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#cwalttextmeta — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cwalttextmeta, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Jupiter Rowland @[email protected] ·
    @TeflonTrout :bc: he/him @Sharp Leaves Still, forcing Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon literally everyone in the Fediverse is bad.

    Maybe you haven't heard about this yet, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been only Mastodon. It didn't even start with Mastodon. And it doesn't entirely work like Mastodon either.

    For starters, this means that just because you see it on Mastodon, it didn't necessarily originate on Mastodon.

    There are places in the Fediverse that are vastly older than Mastodon, and that are very different from Mastodon. Thus, they have their own culture, based on their own technology and their own features and where their users came from, and largely without any influences from Mastodon.

    The oldest still existing server software in the Fediverse is not Mastodon from 2016. It's Friendica (https://friendi.ca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica). Friendica is essentially a mixture of a Facebook alternative and fully-featured long-form blogging. No Twitter or Mastodon influence anywhere. And Friendica first came out in May, 2010, five years and eight months before Mastodon.

    Friendica did not intrude into the Mastodon Fediverse that was created by Eugen Rochko as a Mastodon-only network. Mastodon was born into an already existing Fediverse that consisted of at least Friendica, Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) and GNU social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social; now defunct).

    Here's how Friendica differs from Mastodon in ways that may disturb Mastodon hardliners:
    • Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. This character limit is deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture.
      Friendica doesn't have an arbitrary character limit; it's limited by the maximum size of the database field for the post text. Currently, this is 16,777,215 characters. Thus, Friendica doesn't have keeping messages short in its culture, it never has, and it never will.
    • Mastodon users tend to be eager to block anyone who doesn't cut long posts into pieces of no more than 500 characters each.
      I know at least one Friendica veteran who blocks everyone upon first strike who does cut long posts into annoying strings of tiny chunks.
    • Mastodon introduced a CW field in 2017.
      Friendica has had the exact same field as a summary/abstract field since its own beginning in 2010. That, and Friendica has always had a much more efficient way of handling CWs, one that Mastodon itself adopted with version 4.0 in October, 2022. Thus, by its technology and culture, Friendica users despise misusing their abstract field to force the same CW upon everyone out there with a hot, flaming passion.
      So if you see someone "misusing" the CW field for "a subject or a summary or whatever that is," that might not be a clueless Mastodon user. Instead, it might be a Friendica user who has been around for a dozen years longer than you, who is used to living by Friendica's culture, and who knows tons more about the Fediverse than you do.
    • Friendica users are much less likely to add alt-texts to their images. That's for two reasons.
      One, Friendica's culture is not an idealised version of pre-Musk, very-left-wing Twitter's culture. It does not include attacking and punishing everyone who doesn't add 100% hand-written, 100% accurate, sufficiently detailed alt-texts to their images.
      Two, Friendica handles images drastically differently from Mastodon. Mastodon always has a nifty little entry field for alt-texts whenever you attach an image. On Friendica, images are embedded into posts rather than attached to them, like in a blog post. And oftentimes, you literally have to program the alt-text into the raw image embedding markup code.
    • On Mastodon, it's considered intrusive and reply-guying to reply to someone who hasn't mentioned you, and to whom you aren't mutually connected. You couldn't possibly have received the toot that you're replying to otherwise.
      On Friendica, that's perfectly normal. Friendica doesn't show you single messages by default. It always shows you the entire conversation thread, all the way up to the start post, with all branches. Thus, neither Friendica's technology nor Friendica's culture rules out replying to any comment in the thread.
    • Mastodon has only just introduced Twitter-style quote-posts a few months ago. With a safety feature that only works on Mastodon and GoToSocial for fear of that feature being used for harassment and dogpiling just like on Twitter. And because literally everyone on Mastodon comes from Twitter, it's actually being used for harassment and dogpiling.
      Friendica has had that very same feature since its inception in 2010, over a decade and a half longer. It has never not had this feature. It has always been able to quote-post any public message in the Fediverse. But since Friendica is not entirely populated by former Twitter users, it hasn't been used for harassment or dogpiling even once. It's only used to forward content. For most of the time, it literally was the only available way to forward a message.
    • Mastodon users tend to be very protective and defensive about their allegedly Mastodon-only Fediverse.
      Friendica users are used to being able to connect with everything that moves and then some. It's one of Friendica's key features that it speaks a whole lot of protocols, not just ActivityPub.
      Whereas Mastodon users see Mastodon as a "decentralised walled garden", Friendica users see Friendica as the gateway to the whole federated social Web plus some places that aren't, strictly speaking, federated.
    • Mastodon users will staunchly insist that "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" essentially mean the same because they believe they do. They will attack anyone who claims otherwise.
      Friendica users will staunchly insist that there's a huge difference between "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" because they actually know there is one. They will lecture anyone who claims otherwise.

    Of course, from a Mastodon point of view, it's both tempting and fully justified to tell the Friendica users that this is the Mastodon Fediverse, and that they will have to adapt the Mastodon culture and abolish their own culture or be thrown out. But for one, Mastodon's culture doesn't fit Friendica's technology.

    Besides, that'd literally be like European settlers holding Native Americans at gunpoint and forcing them to give up their own culture, adopt European culture and convert to Catholic Christianity or else. The only difference is that European settlers, unlike the Mastodon users, did not think that they were there first, and that everyone else is an intruder.

    I mean, sure, go ahead and attack anyone who doesn't strictly live by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules if you think you have to. But prepare for a whole lot of defence and even counter-attacks from Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, GoToSocial, Hollo, snac2, Mitra, Socialhome, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and the rest of the non-Mastodon Fediverse.

    CC: @Jan Wildeboer

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse
    #mastodonisnotthefediverse #fediverseisnotmastodon #cwcharacterlimitmeta #contentwarningmeta #characterlimitmeta #cwfediversemeta
  2. Jupiter Rowland @[email protected] ·
    @Tor Iver Wilhelmsen For starters, making it a hard technical requirement on the server side would exclude and discriminate against
    • actually blind or visually-impaired people who do post images regardless
    • neurodivergent people who, due to their disability, are incapable of turning images into words

    Besides, what's "the platform"? Only Mastodon or the whole Fediverse?

    Just in case you didn't know: The Fediverse server applications that can send posts with images and other media onto your timeline include, but aren't limited to:
    • Mastodon
    • Glitch
    • Hometown
    • Pleroma
    • Akkoma
    • Misskey
    • Calckey
    • Firefish
    • Iceshrimp-JS
    • Iceshrimp.NET
    • CherryPick
    • Sharkey
    • Meisskey
    • GoToSocial
    • snac
    • Hollo
    • Tootik
    • Mitra
    • micro.blog
    • Smithereen
    • Socialhome
    • Friendica
    • Hubzilla (that's what this comment came from)
    • (streams)
    • Forte
    • Pixelfed
    • Vernissage
    • PeerTube
    • Loops
    • Plume
    • WriteFreely (needs an external image host, but still)
    • WordPress
    • Ghost
    • nodeBB
    • Lemmy
    • /kbin
    • Mbin
    • PieFed

    If "the platform" means something with one development team, it's only Mastodon. And everything else I've listed above, and then some, is free to keep alt-text optional.

    If "the platform" means the whole Fediverse, this means that well over 100 Fediverse server applications, all being developed independently from another and especially from Mastodon, often working vastly differently from Mastodon, would have to make it impossible to post images without alt-text. This, by the way, is next to impossible to implement on at least some of them due to the way they handle images and therefore alt-text.

    And you can be certain about one thing: If the Mastodon developers add something to Mastodon, it's very unlikely that Mario Vavti and Harald Eilertsen, the Hubzilla developers, and Mike Macgirvin, inventor of Friendica and Hubzilla and still developer of (streams) and Forte, will follow suit. Other server applications won't because they're dead in spite of still having running servers (Calckey, Firefish, /kbin etc.), they're in maintenance mode which means they won't get new features (Iceshrimp-JS), or their development is on hold (Plume).

    CC: @Dgar

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Blind #VisuallyImpaired #Neurodivergent #Neurodivergence
    #mastodonisnotthefediverse #fediverseisnotmastodon #visuallyimpaired #cwfediversemeta #notonlymastodon #neurodivergence
  3. Jupiter Rowland @[email protected] ·
    @Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦 This would require three things, however.

    One, any Fediverse server software would have to be capable of altering comments from any Fediverse software. Don't think that posts, comments etc. aren't formatted the same everywhere. They aren't.

    For example, Mastodon would have to know and understand that it would have to remove @⁠[email protected] from Misskey, Sharkey, CherryPick, Iceshrimp etc. notes, @[url⁠=https://mas.to/users/osma]Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦[/url] from Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte comments and an invisible shadow mention from (streams) and Forte comments, too.

    Two, anyone in the Fediverse would have to always have full and unlimited permission to alter everyone else's content without their consent. This is particularly crucial in the cases of Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte with their highly advanced and fine-grained permissions systems that don't even cover having your content altered by others.

    Three, edits on any Fediverse software must always be federated to absolutely everywhere and anywhere in the Fediverse, no exceptions, regardless of software. AFAIK, there is Fediverse server software that still doesn't understand edits at all, and that will either ignore received edits or understand them as and treat them like new posts.

    It's very similar to the wish for being able to edit alt-texts into other people's posts which seems to pretty much always come from people who think that the Fediverse is only Mastodon, or at least that everything in the Fediverse is like Mastodon plus one or two extra features.

    And let's be honest: If you give especially Mastodon users the ability to alter other people's posts, they will want to alter other people's posts in lots of other ways. Like, delete summaries on Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte posts because they're "abuse of the CW field" from a "Fediverse = Mastodon" point of view. Remove all hashtags but four, regardless of these hashtags triggering the automated, individual, reader-side content warnings that have existed in the Friendica family since five and a half years before Mastodon was first published. Cutting "long posts" (= everything over 500 characters) down to a maximum of 500 characters because "the Fediverse was invented by Eugen Rochko for only microblogging". Even removing any and all mentions of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Removing text formatting because "it has no place in a Twitter alternative". Or removing all contents from posts or comments altogether.

    Of course, the very same Mastodon users will completely flip their shit if a Friendica user comes and copies their 20-post threads into one long post, deletes the contents of the 19 follow-ups afterwards and replaces the content warning in the abstract field (= their CW field) with an actual abstract, just to fit it into a Fediverse culture that's way older than Mastodon itself.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Misskey #Sharkey #CherryPick #Iceshrimp #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mention #Mentions #MentionTag #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Permission #Permissions
    #mastodonisnotthefediverse #fediverseisnotmastodon #cwfediversemeta #notonlymastodon #fediversemeta #cwalttextmeta
  4. Jupiter Rowland @[email protected] ·
    Are you referring to my mentions being @Erik :heart_agender: and @Roknrol rather than what you're used to, namely @⁠bright_helpings and @⁠roknrol? Using the long name rather than the short name and keeping the @ outside the link rather than making it part of the link? Likewise, the # being outside the hashtag link rather than being part of it?

    This is because I'm not on Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been. So this is not a toot.

    No, really. This is what I post from: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland, https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/profile/jupiter_rowland. I ask you: Does this look like Mastodon? Have you ever seen Mastodon look like this?

    Where I am, this style of mentions and hashtags is hard-coded. And it has been since long before Mastodon was even an idea.

    I'm on something named Hubzilla. Hubzilla is not a Mastodon instance. Hubzilla is not a Mastodon fork either. Hubzilla has got absolutely nothing to do with Mastodon at all.

    It is its very own project, fully independent from Mastodon (https://hubzilla.org, https://framagit.org/hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla).

    Hubzilla has not intruded into "the Mastodon Fediverse" either. The Fediverse is older than Mastodon. And Hubzilla was there before Mastodon.

    Hubzilla was launched by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ in March, 2015, eight months before Mastodon, by renaming and redesigning his own Red Matrix from 2012, almost four years before Mastodon. And the Red Matrix was a fork of a fork of his own Friendica, which was launched on July 2nd, 2010, 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon. (https://en.wikipedia.org/Friendica, https://friendi.ca, https://github.com/friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica)

    Friendica was there before Mastodon, too.

    Here's the official Friendica/Hubzilla timeline on Hubzilla's official website to show you that I'm not making anything up: https://hubzilla.org/page/info/timeline. Scroll all the way down and notice all the features that you may right now know for a fact that the Fediverse doesn't have, but that Friendica has introduced to the Fediverse 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon was launched.

    Again, Mastodon has never been its own network. The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. When Mastodon was launched in January, 2016, it immediately federated with

    Friendica has been formatting mentions and hashtags the way I just did for 15 years now. When Mastodon was launched, Friendica has been formatting them that way for five and a half years already, and Hubzilla has done so for ten months. It is hard-coded there. It is not a user option.

    That's because not everything in the Fediverse is a Twitter clone or Twitter alternative. [b]Friendica was designed as a Facebook alternative with full-blown long-form blogging capability. And Hubzilla adds even more stuff to this. This is why Friendica and Hubzilla don't mimic Twitter.

    Another shocking fact: As you can clearly see here, Friendica and Hubzilla don't have Mastodon's 500-character limit. Friendica's character limit is 200,000. Hubzilla's character limit is 16,777,215, the maximum length of the database field. And it's deeply engrained in their culture, which is many years older than Mastodon's culture, to not worry about the length of a post exceeding 500 characters.

    One more shocking fact: Friendica has had quote-posts since its very beginning. So has Hubzilla. Both have always been able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot, and they will forever remain able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot. And Mastodon will never be able to do anything against it. (By the way: In 15 years of Friendica, nobody has ever used quote-posts for dogpiling or harassment purposes. Neither Friendica nor Hubzilla is Twitter.)

    You find this disturbing? You think none of this should exist in the Fediverse, even though all this has been in the Fediverse for longer than Mastodon?

    Then go ahead and block all instances of Friendica and Hubzilla as well as all instances of Mike's later creations, (streams) (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams) from 2021 and Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) from 2024.

    Or you could go ask @Seirdy / DM me the word "bread" and @Garden Fence Blocklist as well as @Mad Villain of @The Bad Space to add every last instance on any of these lists to their blocklists for being "rampantly and unabashedly ableist and xenophobic by design" due to not being and acting and working like Mastodon and just as rampantly and unabashedly refusing to fully adopt and adapt to the Mastodon-centric "Fediverse culture" as defined by fresh Twitter refugees on Mastodon in mid-2022 as well as refusing to abandon their own culture which is disturbingly incompatible with Mastodon's. Essentially try and have four entire Fediverse server applications Fediblocked once and for all because they're so disturbing from a "Fediverse equals Mastodon" point of view.

    Or you could go to Mastodon's GitHub repository (https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon), submit a feature request for defederating Mastodon from everything that isn't Mastodon by design and then go lobbying for support for your feature request.

    As for why I have so many hashtags below my comments, here is what they mean. Many of them are meant to trigger filters, including such that automatically hide posts behind content warning buttons, a feature that Mastodon has had since October, 2022, that Friendica has had since July, 2010, and that Hubzilla has had since March, 2015.

    • #Long, #LongPost = This post is over 500 characters long. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see my or anyone else's long posts.
    • #CWLong, #CWLongPost = CW: long post (over 500 characters long). Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see my or anyone else's long posts.
    • #FediMeta, #FediverseMeta = This post talks about the Fediverse. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone talk about the Fediverse.
    • #CWFediMeta, #CWFediverseMeta = CW: Fediverse meta. Or: CW: Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta. Or: CW: Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone talk about the Fediverse.
    • #NotOnlyMastodon, #FediverseIsNotMastodon, #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse: This post talks about the Fediverse not only being Mastodon. Create a filter for either or multiple or all of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about the Fediverse being more than Mastodon. Otherwise, click or tap any of these hashtags to read more about it in your Fediverse app.
    • #Friendica: This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse named Friendica. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Friendica. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
    • #Hubzilla: This post talks about the Swiss army knif of the Fediverse named Hubzilla. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Hubzilla. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
    • #Streams, #(streams): This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse commonly referred to as (streams). Create a filter for either or both of them if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Friendica. Otherwise, click or tap either of them to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
    • #Forte: This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse named Forte. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Forte. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
    • #AltText = This post talks about alt-text and/or contains an image with alt-text. It is primarily meant for post discovery.
    • #AltTextMeta = This post talks about alt-text. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about alt-text.
    • #CWAltTextMeta = CW: alt-text meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about alt-text.
    • #ImageDescription = This post talks about image descriptions and/or contains an image with an image description. It is primarily meant for post discovery.
    • #ImageDescriptions, #ImageDescriptionMeta = This post talks about image descriptions. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about image descriptions.
    • #CWImageDescriptionMeta = CW: image description meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about image descriptions.
    • #Hashtag, #Hashtags, #HashtagMeta = This post talks about hashtags. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about hashtags.
    • #CWHashtagMeta = CW: hashtag meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about hashtags.
    • #CharacterLimit, #CharacterLimits = This post is talking about character limits. It is primarily meant for post discovery. But if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about character limits, create a filter for any of these hashtags.
    • #QuotePost, #QuoteTweet, #QuoteToot, #QuoteBoost = This post talks about quote-posts and/or contains a quote-post. If this disturbs you, create a filter for any of these hashtags.
    • #QuotePosts, #QuoteTweets, #QuoteToots, #QuoteBoosts, #QuotedShares = This post talks about quote-posts. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about quote-posts.
    • #QuotePostDebate, #QuoteTootDebate = This post talks about quote-posts. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about quote-posts.
    • #FediblockMeta = This post is talking about fediblocks. It is primarily meant for post discovery.

    Lastly: Having all hashtags in one line at the very end of a post that only contains hashtags is the preferred way in the Fediverse. For one, hashtags in their own line at the end of the post irritate screen reader users much less than hashtags in the middle of the text. It's actually hashtags in the middle of the text that are ableist. Besides, Mastodon is explicitly designed to have a separate hashtag line at the end of the post.
    #mastodonisnotthefediverse #fediverseisnotmastodon #cwimagedescriptionmeta #imagedescriptionmeta #imagedescriptions #imagedescription