#fediversemeta — Public Fediverse posts

@fedi (ツ) Es soll nur "sehr große Online-Plattformen" (VLOPs) und "sehr große Online-Suchmaschinen" (VLOSEs) betreffen. Also in Größenordnungen von zig Millionen monatlich aktiven Usern.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses

Selbst wenn das Fediverse als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen wird, kommt es nicht annähernd in diese Dimensionen.

Und das Fediverse wird nicht als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen. Das geht gar nicht, und das wird auch die EU-Kommission begreifen. Denn es gibt niemanden, der zentral für das ganze Fediverse verantwortlich ist. Das Fediverse hat nicht eine ladungsfähige Adresse, sondern zigtausende.

Wir reden hier eher über weit über 45.000 Einzel-"Plattformen". Zugegeben, davon kann man diejenigen Anwendungen abziehen, die eh nur Einzelnutzeranwendungen sind, wie die gut 10.000 Ghost-Instanzen. Die EU-Kommission müßte trotzdem jeden verbleibenden Server einzeln überprüfen und jeden Serverbetreiber einzeln juristisch zur Rechenschaft ziehen.

Selbst mastodon.social ist mit gut 720.000 monatlich aktiven Usern weit davon entfernt, eine VLOP zu sein, und winzige Server kaum bekannter Fediverse-Anwendungen erst recht.

Die EU-Kommission wird kein Riesenfaß aufmachen, weil ein öffentlicher Forte-Server mit Freizeitadmin und fünf monatlich aktiven Usern keine wirksame Alterskontrolle hat. Das Resultat, wenn es denn eins gibt, rechtfertigt den bürokratischen, juristischen und letztlich monetären Aufwand nicht.

Man muß sich einfach mal überlegen: Wieviel Aufwand ist es für die EU, eine "Online-Plattform" wegen unzureichender oder fehlender Alterskontrolle zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen? Wie lange dauert das, was bindet das an Personal, was kostet das?

So, und selbst wenn wir im Fediverse nur Server mit mindestens zehn aktiven Usern pro Monat betrachten, überlegen wir uns mal, was es für ein Aufwand wäre, das gut 3.600x zu machen. Wenn wir jeden Server jeder Software betrachten, die mehrere User auf einem Server ermöglicht (also auch WordPress, wo die Mehrzahl der Instanzen Einzelblogs sind, aber öffentliche Bloggingserver technisch möglich sind), sind wir weit im fünfstelligen Bereich.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #KidsAct

@fedi (ツ) Es soll nur "sehr große Online-Plattformen" (VLOPs) und "sehr große Online-Suchmaschinen" (VLOSEs) betreffen. Also in Größenordnungen von zig Millionen monatlich aktiven Usern.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses

Selbst wenn das Fediverse als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen wird, kommt es nicht annähernd in diese Dimensionen.

Und das Fediverse wird nicht als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen. Das geht gar nicht, und das wird auch die EU-Kommission begreifen. Denn es gibt niemanden, der zentral für das ganze Fediverse verantwortlich ist. Das Fediverse hat nicht eine ladungsfähige Adresse, sondern zigtausende.

Wir reden hier eher über weit über 45.000 Einzel-"Plattformen". Zugegeben, davon kann man diejenigen Anwendungen abziehen, die eh nur Einzelnutzeranwendungen sind, wie die gut 10.000 Ghost-Instanzen. Die EU-Kommission müßte trotzdem jeden verbleibenden Server einzeln überprüfen und jeden Serverbetreiber einzeln juristisch zur Rechenschaft ziehen.

Selbst mastodon.social ist mit gut 720.000 monatlich aktiven Usern weit davon entfernt, eine VLOP zu sein, und winzige Server kaum bekannter Fediverse-Anwendungen erst recht.

Die EU-Kommission wird kein Riesenfaß aufmachen, weil ein öffentlicher Forte-Server mit Freizeitadmin und fünf monatlich aktiven Usern keine wirksame Alterskontrolle hat. Das Resultat, wenn es denn eins gibt, rechtfertigt den bürokratischen, juristischen und letztlich monetären Aufwand nicht.

Man muß sich einfach mal überlegen: Wieviel Aufwand ist es für die EU, eine "Online-Plattform" wegen unzureichender oder fehlender Alterskontrolle zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen? Wie lange dauert das, was bindet das an Personal, was kostet das?

So, und selbst wenn wir im Fediverse nur Server mit mindestens zehn aktiven Usern pro Monat betrachten, überlegen wir uns mal, was es für ein Aufwand wäre, das gut 3.600x zu machen. Wenn wir jeden Server jeder Software betrachten, die mehrere User auf einem Server ermöglicht (also auch WordPress, wo die Mehrzahl der Instanzen Einzelblogs sind, aber öffentliche Bloggingserver technisch möglich sind), sind wir weit im fünfstelligen Bereich.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #KidsAct

@fedi (ツ) Es soll nur "sehr große Online-Plattformen" (VLOPs) und "sehr große Online-Suchmaschinen" (VLOSEs) betreffen. Also in Größenordnungen von zig Millionen monatlich aktiven Usern.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses

Selbst wenn das Fediverse als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen wird, kommt es nicht annähernd in diese Dimensionen.

Und das Fediverse wird nicht als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen. Das geht gar nicht, und das wird auch die EU-Kommission begreifen. Denn es gibt niemanden, der zentral für das ganze Fediverse verantwortlich ist. Das Fediverse hat nicht eine ladungsfähige Adresse, sondern zigtausende.

Wir reden hier eher über weit über 45.000 Einzel-"Plattformen". Zugegeben, davon kann man diejenigen Anwendungen abziehen, die eh nur Einzelnutzeranwendungen sind, wie die gut 10.000 Ghost-Instanzen. Die EU-Kommission müßte trotzdem jeden verbleibenden Server einzeln überprüfen und jeden Serverbetreiber einzeln juristisch zur Rechenschaft ziehen.

Selbst mastodon.social ist mit gut 720.000 monatlich aktiven Usern weit davon entfernt, eine VLOP zu sein, und winzige Server kaum bekannter Fediverse-Anwendungen erst recht.

Die EU-Kommission wird kein Riesenfaß aufmachen, weil ein öffentlicher Forte-Server mit Freizeitadmin und fünf monatlich aktiven Usern keine wirksame Alterskontrolle hat. Das Resultat, wenn es denn eins gibt, rechtfertigt den bürokratischen, juristischen und letztlich monetären Aufwand nicht.

Man muß sich einfach mal überlegen: Wieviel Aufwand ist es für die EU, eine "Online-Plattform" wegen unzureichender oder fehlender Alterskontrolle zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen? Wie lange dauert das, was bindet das an Personal, was kostet das?

So, und selbst wenn wir im Fediverse nur Server mit mindestens zehn aktiven Usern pro Monat betrachten, überlegen wir uns mal, was es für ein Aufwand wäre, das gut 3.600x zu machen. Wenn wir jeden Server jeder Software betrachten, die mehrere User auf einem Server ermöglicht (also auch WordPress, wo die Mehrzahl der Instanzen Einzelblogs sind, aber öffentliche Bloggingserver technisch möglich sind), sind wir weit im fünfstelligen Bereich.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #KidsAct

@fedi (ツ) Es soll nur "sehr große Online-Plattformen" (VLOPs) und "sehr große Online-Suchmaschinen" (VLOSEs) betreffen. Also in Größenordnungen von zig Millionen monatlich aktiven Usern.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses

Selbst wenn das Fediverse als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen wird, kommt es nicht annähernd in diese Dimensionen.

Und das Fediverse wird nicht als Ganzes als eine zusammenhängende Plattform angesehen. Das geht gar nicht, und das wird auch die EU-Kommission begreifen. Denn es gibt niemanden, der zentral für das ganze Fediverse verantwortlich ist. Das Fediverse hat nicht eine ladungsfähige Adresse, sondern zigtausende.

Wir reden hier eher über weit über 45.000 Einzel-"Plattformen". Zugegeben, davon kann man diejenigen Anwendungen abziehen, die eh nur Einzelnutzeranwendungen sind, wie die gut 10.000 Ghost-Instanzen. Die EU-Kommission müßte trotzdem jeden verbleibenden Server einzeln überprüfen und jeden Serverbetreiber einzeln juristisch zur Rechenschaft ziehen.

Selbst mastodon.social ist mit gut 720.000 monatlich aktiven Usern weit davon entfernt, eine VLOP zu sein, und winzige Server kaum bekannter Fediverse-Anwendungen erst recht.

Die EU-Kommission wird kein Riesenfaß aufmachen, weil ein öffentlicher Forte-Server mit Freizeitadmin und fünf monatlich aktiven Usern keine wirksame Alterskontrolle hat. Das Resultat, wenn es denn eins gibt, rechtfertigt den bürokratischen, juristischen und letztlich monetären Aufwand nicht.

Man muß sich einfach mal überlegen: Wieviel Aufwand ist es für die EU, eine "Online-Plattform" wegen unzureichender oder fehlender Alterskontrolle zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen? Wie lange dauert das, was bindet das an Personal, was kostet das?

So, und selbst wenn wir im Fediverse nur Server mit mindestens zehn aktiven Usern pro Monat betrachten, überlegen wir uns mal, was es für ein Aufwand wäre, das gut 3.600x zu machen. Wenn wir jeden Server jeder Software betrachten, die mehrere User auf einem Server ermöglicht (also auch WordPress, wo die Mehrzahl der Instanzen Einzelblogs sind, aber öffentliche Bloggingserver technisch möglich sind), sind wir weit im fünfstelligen Bereich.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #KidsAct

@Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸 They don't.

First of all, that'd require searching the entire Fediverse for accounts and channels that have blocked you. Your Mastodon account has no records of who has blocked you, that's why searching is necessary.

Also, it'd require remotely re-writing the block settings on accounts and channels of every Fediverse software, from Mastodon to Hubzilla which works absolutely nothing like Mastodon internally.

Lastly, next to the huge effort, that'd simply be a stupid idea.

Even nomadic identity (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic_identity) doesn't provide this feature. That has to say something.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #NomadicIdentity #Block #BlockMeta #CWBlockMeta

@Jill ☁️ @Friedemann Das stimmt nicht so ganz. Hubzilla hat die Hubzilla Association, an die man sich wenden kann. Zu der gehört auch einer der beiden Kernentwickler.

Offizielle Website (als Ausgangspunkt): https://hubzilla.org/

Hubzilla Association: https://hubzilla.org/page/info/association

Impressum der Hubzilla Association: https://hubzilla.org/page/info/imprint

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #HubzillaAssociation

@Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: First of all, you completely forgot the social media posters. The TOC link leads nowhere.

Also, maybe it's fair to mention that I'm working on an entire wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions, especially for the Fediverse. 46 pages are planned as of now, 24 of them are already written. These will include over 30 pages on how to do things, how not to do things and what never to do at all.

I won't add step-by-step guides for certain frontends. But I've already started adding rules and guidelines for how to describe images appropriately and write alt-texts in a way that won't break stuff anywhere.

Even if it's a very incomplete WIP, it's unique in several ways:

• It's the only wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions. Few writers have even only written multiple pages or articles on this subject.
• It's the only guide that takes the existence of the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into consideration. This means that it's also the only guide that doesn't assume that Fediverse equals always having only 500 characters for the message text. It actually recommends an additional, longer image description in the message text in certain situations, regardless of whether or not vanilla Mastodon users can do that.
• It's the only guide that, instead of regurgitating the alt-text rules for webpages and blogs and assuming that they apply to the Fediverse just the same, talks about the peculiarities of posting images into the Fediverse, how Mastodon's alt-text quality criteria are different from the W3C WAI and WCAG alt-text quality criteria, and why it's critically important to know and fulfill Mastodon's requirements for good alt-texts.
• It's probably the only guide that doesn't assume that you can always precisely target a certain audience for your content and make sure that only those receive it who understand it right off the bat.
• It is the only guide that lists over 60 references, including your blog post, but also including university webpages as well as over two dozen guides from Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: First of all, you completely forgot the social media posters. The TOC link leads nowhere.

Also, maybe it's fair to mention that I'm working on an entire wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions, especially for the Fediverse. 46 pages are planned as of now, 24 of them are already written. These will include over 30 pages on how to do things, how not to do things and what never to do at all.

I won't add step-by-step guides for certain frontends. But I've already started adding rules and guidelines for how to describe images appropriately and write alt-texts in a way that won't break stuff anywhere.

Even if it's a very incomplete WIP, it's unique in several ways:

• It's the only wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions. Few writers have even only written multiple pages or articles on this subject.
• It's the only guide that takes the existence of the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into consideration. This means that it's also the only guide that doesn't assume that Fediverse equals always having only 500 characters for the message text. It actually recommends an additional, longer image description in the message text in certain situations, regardless of whether or not vanilla Mastodon users can do that.
• It's the only guide that, instead of regurgitating the alt-text rules for webpages and blogs and assuming that they apply to the Fediverse just the same, talks about the peculiarities of posting images into the Fediverse, how Mastodon's alt-text quality criteria are different from the W3C WAI and WCAG alt-text quality criteria, and why it's critically important to know and fulfill Mastodon's requirements for good alt-texts.
• It's probably the only guide that doesn't assume that you can always precisely target a certain audience for your content and make sure that only those receive it who understand it right off the bat.
• It is the only guide that lists over 60 references, including your blog post, but also including university webpages as well as over two dozen guides from Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: First of all, you completely forgot the social media posters. The TOC link leads nowhere.

Also, maybe it's fair to mention that I'm working on an entire wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions, especially for the Fediverse. 46 pages are planned as of now, 24 of them are already written. These will include over 30 pages on how to do things, how not to do things and what never to do at all.

I won't add step-by-step guides for certain frontends. But I've already started adding rules and guidelines for how to describe images appropriately and write alt-texts in a way that won't break stuff anywhere.

Even if it's a very incomplete WIP, it's unique in several ways:

• It's the only wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions. Few writers have even only written multiple pages or articles on this subject.
• It's the only guide that takes the existence of the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into consideration. This means that it's also the only guide that doesn't assume that Fediverse equals always having only 500 characters for the message text. It actually recommends an additional, longer image description in the message text in certain situations, regardless of whether or not vanilla Mastodon users can do that.
• It's the only guide that, instead of regurgitating the alt-text rules for webpages and blogs and assuming that they apply to the Fediverse just the same, talks about the peculiarities of posting images into the Fediverse, how Mastodon's alt-text quality criteria are different from the W3C WAI and WCAG alt-text quality criteria, and why it's critically important to know and fulfill Mastodon's requirements for good alt-texts.
• It's probably the only guide that doesn't assume that you can always precisely target a certain audience for your content and make sure that only those receive it who understand it right off the bat.
• It is the only guide that lists over 60 references, including your blog post, but also including university webpages as well as over two dozen guides from Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: First of all, you completely forgot the social media posters. The TOC link leads nowhere.

Also, maybe it's fair to mention that I'm working on an entire wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions, especially for the Fediverse. 46 pages are planned as of now, 24 of them are already written. These will include over 30 pages on how to do things, how not to do things and what never to do at all.

I won't add step-by-step guides for certain frontends. But I've already started adding rules and guidelines for how to describe images appropriately and write alt-texts in a way that won't break stuff anywhere.

Even if it's a very incomplete WIP, it's unique in several ways:

• It's the only wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions. Few writers have even only written multiple pages or articles on this subject.
• It's the only guide that takes the existence of the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into consideration. This means that it's also the only guide that doesn't assume that Fediverse equals always having only 500 characters for the message text. It actually recommends an additional, longer image description in the message text in certain situations, regardless of whether or not vanilla Mastodon users can do that.
• It's the only guide that, instead of regurgitating the alt-text rules for webpages and blogs and assuming that they apply to the Fediverse just the same, talks about the peculiarities of posting images into the Fediverse, how Mastodon's alt-text quality criteria are different from the W3C WAI and WCAG alt-text quality criteria, and why it's critically important to know and fulfill Mastodon's requirements for good alt-texts.
• It's probably the only guide that doesn't assume that you can always precisely target a certain audience for your content and make sure that only those receive it who understand it right off the bat.
• It is the only guide that lists over 60 references, including your blog post, but also including university webpages as well as over two dozen guides from Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: First of all, you completely forgot the social media posters. The TOC link leads nowhere.

Also, maybe it's fair to mention that I'm working on an entire wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions, especially for the Fediverse. 46 pages are planned as of now, 24 of them are already written. These will include over 30 pages on how to do things, how not to do things and what never to do at all.

I won't add step-by-step guides for certain frontends. But I've already started adding rules and guidelines for how to describe images appropriately and write alt-texts in a way that won't break stuff anywhere.

Even if it's a very incomplete WIP, it's unique in several ways:

• It's the only wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions. Few writers have even only written multiple pages or articles on this subject.
• It's the only guide that takes the existence of the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into consideration. This means that it's also the only guide that doesn't assume that Fediverse equals always having only 500 characters for the message text. It actually recommends an additional, longer image description in the message text in certain situations, regardless of whether or not vanilla Mastodon users can do that.
• It's the only guide that, instead of regurgitating the alt-text rules for webpages and blogs and assuming that they apply to the Fediverse just the same, talks about the peculiarities of posting images into the Fediverse, how Mastodon's alt-text quality criteria are different from the W3C WAI and WCAG alt-text quality criteria, and why it's critically important to know and fulfill Mastodon's requirements for good alt-texts.
• It's probably the only guide that doesn't assume that you can always precisely target a certain audience for your content and make sure that only those receive it who understand it right off the bat.
• It is the only guide that lists over 60 references, including your blog post, but also including university webpages as well as over two dozen guides from Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept?

For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it? Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. Alt-texts have to be manually woven into the image-embedding phpBB code, and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.

Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video? Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.

If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.

This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.

Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.

After all, I'm working on an extensive wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse with 50+ pages with dozens of webpages and blog posts on how to describe images. I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.

I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept?

For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it? Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. Alt-texts have to be manually woven into the image-embedding phpBB code, and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.

Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video? Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.

If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.

This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.

Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.

After all, I'm working on an extensive wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse with 50+ pages with dozens of webpages and blog posts on how to describe images. I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.

I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept?

For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it? Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. Alt-texts have to be manually woven into the image-embedding phpBB code, and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.

Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video? Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.

If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.

This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.

Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.

After all, I'm working on an extensive wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse with 50+ pages with dozens of webpages and blog posts on how to describe images. I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.

I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept?

For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it? Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. Alt-texts have to be manually woven into the image-embedding phpBB code, and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.

Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video? Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.

If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.

This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.

Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.

After all, I'm working on an extensive wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse with 50+ pages with dozens of webpages and blog posts on how to describe images. I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.

I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Tyler Sticka @Old Man Vandehey @Neatnik :prami: I have a problem with this. But I probably only have this problem because whenever I post an image, it's about an extremely obscure niche topic. (Don't go looking for my recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere and even there only recently.)

When you're describing an image to a friend, first of all, you're describing the image to only one person. You probably already know that person. You can at least estimate what they know about the image you're going to describe. If not, you can ask them what they know, what they don't know, what they need to know, what they want to know.

And then you can tailor your description to the individual wants and needs of that one specific person. And you can add the explanations which this person needs and omit the explanations which this person doesn't need.

In case they don't understand something, or if they want to know more details, they can interrupt you mid-describing and ask you.

But when you're describing an image for the Fediverse, you're describing it for potentionally everyone in the Fediverse (and everyone on the Web, unless you restrict the permission to view your post). You don't know all these people, there's no way you can.

You simply can't go around and ask millions of Fediverse users and billions of Web users, one by one, what they know about the topic of your image, what they don't know etc. Neither can you predict who exactly will receive your post and then only go and ask these people in advance.

Even if you could, you can't tailor your image description and accompanying explanations to the individual needs of many people. Especially not if you're going to post that image only once for everyone all the same.

Worse yet, they can't interrupt you mid-describing and ask you for explanations either. They'll get the entire description plus your explanations all at once.

Thus, you have to describe and explain your image for everyone all the same with no regards for individual needs. You have to cover everyone's potential needs right away.

Let's take (link CW: eye contact, meme, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta) this image, for example. I've actually used it in a Fediverse meme post.

If I were to describe it to one friend, I'd ask the friend if they're familiar with the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme template, and if they're familiar with FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects". Honestly, I expect hardly anyone to know both.

If they aren't familiar with FEP-ef61, and they most likely aren't, I'd ask them if they know nomadic identity, and if they know the streams repository, because knowing both is required for my explanation of FEP-ef61. They probably don't know either, so I'd explain the streams repository to them, including rattling down the whole 16-year history of the software family from Mistpark/Friendica to Forte. When I reach the rewriting of Red in 2012, I'd explain the concept of nomadic identity because it was then when it was first implemented. And even that I could only do if they knew the Fediverse. If not, I'd go start with the Fediverse.

If they aren't familiar with "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor", I'd ask them if I could send them a link to the KnowYourMeme page, or if they need it described by me. If the latter, I'd ask them if they're familiar with the concepts of snowclones and image macros. And so forth. Whatever they aren't familiar with, I'd explain it to them.

As for the visuals, I'd ask them if they need a visual description of what Boromir looks like, regardless of whether or not this matters in the context. I'd also ask them how familiar they are with The Lord of the Rings and specifically the Peter Jackson films. For this may require even more explanations.

How am I supposed to do any of this with an audience of many? Right, I can't.

And so I have to deliver all necessary explanations in the message text, right beneath the image itself, just in case someone needs them. And let's face it, most people will need them. The explanation of the image macro itself plus another eight explanations in order for people to understand the main explanation. Over 25,000 characters if they consider links to external explanations bad.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Tyler Sticka @Old Man Vandehey @Neatnik :prami: I have a problem with this. But I probably only have this problem because whenever I post an image, it's about an extremely obscure niche topic. (Don't go looking for my recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere and even there only recently.)

When you're describing an image to a friend, first of all, you're describing the image to only one person. You probably already know that person. You can at least estimate what they know about the image you're going to describe. If not, you can ask them what they know, what they don't know, what they need to know, what they want to know.

And then you can tailor your description to the individual wants and needs of that one specific person. And you can add the explanations which this person needs and omit the explanations which this person doesn't need.

In case they don't understand something, or if they want to know more details, they can interrupt you mid-describing and ask you.

But when you're describing an image for the Fediverse, you're describing it for potentionally everyone in the Fediverse (and everyone on the Web, unless you restrict the permission to view your post). You don't know all these people, there's no way you can.

You simply can't go around and ask millions of Fediverse users and billions of Web users, one by one, what they know about the topic of your image, what they don't know etc. Neither can you predict who exactly will receive your post and then only go and ask these people in advance.

Even if you could, you can't tailor your image description and accompanying explanations to the individual needs of many people. Especially not if you're going to post that image only once for everyone all the same.

Worse yet, they can't interrupt you mid-describing and ask you for explanations either. They'll get the entire description plus your explanations all at once.

Thus, you have to describe and explain your image for everyone all the same with no regards for individual needs. You have to cover everyone's potential needs right away.

Let's take (link CW: eye contact, meme, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta) this image, for example. I've actually used it in a Fediverse meme post.

If I were to describe it to one friend, I'd ask the friend if they're familiar with the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme template, and if they're familiar with FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects". Honestly, I expect hardly anyone to know both.

If they aren't familiar with FEP-ef61, and they most likely aren't, I'd ask them if they know nomadic identity, and if they know the streams repository, because knowing both is required for my explanation of FEP-ef61. They probably don't know either, so I'd explain the streams repository to them, including rattling down the whole 16-year history of the software family from Mistpark/Friendica to Forte. When I reach the rewriting of Red in 2012, I'd explain the concept of nomadic identity because it was then when it was first implemented. And even that I could only do if they knew the Fediverse. If not, I'd go start with the Fediverse.

If they aren't familiar with "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor", I'd ask them if I could send them a link to the KnowYourMeme page, or if they need it described by me. If the latter, I'd ask them if they're familiar with the concepts of snowclones and image macros. And so forth. Whatever they aren't familiar with, I'd explain it to them.

As for the visuals, I'd ask them if they need a visual description of what Boromir looks like, regardless of whether or not this matters in the context. I'd also ask them how familiar they are with The Lord of the Rings and specifically the Peter Jackson films. For this may require even more explanations.

How am I supposed to do any of this with an audience of many? Right, I can't.

And so I have to deliver all necessary explanations in the message text, right beneath the image itself, just in case someone needs them. And let's face it, most people will need them. The explanation of the image macro itself plus another eight explanations in order for people to understand the main explanation. Over 25,000 characters if they consider links to external explanations bad.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Tyler Sticka @Old Man Vandehey @Neatnik :prami: I have a problem with this. But I probably only have this problem because whenever I post an image, it's about an extremely obscure niche topic. (Don't go looking for my recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere and even there only recently.)

When you're describing an image to a friend, first of all, you're describing the image to only one person. You probably already know that person. You can at least estimate what they know about the image you're going to describe. If not, you can ask them what they know, what they don't know, what they need to know, what they want to know.

And then you can tailor your description to the individual wants and needs of that one specific person. And you can add the explanations which this person needs and omit the explanations which this person doesn't need.

In case they don't understand something, or if they want to know more details, they can interrupt you mid-describing and ask you.

But when you're describing an image for the Fediverse, you're describing it for potentionally everyone in the Fediverse (and everyone on the Web, unless you restrict the permission to view your post). You don't know all these people, there's no way you can.

You simply can't go around and ask millions of Fediverse users and billions of Web users, one by one, what they know about the topic of your image, what they don't know etc. Neither can you predict who exactly will receive your post and then only go and ask these people in advance.

Even if you could, you can't tailor your image description and accompanying explanations to the individual needs of many people. Especially not if you're going to post that image only once for everyone all the same.

Worse yet, they can't interrupt you mid-describing and ask you for explanations either. They'll get the entire description plus your explanations all at once.

Thus, you have to describe and explain your image for everyone all the same with no regards for individual needs. You have to cover everyone's potential needs right away.

Let's take (link CW: eye contact, meme, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta) this image, for example. I've actually used it in a Fediverse meme post.

If I were to describe it to one friend, I'd ask the friend if they're familiar with the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme template, and if they're familiar with FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects". Honestly, I expect hardly anyone to know both.

If they aren't familiar with FEP-ef61, and they most likely aren't, I'd ask them if they know nomadic identity, and if they know the streams repository, because knowing both is required for my explanation of FEP-ef61. They probably don't know either, so I'd explain the streams repository to them, including rattling down the whole 16-year history of the software family from Mistpark/Friendica to Forte. When I reach the rewriting of Red in 2012, I'd explain the concept of nomadic identity because it was then when it was first implemented. And even that I could only do if they knew the Fediverse. If not, I'd go start with the Fediverse.

If they aren't familiar with "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor", I'd ask them if I could send them a link to the KnowYourMeme page, or if they need it described by me. If the latter, I'd ask them if they're familiar with the concepts of snowclones and image macros. And so forth. Whatever they aren't familiar with, I'd explain it to them.

As for the visuals, I'd ask them if they need a visual description of what Boromir looks like, regardless of whether or not this matters in the context. I'd also ask them how familiar they are with The Lord of the Rings and specifically the Peter Jackson films. For this may require even more explanations.

How am I supposed to do any of this with an audience of many? Right, I can't.

And so I have to deliver all necessary explanations in the message text, right beneath the image itself, just in case someone needs them. And let's face it, most people will need them. The explanation of the image macro itself plus another eight explanations in order for people to understand the main explanation. Over 25,000 characters if they consider links to external explanations bad.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Kiloku - Secretário do Caos @Neatnik :prami: I've been working on an entire wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts for the Fediverse for quite a while now. It's far from finished, not even half of the over 50 pages planned right now are written.

As of now, it'll have 32 rules and guidelines on what to do, how to do it and what not to do. The huge majority of these are completely unknown in the Fediverse otherwise.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Kiloku - Secretário do Caos @Neatnik :prami: I've been working on an entire wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts for the Fediverse for quite a while now. It's far from finished, not even half of the over 50 pages planned right now are written.

As of now, it'll have 32 rules and guidelines on what to do, how to do it and what not to do. The huge majority of these are completely unknown in the Fediverse otherwise.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Kiloku - Secretário do Caos @Neatnik :prami: I've been working on an entire wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts for the Fediverse for quite a while now. It's far from finished, not even half of the over 50 pages planned right now are written.

As of now, it'll have 32 rules and guidelines on what to do, how to do it and what not to do. The huge majority of these are completely unknown in the Fediverse otherwise.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Chao-c'

Also, ALT text translates with the rest of the post, which can be helpful for images which contain only foreign language text.

Hubzilla is the most incompatible ActivityPub software in Fediverse. You do just lot of things wrong, to put it mildly.

You still seem to think that Gargron invented ActivityPub and the Fediverse, that Mastodon is the one and only reference implementation of ActivityPub, and that everything that doesn't work exactly like Mastodon is broken.

Here are the facts:

Mastodon was launched in January, 2016.

Hubzilla was launched in March, 2015. Counting an earlier incarnation named Red, it was created in May, 2012, when Friendica's creator re-wrote his own fork of a Friendica fork of his own.

Mastodon implemented ActivityPub in September, 2017, when the spec wasn't finalised yet.

Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub in July, 2017. Two months before Mastodon. Hubzilla was the first software to ever implement ActivityPub.

Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub strictly by the book. It has always tried to stick as close to the official W3C ActivityPub spec as possible.

Mastodon, in stark contrast, has always been stretching the ActivityPub spec until it broke. Not only that, but it has always been adding stuff outside the spec. First it did so to take over certain features from StatusNet which was its original protocol. More recently, it did so with the very intention to break compatibility with the rest of the Fediverse and make everything that isn't Mastodon look broken. And people like you keep falling for it because they think they know for a fact that Mastodon is the ActivityPub reference implementation.

The whole Fediverse has to break the ActivityPub spec just to be able to federate with Mastodon.

yes, the Hubzilla author is writing Streams, with nomadic identity, but it also means, that he understands, that Hubzilla approach is kind of dead-end.

You know nothing. Whereas I can rattle down the whole history from Mistpark in 2010 to today.

Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte created his post-Hubzilla server applications because he kept advancing the Zot protocol. And he couldn't implement these advancements into Hubzilla because they bore the chance of breaking compatibility with what already existed.

(streams) is not a completely new development, nor is it a straight Hubzilla fork.

(streams) is a 2022 fork of Roadhouse.
Which was a 2022 fork of either the third Osada or Mistpark 2020 or Redmatrix 2020.
Which were 2020 forks of Zap (or each other, but at least one of them was forked from Zap).
Which was a 2018 fork of either Hubzilla itself or the first Osada, which was a 2018 fork of Hubzilla.

Osada and Zap were created to develop Zot6. In its early stages of concept, Mike expected Zot6 to be incompatible with everything else. Mind you, he didn't see that as something bad. Advancing Zot was necessary because the then-current version of Zot was less than optimal. And Mike's vision was a decentralised, nomadic network named the "Grid", entirely based on Zot. The Grid would have been vastly superior to the existing Fediverse in every way possible.

So the issue with his early draft of Zot6 was that it was quite incompatible with non-nomadic protocols. Nomadic Zot6 content could not be translated into non-nomadic protocols like the diaspora* protocol or ActivityPub.

Thus, developing Zot6 on Hubzilla was out of question. Zot6 would have broken too much on Hubzilla. Besides, Hubzilla was bad as a platform to experiment on due to its wealth of supported protocols and other features, all of which would have had to be made compatible with Zot6.

And this is the real reason why Mike created Osada and Zap. From how I see it, and how I remember what he talked about back in the day (I was there, yes), he first forked Osada from Hubzilla. Then he ripped everything out that he didn't need, including support for all protocols except for Zot itself, ActivityPub, RSS and Atom, including the CMS stuff like articles, planning cards, notes, wikis and webpages, etc. Then he modified what was left against his early version of Zot6.

Then he discovered that a cloned Osada channel couldn't properly send content via ActivityPub.

Then, shortly afterwards, he forked Osada into Zap. He removed nomadic identity from Osada which kept ActivityPub and ActivityPub support from Zap which stayed nomadic.

The idea was to have a nomadic, cloned channel on Zap as your main channel that would only connect to Hubzilla, Osada and Zap, and to have an additional, non-nomadic channel on Osada that would serve as a "gateway" between nomadic Zap and the non-nomadic ActivityPub Fediverse.

Of course, this was highly impractical. But by 2019, Mike found a way to make Zot6 compatible with non-nomadic protocols. So, in early 2019, Mike discontinued Osada and forked a new Osada from Zap which only differred from Zap by having ActivityPub support while still being nomadic. This enabled Mike to have one development platform for Zot6 in conjunction with non-nomadic protocols and another one on which ActivityPub did not stand in the way.

Later in 2019, both Osada and Zap got stable releases. At that point, Osada and Zap were identical in code. Both had ActivityPub support. It was included into their cores now and no longer an add-on like on Hubzilla. They only had two differences. One was the branding. The other one was that Osada servers had ActivityPub activated by default, and Zap servers had ActivityPub disabled by default. Keeping Osada around was unnecessary now, so ActivityPub was activated by default on Zap, and Osada was discontinued. Zot6 was so stable that it was soon backported to Hubzilla.

Mike wasn't done yet, though. He now wanted to develop Zot8. Again, he did not want to develop protocol changes on stable production software that people potentially daily-drove.

Thus, three new forks emerged in 2020: another Osada, Mistpark 2020 (a.k.a. Misty) and Redmatrix 2020 (named after the Red Matrix, the name that Hubzilla bore from late 2012 to early 2015 between being created as Red and being re-branded into Hubzilla). Mike used them to develop Zot8. They were identical in all but brand identity.

This was fully intentional on Mike's part to confuse the hell out of the brand fetishists that were growing more and more numerous in the Fediverse. His goal was for people to declare Osada or Misty or Redmatrix the best Fediverse software and superior to everything else, just for him to tell them that Osada, Misty and Redmatrix are absolutely identical. In fact, the three remained identical to Zap in features.

Zot8 never got stable because Mike kept advancing it further and further. In early 2022, he was at Zot11. But Zot11 was so incompatible with everything else, including previous Zot versions, that Mike declared it a new protocol of its own and renamed it Nomad. In order to test-drive it, he forked Osada or Misty or Redmatrix into Roadhouse. After all, there were people who were daring enough to daily-drive production channels on Osada, Misty and Redmatrix, albeit only few. Roadhouse was still identical in features to Zap, Osada, Misty and Redmatrix.

It was now possible to crossgrade between Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse by simply rebasing the server code.

Later in 2022, he created a new fork of Roadhouse itself. The reason for this was not further protocol advancement. No, this time, it mostly had branding and licensing reasons.

First of all, he wanted to make that fork as easy for others to fork and adopt as possible. Everything he had developed so far was under the MIT license (he himself had relicensed Friendica under the AGPLv3 in 2011, but he didn't actually develop on Friendica; he developed on a fork named Free-Friendika that was still MIT-licensed and then backported the changes to the Friendica repository, and Red was a Free-Friendika fork). This new repository was released into the public domain. At first, the whole thing was never primarily intended to be installed on servers as it was, but rather to be forked as the base of something new.

At least the core and Mike's own add-ons were. What third-party add-ons from Hubzilla times were still there got to keep their maze of licenses. This was intentional on Mike's part, too. It would make it impossible for commercial players to scoop up the whole thing and relicense it into something non-free and commercial without breaking any licenses, or without pumping tons of money into their legal department to work around that maze of licenses.

Also, Mike removed any and all naming and branding from the software. He absolutely intentionally made it nameless. You've read that right. He did this for two reasons. One, whoever wanted to fork it would have to give the fork an individual name and an individual branding. Two, this was to mess with brand fanbois and brand fetishists even more: This thing had no brand to gush over to begin with.

Furthermore, Mike removed all nodeinfo code that he could possibly get away with removing. Again, this was intentional. One intention was to stop this software from automatically joining the "my Fediverse project is bigger than yours" and "my server is bigger than yours" rat races. He intentionally did everything he could to keep this software away from The Federation, Fediverse Observer, FediDB and the like.

The other intention was for the case of commercial players looking for free code to steal. If this software had really taken off and left its stats proving its popularity everywhere, some big commercial player would have been likely to try and steal this software, make it commercial and non-free and release it as their own original creation. So his intention was for them to not even be able to find it in this case. (This, by the way, was the reason why he relicensed Friendica under the AGPLv3, and why he hardly ever spoke about Free-Friendika: Now that Friendica was growing popular, he didn't want big commercial players to scoop up code of his under a license that they could change to non-free.)

This server application became the first and only one in the Fediverse with no fixed server type identifier, in fact, with none at all by default. It has one text field for the server name, just like Mastodon and Friendica and Hubzilla and the like. But it has an additional field where the server type, i.e. the identifier for the software, can be entered. If none is entered, it's derived from the server name. Mike used to have a server that identified as "Y" because, as he said, "Y is not X."

While the application itself is nameless (for it still is), the code repository did require a name of sorts. Mike named the repository "streams".

Now, the community needed something to call that nameless software when they spoke about it. So they unofficially established "(streams)", complete with parentheses that make sure that this is not actually the name of this software. Those who say, "Streams," with a capital S and no parentheses, and who use that term as if it's an official name, usually sincerely believe that this is the official name.

Mike himself uses "streams" without the parentheses because even he needs something to call his own software by. Before Forte was made, he preferred talking about the streams repository without directly mentioning the software. And he himself denied that (streams) is even a project. It's just a bunch of code that runs.

As far as I know, it was now possible to freely crossgrade between six different server applications because they were still identical in features. Only that Mike also had six server applications to take care of now.

So on December 31st, 2022, Mike discontinued Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse. Admins who ran either of these on their servers were recommended to rebase their servers to the streams repository. In this case, by the way, the old branding was kept. I've seen a server that still had "zap" as its subdomain which indicated that it was set up as a Zap server, that had Misty branding, but that actually ran (streams).

From then on, Mike dedicated his time to maintaining and developing only the streams repository. He still occasionally helped Hubzilla out, though.

In 2023, the Mitra creator and developer silverpill approached Mike. The goal was to make Mitra nomadic. I guess earlier attempts using a blockchain and crypto technology didn't come to fruition, so it had to be Mike's way which had proven itself stable for more than a decade. However, Mitra was to remain based on ActivityPub.

It was in this exchange that Mike realised that ActivityPub could indeed be used for nomadic identity if a few things were added to it. One outcome was FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" which introduced decentralised IDs (DIDs) that would not be bound to any one server domain.

Instead of creating a whole new server application to play with, Mike simply made a "nomadic" branch in the streams repository (even though the software was already nomadic) in which he implemented support for nomadic identity via ActivityPub. Support as in (streams) understanding it while internally still using Nomad for nomadicity.

In June, 2024, Mike considered the "nomadic" branch reliable enough and merged it into the "dev" branch.

In July, 2024, Mike merged the "dev" branch into the "release" branch which caused DIDs as per FEP-ef61 to be rolled out to existing production servers. On accounts created on this new version, channels would have a DID internally. On accounts greated on any previous version, even new channels would keep the old ID system for the time being. This way, existing accounts and channels weren't messed with.

However, what had worked under supervised and restricted lab conditions completely blew up under real-life conditions. Again, I was there on (streams) with a pre-DID account and two channels on it. I still have them. (streams) channels wouldn't federate with anything anymore. It had become impossible to send anything anywhere. What Mike was facing was nothing short of an enigma because not even he knew what was going in.

So he started tinkering. In mid-August, Mike forked the streams repository into something named and branded Forte. He did so so he could rip the Nomad protocol out while still keeping the entire functionality. He had to get rid of Nomad because he had discovered that (streams) got confused juggling all the many IDs it had to deal with, so he had to weed out the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to make things easier. But he couldn't possibly have done that on (streams) proper.

This way, Mike created the very first Fediverse server software that uses ActivityPub for full nomadicity, including cloning.

By the end of August, things got back to normal. But Mike, having spent every free minute in the last few weeks to get (streams) back into working condition, was burned out. He sent an open message around in which he declared that he would completely retire from Fediverse development, and both the streams repository and Forte were up for grabs.

But nobody was found who could take over either. (streams) and Forte probably had way fewer than 100 users combined. Those few who would have been able to maintain either didn't have time. One did have time and was willing to do so, but he didn't know how to code. He eventually did start teaching himself, and he occasionally contributes merge requests, but there was no way he could take over as the only dev for either, much less both. So Mike had to go on, whether he wanted or not, albeit at a somewhat slower pace.

This is why Mike is still developing (streams) and Forte to this day.

By the way: The reason why Mike "abandoned" his old software was because he needed to invest all his time into protocol development and advancement. Mike isn't the one to constantly maintain stable server software unless he absolutely has to.

In 2011, he handed Friendica over to two new developers so that he had time to create the Zot protocol.

In 2015 already, he handed Hubzilla over to two new developers so that he had time to explore the advancement of the Zot protocol. He still contributed to Hubzilla's development.

In 2019, he wanted to hand Osada and Zap over to the community, now that they were stable, so he had time to develop Zot8. But the Osada/Zap community was so tiny that he couldn't get a new dedicated developer team together.

In 2024, he wanted to hand (streams) and Forte over to the community because fixing (streams)' huge identity bug, which led to Forte's creation, had burnt him out. He wanted to quit. But, again, he couldn't because (streams) didn't have a single user who had both the time and the knowledge to take over as the new main dev.

Consider this: Gargron was a young man when he made Mastodon. I think he was still at university. Mike Macgirvin made Friendica, he had some three decades of professional work in IT and software under his belly. Gargron was at the beginning of his career. Mike had quit and moved from the USA to the western Australian outback where he has been living as a farmer ever since. He might actually be older than Gargron's parents.

while nomadic identitity would be cool thing, currently it does not exist

Take off your Mastodon glasses and look at the Fediverse and what it actually is like.

Nomadic identity does exist. Not as a vague idea, not as a concept on paper, but as a stable, production-grade feature that has been used to its full extent for well over a decade now. Just because Mastodon doesn't have it, doesn't mean the Fediverse doesn't have it. And just because Mastodon doesn't recognise it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The Fediverse has loads of features which Mastodon users want "the Fediverse" to have. It has features which many Mastodon users have never wanted "the Fediverse" to have such as quote-posts, introduced by Mike Macgirvin on Mistpark in 2010. It even has features that are completely and utterly unimaginable for Mastodon users, and it has had even these since as early as 2010, 2012 or 2015.

Nomadic identity was invented by Mike Macgirvin in 2011 with the Zot protocol.

It was first implemented by him in mid-2012 when he rewrote Red against Zot. This means that Hubzilla itself has been offering full-blown nomadic identity since 2012, almost four years longer than Mastodon has existed.

This very Hubzilla channel that I'm commenting from right here, right now, is actually nomadic. It is cloned across two servers: hub.netzgemeinde.eu and hub.hubzilla.de. And it has been since before Elon Musk announced to take over Twitter in early 2022. When I sent you this comment, it was automatically sync'd over to hub.hubzilla.de. When you sent the comment that I'm replying to, it was automatically sync'd over to hub.hubzilla.de. The clone has actually been of great help at least once.

Unfortunately, non-nomadic software identifies cloned channels as fully separate accounts with fully separate identities. But rest assured: @Jupiter Rowland on hub.hubzilla.de is my clone. It's the live, hot, real-time, bidirectional backup of the main instance of my channel, @Jupiter Rowland on hub.netzgemeinde.eu that you're following now. They're both one and the same channel with one and the same identity, [email protected], even though Mastodon is unable to see it as such. Go check both. You'll see they've got all the same content in them, including comments from others. Including your comment. How else can [email protected] possibly have one of your comments under a post if you've only sent that comment to [email protected] if it weren't for nomadic identity?

Even nomadic identity via ActivityPub is available as a stable, production-grade feature in stable, production-grade software right now as we speak. Forte was the first to be fully nomadic via nothing but ActivityPub, as of mid-August, 2024. Tootik, based on Gemini instead of the World Wide Web, is fully nomadic at server level, too. Mitra is fully nomadic by means of the Minimitra client.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #Friendica #Red #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Mistpark #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Redmatrix2020 #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Tootik #Mitra #Minimitra #NomadicIdentity

@DavidM_yeg @Dennis What more is needed?

A full visual description of the settings, the people (of course, avoiding their gender and describing their skin tone rather than their race), their outfits, the surroundings?

The title of the film, including an explanation what this film is, who made it, what it is about, when it was released, who the characters are and who the actors are?

Regardless of neither of this belonging into the alt-text because information that is neither available in the message text nor plainly visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into the alt-text? Because there are people who cannot access alt-text?

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Don(27)t(20)explain(20)things(20)or(20)give(20)other(20)information(20)only(20)in(20)alt-text(21)

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f)

And, pray tell, how is all this supposed to fit in 512 characters or fewer so that Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp-JS, Sharkey, CherryPick and the other Misskey forks won't discard the alt-text?

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/How(20)long(20)can(20)alt-text(20)be(3f)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@DavidM_yeg @Dennis What more is needed?

A full visual description of the settings, the people (of course, avoiding their gender and describing their skin tone rather than their race), their outfits, the surroundings?

The title of the film, including an explanation what this film is, who made it, what it is about, when it was released, who the characters are and who the actors are?

Regardless of neither of this belonging into the alt-text because information that is neither available in the message text nor plainly visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into the alt-text? Because there are people who cannot access alt-text?

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Don(27)t(20)explain(20)things(20)or(20)give(20)other(20)information(20)only(20)in(20)alt-text(21)

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f)

And, pray tell, how is all this supposed to fit in 512 characters or fewer so that Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp-JS, Sharkey, CherryPick and the other Misskey forks won't discard the alt-text?

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/How(20)long(20)can(20)alt-text(20)be(3f)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Patrick Leavy A whole lot. Sorry, but this will be very very very long again.

I don't know if you've read my previous (very long) commentary. But just implementing one or two FEPs won't get you the same full-blown nomadic identity (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic_identity) that Hubzilla (what I'm writing from right now; https://hubzilla.org; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla; https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) has had since 2012. And having this level of nomadic identity has to be the goal.

What has to be done is:

Take something like Mastodon.
Non-nomadic.
Where your account, your login, equals your identity.

Make your identity cloneable

Now, before you can make identities nomadic, you have to uncouple them from the login, from the account.

Mastodon has to introduce a sort of container for your identity, like the channels that Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have always had (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Channels_(Hubzilla_&_(streams))). This is necessary so that a future nomadic Mastodon will know what to clone and what not to clone. For example, cloning your password is dangerous nonsense.

So, everything that makes up your account except for your login credentials will have to be moved into this container.

• your short name
• your long name
• your profile images, including alt-texts
• your profile
• your followers
• your followed
• your toots, including stats like faves, boosts etc.
• copies of the conversation trees of all your toots, including stats like faves, boosts etc. as well as attached files for each message
• all files you've ever attached to toots
• your settings
• your filters
• your mutes
• your blocks
• your server blocks
• etc.

Essentially, everything except for your login credentials will have to be moved from directly residing on your account into that box.

Change your login

Also, your login will have to change from short name + passphrase to e-mail + passphrase. Your short name is part of your identity, it's in the container, it will be cloned, so it can't be used to log you in anymore.

In order for this to work, half of Mastodon's server backend will have to be rewritten.

Decentralised IDs

Next, Mastodon must switch from the Webfinger IDs that it uses now to decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61. For a while, I guess, it will have to use both next to one another. Then it will have to phase out its Webfinger IDs.

The decentralised IDs must be tested against other Fediverse software that already understands them or that's nomadic itself: (streams), Forte, Mitra, Tootik. For example, @silverpill of Mitra and @Mike Macgirvin of (streams) and Forte must test whether their software correctly understands Mastodon's DIDs. And the Mastodon developers must test whether Mastodon correctly understands the DIDs from Fediverse server applications that already use them.

Once it has gotten rid of its Webfinger IDs, the next phase can start.

Implement cloning within Mastodon

The central element of nomadic identity is not the ability to move your identity. That's only a byproduct of cloning your identity.

A clone, in nomadic identity, is a full backup of the container with your identity in it. A real-time, live, bidirectional backup that you can log into and use just like the "original". The clone always has the same idea as the original, regardless of which server it's on.

The key elements of clones and cloning must be implemented and tested:

• cloning an identity container to a different server after registering a new, blank account there
• cloning an identity container to a different server where you already have an account with a different containerised identity
• anything that happens on the original being sync'd to the clone
• anything that happens on the clone being sync'd to the original
• clone going offline, things happening on the original, clone coming back online, things that happened on the original being reliably sync'd to the clone
• original going offline, clone still working with the ID based on the original's domain
• original going offline, things happening on the clone, original coming back online, things that happened on the clone being reliably sync'd to the original
• making additional clones of an identity container that has already been cloned at least once
• the whole syncing shebang from the original to any number of clones
• the whole syncing shebang from one of the clones to the original and also directly to the other clones
• declaring one of the clones the new original, thus changing the ID of both the former original and all clones

Implement moving within Mastodon

Only when cloning works reliably, we can talk about moving, even though that's what everyone on Mastodon is giddy about.

Why? Because moving involves cloning. It's an automated process. At least it is on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, and it really should be one on nomadic Mastodon.

Basically, first you make a clone.
Then you declare the clone the new original, and your old original is demoted to a clone.
Then you have to wait until your change of ID from changing the original has federated to all your followers and followed and everywhere and whatnot.
Then, one last sync so that both the former-clone-now-new-original and the old-original-now-clone are really identical, and you won't lose any data.
Then your old-original-now-clone is deleted. We don't want to leave any dead stuff behind, now, do we?
Lastly, if your old account where your old original used to reside has no other identity on it, the whole account is deleted. In nomadic containerised identity, accounts cannot/should not exist with no identity container on them.

Cloning and moving beyond Mastodon

The last possible step is still utter science-fiction: Cloning or moving from Mastodon to something else that's nomadic and understands FEP-ef61.

Cloning or moving from Mastodon to Mitra. From Mastodon to Tootik. From Mastodon to (streams). From Mastodon to Forte. Oh, and maybe also back to Mastodon.

The difficult part is not only to make Mastodon capable of cloning identity containers to other nomadic software. And to make Mastodon accept identity containers from other nomadic software being cloned to Mastodon. I mean, this would be difficult already. (streams) and Forte are vastly, vastly different from Mastodon.

No, the difficult part is to make these four capable of cloning from or to someplace else. As it stands now, you can only clone from Mitra to Mitra, from Tootik to Tootik, from (streams) to (streams), from Forte to Forte. Even cloning between (streams) and Forte has never been possible, even though they're very similar. Oh, and cloning from and to Hubzilla is another story because Hubzilla doesn't have FEP-ef61 implemented.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #Tootik #NomadicIdentity

@Johannes Ernst

same account for multiple instances

This in its pure, nomadic form and with proven stability is only available on Hubzilla and (streams) anyway.

They're also the only ones whose instances can detect off-site users' logins and grant them rights that other visitors don't have, provided said off-site users are on either of the two or Friendica. All thanks to OpenWebAuth.

@Mike Macgirvin 🖥️, creator of all three and maintainer of the streams repository, is currently working on implementing nomadic identity and (streams)' set of permissions using nothing but ActivityPub so it can become available to everything else in the Fediverse as well.

share to fediverse

I'm not quite sure, but I think @Stefan Bohacek or someone who commented on one of his posts has figured out how to share at least to Hubzilla.

However, actual share buttons are all geared only towards Mastodon and hit-and-miss at best when it comes to anything else. The less something is like Mastodon, the less they work with it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ShareButton #ShareButtons

@Cătă

Well, Lemmy is pretty much established right now and growing as well, despite being something different. Right now, this seems the biggest competitor to Mastodon in a way. But the limitation of Lemmy accounts not being able to follow other accounts (and only communities instead) makes it a bit of an outsider. Like, you can follow users from Friendica, Mastodon, even Hubzilla I think, and see their activity (comment, post), but they cannot see yours.

This also leads to the creation of a more specific culture, with people that are also unaware of other platforms and capabilities (albeit less pronounced, as the devs did a better job of keeping the whole ecosystem decentralized). For example, some users are surprised to hear that you can see their upvotes on other platforms.

The latter is mostly because the vast majority of Lemmy users didn't come from Mastodon but from Reddit. They weren't told much about the existence of a Fediverse, only that there's a thing called Lemmy which is many copies of Reddit before its enshittification, and these are connected with each other. That's all that many know. Just like many Mastodon users think the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

It doesn't help that Lemmy barely gets any interaction from other projects. Mastodon is huge, and Mastodon users should be all over Lemmy. But many Mastodon users have never heard about Lemmy. Those who have may find it too inconvenient to follow a Lemmy community because that involves using the account search and copy-pasting. Don't forget that the huge majority of Mastodon users is on phones. And those who do manage to follow Lemmy communities say that the interaction between Mastodon and Lemmy is too limiting.

For the record: I do have Lemmy followers.

Kbin and Mbin could have brought a solution to this issue, as they do support following users, even those from *blogging platforms, but because the projects are younger and less stable - and more so at the time of the Reddit migration - they failed to gain the required traction (i.e. more servers, user numbers more spread out across them) until now. There is still activity on these, they are still growing (people are joining them mostly because they are dissatisfied with the political leanings of the Lemmy devs, as well as their moderation policy on .ml which is subjective to say the least), but you can clearly see a bigger culture formed around Lemmy as of now.

/kbin made bidirectional *blogging-style following possible only by bolting microblogging onto a Reddit clone. Lemmy is a more purist Reddit clone, it doesn't support domestic *blogging, so users of *blogging projects can't follow Lemmy users in the traditional sense.

As for lemmy.ml, that instance doesn't matter that much anymore. Even lemmy.world has been surpassed as the biggest instance.

There seems to be something similar happening to Pixelfed, with user numbers growing month after month, and I am sure something similar will happen to Peertube when YouTube will flop badly again and PeerTube will be mature enough, or with Bookwyrm, Friendica, Hubzilla etc.

Pixelfed could become big if Instagram was enshittified so tremendously that everyone except the biggest attention whores ("But muh followers, but muh fame") will start looking for alternatives. The advantage of Pixelfed for Instagram users over Mastodon for Twitter users is that Pixelfed allows direct imports of Instagram accounts with all content.

I'm not so sure about PeerTube, not only because that'd require gigantic amounts of hard drive space, but also because many users are on YouTube for the money, and PeerTube won't pay them a penny. If they moved to PeerTube, they'd lose a source of income. Also, fewer YouTube users have ever heard of PeerTube than 𝕏 users have heard of Mastodon.

BookWyrm would be easier, but I can't see right now how Goodreads could be enshittified enough to cause a mass migration. Maybe, however, BookWyrm becomes interesting for people who don't even know Goodreads and its whole concept, and they find out about BookWyrm before they find out about Goodreads.

Friendica tried to take a chance long ago, back in the early 2010s. It even tried to facilitate the transition of whole social circles from Facebook by federating with Facebook by means of a cross-poster. It didn't work out. People didn't want to leave their "friends" behind, not to mention that the average Facebook user was even less technologically adept than the average Twitter user a good decade later. Even trying to mimic Facebook's UI didn't help.

Maybe it was for the better. Typical server hardware that Friendica ran on back in the day could barely handle over 130 accounts on one node. The notoriously power-hungry Facebook connector cut a dozen or two out of this number. Many public Friendica nodes with the Facebook connector on closed their registrations at a bit over 100 accounts. I think not even the biggest root servers would have given you a four-digit capacity.

It would simply have been impossible to accommodate a flood of Facebook refugees on Friendica. Even if Friendica users with Facebook contacts had started their own private nodes, most of them would have needed multiple nodes to even have space for a fraction of their Facebook "friends".

As for Hubzilla, it'll first need a lot of polish. And then I can't see from where people would come flooding to Hubzilla. Facebook refugees would rather pile onto Friendica, the traditional more-powerful-than-Diaspora* Facebook "clone", or maybe (streams), the Fediverse champion in permission control.

Hubzilla could be something for companies, for organisations, for political offices, for journalists, for scientists etc. I could even see modern and progressive left-wing parties use it; Pirate Parties, anyone? They wouldn't have to worry about hub capacities because they could either use specialised hubs, e.g. for journalists, or they'd run their own hubs anyway, just like they run their own Mastodon instances now. In fact, if that thicket of instances run by German public broadcasters was Hubzilla instead of Mastodon, everyone could go nomadic without having to use general-purpose hubs for their clones.

But getting them from something as dead-simple as 𝕏 to the Leatherman of Fediverse projects is difficult, to say the least. Even from Facebook.

And private persons will only really tackle Hubzilla and stick with it if they're geeks enough.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Lemmy #kbin #/kbin #Pixelfed #PeerTube #BookWyrm #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseMigration