I'm logged out, I still can't see them.

What could possibly have caused these phenomena, and how, if at all, could they possibly be overcome?

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