#fediversemeta — Public Fediverse posts

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@happyborg

People can follow hashtags

People on Mastodon can follow hashtags. But just because people on Mastodon can, doesn't mean people everywhere else in the Fediverse can, too.

AFAIK, some of the minimalist microblogging server applications designed for self-hosting don't offer this feature. I'm not sure if Pleroma and Akkoma have it.

Hubzilla, which is what I'm commenting from, definitely doesn't have this feature. And Hubzilla is anything but minimalist. It's the most powerful and versatile of all Fediverse server applications.

Also, if you can follow hashtags, you can only follow hashtags on your home server. But if you're on a small server, hardly any messages with these hashtags wash up there in the first place. You'll miss a lot. If you're on a private, single-user server, following hashtags is completely useless because the only messages with these hashtags that reach the server are those that you receive from your own contacts anyway.

(streams) and Forte, both being streamlined and more advanced Hubzilla descendants, can follow hashtags. But there simply aren't any big (streams) or Forte servers, especially not with lots of traffic from Mastodon. Most of the few (streams) and Forte users run their own single-user servers.

This is also why it doesn't matter much whether snac or GoToSocial users can follow hashtags: These two are almost exclusively used as private, single-user servers because that's what they're designed for first and foremost.

To make it short: Most Fediverse users outside the big Mastodon servers can only follow hashtags by relying on "bots" that forward posts with these hashtags which they find on e.g. mastodon.social.

In fact, this is good for Mastodon users as well. It helps circumvent two of Mastodon's disadvantages.

One is that it has no support for groups whatsoever (the Fediverse does have groups in case you don't know). If Mastodon users need to talk about a certain topic, they can't do so in a group about that topic. All they can do is shout into the ether with certain hashtags and hope that the right person catches their toot.

The other one is that this is highly unlikely on Mastodon itself. On Mastodon, most content remains unseen.

Mastodon doesn't offer a list of unread messages in the timeline, not even a counter. All that Mastodon users can do is scroll down their timeline until they either hit content that they've already seen, or until they've got no more time, or until they want no more. Anything below will remain unseen. It's sad that this counts as the default or even without alternatives in the Fediverse. And most Mastodon users follow so many accounts and channels (plus hashtags occasionally) that they can impossibly read all the messages they receive.

Let's suppose a Mastodon user wants to talk about Hubzilla for some reason. I've seen this happen often enough. The only chance they have, not knowing that the @hubzilla exists, much less that they can join it from Mastodon, is by tooting into the void with the hashtag #Hubzilla and hoping that either one of their followers or someone somewhere out there on their followers' servers follows the hashtag #Hubzilla.

But none of their followers comes online soon enough to scroll down to their toot. They all have tons of other content in their timelines above that toot, so they never scroll all the way down to it. If not, they simply don't know what Hubzilla is. And even if any Mastodon users follow the hashtag #Hubzilla (which I doubt), this still doesn't mean that one of them scrolls all the way down to that toot.

And then there's me. As I've already said, I'm on Hubzilla. I can't follow hashtags directly. Instead, I "follow" the hashtag #Hubzilla by having this hashtag on the FediBuzz relay (https://relay.fedi.buzz/) as a contact. Or, in Mastodon terms, by following it. FediBuzz is not a bot server. It's a relay that server admins can connect their servers to to have more public content on their servers (if their server software supports relays, that is). Something completely normal on Mastodon, especially on small servers.

So when someone on Mastodon toots something with #Hubzilla, I receive it as a new post. But I don't have to scroll down a timeline of unknown length to find it. I have a counter for unread messages and other unnoticed actions. It unfolds into a list of unread messages and other unnoticed actions. From there, I can get directly to that post. I will notice it. And I'll usually be able to help.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Relay #Relays

@happyborg

People can follow hashtags

People on Mastodon can follow hashtags. But just because people on Mastodon can, doesn't mean people everywhere else in the Fediverse can, too.

AFAIK, some of the minimalist microblogging server applications designed for self-hosting don't offer this feature. I'm not sure if Pleroma and Akkoma have it.

Hubzilla, which is what I'm commenting from, definitely doesn't have this feature. And Hubzilla is anything but minimalist. It's the most powerful and versatile of all Fediverse server applications.

Also, if you can follow hashtags, you can only follow hashtags on your home server. But if you're on a small server, hardly any messages with these hashtags wash up there in the first place. You'll miss a lot. If you're on a private, single-user server, following hashtags is completely useless because the only messages with these hashtags that reach the server are those that you receive from your own contacts anyway.

(streams) and Forte, both being streamlined and more advanced Hubzilla descendants, can follow hashtags. But there simply aren't any big (streams) or Forte servers, especially not with lots of traffic from Mastodon. Most of the few (streams) and Forte users run their own single-user servers.

This is also why it doesn't matter much whether snac or GoToSocial users can follow hashtags: These two are almost exclusively used as private, single-user servers because that's what they're designed for first and foremost.

To make it short: Most Fediverse users outside the big Mastodon servers can only follow hashtags by relying on "bots" that forward posts with these hashtags which they find on e.g. mastodon.social.

In fact, this is good for Mastodon users as well. It helps circumvent two of Mastodon's disadvantages.

One is that it has no support for groups whatsoever (the Fediverse does have groups in case you don't know). If Mastodon users need to talk about a certain topic, they can't do so in a group about that topic. All they can do is shout into the ether with certain hashtags and hope that the right person catches their toot.

The other one is that this is highly unlikely on Mastodon itself. On Mastodon, most content remains unseen.

Mastodon doesn't offer a list of unread messages in the timeline, not even a counter. All that Mastodon users can do is scroll down their timeline until they either hit content that they've already seen, or until they've got no more time, or until they want no more. Anything below will remain unseen. It's sad that this counts as the default or even without alternatives in the Fediverse. And most Mastodon users follow so many accounts and channels (plus hashtags occasionally) that they can impossibly read all the messages they receive.

Let's suppose a Mastodon user wants to talk about Hubzilla for some reason. I've seen this happen often enough. The only chance they have, not knowing that the @hubzilla exists, much less that they can join it from Mastodon, is by tooting into the void with the hashtag #Hubzilla and hoping that either one of their followers or someone somewhere out there on their followers' servers follows the hashtag #Hubzilla.

But none of their followers comes online soon enough to scroll down to their toot. They all have tons of other content in their timelines above that toot, so they never scroll all the way down to it. If not, they simply don't know what Hubzilla is. And even if any Mastodon users follow the hashtag #Hubzilla (which I doubt), this still doesn't mean that one of them scrolls all the way down to that toot.

And then there's me. As I've already said, I'm on Hubzilla. I can't follow hashtags directly. Instead, I "follow" the hashtag #Hubzilla by having this hashtag on the FediBuzz relay (https://relay.fedi.buzz/) as a contact. Or, in Mastodon terms, by following it. FediBuzz is not a bot server. It's a relay that server admins can connect their servers to to have more public content on their servers (if their server software supports relays, that is). Something completely normal on Mastodon, especially on small servers.

So when someone on Mastodon toots something with #Hubzilla, I receive it as a new post. But I don't have to scroll down a timeline of unknown length to find it. I have a counter for unread messages and other unnoticed actions. It unfolds into a list of unread messages and other unnoticed actions. From there, I can get directly to that post. I will notice it. And I'll usually be able to help.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Relay #Relays

@happyborg

People can follow hashtags

People on Mastodon can follow hashtags. But just because people on Mastodon can, doesn't mean people everywhere else in the Fediverse can, too.

AFAIK, some of the minimalist microblogging server applications designed for self-hosting don't offer this feature. I'm not sure if Pleroma and Akkoma have it.

Hubzilla, which is what I'm commenting from, definitely doesn't have this feature. And Hubzilla is anything but minimalist. It's the most powerful and versatile of all Fediverse server applications.

Also, if you can follow hashtags, you can only follow hashtags on your home server. But if you're on a small server, hardly any messages with these hashtags wash up there in the first place. You'll miss a lot. If you're on a private, single-user server, following hashtags is completely useless because the only messages with these hashtags that reach the server are those that you receive from your own contacts anyway.

(streams) and Forte, both being streamlined and more advanced Hubzilla descendants, can follow hashtags. But there simply aren't any big (streams) or Forte servers, especially not with lots of traffic from Mastodon. Most of the few (streams) and Forte users run their own single-user servers.

This is also why it doesn't matter much whether snac or GoToSocial users can follow hashtags: These two are almost exclusively used as private, single-user servers because that's what they're designed for first and foremost.

To make it short: Most Fediverse users outside the big Mastodon servers can only follow hashtags by relying on "bots" that forward posts with these hashtags which they find on e.g. mastodon.social.

In fact, this is good for Mastodon users as well. It helps circumvent two of Mastodon's disadvantages.

One is that it has no support for groups whatsoever (the Fediverse does have groups in case you don't know). If Mastodon users need to talk about a certain topic, they can't do so in a group about that topic. All they can do is shout into the ether with certain hashtags and hope that the right person catches their toot.

The other one is that this is highly unlikely on Mastodon itself. On Mastodon, most content remains unseen.

Mastodon doesn't offer a list of unread messages in the timeline, not even a counter. All that Mastodon users can do is scroll down their timeline until they either hit content that they've already seen, or until they've got no more time, or until they want no more. Anything below will remain unseen. It's sad that this counts as the default or even without alternatives in the Fediverse. And most Mastodon users follow so many accounts and channels (plus hashtags occasionally) that they can impossibly read all the messages they receive.

Let's suppose a Mastodon user wants to talk about Hubzilla for some reason. I've seen this happen often enough. The only chance they have, not knowing that the @hubzilla exists, much less that they can join it from Mastodon, is by tooting into the void with the hashtag #Hubzilla and hoping that either one of their followers or someone somewhere out there on their followers' servers follows the hashtag #Hubzilla.

But none of their followers comes online soon enough to scroll down to their toot. They all have tons of other content in their timelines above that toot, so they never scroll all the way down to it. If not, they simply don't know what Hubzilla is. And even if any Mastodon users follow the hashtag #Hubzilla (which I doubt), this still doesn't mean that one of them scrolls all the way down to that toot.

And then there's me. As I've already said, I'm on Hubzilla. I can't follow hashtags directly. Instead, I "follow" the hashtag #Hubzilla by having this hashtag on the FediBuzz relay (https://relay.fedi.buzz/) as a contact. Or, in Mastodon terms, by following it. FediBuzz is not a bot server. It's a relay that server admins can connect their servers to to have more public content on their servers (if their server software supports relays, that is). Something completely normal on Mastodon, especially on small servers.

So when someone on Mastodon toots something with #Hubzilla, I receive it as a new post. But I don't have to scroll down a timeline of unknown length to find it. I have a counter for unread messages and other unnoticed actions. It unfolds into a list of unread messages and other unnoticed actions. From there, I can get directly to that post. I will notice it. And I'll usually be able to help.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Relay #Relays

@happyborg

People can follow hashtags

People on Mastodon can follow hashtags. But just because people on Mastodon can, doesn't mean people everywhere else in the Fediverse can, too.

AFAIK, some of the minimalist microblogging server applications designed for self-hosting don't offer this feature. I'm not sure if Pleroma and Akkoma have it.

Hubzilla, which is what I'm commenting from, definitely doesn't have this feature. And Hubzilla is anything but minimalist. It's the most powerful and versatile of all Fediverse server applications.

Also, if you can follow hashtags, you can only follow hashtags on your home server. But if you're on a small server, hardly any messages with these hashtags wash up there in the first place. You'll miss a lot. If you're on a private, single-user server, following hashtags is completely useless because the only messages with these hashtags that reach the server are those that you receive from your own contacts anyway.

(streams) and Forte, both being streamlined and more advanced Hubzilla descendants, can follow hashtags. But there simply aren't any big (streams) or Forte servers, especially not with lots of traffic from Mastodon. Most of the few (streams) and Forte users run their own single-user servers.

This is also why it doesn't matter much whether snac or GoToSocial users can follow hashtags: These two are almost exclusively used as private, single-user servers because that's what they're designed for first and foremost.

To make it short: Most Fediverse users outside the big Mastodon servers can only follow hashtags by relying on "bots" that forward posts with these hashtags which they find on e.g. mastodon.social.

In fact, this is good for Mastodon users as well. It helps circumvent two of Mastodon's disadvantages.

One is that it has no support for groups whatsoever (the Fediverse does have groups in case you don't know). If Mastodon users need to talk about a certain topic, they can't do so in a group about that topic. All they can do is shout into the ether with certain hashtags and hope that the right person catches their toot.

The other one is that this is highly unlikely on Mastodon itself. On Mastodon, most content remains unseen.

Mastodon doesn't offer a list of unread messages in the timeline, not even a counter. All that Mastodon users can do is scroll down their timeline until they either hit content that they've already seen, or until they've got no more time, or until they want no more. Anything below will remain unseen. It's sad that this counts as the default or even without alternatives in the Fediverse. And most Mastodon users follow so many accounts and channels (plus hashtags occasionally) that they can impossibly read all the messages they receive.

Let's suppose a Mastodon user wants to talk about Hubzilla for some reason. I've seen this happen often enough. The only chance they have, not knowing that the @hubzilla exists, much less that they can join it from Mastodon, is by tooting into the void with the hashtag #Hubzilla and hoping that either one of their followers or someone somewhere out there on their followers' servers follows the hashtag #Hubzilla.

But none of their followers comes online soon enough to scroll down to their toot. They all have tons of other content in their timelines above that toot, so they never scroll all the way down to it. If not, they simply don't know what Hubzilla is. And even if any Mastodon users follow the hashtag #Hubzilla (which I doubt), this still doesn't mean that one of them scrolls all the way down to that toot.

And then there's me. As I've already said, I'm on Hubzilla. I can't follow hashtags directly. Instead, I "follow" the hashtag #Hubzilla by having this hashtag on the FediBuzz relay (https://relay.fedi.buzz/) as a contact. Or, in Mastodon terms, by following it. FediBuzz is not a bot server. It's a relay that server admins can connect their servers to to have more public content on their servers (if their server software supports relays, that is). Something completely normal on Mastodon, especially on small servers.

So when someone on Mastodon toots something with #Hubzilla, I receive it as a new post. But I don't have to scroll down a timeline of unknown length to find it. I have a counter for unread messages and other unnoticed actions. It unfolds into a list of unread messages and other unnoticed actions. From there, I can get directly to that post. I will notice it. And I'll usually be able to help.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Relay #Relays

@happyborg

People can follow hashtags

People on Mastodon can follow hashtags. But just because people on Mastodon can, doesn't mean people everywhere else in the Fediverse can, too.

AFAIK, some of the minimalist microblogging server applications designed for self-hosting don't offer this feature. I'm not sure if Pleroma and Akkoma have it.

Hubzilla, which is what I'm commenting from, definitely doesn't have this feature. And Hubzilla is anything but minimalist. It's the most powerful and versatile of all Fediverse server applications.

Also, if you can follow hashtags, you can only follow hashtags on your home server. But if you're on a small server, hardly any messages with these hashtags wash up there in the first place. You'll miss a lot. If you're on a private, single-user server, following hashtags is completely useless because the only messages with these hashtags that reach the server are those that you receive from your own contacts anyway.

(streams) and Forte, both being streamlined and more advanced Hubzilla descendants, can follow hashtags. But there simply aren't any big (streams) or Forte servers, especially not with lots of traffic from Mastodon. Most of the few (streams) and Forte users run their own single-user servers.

This is also why it doesn't matter much whether snac or GoToSocial users can follow hashtags: These two are almost exclusively used as private, single-user servers because that's what they're designed for first and foremost.

To make it short: Most Fediverse users outside the big Mastodon servers can only follow hashtags by relying on "bots" that forward posts with these hashtags which they find on e.g. mastodon.social.

In fact, this is good for Mastodon users as well. It helps circumvent two of Mastodon's disadvantages.

One is that it has no support for groups whatsoever (the Fediverse does have groups in case you don't know). If Mastodon users need to talk about a certain topic, they can't do so in a group about that topic. All they can do is shout into the ether with certain hashtags and hope that the right person catches their toot.

The other one is that this is highly unlikely on Mastodon itself. On Mastodon, most content remains unseen.

Mastodon doesn't offer a list of unread messages in the timeline, not even a counter. All that Mastodon users can do is scroll down their timeline until they either hit content that they've already seen, or until they've got no more time, or until they want no more. Anything below will remain unseen. It's sad that this counts as the default or even without alternatives in the Fediverse. And most Mastodon users follow so many accounts and channels (plus hashtags occasionally) that they can impossibly read all the messages they receive.

Let's suppose a Mastodon user wants to talk about Hubzilla for some reason. I've seen this happen often enough. The only chance they have, not knowing that the @hubzilla exists, much less that they can join it from Mastodon, is by tooting into the void with the hashtag #Hubzilla and hoping that either one of their followers or someone somewhere out there on their followers' servers follows the hashtag #Hubzilla.

But none of their followers comes online soon enough to scroll down to their toot. They all have tons of other content in their timelines above that toot, so they never scroll all the way down to it. If not, they simply don't know what Hubzilla is. And even if any Mastodon users follow the hashtag #Hubzilla (which I doubt), this still doesn't mean that one of them scrolls all the way down to that toot.

And then there's me. As I've already said, I'm on Hubzilla. I can't follow hashtags directly. Instead, I "follow" the hashtag #Hubzilla by having this hashtag on the FediBuzz relay (https://relay.fedi.buzz/) as a contact. Or, in Mastodon terms, by following it. FediBuzz is not a bot server. It's a relay that server admins can connect their servers to to have more public content on their servers (if their server software supports relays, that is). Something completely normal on Mastodon, especially on small servers.

So when someone on Mastodon toots something with #Hubzilla, I receive it as a new post. But I don't have to scroll down a timeline of unknown length to find it. I have a counter for unread messages and other unnoticed actions. It unfolds into a list of unread messages and other unnoticed actions. From there, I can get directly to that post. I will notice it. And I'll usually be able to help.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Relay #Relays

@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

@Truth & Answers Let me be honest: Mastodon isn't the right thing to rely on for this.

There are two common misconceptions on Mastodon about Mastodon. The first one is that Mastodon is the only free, non-commercial, non-corporate, decentralised social anything. Once Mastodon users are over this, they still think Mastodon is the best free, non-commercial, non-corporate, decentralised social anything.

I've seen Mastodon being advertised by users as a Fediverse alternative to literally everything, including Reddit (because, like, you can communicate, right?) and even YouTube (because, like, you can upload videos, right?).

But again, let me be honest: The only thing that Mastodon can hope to be an alternative to is 𝕏. Because it's a Twitter clone. A purist Twitter clone whose developers intentionally reject feature requests because the requested features don't fit into their image of purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta microblogging. They want to keep Mastodon a slightly more glorified SMS than 𝕏.

Mastodon isn't even the only microblogging server application in the Fediverse. It isn't even the best at that. 80-90% of Mastodon's users don't and probably will never realise that Mastodon is an intentionally crippled resource hog. Many believe that Mastodon is the fully-featured be-all, end-all of social networking.

By the way, even the Mastodon developers claim that Mastodon is fully featured. I've had a Mastodon dev try hard to convince me that Mastodon is fully featured although I've told him that I'm on Hubzilla. He essentially tried to tell me that Mastodon has every last feature that Hubzilla has plus even more on top.

In reality, Mastodon isn't the fully-featured be-all, end-all of social networking. It isn't even a social network. It's social media, just like 𝕏 is social media. It's designed for pumping out content and being followed because it's designed as a Twitter-like microblogging application. And it isn't even the best at microblogging.

Almost everyone on Mastodon is fully convinced that Mastodon has to be the best. After all, it's the biggest. It's what everyone chose.

No.

Mastodon is the biggest because everyone who wants to leave 𝕏 or Threads or Bluesky is railroaded to Mastodon. It's the biggest because all the newbies are only told about Mastodon. It's the biggest because none of the newbies even learn upon on-boarding that other 𝕏 alternatives exist in the Fediverse, that anything else exists in the Fediverse other than Mastodon. It's the biggest because mainstream media, tech media and even Fediverse activists only ever talk about Mastodon, Mastodon, Mastodon. (Granted, it's also the biggest because it's the only one with an official phone app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Even though that app sucks.)

All these Mastodon users who claim that Mastodon is the best choice don't realise that they themselves did, in fact, not choose Mastodon. They didn't know they had a choice. All they were told about was Mastodon. Seriously, if they'd had a choice, they'd probably be on Sharkey now and not on Mastodon.

I've read what people had to say who moved from Friendica to Misskey. Or to now defunct Calckey/Firefish. Or to Sharkey. Or to Akkoma. All these are microblogging server applications in the Fediverse. But none of them are intentionally crippled to stay close to Twitter, at least not to such a degree as Mastodon.

It was nothing short of eye-opening to them. Only by daily-driving something else than Mastodon did they realise what the non-Mastodon Fediverse can be like. And how crippled Mastodon actually is. That Mastodon is far from being the absolute pinnacle in decentralised social media.

They no longer had only 500 characters. They had thousands of characters. They would have had thousands of characters on every server running that software without having to ask around which one has more than 500 characters. It felt like a restraint being removed which they had never considered a restraint, at least not that much of it.

They saw text formatting which they considered technologically absolutely impossible in the Fediverse when they were on Mastodon. In fact, they had considered text formatting entirely impossible while on Mastodon until they had come across the first message from outside with text formatting. Actual text formatting, not Unicode trickery. Now they suddenly saw a lot of the stuff that Mastodon's HTML sanitiser removes. And they themselves could use it!

If they were on one of the *keys, they no longer had a timeline of single-message piecemeal. For the first time ever, they experienced what it's like to have something else than single-message piecemeal. Namely entire conversations right in front of them, right away. Without having to dig for them first.

They had features which they had always wished the Fediverse may introduce. They never knew that the Fediverse does have these features, only Mastodon doesn't. They had features that were completely unimagiable to them in the Fediverse.

There are users who have moved from Mastodon to something "minimalist" and lightweight like snac or GoToSocial, often on self-hosted, single-user, private servers. Even they suddenly had features they didn't have on Mastodon. Mind you, while not missing a single Mastodon feature (except maybe for a built-in Web UI).

And that's just the microblogging side of the Fediverse. None of this is actual social networking. You know, what Facebook does.

First of all, if it's about following and being followed, it's social media. A social network doesn't have followers. In case you don't know, Facebook doesn't have followers. It has "friends". Bidirectional connections. Not 𝕏/Mastodon-like mutuals which are two connections, one in each direction, but one connection that goes both ways.

Besides, there are even more important social networking features missing from the microblogging side of the Fediverse.

Where are the contact suggestions? Where does Mastodon suggest new contacts based on how many contacts you have in common with them? Where does Mastodon suggest new contacts based on what profile information you have in common with them?

Oh, right, the latter is impossible because Mastodon doesn't have profile fields with defined purposes. In fact, where are these? Every good social network has them! But Mastodon only gives you four all-purpose profile fields (just like Mastodon only gives you four of everything, four file attachments, four options in polls...).

Where is the list of unread posts, unread comments and other unnoticed actions? How are you to make sure you really catch everything your friends do? Because you can't do that if all you have is a timeline to scroll through until you no longer see new stuff. If you manage to scroll down that far. And only absolute newbies can do that on Mastodon because they hardly follow anyone.

Where are groups? Seriously, I've lost count of how many times Mastodon users said "the Fediverse" must introduce something like Facebook Groups. The huge majority of Mastodon users is fully convinced that the Fediverse does not have groups in any shape or form because Mastodon doesn't have them.

Where are all these things? In the Fediverse, no less? Where are they?

I'll tell you where they are.

Friendica. Hubzilla. (streams). Forte.

The actual social networking side of the Fediverse (although Hubzilla is more like a social CMS or a "social Swiss army knife" that you can also use as a Facebook-like social networking application). I mean, I've already explained that Friendica was created in 2010 as a Facebook alternative. Not a faithful Facebook clone, though, but better than Facebook.

Mike Macgirvin took over from Facebook what social networks really need. And Farmville isn't that, and spying on your users and passing that data on to the NSA and selling it to the highest bidder isn't that, so he didn't take over that. He didn't want to build a clone that also adopts the bad sides just to be as close to the original as possible.

He took over the detailed profiles with profile fields with dedicated purposes. He took over profile privacy settings. In general, he took over a lot of privacy features. He took over advanced user discovery and connection suggestions. He took over bidirectional connections, only without that silly name "friends". He took over groups with moderation, only that a group on Friendica is just another account with a special automated reposter. He took over enclosed threaded conversations with one post at the top and otherwise only comments. He took over a "timeline" of full conversations as the default. He took over the event calendar. And so forth.

Instead, he added useful stuff on top. He gave Friendica all the posting features to make it fully capable of long-form blogging with all bells and whistles. No character limit (except for in the database, but I think that was over 65,000 back in the day already). All HTML text formatting features (only that Friendica only used BBcode back then; now it can optionally also use Markdown). A post/thread title. Summaries. Embedded images and other media with no limit in number. He even added a spoiler tag like in forums that can hide parts of a message.

He took care of privacy beyond what Facebook had to offer. He introduced a permissions system. Friendica got multiple profile per account, only one of which is public, so that you can show different sides of yourself to different connections.

Now, if you want to embed images or other media in your messages, you have to store them somewhere. And not everyone could be expected to set up a little file space somewhere. So he built a file space into Friendica, one that can even be used as a Dropbox alternative, all the way to restricted access to certain directories.

Mike also added a content warning system that automatically generates content warnings on the reader's side, based on a keyword list. If you need something behind content warnings, add the keywords to the list, and you'll have the respective content warnings, but the next user receiving the self-same post or comment does not have these content warnings if they don't need them.

One important part of what makes Friendica Friendica is being able to connect to a whole lot of stuff. For example, Friendica could federate with StatusNet via the OStatus protocol from the get-go; this is also how it immediately federated with Mastodon when the latter was launched. Mastodon generates an RSS feed, something that many users don't know. Friendica not only generates an Atom feed, but it can subscribe to feeds. Friendica can "federate" with e-mail. Over time, more and more connection features were added, including Tumblr, Twitter (!), Facebook (only for a few years before Facebook crippled it) and a WordPress cross-poster.

Lastly, he made it possible for third parties to add extra features by implementing an add-on system.

I dare those who are fully convinced that Mastodon is the best Facebook alternative possible to use Friendica for a year. Not only dip one toe in to the water, but use it as their one and only daily driver for everything they've used Mastodon for. Not scratching the surface and using it like Twitter while ignoring any and all features the Twitter they remember didn't have, but going all in. In fact, I dare those who are fully convinced that Mastodon is perfect and fully-featured to do the same.

And then there's Hubzilla. It came to exist by Mike forking Friendica in 2011, then forking that fork the same year, then rewriting that fork of a fork in 2012, then repurposing, rebranding, repositioning and greatly expanding it in 2015. Long story.

Hubzilla adds even more stuff on top. Most importantly, it introduced nomadic identity (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic_identity) in 2012.

Hubzilla, or its 2012 prototype form named Red, became the first decentralised social software that uncoupled the identity from the login. This was necessary for nomadic identity, but it also introduced the option to have multiple independent identities, basically what's an account elsewhere, on the same account, the same login. This makes sense, given the many different roles and purposes a Hubzilla channel can have. The big advantage over having multiple separate accounts is that you can switch between the channels on your account without logging out and back in.

Hubzilla, or its 2012 prototype form named Red, got an even more advanced and fine-grained permissions system. Hubzilla has 17 individual permissions on three levels, channel level, contact level, content level. At channel level, each one has seven or eight permission options to choose from, depending on whether or not it makes sense to give a permission to everyone on the Internet.

Mike added optional features to Hubzilla that were previously unseen on social anything, features that you'd rather expect from a CMS and maybe not even from that. Non-federating long-form articles. Planning cards that are based on these articles. Wikis that can be formatted with BBcode or Markdown. Webpages that can be formatted with BBcode, Markdown or HTML, that can include dynamic content from elsewhere on the channel, and that can add extra content to the channel pages.

Hubzilla can even act as groupware. It has a CalDAV calendar server; the event calendar can double as a crude UI for the CalDAV calendars. It has an optional CardDAV addressbook server. Its built-in file storage can be accessed via WebDAV, so you theoretically even have some cloud file space you can mount as a network drive. Rather recently, there was even a way found to tie Collabora Office into Hubzilla.

If you should ever read about Bonfire: Bonfire is Hubzilla ordered from Wish.com. Whatever Bonfire promises to have or to introduce has been available as a rock-solid stable feature on Hubzilla for over a decade. Bonfire only gets away with what it's trying to do because nobody knows Hubzilla.

I think it's safe to say that those who "chose" Mastodon didn't choose it over the rest of the Fediverse because it's better. They "chose" it because they didn't even know they have a choice.

As for your post, the technology for redeveloping socialising is there. And it certainly isn't Mastodon, and it never will be Mastodon. Mastodon can't be that due to its design philosophy, due to it being a Twitter clone, due to its own developers intentionally crippling it.

If you want to move on from 1-way interaction, you have to move on from 1-way connections. Move on from Twitter followers to Facebook friends.

You have to offer better options for the users than shouting into the void, attaching a bunch of hashtags and hoping that some of their followers or someone who is following one of the hashtags happens to be bothered to scroll down their timeline far enough.

You have to make sure that people don't miss content due to basic design and philosophy decisions. You have to make sure that people don't miss content because they simply never know that this content is there in the first place, because they can't scroll down far enough their timelines until they reach that content. You need something else than a timeline of single messages to scroll down with the user not having an idea just how far down that timeline goes. You have to tell the user how much unread content there is, what it is, where it is, and take the user directly to that unread content.

You have to stop presenting content to users as a long list of single posts and more single posts with only tiny details telling them that these posts are, in fact, part of a longer conversation which they don't see. Where they have to click or tap themselves through various UI pages to see that post in its context. Users must see the whole conversation Right. Off. The bat.

You need groups. Not kluged onto something that had no group support whatsoever two seconds earlier, not intentionally crippled, not crippled by the technology they're built upon, not intentionally re-invented to be incompatible with whatever already exists (and this is how Mastodon would do them). But fully functional, on an appropriate base, interoperable, user-moderated, optionally private, optionally hiding from directories.

If you want to go "social", you really have to go social. You have to go Facebook, not Twitter.

Users must find other users based on common interests. Or users living close to them. Or users with lots of contacts in common with them. Not by being on the same local/regional server of the same server about a certain topic. Not by searching for hashtags in the main profile text. But by examining specialised profile fields and the contacts.

Users must have such users suggested to them as new connections. Users must have such users at the top of their directory. This is how Facebook does it. And this is one thing that Facebook has always done right.

Again, Mastodon will never offer any of this. But that doesn't mean that you'll have to compromise and lower your expectations. Because you don't have to. There are server applications in the Fediverse, fully federated with Mastodon, that offer literally all of that. They exist right now. And some of them have existed for longer than Mastodon.

If you need something better than today's Mastodon, stop wishing for a better Mastodon. Instead, use something that's better and more appropriate for the job than Mastodon right now. For it exists right now.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Privacy #Permission #Permissions #Groups #FediverseGroups #FediGroups #NomadicIdentity #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Truth & Answers I've just come across a toot from a Mastodon user who demanded that everyone who posts, quote, "on Mastodon," end quote, limit their posts to 500 characters.

This was far from being the first time I've read this very demand or similar demands. It just was the most recent time.

Where this comes from? Well, it has two sides.

The Mastodon side

One side are Mastodon users. Not all of them, but most of them. Literally all of them were on-boarded onto Mastodon with the notion that Mastodon is its own enclosed network with nothing else in it. Those who pull them on board either think it's easier for them to understand if they aren't told about the non-Mastodon Fediverse, or they don't know about the non-Mastodon Fediverse themselves.

Some of these newbies think Mastodon is the network because they've never heard of the Fediverse. Others think the Fediverse is Mastodon and nothing else.

My estimation, and not only mine, is that more than 50% of all Mastodon users think the Fediverse consists of nothing else than Mastodon. A great deal of the rest thinks the Fediverse doesn't extend beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube. Not much anyway.

It doesn't help that Mastodon, unlike other Fediverse server applications such as Misskey, the Forkeys, Friendica, (streams) or Forte, does not tell its users which server app a message came from. It doesn't help either that Mastodon "sanitises" away quite a few things that'd make non-Mastodon messages a dead giveaway. So the huge majority of Mastodon users believe that if they see it on Mastodon, it came from Mastodon.

So these people are dropped into a network which they think is nothing but a purist, minimalist microblogging service with no more than 500 characters, and whose only differences from Twitter are the name, that it isn't just one website, that it isn't owned by Elon Musk, and that it isn't overrun by fascists.

They get used to it. They get used to only having a maximum of 500 characters. They get used to the CW field being the CW field. They get used to Mastodon's entire culture which they see as the be-all, end-all of online culture.

And then they come across a message with a whole lot over 500 characters for the first time. Something which, to their best knowledge, shouldn't exist in the Mastodon Fediverse. Something which mustn't exist in the Mastodon Fediverse.

Some don't have any idea how it could be possible to "toot" more than 500 characters "on Mastodon", and they ask how one can do that. Others believe that all these "long toots" come from hacked Mastodon servers. Either way, they often demand that these Mastodon users adhere to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules and act like all good Mastodon users shall act. Including not "tooting" more than 500 characters "on Mastodon".

Both are being told that these "toots" aren't "toots" because they don't come from Mastodon. That the Fediverse is, in fact, not only Mastodon. That there's other server software in the Fediverse that has always been able to post way more than 500 characters.

That changes nothing for them. They still demand everyone in the Fediverse adhere to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules and only to these, and that everyone in the Fediverse use whatever they use exactly like vanilla, unmodified Mastodon.

And they feel absolutely justified. According to their gospel, Gargron invented the Fediverse when he created Mastodon. And everything in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon (once they discover that there is such stuff) has either been designed as an add-on glued onto Mastodon (Pixelfed, PeerTube), or it's an evil, savage intruder (everything that's capable of largely doing the same thing as Mastodon without being Mastodon).

The Fediverse is to Mastodon users what the ancient world was to the Romans. Mastodon is the Roman Empire. Literally the only place that has got something like culture. A few places have voluntarily joined the Roman Mastodon Empire. All the rest consists of primitive, savage, culture-less barbarians whose lands need to be conquered by force to bring them culture.

The non-Mastodon side

The other side are the non-Mastodon users. This sounds harsh, but while Mastodon users act by faith and belief, non-Mastodon users act by knowledge. It's them who know what the Fediverse really is. That there has never been a point in history at which the Fediverse has only been Mastodon. And that culture does exist outside of Mastodon. Only that these cultures are different from Mastodon's culture, largely because they're geared towards the technical capabilities of the underlying software.

To non-Mastodon users, the Fediverse feels like the New World when the European conquerors and settlers arrived. They demanded the natives adopt European culture and convert to Catholic Christianty or face death. The natives actually already had cultures. Cultures that suited them and their surroundings much more than the culture lived in European cities. But the Europeans didn't acknowledge the natives' cultures as such, nor did they care.

From non-Mastodon users' point of view, Mastodon users act to them like the Europeans acted to the natives in their colonies-to-be.

A very good example, also because it's such an extreme example, has to be Friendica. In case you don't know, Friendica (https://friendi.ca; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica; https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica) is a free, open-source, decentralised, federated Facebook alternative that first came out as early as May, 2010. Friendica developed a wholly different culture from Mastodon's because it's vastly different from Mastodon.

Mastodon's culture was mostly coined in mid-2022 by those who escaped from Elon Musk's announcement to buy out Twitter in February/March, 2022.
Friendica's culture was coined by its early users in 2010 already.

Mastodon users are mostly used to living in a Mastodon-only network with no connection to anything that isn't Mastodon. They believe that Mastodon and the Fediverse were designed as such, and that Friendica is an illegitimate intruder.
Friendica users are used to being able to connect to everything that moves, including Mastodon, including the whole Fediverse, no matter which iteration of the Fediverse, including diaspora*, and the some. That's because Friendica was designed from the ground up to be able to connect to a whole lot of stuff. It's part of its concept.

Mastodon users believe that Mastodon was there before anything.
Friendica users know that Friendica was there long before Mastodon, even before diaspora*, and that Friendica still wasn't the first.

Mastodon users are used to only having 500 characters. They still consider that a lot in comparison with Twitter's 280 characters.
Friendica users are used to not having any character limit whatsoever. Friendica's actual technical character limit is imposed by the maximum size of the message text database field, and that's over 16.7 million characters.

Mastodon users are used to chopping long posts into threads. It's what they expect. Actual long posts irritate them.
Friendica users are used to posting long post in one piece. It's what they expect. One and the same post being chopped up into itty-bitty bits irritate them.

Mastodon users are used to putting CWs in a dedicated CW field.
Friendica users are used to the self-same text field actually being a summary field (Friendica calls it "abstract"). While Mastodon got that field in 2017 as a pull request from a user, Friendica had it from the get-go, i.e. since 2010. And Friendica actually adopted it from Evan Prodromou's decentralised Twitter alternative StatusNet from 2008 with which Friendica was able to federate with from the get-go as well.

Mastodon users "know" that Gargron invented the CW field.
Friendica users actually do know for a fact that they've had the same field as a summary field since long before Mastodon was even made. There are still enough Friendica veterans around from before 2016.

This also means that Mastodon users are used to poster-side CWs which all readers get just the same.
Friendica users are used to CWs being automatically generated on the reader's side, individually for each reader, by an optional text filter.
In fact, Mastodon can do the same. But nobody knows, it came way too late to become part of Mastodon's culture (Mastodon 4.0 in October, 2022), it's too tedious to use, it probably isn't supported by that many phone apps, and next to nobody uses Mastodon's Web interface. In the meantime, Friendica has had this feature for some twelve years longer, and it's only an on-off switch and one editable keyword list.

Mastodon users are used to only having up to four images and to images always only being file attachments dangling below a post.
Friendica users are used to being able to embed a virtually unlimited number of images to a post. And to actually embed them, as in, with text above the image and text below the image and another image below that text and more text below that image. Theoretically, they could insert tiny images into lines of text. By the way, Mastodon refuses to display embedded images. It also rejects any file attachments beyond the first four. And up to version 4.0 from October, 2022, it didn't support any kind of text formatting and "sanitised" all message texts down to plain text.

This also means that Mastodon users are used to only having plain text or mucking around with Unicode characters for bold type and italics.
Friendica users are used to being able to not only see, but also post all sorts of text formatting that HTML is capable of.

Mastodon users are often deadly afraid of quote-posts because they only know quote-posts as a means of harassment and dogpiling on Twitter.
Friendica users, their entire culture being entirely unfazed by whatever has ever happened on Twitter, are absolutely used to always having had quote-posts at hand and to using quote-posts as a means of forwarding content. They had what Mastodon calls "quotes" years before they had what Mastodon calls "boosts" (and what many Mastodon users refer to as "retoots").

Mastodon users are used to conversations being loosely tied together from toots and to having to visibly mention all those whom they want to receive a reply.
Friendica users are used to having enclosed threaded conversations with only one post and otherwise only comments. They're also used to everyone in the conversation, i.e. everyone who has received the original post, automatically receiving every single last comment. They're used to always seeing the entire thread immediately as opposed to single-message piecemeal.

Mastodon users are used to shouting into the void with hashtags attached if they want to talk about a certain topic. It's the only way for them to do so.
Friendica users are used to having groups. Oh, and full-text search.

The conflict

It should be obvious that these two types have a very high chance of not getting along, especially if the Mastodon user is fairly new and not used to there being stuff in the Fediverse that's nothing like Mastodon.

Mastodon users keep demanding that everyone else in the Fediverse live by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules and only by these.

Mastodon users who have joined in 2026 keep ordering Friendica veterans who have joined in the early 2010s (before there was any Mastodon) to act like they're on Mastodon.

They demand these Friendica veterans fully adopt Mastodon's culture (which isn't even geared towards Friendica's set of features).

They indirectly demand these Friendica veterans give up their own culture (because they cannot comprehend that there can be any other culture in the Fediverse than Mastodon's, as in, that what Friendica has is a culture, even though it's different from Mastodon's).

They directly demand these Friendica veterans give up some 40% of the features they've been using for a decade and a half and indirectly demand they give up another 40% of these features.

They demand these Friendica veterans stop posting more than 500 characters at once.

They demand these Friendica veterans put CWs into their abstract field. (Again, they think that Gargron has invented this field from scratch as a CW field,)

They demand these Friendica veterans use their abstract field only for CWs.

They demand these Friendica veterans stop "spamming" hashtags that clearly aren't there for content discovery. (They cannot comprehend that these hashtags are there to trigger automatic reader-side CWs because the entire concept is completely alien to them.)

And so forth.

These Friendica veterans have been in the Fediverse for about a decade and a half. And suddently, these Mastodon newbies appear and tell them how to use Friendica.

Of course, these Mastodon newbies don't know a thing about Friendica. They think the Friendica veterans are Mastodon users, and they're telling them how to use Mastodon.

So the Friendica users tell them, no, they aren't on Mastodon. They're on Friendica which has got absolutely nothing to do with Mastodon.

Then the Mastodon newbies will believe that someone has created this weird Friendica thing after Mastodon was made (it can't possibly be any other way, right?9 and illegally hacked this Friendica thing into the Mastodon Fediverse. And whoever made Friendica omitted to make Friendica just like Mastodon.

Okay, now the Friendica users tell them that Friendica was launched in 2010, how long before Mastodon that was, and that they themselves have been around for much longer than Mastodon, too.

Now, either the Mastodon newbies will fail to comprehend that there can be anything in the Fediverse made before Mastodon if Gargron has invented the very technology. Or they think that the Fediverse was still created with Mastodon, and that Friendica still illegally intruded into the Mastodon Fediverse.

Either way, the Friendica veterans will have to adapt and act entirely by Mastodon's standards. This is the Mastodon Fediverse, Mastodon is the biggest software (if only by monthly active users, by the way), Mastodon has defined "the Fediverse culture", and thus it's the Mastodon users and only the Mastodon users who get to say how people have to act and behave in the Fediverse.

And then the Mastodon users wonder how there's so much Mastodon hatred on Friendica (and there actually is). How Friendica users complain about Mastodon users trying to force them to use Friendica like Mastodon. How Friendica users complain about Mastodon users chopping long posts into small bits. As if they had a choice. How Friendica users complain about CWs in whatever that abstract field is supposed to be. And so forth.

How dare the Friendica users complain? The Mastodon users are the good guys! It's them and only them who have a culture, who have rules, who know how to use the Fediverse!

By the way: It gets even worse between Mastodon and Lemmy.

Mastodon's culture is an idealised version of pre-Musk Twitter's culture with bits of Tumblr's SFW culture mixed in. That's because just about everyone on Mastodon originally came from Twitter, and most of them escaped from Elon Musk. They want Mastodon (and the Fediverse) be a better Twitter. It helps that Mastodon is still trying hard to be a Twitter clone.

Lemmy's culture, on the other hand, is a carbon copy of Reddit's culture. Lemmy is a Reddit clone that shares next to no features at all with Mastodon except for ActivityPub support. Next to all Lemmy users are former Redditors who left Reddit when Reddit started charging $20,000,000 for its client API, effectively killing off all third-party Reddit apps. They saw no reason in changing their culture because it wasn't the culture that drove them away. Hardly any of them were on Twitter, and almost none of them have ever been on Mastodon. Many think the Fediverse is Lemmy. Of the rest, many think the Fediverse is Lemmy with a side of PieFed.

Mastodon lives on hashtags even more than Twitter. Lemmy has zero support for hashtags because Reddit doesn't have any either, and neither does Hacker News.

Mastodon requires mentions to get replies to their recipients. One visible mention per recipient. Lemmy doesn't need mentions for this at all. Mentions on Lemmy only serve to, well, mention someone. Just like on Reddit.

And so forth.

It's actually easy to spot threads on Lemmy that were started by Mastodon users: The title is in the post text, or there's no title at all because the Mastodon users did as they always do: mention in the first line, then a new line because that looks prettier. Of course, there's a mention in the post text. And there's a bunch of hashtags strewn across the post text even though they don't even work. If you're very lucky, the hashtags are at the bottom, but most Mastodon users don't waste any of their 500 characters on that.

I hope you get a rough idea how much headbutting there is between Mastodon users who think that the Mastodon users rule supreme over the whole Fediverse and Lemmy community owners who do rule over the Lemmy communities which these Mastodon users have just posted into.

Countermeasures

Both sides are actually taking countermeasures. The non-Mastodon side is more effective at it, though.

On Mastodon's side, there are very few single users who block every single non-Mastodon server they come across.

Countermeasures on the non-Mastodon side vary. They start with single users who block each Mastodon user who doesn't behave like they want them to behave, e.g. they block everyone who chops a long post into a thread at first trike.

Then there's Hubzilla, reworked from a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's own creator. Hubzilla has always been based on its own protocol, Zot6 (Friendica's creator calls it an older version of Nomad). ActivityPub support is optional, on by default on new servers and off by default on new channels. The current devs won't change anything about that. Not only doesn't Hubzilla's technology allow for moving it to ActivityPub as its base protocol, but ActivityPub being optional is seen as a last-resort "drawbridge" for those to whom Mastodon has become unbearable.

Nowadays, Friendica's creator is working on two other applications in the same family. (streams) is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla, and Forte is a fork of (streams). Both have an admin-side user agent filter. It can block entire Fediverse applications without having to hassle around with a URL list. It was mainly created and advertised as a means to permanently lock Threads out, even if Threads should change URLs. But it's also being advertised as being capable of blocking all of Mastodon, all present and future servers. Mastodon being intentially made barely compatible with the rest of the Fediverse is only one reason for this.

(streams) and Forte also have another admin-side filter which, when turned on, locks everything out that doesn't support enclosed threaded conversations. That's because server applications like Mastodon mess with the way that (streams), Forte and their ancestors handle conversations. Granted, when this is activated only to get rid of Mastodon, it causes quite a bit of collateral damage.

Generally, (streams) and Forte are very similar. The main difference is that Forte is entirely based on ActivityPub whereas (streams) is based on the current version of Nomad with ActivityPub still being optional. The reason why (streams) is kept around is for there to still be one of these applications with the same protocol-level "drawbridge" as Hubzilla. And in fact, the most important (streams) group used to have ActivityPub off with the intention to keep Mastodon out.

I guess there are still Mastodon users who absolutely defend and support Mastodon's way being forced upon the non-Mastodon Fediverse, and who are irritated or upset about non-Mastodon users being very defensive of their own non-Mastodon ways and refusing to adopt Mastodon's (allegedly much superior) culture instead of embracing it.

And I guess there are Mastodon users who feel absolutely entitled to get to every last Hubzilla and (streams) and Forte user unhindered and force them to use Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte exactly like Mastodon in every way possible.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Lemmy #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@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

@Truth Collector Do you mean people who know how to write long posts? Who have it in themselves to write long posts?

Or people who have the technical means in the Fediverse to write long posts?

Either way, I guess a major issue is that 99% of all Fediverse newbies came from Twitter to Mastodon, believing that the Fediverse is only Mastodon, that Mastodon is an enclosed network and only connected to itself. Most of them still think that. Many of the rest want that back. Long posts, i.e. anything with more than 500 characters, are very unwelcome on Mastodon.

Part of the issue is that most Mastodon users are on phones, usually only ever on phones. Pretty much all of them use apps. And especially the newbies use the official Mastodon app. Unlike just about all other apps as well as Mastodon's own Web interface, the official Mastodon app can't fold long posts in. It's built under the assumption that there will never be any messages in the Fediverse that exceed 500 characters. But if a long post appears in this app, it appears as a long wall of text in your timeline that you have to scroll past.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@Kristian Na ja, Friendica war ja ausgereift. Zumindest soweit ausgereift, wie Friendica selbst und das DFRN-Protokoll es zuließen. Smartphone-Apps gab es nicht, weil man damals, 2010/2011, Smartphone-Apps für Sachen, die es auch als Websites gab, noch als Gimmicks ansah und noch nicht als lebensnotwendig. Das war, bevor die Leute gewisse Websites mehr über dedizierte Apps nutzten als über die Websites selbst.

Nur: Eine Weiterentwicklung war zwingend notwendig. Und die ging nicht mit Friendica, wie es war, denn die ging auch nicht mit DFRN.

Der Auslöser: 2011 waren binnen kurzer Zeit mehrere größere Friendica-Nodes von jetzt auf sofort ohne Ankündigung verschwunden. Einfach so weg. Friendica war durch das Verschwinden einiger weniger, aber jeweils sehr großer öffentlicher Nodes auf die Hälfte seiner Größe geschrumpft. Die andere Hälfte der Nutzer hatte alles verloren ohne die Chance, irgendwas zu retten. Die konnten wieder ganz neu bei null anfangen.

Das beste, was Mike an Friendica selbst machen konnte, war, eine Export- und Importfunktion einzubauen. Damit konnte man Backups des eigenen Konto machen. Das half aber nur, wenn man entweder brav ein tägliches Backup machte oder die Schließung eines Node vorher angekündigt wurde. Noch einmal: Genau das war 2011 nicht passiert. Die Nodes waren einfach futsch. Da hilft dir auch eine Backup-Funktion nicht, wenn du nicht laufend regelmäßig Backups machst.

Mike sah nur eine mögliche wirkliche Lösung. Und das war, indem deine Identität nicht bombenfest an einen Server gebunden ist, sondern simultan gleichzeitig als identische Klone auf mehreren unabhängigen Servern existieren kann. Wenn davon mal einer ausfällt, egal, die anderen laufen ja noch, also läuft deine Identität noch.

Problem: Mit DFRN ging das nicht umzusetzen. Es brauchte ein ganz neues Protokoll. Auch deshalb, weil Mike noch andere Verbesserungen im Kopf hatte wie ein nochmals deutlich aufgebohrtes Berechtigungssystem. Auch das ging mit DFRN so nicht und brauchte ein neues Protokoll. So entstand Zot.

Zum einen hieß ein neues Protokoll aber auch, wo auch immer das eingebaut werden soll, muß das komplette Backend ausgetauscht und neu geschrieben werden. Und große Teile des Frontend gleich mit. Das konnte Mike aber nicht auf Friendica im laufenden Betrieb machen. Friendica hätte unmöglich seine Grundfunktionalität gleichzeitig auf DFRN und auf Zot betreiben können. Und ein Protokollaustausch hätte bedeutet, daß Nodes, die die neue Friendica-Version mit Zot fahren, sich nicht mehr nativ hätten verbinden können mit Nodes, die alte Versionen mit DFRN fahren. Die wären zueinander inkompatibel gewesen.

Mike hatte als neue Entwicklungsplattform ja gerade das neue Red, das ein Fork seiner bisherigen "geheimen" Entwicklungsplattform Free-Friendika war. Das war ebenso "geheim", das konnte er also entsprechend umbauen.

Mike hätte aber niemals gleichzeitig Red komplett umbauen und Friendica selbst auf Free-Friendika weiterpflegen und die Weiterentwicklungen von Free-Friendika nach Friendica selbst bringen können. Und die einzige Alternative zum Umbau von Red auf Zot war, wieder solche Massencrashs wie 2011 mit exakt denselben Auswirkungen zu haben, ohne irgendwas tun zu können.

Also hat Mike sich auf Red konzentriert (dessen Umbau ja alleine schon länger dauern sollte als die Entwicklung von Friendica) und Friendica in die Hände von Tobias und Michael gegeben, die es seitdem nach ihren Vorstellungen weiterentwickeln. Die beiden waren ja meines Wissens sowieso schon Co-Entwickler von Friendica. Das hat Mike ja längst nicht mehr alles alleine gemacht.

Bei Red war das wieder anders. Das machte Mike ganz alleine. Das mußte er ja erstmal aufbauen. Und selbst als es fertig war, wurde es kaum angenommen. Es war zwar kein Geheimprojekt mehr, nachdem es sich von Friendica gelöst hatte. Aber es wurde kaum angenommen.

Auch als es umbenannt wurde in Red Matrix, was es leichter machte, es zu googlen, wurde es nicht angenommen. Die Friendica-Nutzer nahmen es wahr als Friendica mit nomadischer Identität. Was nomadische Identität ist, verstanden sie gar nicht. Selbst wenn doch: Die meisten von ihnen hatten inzwischen ihre eigenen privaten Einzelnutzer-Nodes.

So sahen sie in der Red Matrix gegenüber Friendica keine Vorteile, also warum umsteigen? Mal ganz davon abgesehen, daß Friendica und die Red Matrix nur über das diaspora*-Protokoll oder OStatus kommunizieren konnten. Die einzigen, die wechselten, dürften die gewesen sein, die eh immer das neueste, heißeste Zeug ausprobieren wollten.

Außerhalb von Friendica wußte eh keine Sau, daß die Red Matrix existierte. Herzlich wenige Leute wußten ja überhaupt auch nur, daß Friendica existierte. Mikes "Wenn du es baust, werden sie kommen" funktionierte damals schon nicht. Kleckerweise kamen noch neue Leute nach Friendica. Aber kaum einer ging von Friendica auf die Red Matrix, und absolut niemand ging von null auf die Red Matrix.

Interessant wurde die Red Matrix eigentlich erst 2015, als sie zu Hubzilla aufgebohrt wurde, also auf einmal Sachen konnte, die Friendica nicht konnte, die aber vielleicht nützlich sein konnten. Damit konnte Hubzilla auch für ganz andere Sachen eingesetzt werden als Friendica, also nicht nur als Facebook-Ersatz oder Blog.

Aber wenn Mario schon Anfang 2015 das noch brandneue Hubzilla übernahm, was ja so auf der offiziellen Website steht (nach meinen Informationen war es erst 2018), dann war es ein Wunder, daß Mike überhaupt jemanden fand, der übernehmen würde, der also schon seit Red-Matrix-Zeiten dabei war. Aber Mike hat ja an der Weiterentwicklung von Hubzilla noch weiter aktiv mitgewirkt, nur eben nicht als Projektleiter.

Hubzilla selbst wurde ja erst ab Ende 2015 interessant, als es seinen ersten stabilen Release hatte. Und auch Hubzillas Existenz war eigentlich nur auf Friendica bekannt. Selbst heute noch sind die allermeisten Hubzilla-Nutzer Friendica-Veteranen. Direkt von Mastodon nach Hubzilla ist kaum einer gekommen, von null nach Hubzilla schon gar nicht.

Selbst da war Mike keiner, der Sachen so läßt, wie sie sind, und sie nur noch weiter poliert. Wenn es etwas zu verbessern gibt, dann macht er das auch. Und wenn das nicht auf existierender Software im laufenden Produktivbetrieb geht, dann forkt er eben, und dann nimmt er sich weit mehr Zeit für seinen Fork als für das, was er vorher gemacht hatte. Und das ist auch gut so. Ansonsten hätten wir heute noch nur Friendica und immer noch keine Lösung für das Problem, daß die Leute alles verlieren, wenn mal wieder ein großer Node verschwindet.

Jetzt wollte Mike Zot weiterentwickeln, wohl auch deshalb, weil Zot, wie es damals war, nicht gut mit ActivityPub zusammenspielte. Aber potentiell kompatibilitätsbrechend. In einem eigenen zusätzlichen Branch von Hubzilla wäre das nicht gegangen, schon deshalb, weil Hubzilla für solche Experimente schlicht und ergreifend zu groß war.

Also hat Mike 2018 Osada von Hubzilla abgeforkt und alles rausgerissen, was im Weg war. Artikel, Karten, Wikis, Webpages, alle Verbindungsmöglichkeiten außer Zot, ActivityPub und RSS/Atom, alles raus.

Weil dann abzusehen war, daß nomadisches Zot6 (zumindest vorerst) mit ActivityPub überhaupt nicht mehr funktionieren würde, brauchte Mike zwei Projekte: Osada behielt ActivityPub, wurde aber nichtnomadisch. Zusätzlich forkte er Zap von Osada, ließ es nomadisch, entfernte aber ActivityPub.

Jetzt konnte Mike endgültig nicht gleichzeitig Zot6 entwickeln und Osada entwickeln und Zap entwickeln und Hubzilla weiterpflegen. Auch dieses Mal half ihm bei den Neuentwicklungen niemand. Also überließ er Hubzilla gänzlich Mario.

Wie es dann weiterging, lag nicht an Mikes Sprunghaftigkeit.

Anfang 2019 fand er einen Weg, auch nomadisches Zot6 mit ActivityPub kompatibel zu machen. Abgesehen davon war die Idee, einen nomadischen Zap-Kanal über einen nichtnomadischen Osada-Kanal mit dem Fediverse zu verbinden, sowieso kompletter Blödsinn und technisch in der Praxis kaum realisierbar, selbst mit Kanalquellen nicht. Also stellte Mike Osada ein, forkte von Zap ein ganz neues Osada und baute da ActivityPub-Support ein. Noch war nomadisches Zot6 + ActivityPub ja noch experimentell, deswegen hat er es nicht in Zap eingebaut.

Dann aber wurden Osada und Zap stabil und bekamen sogar einen 1.0-Release. Inzwischen gab es Leute, die Osada oder Zap produktiv nutzten. Die kamen alle von Hubzilla, denn nur da wußte man, daß es Osada und Zap gab. Nicht mal auf Friendica wußte das jemand, im übrigen Fediverse erst recht nicht und außerhalb des Fediverse schon gar nicht.

So baute Mike dann Osadas ActivityPub-Support auch in Zap ein, schaltete ihn aber standardmäßig auf Serverebene ab, auf Kanalebene sowieso. Das führte dazu, daß Osada und Zap bis auf das Branding und die Standardeinstellungen völlig identisch waren. Es brauchte gar nicht mehr beide. Mike ließ das aber so.

Irgendwie gab es wohl genug Osada- und Zap-Anwender, daß Mike jemanden fand, der beides weiterpflegen wollte. Denn Mike hatte wieder neue Weiterentwicklungen im Sinne, die er aber nicht mehr auf Osada und Zap machen konnte, weil die jetzt beide als stabile Produktivsoftware galten. So gab er Osada und Zap dann wieder an "die Community" weiter, die als quasi erste Amtshandlung mit Mikes Segen Osada nach Zap mergete, in dem Zuge auch auf Zap ActivityPub standardmäßig aktivierte und Osada kurzerhand einstellte.

2020 ging es dann weiter. Zap war damals State of the Art. Zot6 war so stabil, daß es nach Hubzilla zurückportiert wurde. Zap war jetzt quasi der modernere kleine Bruder von Hubzilla, der sich etwas eleganter bediente und einen nicht mit Features erschlug. Nur war Zap immer noch obskurer als Hubzilla, Hubzilla war obskurer als Friendica, und Friendica war selbst sehr obskur, weil für keins der drei wirklich Werbung gemacht wurde. Zap war weiterhin sonst nur auf Hubzilla bekannt und Hubzilla sonst nur auf Friendica.

Und Mike bastelte an Zot8, das nochmals besser werden sollte. Dafür brauchte er aber Software zum Experimentieren. Und so entstanden drei neue Forks in so kurzer Folge, daß heute nicht mehr bekannt ist, was jetzt wovon geforkt wurde, nur daß irgendwas von Zap geforkt worden ist. Im einzelnen waren das schon wieder ein neues Osada, ein neues Mistpark und eine neue Redmatrix.

Warum drei?

Es ging das Gerücht um, das seien verschiedene Stabilitätsstufen. Redmatrix 2020 sei experimentell mit wie früher bei Zap standardmäßig deaktiviertem ActivityPub, das damit der Entwicklung von Zot8 nicht im Wege stehe. Osada sei auch experimentell, aber wie früher schon bei Osada mit standardmäßig aktiviertem ActivityPub, um zu gucken, wie die Weiterentwicklungen von Zot8 sich mit ActivityPub vertragen. Mistpark 2020 wiederum sei "halbstabil" wie Debian testing, also stabiler als Osada und eher für den Produktiveinsatz geeignet, aber aktueller als Zap.

Zap sei also für die, die etwas neueres als Hubzilla haben wollten und auf die Zusatzfeatures von Hubzilla verzichten konnten. Misty sei für die, die etwas noch aktuelleres als Zap haben wollten, also das neueste Zeug noch früher, und die etwaige Instabilitäten in Kauf zu nehmen bereit waren. Osada sei für die, die unbedingt bleeding-edge wollten, instabil oder nicht. Und Redmatrix 2020 sei eh nur für Mike.

In Wahrheit waren Osada, Misty und Redmatrix 2020 bis auf das Branding völlig identisch und quasi Soft-Forks. Alle Commits wurden gleichermaßen und fast gleichzeitig in alle drei eingepflegt.

Warum?

Weil Mike der Markenfetischismus im Fediverse auf den Keks ging. Es gab Leute, die bildeten sich ein, die Software, die sie nutzten, sei die beste, einfach, weil sie Fans der Softwaremarke waren. Ganz besonders gab es die natürlich auf Mastodon, aber auch sonst. Genau diese Leute wollte er trollen, indem er drei bis auf den Namen und das Logo völlig identische Serveranwendungen pflegte. Misty z. B. konnte überhaupt nicht "die beste Fediverse-Serversoftware" sein, egal, wer sich das einbildete, wenn Osada und Redmatrix bis auf die Marke völlig baugleich waren.

Anfang 2021 kam dann Roadhouse dazu. Das Abenteuer Zot8 war im Grunde vorbei, bevor Zot8 stabil war. Denn Zot11 sollte noch besser werden. Vor allem sollte Zot11 von allen Zot-Versionen die beste Kompatibilität mit ActivityPub bekommen. Blöderweise konnte Mike aber Zot11 nicht auf Osada, Misty und Redmatrix entwickeln. Zot11 sollte nämlich zu allen Vorgängern so inkompatibel werden, daß es letztlich nicht mehr Zot heißen sollte. Aber es gab Leute, die Osada, Misty oder Redmatrix produktiv nutzten.

Also mußte Mike von einem von den dreien Roadhouse forken. War ihm aber egal, weil er damit die Leute mit noch einer weiteren Marke trollen konnte. Wohlgemerkt, effektiv hatte er sogar Zap noch an der Backe, weil es in der Community dann wohl doch zuwenig Interesse an der Weiterentwicklung gab.

Nomad, eigentlich ja Zot11, wurde zum Erfolg. Und das Erfolgsrezept lag auch darin, zusätzlich Support für Hubzillas Zot6 einzubauen, über den Roadhouse auch mit Osada, Misty und Redmatrix kommunizieren konnte. Ansonsten waren von den praktischen Features her Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix und Roadhouse identisch und von der Benutzeroberfläche her auch beinahe. Es machte in der Praxis keinen großen Unterschied, welches man nutzte. Außerhalb waren sie eh, wenn überhaupt, nur auf Hubzilla bekannt. Das heißt, Roadhouse war beinahe komplett unbekannt, weil da endgültig nur Mike drüber redete.

Daß es (streams) gibt, obwohl Roadhouse doch gut war, hatte andere Gründe.

Grund 1: Mike fand einen neuen Weg, die Markenfetischisten zu trollen. Nämlich mit Software, die gar keinen Namen und gar keine Markenidentität hat. Also nahm Mike dem neuen Roadhouse-Fork von Ende 2021 den Namen und sogar den fediverseinternen festen Identifikator weg. Letzteren kann man entweder händisch ausfüllen, oder (streams) übernimmt ihn vom Instanznamen. Alleine das wäre mit einem "Debranding" von Roadhouse nicht getan gewesen, weil weiter alle von "Roadhouse" gesprochen hätten.

Grund 2: Dieses ständige Wetteifern, welche Software auf The Federation, Fediverse Observer, der FediDB usw. jetzt am populärsten ist und am meisten genutzt wird, ging ihm inzwischen auch auf dem Zeiger. Ein weiteres "Feature" von (streams) ist, daß Mike neben dem Namen und der Markenidentität auch nodeinfo praktisch komplett entfernt hat. (streams) sendet überhaupt keine Statistiken und hält sich von allen Instanzlisten-Websites fern. Und das ist so gewollt.

Grund 3: Zusätzlich wollte Mike es der Free-Software- und Open-Source-Community leichter machen. Da kloppt man sich ja bekanntlich darum, welche Lizenzen wirklich frei sind und welche nicht. Also hat Mike (streams), dessen sämtliche Vorgänger unter der MIT-Lizenz stehen, in die Public Domain gestellt. Freier als das geht's nun wirklich nicht mehr. Gleichzeitig wollte Mike diejenigen ärgern, die vielleicht vorhaben könnten, aus (streams) proprietäre, kommerzielle Closed-Source-Software zu machen. Die ganzen Apps sind nämlich durchaus schon mal Fremdcode und stehen unter eigenen Lizenzen. Und die sind untereinander inkompatibel.

(streams) sollte stabil werden und wurde stabil. Im Grunde war Mikes Plan, (streams) zu der Fediverse-Software der Zukunft zu machen. So hat er am 31.12.2022 offiziell Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix und Roadhouse eingestellt. Das war aber kein Problem, denn zwischen den fünfen konnten Admins durch einfaches Rebasen nicht nur crossgraden, sondern auch zu (streams) upgraden.

Jetzt gab es nur noch Friendica, Hubzilla und (streams), wovon Mike nur noch (streams) betreute.

Dann kam ja silverpill auf Mike zu mit der Idee der nomadischen Identität über ActivityPub. Mike war interessiert. silverpill trieb das ziemlich voran inklusive dem einen oder anderen neuen FEP, darunter auch FEP-ef61, das in ActivityPub dezentrale Identitäten einführen sollte. Zot hat so etwas, Nomad natürlich auch, aber anders, und ActivityPub hatte das natürlich nicht.

Diese dezentralen Identitäten hat Mike auch in (streams) eingebaut. Langfristig sollte es ja möglich sein, zwischen verschiedenen Serveranwendungen zu klonen, so auch zwischen (streams) und Mitra. Zumindest aber sollten sie voneinander die dezentralen Identitäten als ebensolche verstehen. So sollte (streams) geklonte Mitra-Identitäten als solche erkennen, und Mitra sollte geklonte (streams)-Kanäle als solche erkennen.

Unter Laborbedingungen in Mikes nomadic-Zweig funktionierten die. Also mergete Mike im Juni 2024 den nomadic-Zweig in den dev-Zweig, den allgemeinen Entwicklungszweig. Auch der lief nur unter Laborbedingungen, weil (im Gegensatz zu Hubzilla, wo zwei öffentliche Produktivhubs Entwicklerversionen fahren) niemand außer Mike den dev-Zweig von (streams) produktiv fuhr.

Im Juli 2024 mergete Mike dann den dev-Zweig in den release-Zweig, um die neuesten Weiterentwicklungen an die produktiv gefahrenen, stabilen Server auszurollen. Da war allerdings Schluß mit Laborbedingungen. Jetzt mußten sich FEP-ef61 und die DIDs unter täglichen und breitgefächerten Realbedingungen beweisen.

Genau das taten sie nicht. Erst jetzt stellte sich heraus, daß (streams) mit den vielen Identitäten nicht klarkam. Es föderierte nicht mehr über ActivityPub. Es föderierte nicht mehr mit Hubzilla. Es föderierte nicht mal mehr mit sich selbst. Es konnte sich mit nichts mehr vernünftig verbinden.

Mike brauchte eine Weile, um überhaupt festzustellen, daß der Verursacher dieser Misere ein Identitätenchaos war. Das konnte er aber nicht auf (streams) selbst beheben. Hilfe hatte er auch keine. Die (streams)-Community war so winzig, da gab es niemanden, der ihm hätte helfen können. Der einzige, der die Fähigkeit gehabt hätte, hatte keine Zeit. Und der einzige, der Zeit und Bock hatte, hatte vom Coden keine Ahnung.

So mußte Mike sich erstmal einen Überblick verschaffen. Im August, also dem Monat nach dem Crash, als der Crash noch nicht behoben war, forkte er das streams-Repository und schuf Forte. Da wiederum riß er alles raus, was nicht ActivityPub war, also die Unterstützung sowohl von Nomad als auch von Zot6, um einen freien, ungehinderten Blick auf ActivityPub zu haben.

Inzwischen hatte er auch zwei andere Sachen gelernt: Software, die keinen Namen hat, interessiert keinen. Das verwirrt die Leute eher. Also bekam Forte wieder einen Namen. Die Public Domain brachte auch nichts. Also kam Forte wieder unter die MIT-Lizenz. Und Fediverse-Software, die überhaupt keine nodeinfo hat, ist praktisch unsichtbar. Also bekam Forte wieder nodeinfo, zunächst aber, ohne brauchbare Zahlen zu versenden. So konnte Forte zumindest vom Fediverse Observer und später vom FediIndex gelistet werden.

Forte half ihm, die ID-Misere zu entwirren, zu entflechten und zu lösen. Das reichte er dann auch nach (streams) weiter, das allmählich wieder funktionierte. Allerdings brannte er sich in dem August derart aus, daß er zum 31.8.2024 offiziell sowohl das streams-Repository als auch Forte zur Übernahme anbot und seinen Ruhestand ankündigte.

Dieses Mal fand eine Übernahme gleich gar nicht statt. Wie gesagt, in der (streams)-Community gab es niemanden, der sowohl die Zeit als auch das Know-how hatte, um auch nur Mike zu helfen, geschweige denn, eine Rolle wie Tobias oder Michael oder Mario anzunehmen.

Außerhalb von (streams) war (streams) selbst sogar auf Hubzilla kaum bekannt. Forte war sogar auf Hubzilla noch unbekannter, zumal es noch eine obskure, nichtöffentliche Bastelbude war, bis Mike im September 2024 die erste "offizielle" Entwicklerversion von Forte (und damit Forte selbst) veröffentlichte.

Und außerhalb von Hubzilla? Mike war es so leid, daß Mastodon als alternativlose Referenzimplementation des Fediverse angesehen wurde, daß er um 2023 anfing, Werbung für (streams) zu machen. Das erste Mal überhaupt, daß Mike von "wenn du es baust, werden sie kommen" abkam (es kam ja keiner) und irgendwas bewarb. Nur wußte Mike nicht, wie man zu Mastodon-Leuten spricht; ehrlich gesagt, das weiß auch auf Friendica und Hubzilla kaum jemand.

Oft genug ging aus Mikes Posts nicht mal hervor, daß er über ein konkretes Fediverse-Produkt sprach, und schon gar nicht, über welches. Wie auch, sprach er doch von etwas Namenlosem. Das heißt, auch er fing langsam an, den Namen des Repository zu verwenden. Aber er machte nicht unbedingt wirklich glasklar, daß er von etwas sprach, das jetzt in diesem Augenblick im Fediverse existierte. Schon gar nicht erwähnte er, daß es auch mit Mastodon verbunden ist, denn kaum jemand außerhalb von Mastodon weiß, daß Mastodon-Nutzer das nicht unbedingt automatisch verstehen.

Stand Mitte September 2024 hatte (streams) keine 100 aktiven Nutzer und Forte außer Mike gar keine. Traurigerweise hatte (streams) damals mehr öffentliche Server als heute, derweil Forte anderthalb Jahre gebraucht hat, um auch nur einen hervorzubringen. Wo sollen da Entwickler herkommen?

Mike hat übrigens nicht vor, (streams) einzustellen. Er und nicht nur er sagt, (streams) hat weiterhin seine Existenzberechtigung, und zwar als moderne Fediverse-Software, die von ActivityPub unabhängig ist. Er und nicht nur er sieht den ActivityPub-Schalter als eine Art letztes Bollwerk gegen Mastodon an und das einzige, das auf Kanalebene funktioniert, also nicht nur serverweit.

So, nun noch das Wort zu Smartphone-Apps.

Von Mike selbst war da nie etwas zu erwarten. Fediverse-Apps sind reine Frontend-Sachen. Und wir sollten inzwischen wissen, daß Mike nicht mal Web-UIs kann. Hubzilla ist für seine Oberfläche berüchtigt. Es ist doch erst schick geworden, als Saiwal mit seinen Utsukta-Themes anfing.

Außerdem hatte Mike immer schon genügend mit Webentwicklung zu tun. Da konnte man von ihm nicht auch noch erwarten, eine Smartphone-App zu entwickeln. Besser gesagt, zwei Smartphone-Apps, weil die iOS-App wahrscheinlich separat hätte entwickelt werden müssen. Mike wäre ja auch keiner gewesen, der in einer Smartphone-App nur das nötigste an Features eingebaut hätte. Wenn, dann alles. Er hätte also neben der Serversoftware zwei ziemliche Monster-Apps entwickeln und pflegen müssen.

Apps von Drittentwicklern?

Guck dir mal an, wie lange es gedauert hat, bis es von RaccoonForFriendica einen öffentlich verfügbaren Android-Release gab. Für iOS ist es meines Wissens bis heute nur über TestDrive verfügbar, aber nicht im App Store. Und selbst auf Android ist es noch nicht so stabil und fully featured, daß man es als Daily Driver nutzen könnte.

Für Hubzilla gab es mal Nomad für Android. Das wird seit gut sechs Jahren nicht mehr weiterentwickelt. Unter aktuellen Android-Versionen läuft es inzwischen gar nicht mehr. Und auch das ist nur ein Wrapper für die Weboberfläche, also ein glorifizierter Webbrowser. Ansonsten gibt's nur eine Minimalst-App von Mario, mit der er mal versuchsweise getestet hat, ob man von Android aus nach Hubzilla posten kann. Das ist absolut das einzige, was die App überhaupt kann.

Hubzilla hat eine Client API. Ob die aber funktioniert, ist weitestgehend unbekannt, weil noch nie jemand versucht hat, dagegen eine hinreichend mit Features ausgestattete App zu bauen. Dasselbe dürfte für (streams) und Forte gelten, für die es überhaupt noch nie irgendwelche Apps gegeben hat. Alle drei setzen statt dessen auf den Einsatz als PWA, nur daß da draußen keine Sau weiß, daß es das überhaupt gibt, geschweige denn, wie man das einrichtet.

Auf Drittentwickler kann man hier erst recht nicht hoffen. Von den Leuten im Fediverse, die Smartphone-Apps entwickeln können, kennt genau niemand Hubzilla, geschweige denn (streams) oder Forte. Selbst wenn sie Hubzilla kennenlernen würden, hätten sie keinen Bock, dafür eine App zu entwickeln. Lohnt sich nicht, weil nutzt keiner. Es lohnt sich viel mehr, die drölfzigtausendste reine Mastodon-App fürs iPhone zu bauen. Das heißt, mindestens die Hälfte von denen weiß doch sowieso nicht, was es außer Mastodon sonst noch so im Fediverse gibt.

Auf Hubzilla selbst gibt's nicht einen Mobilentwickler. Auf (streams) und Forte dürfte es niemanden geben, der überhaupt wirklich irgendwas entwickeln kann, nicht mal Webanwendungen (sonst hätte Mike Hilfe), Smartphone-Apps schon gar nicht.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #DFRN #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #Mistpark #Friendica #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte

@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.

Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.

You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".

Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.

You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.

Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.

And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.

You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.

Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.

You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.

Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.

You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.

Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.

All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.

Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):

• The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
• Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
• If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.

There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.

There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.

And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.

And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@Quasit I wouldn't build it on Mastodon. Nor would I build it from scratch and then against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only much more than Mastodon, but technologically much more diverse than just Mastodon.

The best way would be to build it as an add-on (a so-called "app") for (streams) or Forte. That way, you would neither have to deal with Mastodon's limitations (yes, Mastodon is very limited although this isn't apparent to those of its users who don't know anything else), nor would you have to develop Fediverse server software from scratch.

In case you don't know them:

(streams) is the unofficial community name of a very powerful but technically nameless Fediverse application whose code is in the streams repository (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams). It's essentially a Facebook-style social networking application with quite a number of extra features and the second-most recent member of a software family that dates all the way back to Friendica from 2010 (https://friendi.ca). It's a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org) which, in turn, was reworked from a fork of a fork of what's now Friendica.

And Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) is a fork of the streams repository that's very similar to (streams) itself.

All this was originally done by one and the same developer, a professional in IT and software for close to half a century.

Here is an article I've put together with tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392

Unlike Mastodon which has only got four general-purpose profile fields in addition to the profile text, both (streams) and Forte already come with the profile fields that a good dating app would need such as:

• pronouns (pick one out of 3 or none at all)
• birthday (from which the age is calculated)
• six free-text location fields, even including Facebook-style "hometown" where you used to live; you can select for yourself how far you want to go into detail with revealing your location
• gender (pick one out of 14 or none at all)
• marital status (pick one out of 31 or none at all) plus who plus date since
• sexual preference (pick one out of 9 or none at all)
• a separate keyword field
• political views
• religious views
• hobbies/interests
• likes
• dislikes
• other channels/Fediverse identities
• musical interests
• books/literature
• television
• film/dance/culture/entertainment
• love/romance
• work/employment
• school/education

A dating app could easily tie into the directory and make use of these profile fields. It could use a tag of its own in the keyword field so that it only shows channels that use this app (I'm not sure if it's possible to detect which channel has which apps installed).

One big advantage for users is that they don't have to use their daily-driver channel for the dating app. On Mastodon and in most of the Fediverse, your account is both your login and your identity. On (streams) and Forte, you can have multiple fully independent identities, each with its own name, its own ID, its own profile, its own contacts, its own posts and conversations, its own settings etc. etc., all behind one and the same login. It's like having multiple Mastodon accounts behind one login. That way, users don't have to reveal to everyone who knows their official daily-driver channel that they're using this dating app.

Also, Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. You literally have to soft-fork it and edit the source code to change the limit. Both (streams) and Forte are essentially unlimited in characters (their actual character limit is over 24 million).

Privacy and security are much higher on (streams) and Forte than on Mastodon, in fact, much higher than most Fediverse users can even imagine. Private messages are actually literally private. On Mastodon, a direct message only defines whom it's sent to. On (streams) and Forte, permissions come into play. The start post in a conversation defines who is allowed to see the conversation. Not only that post, but all comments as well. It's literally impossible to pull someone else into an existing private conversation by mentioning because that someone simply isn't allowed to see anything in the conversation.

So when you're chatting with a woman via PM, and she dislikes you, she can't shame or dogpile you by pulling her friends into the conversation.

On top of that, although even Friendica already had quote-posts since 2010, private messages cannot be quote-posted.

For a developer, all it takes to build this is PHP plus database know-how. Like the whole rest of the family, (streams) and Forte don't need anything more than a LAMP stack. No Ruby on Rails, no Elixir, no TypeScript or Vue.js or any other JavaScript, no .NET.

Deploying a (streams) or Forte app is easy, too: Create a public git repository for it, keep it there, and server admins can add your repository to their servers and activate your app server-side. Both (streams) and Forte are very modular and designed to be easy to expand.

Most of this would be possible with Hubzilla as well which is much bigger in terms of users and available servers. However, Hubzilla has got one disadvantage: Its directory only shows Hubzilla and (streams) channels, i.e. channels that use Hubzilla's native Zot protocol. That's because ActivityPub support on Hubzilla is provided by another app, it's optional, it's off by default, and the directory can't tie into it. On (streams), ActivityPub support is still optional, but more advanced than on Hubzilla, built into the core and on by default. And Forte doesn't support anything else than ActivityPub.

In theory, it should be possible to build such a dating app for all three.

Also, yes, in theory, channels that use such a dating app can connect to Mastodon. But Mastodon users couldn't use that dating app. Mastodon simply doesn't have any support for profile fields which it itself doesn't have. Also, Mastodon is too unsecure, and meaningful conversations are difficult if one side is limited to 500 characters. And I would hate to see this dating app bound hard to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, neither of which take the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into account.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #FediDate

@silverpill Would be interesting to add Hubzilla's Zot6 and (streams)' Nomad (which would be Zot12 if it wasn't incompatible with Zot6) to the list.

By the way: Forte doesn't require a gateway to communicate with non-nomadic ActivityPub. A fully cloned Forte channel can communicate with a Mastodon account without jumping through hoops. Remember that Forte has almost fully-featured Hubzilla-level nomadic identity (i.e. everything except real-time syncing between channel instances; unlike Hubzilla and (streams) which do sync in real time, it needs a cronjob for that) directly built into its core.

(streams) does support nomadic identity via ActivityPub. But internally, it uses and relies upon Nomad for its nomadic identity. It only supports nomadic identity via ActivityPub a) because it was used as a development platform for just this and b) in order to be able to understand cloned nomadic ActivityPub actors elsewhere. This is also why it isn't possible to move from (streams) to Forte, to move from Forte to (streams) or to clone between (streams) and Forte.

(streams) itself doesn't require gateways to communicate with Mastodon & Co. either. It speaks three protocols natively: its own Nomad, Hubzilla's Zot6 and (optionally, but on by default) standard ActivityPub.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Nomad #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity

@Justin Crozer @Stefan Bohacek @Lentävä Kalakukko @Roni Rolle Laukkarinen Whenever I see Mastodon users talk about "culture" in a Fediverse context, I have to wonder: What exactly do they refer to when they talk about "culture"?

Is it Fediverse culture? As in, overarching, software-independent Fediverse culture?

As in, taking into consideration that Fediverse server applications that aren't Mastodon, e.g. Misskey or Sharkey or Friendica or Hubzilla, have different cultures than Mastodon?

Recognising a post or a comment from one of these applications, acknowledging that it comes from a place with a different history, a different set of features and thus a different culture than Mastodon and refraining from enforcing Mastodon's unwritten rules against it?

Or does "culture" only refer to Mastodon's culture? Does it reject or completely disregard all cultures in the Fediverse that aren't Mastodon's and demand the whole Fediverse adopt Mastodon's culture and only Mastodon's culture?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who post more than 500 characters at once (which, by the way, is perfectly normal everywhere outside of Mastodon)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who reply to people who haven't mentioned them first, and whom they aren't mutually following either (which, by the way, is perfectly normal in large parts of the non-Mastodon Fediverse, too)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who quote-post Mastodon toots that must not be quote-posted (because they've had quote-posts for much longer than Mastodon, but without a no-quote flag so they can't see Mastodon's no-quote flag)?

Do these "bad eggs" incllude users who "misuse" Mastodon's CW field for summaries (because they have literally had the exact same text field as a summary field for seven years longer than Mastodon has had it as a CW field, and because having a summary field makes a whole lot of sense if your character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who use more than four hashtags in one post (because, unlike Mastodon, the places where they are have filtering as well as automatically having messages hidden behind CW buttons deeply engrained into their cultures, but this requires the appropriate keywords to be present)?

If so, then this explains why only Mastodon users can enjoy significant reach on Mastodon: Everyone else is mass-blocked for misbehaving by Mastodon's standards.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Stefan Bohacek @Lentävä Kalakukko @Roni Rolle Laukkarinen Thing is, many expect the Fediverse to be one big perfectly cosy and fluffy hugbox in which everyone is always nice to one another. 100% anti-racist, 100% anti-sexist, 100% anti-ableist and so forth.

Also, they expect it to be only Mastodon. They expect it to be nothing but a microblogging service with no more than 500 characters.

Why? Because it's basically exactly that that the Fediverse has been implied (or outright announced) being to them, and be it by telling them that "the Fediverse" is the polar opposite of 𝕏 culture-wise.

The moment that any of the above proves itself to them as not true, they're so deeply disturbed that they're making a mad dash towards the exit, even though they don't know where else to go. Either that, or they make it their goal to fight for the Fediverse to become what they thought it is.

It's largely because of these people that the Fediverse becomes a minefield for all non-Mastodon Fediverse users the very moment they establish their very first contact with Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture

@SK Yeah, that's a classic: Mastodon users who don't know much about the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, and who think that if Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't. Some of them have been around since October/November 2022 or even since February/March 2022.

"The Fediverse must introduce $FEATURE."

"Um, the Fediverse already has $FEATURE. Hubzilla has had it since 2015/since 2012 when it still was the Red Matrix/Friendica has had it since 2010. This feature is literally older than Mastodon itself. Just because Mastodon doesn't have it, doesn't mean the Fediverse doesn't have it."

"Actually, everything except Mastodon has $FEATURE."

My experience is that the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, and what features it has to offer, is completely incomprehensible to those who haven't used non-Mastodon Fediverse server software for at least six months as their daily driver. Incomprehensible like a four-dimensional hypercube.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #MastodonCentricity

@Pino Carafa

Why would one block accounts that sometimes post longer toots, though?

Because people are invited to Mastodon with no word that it's connected to something that isn't Mastodon. That'd make things too complicated.

So they join Mastodon and the Fediverse, thinking that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Nothing but a decentralised microblogging platform with no more than 500 characters.

For quite a while, all they see is vanilla Mastodon toots with no more than 500 characters. "Quite a while" may be anything from two months to four years to even more. So they get used to the Fediverse being only Mastodon and not having more than 500 characters.

But then, the more people they follow and the more people follow them back, the more people do they follow who don't live in a Mastodon-only bubble. This means two things:

• These other people will boost content that exceeds 500 characters to their timelines.
• Their own toots end up outside Mastodon where people see them who don't have 500-character limits. And they reply to their toots with no regards for Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules. In other words, with over 500 characters.

In other words: They suddenly get "toots" (that aren't toots because they aren't from Mastodon) onto their timelines that are way too long. As in over 500 characters.

And they completely. Flip. Their. Shit.

Of course, they don't know that this particular "toot" is from Friendica. A place in the Fediverse that's over five and a half years older than Mastodon, with its own culture that's vastly different from Mastodon's, and with 33,000+ times more characters than Mastodon.

And they don't care. They only want their only-Mastodon, only-500-characters Fediverse back that they got used to, that they learned to love.

Besides, they don't know about third-party apps. That, and/or they couldn't possibly wrap their minds around using Mastodon with an app that isn't named "Mastodon". Thus, they daily-drive the official Mastodon app.

However, the official Mastodon app is geared towards a Mastodon-only Fediverse where nothing exceeds 500 characters. It can't fold long posts in. You get a 10,000-character message onto your timeline, and the official Mastodon app will show you the full 10,000-character "essay", full stop.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta

@Jasper Burns

I'd like to see more of that in the fediverse features like events, groups, moderation, different roles, permissions etc. complemented by secure communication!

The Fediverse has literally got just about of this right now. Mastodon doesn't. But the Fediverse does because there's stuff in the Fediverse, as in federated with Mastodon, that has it. And it has had all of this for longer than Mastodon has even existed.

Friendica

Friendica has

• federating events
• groups (which are special accounts)
• private groups
• hidden groups
• moderated groups
• groups with multiple moderators on the same server
• a permissions system
• DMs that are actually private because they're covered by the permissions system rather than just handling who receives a message
• etc.

Friendica is from May, 2010, over five and a half years older than Mastodon.

It was made as an alternative for Facebook right away. It was not meant to be a Facebook clone, though, but better than Facebook while also covering all long-form blogging features.

And Friendica is fully federated with Mastodon. You can follow Friendica accounts from Mastodon, and Friendica users can connect to your Mastodon account from Friendica.

Hubzilla

Hubzilla has

• federating events (in addition to a non-federating CalDAV calendar server)
• groups (which are special channels; Hubzilla calls them "forums")
• various independent options of making groups private that can be combined
• hidden groups, groups with multiple admins/moderators anywhere on Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte
• the second-most advanced permissions system in the Fediverse on three levels (entire channel, individual contacts, content) with 17 different permissions and seven or eight channel-wide permission levels for each
• DMs that are actually private because they're covered by the permissions system rather than just handling who receives a message
• optional additional encryption (only works within Hubzilla)
• optional non-federating articles
• optional planning cards
• optional webpages
• optional wikis
• nomadic (fully portable, decentralised, distributed) identity
• etc. etc.

Hubzilla is from March, 2016, ten months older than Mastodon. It was created by Friendica's creator by rebuilding and repurposing a fork of a fork of Friendica.

It is considered a "decentralised social content management system" that can be just about anything you want it to be because it's so modular. Basically, what's incomplete and unstable at best and an unfulfilled promise at worst on Bonfire has been readily available and rock-solid stable for over 10 years on Hubzilla. And even more on top of that.

Red, the Hubzilla precursor, was the first software to establish nomadic identity, something that Bluesky claims to be in the process of inventing from scratch. And that was as early as 2012.

Hubzilla was the very first software to implement ActivityPub. And unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub by the book and largely still does so.

And Hubzilla is optionally fully federated with Mastodon. In fact, this comment that you're reading right now comes from Hubzilla. Like, you're directly speaking with someone on something that has absolutely everything you wish for the Fediverse to have, and that has had all of it for longer than Mastodon has existed.

(streams), Forte

(streams) and Forte have

• federating events (in addition to a non-federating CalDAV calendar server)
• groups (which are special channels)
• private groups
• hidden groups
• groups with multiple admins/moderators anywhere on Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte
• groups with moderated posting and commenting (as in posts and comments from new members will have to be confirmed by the moderators in order to be visible)
• the most advanced permissions system in the Fediverse on three levels (entire channel, individual contacts, content) with 15 different permissions and three or four channel-wide permission levels for each
• DMs that are actually private because they're covered by the permissions system rather than just handling who receives a message
• nomadic (fully portable, decentralised, distributed) identity
• etc.

(streams) is from October, 2021. It was created by Friendica's creator as a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla.

Forte is from August, 2024. It was created by Friendica's creator as a fork of (streams).

Forte was the first software to establish nomadic identity via ActivityPub.

And both are fully federated with Mastodon; (streams) optionally so, but it is by default.

I've made a document with a series of tables which directly compare the features of Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte:

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392

In fact, this document is on the very same Hubzilla channel that I'm commenting from right now.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Calendar #Events #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #PrivateGroups #Permission #Permissions

@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

@Stefan Bohacek I'm not a 404 Media reader. But this genuinely makes me wonder if they'd understand what I mean if I told them them that I'm actually neither on Bluesky nor on Mastodon, but on Hubzilla instead.

CC: @Joseph Cox

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta  #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@Gaming on the Fediverse That's quite a bit simplified. For one, four server applications and one protocol were lumped together. Besides, Zap is dead, and Forte isn't even mentioned.

So here's an attempt at telling the whole story (server applications are in bold type, protocols are in bold type and italics):

tl;dr:

2010:

• DFRN
• Mistpark/Friendika/Friendica
  (DFRN)

2011:

• Zot
• Free-Friendika
  (DFRN)
  (forked from Friendika)
• several other Friendika forks
  (DFRN)
  (forked from Friendika)
  (discontinued 2011)
• Red/Red Matrix
  (DFRN, from 2012 Zot)
  (forked from Free-Friendika)
  (rebuilt into Hubzilla 2015)

2015:

• Hubzilla
  (Zot, later Zot6)
  (rebuilt from the Red Matrix)

2018:

Zot6
• Osada
  (Zot6)
  (forked from Hubzilla)
  (discontinued in 2018)
• Zap
  (Zot6)
  (forked most likely from Osada, maybe from Hubzilla)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• Osada
  (Zot6)
  (forked from Zap)
  (discontinued in 2019)

2020:

Zot8
• Redmatrix 2020
  (Zot8)
  (forked from either Zap or Mistpark 2020 or (the third) Osada)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty
  (Zot8)
  (forked from either Zap or Redmatrix 2020 or (the third) Osada)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• Osada
  (Zot8)
  (forked from either Zap or Redmatrix 2020 or Mistpark 2020)
  (discontinued in 2022)

2022:

• Nomad
  (originally Zot11)
• Roadhouse
  (Nomad)
  (forked from either Redmatrix 2020 or Mistpark 2020 or (the third) Osada)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• (streams)
  (Nomad)
  (forked from Roadhouse)

2024:
Forte
(ActivityPub)
(forked from (streams))[/list]
So as far as Fediverse server applications go, he created Friendica, Free-Friendika, a few more Friendika forks, the Red Matrix, Hubzilla, three Osadas, Zap, Redmatrix 2020, Mistpark 2020, Roadhouse, (streams) and Forte. Depending on how you want to count them, that's at least 13 or 14 server applications. Four of these are still being maintained (Friendica by a new team, Hubzilla by another new team, (streams) and Forte by himself).

The long version:

In 2010, he created

• the DFRN protocol
• Mistpark (renamed first into Friendika later in 2010 and then into Friendica in 2011)

In 2011, he made several forks of Friendika. The reason was licensing: Friendika was getting quite some attention. As it was under the MIT license, chances were that it was tempting to fork it and turn the fork into a commercial, proprietary, closed-source monolith or something. On the other hand, the GPL in any shape or form would have hindered further development.

So Mike made a number of forks and relicensed all but one: Free-Friendika kept the MIT license and became the main development platform for Friendika. Friendika itself was relicensed under the AGPLv3.

Shortly afterwards, Mike discontinued all forks except Free-Friendika.

The same year, Mike needed something to keep people from losing everything whenever their Friendika home node was shut down. So he invented nomadic identity and created the Zot protocol.

Also the same year, Mike forked Free-Friendika into Red (spanish la red = the network). It would be renamed Red Matrix in late 2012 because "Red" is hard to Google.

In 2012, Mike rewrote Red almost completely. The whole backend was rebuilt against Zot.

However, the Red Matrix didn't take off. Most Friendica users were hosting their own private nodes. Nomadic identity made no sense for them. Besides, it seemed like many Friendica users didn't understand nomadic identity anyway, so they saw no advantage in the Red Matrix over Friendica, seeing as the features were almost identical otherwise. The Red Matrix had to be made more popular for hosting public servers.

So in 2015, the Red Matrix was rebuilt and greatly expanded into Hubzilla.

In 2018, Mike wanted to develop the Zot protocol further into Zot6. But this would have meant compatibility-breaking changes, also because what he wanted to do with nomadic identity over Zot6 was likely to not work with non-nomadic protocols anymore. So he couldn't do that on Hubzilla.

Instead, he made two new forks:

• first Osada, forked from Hubzilla, which was the original Zot6 development platform and then evolved into a non-nomadic "gateway" between Zot6 and everything else
• then Zap, forked most likely from Osada or maybe from Hubzilla, which got the whole Zot6 feature set, including nomadic identity, but which lost support for any and all non-nomadic protocols

A bit later, Zot6 became compatible enough with non-nomadic protocols. Forwarding content from Zap via Osada to the rest of the Fediverse was clunky anyway, forwarding content from the rest of the Fediverse via Osada to Zap even more so. So Osada was discontinued.

Instead, a new Osada was forked from Zap and got ActivityPub support. This and the branding were the only differences between Osada and Zap.

In 2019, when both Osada and Zap had become stable, Zap got ActivityPub support itself. The only difference between the two was now that Osada servers had ActivityPub turned on by default, and Zap servers had it turned off by default. It simply didn't make much sense to keep both alive, so Osada was discontinued again.

I think it was also in 2019 that Hubzilla was upgraded to Zot6.

In 2020, Mike made three more forks to develop Zot8, at least one of which was forked from Zap, and those that weren't were forked from one another: Redmatrix 2020, Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty and Osada.

There was a rumour that Zap was the stable one, Misty was a bit more up-to-date, but potentially less stable, Osada was experimental with ActivityPub support on by default, and Redmatrix 2020 was experimental with ActivityPub support off by default. In fact, however, Misty, Osada and Redmatrix 2020 were absolutely identical in all but branding. Mike kept four server applications around to mess with brand fetishists.

In 2022, Mike forked one of the three into Roadhouse to develop Zot11. But Zot11 was no longer compatible with Zot6 as implemented on Hubzilla and Zap, so he declared it a new protocol named Nomad. Roadhouse got additional support for Zot6.

Now Mike had five server applications, still in order to mess with brand fetishists.

Later the same year, Mike forked Roadhouse into something intentionally nameless and brandless. Again, this was done to troll brand fetishists, this time also to facilitate forking and make people think up their own individual names for the fork rather than keeping the existing one. However, the code repository absolutely required a name, so Mike called it streams.

The community needed something to name this nameless thing by, so they took the name of the repository and wrapped it in parentheses to make sure that this is not actually the name. Ever since, it is colloquially being called (streams). By the way, (streams) is running on what would be Zot12 if it wasn't Nomad now.

On New Year's Eve 2022, Mike discontinued Zap, Redmatrix 2020, Misty, Osada and Roadhouse. (streams) was stable enough, and the other five could be upgraded not only to each other by rebasing the server code, but also to (streams). He asked all admins of Zap, Redmatrix 2020, Misty, Osada and Roadhouse servers to upgrade to (streams).

In 2024, (streams) got bogged down by some identity confusion after the stable release branch introduced decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61, a part of the development of nomadic identity via ActivityPub. Partially in order to be able to sort this out, partially because the time seemed to have come for this to actually work, Mike forked the streams repository into Forte and removed all support for any protocols other than ActivityPub while still keeping it nomadic. And so Forte became the very first Fediverse server application that establishes nomadic identity via ActivityPub.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #DFRN #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #Mistpark #Friendika #FreeFriendika #Friendica #Red #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Redmatrix2020 #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte

@Ingo Lantschner

Kampagnen – auch nicht-kommerzielle – sind im Fediverse schwierig.

Sagen wir mal so: Sie sind auf Mastodon schwierig. Woanders, wo es a) ein vernünftiges Konversationsmodell und b) Gruppen gibt, wären sie einfacher.

Nur macht Mastodon immer noch um die 60% des Fediverse aus und geschätzt 80-90% des deutschsprachigen Fediverse. Der Postverkehr auf Mastodon selbst wirkt sogar wie zu 95-99% von Mastodon. Und der überwiegende Teil der Mastodon-Nutzer weiß fast oder tatsächlich gar nichts vom Fediverse jenseits von Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #Kampagnen

@damon Granted, this blog post is four years old. It predates not only the rise of Bluesky, but also even Musk's Twitter takeover announcement, much less the actual takeover.

But once again, there's this "Mastodon and the Fediverse", and once again with the same old meaning. "Mastodon" as in Mastodon the software and "Fediverse" as in the Mastodon network.

Another post that claims, no, insists that the Fediverse is literally Twitter with 500 characters because it only consists of Mastodon. Mastodon 3.x, actually, which hardly had any features that Twitter didn't have. But take a look at Hubzilla, which is where this comment comes from, even though most people will see it on Mastodon. Daily-drive Hubzilla for a year or two. And then tell me with a straight face that Hubzilla is a Twitter clone and all the same as Twitter.

And once again, I guess that literally nobody who is on Mastodon now sees anything wrong with this notion, and I only expect the usual small handful of non-Mastodon users to complain about it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Hubzilla

@Thomas Eibich aka DK2NB

Bauen die Workshops aufeinander auf oder kann man auch einfach so mal vorbei kommen?

Wir haben jedes Mal Leute dabei, die zum ersten Mal bei der Sprechstunde sind und häufig auch erst seit kurzem überhaupt im Fediverse. Das ist also kein Problem. Und da baut auch nichts aufeinander auf.

Was ist Hubzilla?

Oh, da muß ich weit ausholen. (Ich kommentiere übrigens gerade von Hubzilla.)

Hubzilla ist das absolute, ultimative Featuremonster im Fediverse. Eine Art Alleskönner, der Features hat, die für die allermeisten Fediverse-Nutzer im Fediverse völlig unvorstellbar sind, aber auch Features, die sich viele im Fediverse wünschen. Wohlgemerkt, ohne zu wissen, daß es diese Features im Fediverse längst gibt.

Hubzilla ist im Prinzip "Facebook trifft WordPress trifft Google Cloud Services trifft noch mehr Zeug" im Fediverse, und es kann mit wenigen Mausklicks aufgebohrt werden zu "Facebook trifft WordPress trifft Google Cloud Services trifft Joplin trifft GeoCities trifft <irgendeine Wiki-Engine hier einsetzen> trifft noch mehr Zeug" im Fediverse. Ja, GeoCities. Man kann buchstäblich Webseiten auf Hubzilla aufbauen.

Hier sind ein paar Links:

• offizielle Website (die übrigens selbst auf Hubzilla läuft)
• Wikipedia auf Deutsch (zugegeben, das Lemma ist nicht sehr gut)
• GNULinux.ch: Hubzilla, die mächtige ungeschminkte Königin des Fediverse
• Ein paar Tabellen, in denen ich Mastodon vergleiche mit Friendica (Hubzilla-Vorfahr), Hubzilla selbst, (streams) und Forte (zwei Hubzilla-Nachfahren)

Hubzilla ist übrigens älter als Mastodon.

Hubzillas Vater ist @Mike McCue , ein pensionierter professioneller Software-Entwickler mit fast einem halben Jahrhundert an Erfahrung. Der hat schon 2010, noch vor dem in dem Sommer in den Himmel gehypeten diaspora*, eine extrem vielseitige und extrem leistungsfähige freie, quelloffene, dezentrale Facebook-Alternative gestartet, die ursprünglich Mistpark hieß und heute als Friendica bekannt ist. Die gibt's heute hoch, sie ist Teil des Fediverse, und sie ist mit Mastodon föderiert, seit es Mastodon gibt.

Friendica ist kein Facebook-Klon, sondern eine Facebook-Alternative, die grundsätzlich dieselbe Funktion haben soll wie Facebook, aber besser als Facebook ist. Friendica kann nebenher auch genutzt werden als vollwertiges Blogging-System mit allen Schikanen: Titel, Zusammenfassung, Kategorien, alles Mögliche an Textformatierung, beliebig viele Bilder mitten im Text eingebettet, über 16 Millionen Zeichen.

Friendica wurde aufgebaut auf seinem eigenen Protokoll namens DFRN. Aber ein Killerfeature von Friendica war schon immer, daß es sich in alle möglichen und unmöglichen anderen Richtungen verbinden kann: Fediverse, diaspora*, Tumblr, WordPress, sogar Twitter, ein paar Jahre sogar Facebook und so weiter.

So ganz zufrieden war er damit aber nicht. Ein großes Problem war nämlich, daß jedes Mal, wenn ein öffentlicher Friendica-Node dichtmachte, die Nutzer alles verloren. Auf die Lösung kam er 2011: nomadische Identität, also die Möglichkeit, die eigene Social-Networking-Identität gleichzeitig voll synchron auf mehreren Servern zu haben.

Dafür entwickelte er ab 2011 ein neues Protokoll names Zot, das genau diese Funktion bieten sollte. Um es zu implementieren, forkte Mike noch 2011 einen Friendica-Fork, den er im selben Jahr erstellt hatte, um mit verschiedenen Lizenzen zu experimentieren. (Deswegen steht Friendica heute unter der AGPLv3 und die meisten seiner "Nachfahren" weiterhin unter der MIT-Lizenz.)

So entstand etwas namens "Red" (von spanisch "la red" = "das Netzwerk"). 2012 wurde es komplett neu geschrieben gegen das Zot-Protokoll. Das war der eigentliche Startschuß für Hubzilla. Damals gab Mike übrigens Friendica (das inzwischen auf die AGPLv3 relizensierte Original) an die Community ab. Ende 2012 wurde Red umbenannt in "Red Matrix", weil man "Red" nicht googlen kann.

Allerdings wurde die Red Matrix kaum angenommen, weil sie im Grunde Friendica mit vielleicht ein oder zwei weniger Verbindungsmöglichkeiten und nomadischer Identität war. Die meisten verstanden nomadische Identität aber gar nicht, und von denen, die sie verstanden, glaubten viele, sie gar nicht zu brauchen, weil sie eh ihr Friendica-Konto auf ihrem eigenen Node hatten.

So gab es dann im März 2015 den Schnitt. Mike und seine Mitstreiter aus der Community nahmen die Red Matrix und strickten sie um für neue Zielgruppen, insbesondere Betreiber öffentlicher Server. Dafür wurden haufenweise neue, teilweise optionale Features drangebaut: WebDAV für den eingebauten Filespace, ein CalDAV-Server, der das Frontend des Eventkalenders mitnutzt, ein CardDAV-Server, nichtföderierende Artikel, Planungskarten, Wikis, Webseiten usw. usf. Und das Ganze wurde umbenannt in Hubzilla.

Wir sind übrigens immer noch zehn Monate vor dem Start von Mastodon.

Standardmäßig föderiert Hubzilla nur über sein eigenes Zot-Protokoll. Es unterstützt immer noch einiges an nichtnomadischen Protokollen und Verbindungen, aber alles, was nichtnomadisch und bidirektional ist, ist optional und standardmäßig deaktiviert, muß also in einem neuen Kanal erst aktiviert werden. Darunter fällt auch ActivityPub, das Hubzilla seit Juli 2017 als allererste Software überhaupt implementiert hat, zwei Monate noch vor Mastodon.

Damit war aber das Ende der Fahnenstange noch nicht erreicht.

Mike wollte das Zot-Protokoll noch weiter entwickeln, und zwar auf Arten und Weisen, die möglicherweise die Kompatibilität beeinträchtigten. Das konnte er nicht auf Hubzilla selbst machen.

Also gab er 2018 Hubzilla ab an zwei Entwickler aus der Community und forkte es. Erst kam Osada, das wohl zunächst als Entwicklungsplattform für Zot6 dienen sollte, aber trotzdem noch die meisten von Hubzillas Verbindungsmöglichkeiten hatte. Bei Osada wurde übrigens fast alles wieder entfernt, was beim Umbau von der Red Matrix zu Hubzilla dazugekommen war.

Wie es aber zunächst aussah, würde Zot6 nicht mit nichtnomadischen Protokollen zusammenspielen können. So entstand als zweiter Fork Zap; ich glaube heute, Zap war ein Fork von Osada und nicht von Hubzilla. Jedenfalls behielt Osada die ganzen Verbindungsmöglichkeiten, verlor aber nomadische Identitäten. Zap wiederum blieb nomadisch, unterstützte aber nur Zot6.

Schließlich stellte sich heraus: Zot6 konnte sehr wohl mit nichtnomadischen Protokollen zusammenspielen. Also wurde Osada, wie es war, Anfang 2019 eingestampft. Die Idee, einen Osada-Kanal als Gateway zwischen Zap und dem Rest des Fediverse zu haben, war sowieso gaga und wenig praktikabel. Dafür wurde von Zap kurz darauf ein zweites Osada geforkt, das sich zumindest wieder mit ActivityPub verbinden konnte. Das war zunächst der einzige Unterschied zwischen Osada und Zap.

Im Laufe des Jahres wurden Osada und Zap stabil. Das heißt auch, Osada war so stabil, daß es keinen Grund mehr gab, warum Zap kein ActivityPub können sollte. Kurz darauf war der einzige Unterschied zwischen Osada und Zap neben dem Branding, daß auf Osada-Servern ActivityPub standardmäßig aktiviert und auf Zap-Servern standardmäßig deaktiviert war. Weil auch das Käse war und nur unnötigen Mehraufwand in der Entwicklung mit sich brachte, wurde das zweite Osada im Herbst 2019 komplett in Zap gemerget und eingestellt.

Weil Zap jetzt aber ein stabiler Daily Driver war, brauchte Mike wieder neue Entwicklungsplattformen für Zot8. Dafür wurden 2020 ein drittes Osada, Mistpark 2020 (alias Misty) und Redmatrix 2020 geforkt. Es gab das Gerücht, daß sie verschiedene Stabilitätsstufen darstellten. Tatsächlich waren sie bis auf das Branding identisch, und es waren deshalb drei, weil Mike damit die Markenfetischisten im Fediverse trollen wollte.

Einen stabilen Release mit Zot8 gab es nie. Statt dessen kam im Frühjahr 2021 Roadhouse dazu als Fork von einem von den dreien. Das basierte eigentlich schon auf Zot11, aber Zot11 war zu Zot6 in keinster Weise mehr kompatibel. Also entschied sich Mike, das Protokoll in Nomad umzubenennen. Heute sagt Mike, alle Versionen des Protokolls heißen jetzt Nomad; die Hubzilla-Entwickler widersprechen ihm aber und sagen, Zot6 ist immer noch Zot.

Jetzt hatte Mike fünf Projekte, die unterschiedliche Protokollversionen nutzte, ansonsten aber dasselbe konnten und fast dasselbe UI hatten.

Up- und Crossgrades gingen übrigens ganz einfach, in dem die Codebase des Servers umgestellt wurde. Man konnte von Zap nach Osada, Misty und Redmatrix 2020 upgraden. Man konnte zumindest zwischen Osada, Misty und Redmatrix 2020 hin und her crossgraden. Und man konnte von allen vieren nach Roadhouse upgraden.

Im Oktober 2011 forkte Mike Roadhouse in wieder etwas Neues. Dieses Mal ging er in eine ganz andere Richtung: Was er jetzt erschaffen hatte, hatte keinen Namen. Es hatte kein Logo. Es hatte keine Markenidentität. Es war auch kein Projekt mehr. Alles mit voller Absicht und sehr gut begründet. Noch dazu nahm er sogar die MIT-Lizenz weg und stellte es direktweg in die Public Domain. Damit wollte er noch größere Anreize für Entwickler schaffen, es zu forken, um daraus etwas Eigenes zu bauen.

Das Code-Repository brauchte aber zwingend einen Namen. Also wurde es "streams" genannt (ein Stream ist von Friendica bis heute das, was auf Twitter ein Feed und auf Mastodon eine Timeline ist). Weil nun aber die Community etwas brauchte, womit sie diese neue Software bezeichnen konnte, nahm sie den Namen des Repository und packten ihn in Klammern, um klarzustellen, daß das nicht der Name der Software war. Seitdem wird es seitens der Community "(streams)" genannt.

Von Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix 2020 und Roadhouse konnte durch Rebasen auf (streams) geupgradet werden. Weil (streams) selbst aber keinen Namen, kein Branding und nicht mal einen festgelegten Identifier für den Servertyp hat, übernahm es kurzerhand den Server-Identifier und das Logo von der vorherigen Software. Ich habe selbst mal einen (streams)-Server gesehen, der mit Zap angefangen hatte (wie aus der Subdomain hervorging) und zwischendurch mal Misty war (weil er als Misty gebrandet war), aber vom UI und von der Softwareversion her eindeutig (streams) war.

Zum Silvesterabend 2020 stellte Mike dann Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix 2020 und Roadhouse ein. Wer noch einen Server betrieb, dem war dazu geraten, auf (streams) upzugraden.

(streams) wird heute noch von Mike weiterentwickelt. An Verbindungsmöglichkeiten hat es neben Nomad auch Hubzillas Zot6 und optional, aber standardmäßig aktiviert ActivityPub. Sogar RSS- und Atom-Feeds werden nicht mehr unterstützt, um den Entwicklungsaufwand zu reduzieren.

Der letzte Fork kam im August 2024. Mike war ja damals einer der beiden Entwickler, die an nomadischer Identität über ActivityPub arbeiteten. Im Zuge dieser Entwicklung rollte Mike Portable Objects nach FEP-ef61 im Juni vom "nomadischen" Zweig von (streams) in den hauptsächlichen Entwicklungszweig und im Juli von da in den stabilen Zweig aus. Was im Labor aber funktioniert hatte, sorgte im täglichen Einsatz für Chaos, weil (streams) zuviele verschiedene Identitäten zu jonglieren hatte.

Also forkte Mike (streams) im August zu Forte, entfernte jegliche Unterstützung für Nomad und Zot6 und basierte das ganze Ding komplett auf ActivityPub, und zwar inklusive nomadischer Identität. Das dürfte hauptsächlich passiert sein, um die Nomad- und Zot6-Identitäten loswerden zu können, um das Chaos sichten zu können, aber auch, weil nomadische Identität über ActivityPub die Zukunft sein soll.

Zum 31. August warf Mike erst alle Brocken hin und wollte mit Entwicklung aufhören, weil das alles ein Riesenaufwand war. Er machte aber trotzdem weiter, weil sich in der winzigen (streams)-Community niemand fand, der (streams) und das noch instabile Forte hätte übernehmen können.

Im September wurde erstmals ein Post von Forte durch das öffentliche Fediverse föderiert. Von da an gab es die ersten, die mit ihren eigenen Forte-Servern experimentierten. Und im März 2025 erklärte Mike Forte offiziell für stabil. (streams) lebt aber weiter, denn sein Killerfeature gegenüber Forte ist, daß es ActivityPub nicht braucht. Man kann es also als Zugbrücke verwenden, um das ganze ActivityPub-basierte Fediverse auf einen Schlag auszusperren.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Nomad #Mistpark #Friendica #Red #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Redmatrix2020 #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte

@woe2you @James Britt This may come as a surprise to you, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. And it has never been only Mastodon. It was neither invented by Eugen Rochko nor exclusively for purist microblogging.

For example, there is also Friendica (https://en.wikipedia.org/Friendica, https://friendi.ca, https://github.com/friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica). It was launched in July, 2010, 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon. It is Facebook-like, but designed to be better than Facebook rather than an all-out clone and to be fully capable of long-form blogging. It has a character limit of 200,000, its culture does not enforce brevity, and it staunchly refuses to ditch its own culture and adopt Mastodon's culture instead. It can also do other things that don't belong into purist microblogging such as bold type, italics, underlines, bullet-point lists and multiple levels of headlines.

Here are lists of Friendica nodes for you to block:

• https://friendica.fediverse.observer/list
• https://fedidb.com/software/friendica
• https://rumbly.net/communities?project=friendica
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?project=friendica
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?project=friendica

Then there is Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org, https://framagit.org/hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla), first launched in March, 2015, ten years ago, ten months before Mastodon. It's based on Friendica with many more features that make it a CMS as well. It has a character limit of over 16.7 million (maximum size of the database field).

I'm commenting from Hubzilla myself right now.

Here are lists of Hubzilla hubs for you to block:

• https://hubzilla.fediverse.observer/list
• https://fedidb.com/software/hubzilla
• https://rumbly.net/communities?project=hubzilla
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?project=hubzilla
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?project=hubzilla

More recently and from the same family, there are (streams) (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams) from 2021 and Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) from 2024. Again, they are Facebook-like, just like Friendica. Their character limit is over 24 million.

Again, here are lists of servers for you to block:

• https://rumbly.net/communities?type=streams_repository
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?type=streams_repository
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?type=streams_repository
• https://rumbly.net/communities?project=forte
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?project=forte
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?project=forte

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #Block #Blocking

@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

@Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 Not to my knowledge.

First of all, nomadic identity won't be described in one single FEP that'll cover everything. It was not created on and for ActivityPub. In fact, the concept predates ActivityPub by some six years, and the first implementation predates ActivityPub by some five years.

See, nomadic identity started as an idea. Then Mike built a brand-new protocol around that idea, Zot. Then, in 2012, Mike forked one of his own forks of his own software that is now known as Friendica, originally based on yet protocol designed by himself, and re-wrote the whole thing against Zot. That's how the software was born that's known as Hubzilla now.

As for nomadic identity via ActivityPub, there is only one publicly available software implementation for that. And that's Mike's own Forte. Forte still does everything the Hubzilla/(streams) way which is very very different from how anything else in the Fediverse works, even including Friendica itself, and especially including Mastodon.

Whereas Zot was designed around nomadic identity, ActivityPub isn't. It's having nomadic identity bolted on with a whole slew of FEPs authored by @silverpill who is working on converting Mitra (typical Fediverse software: built only against ActivityPub, non-nomadic, login/account equals identity) into something that's every bit as nomadic as Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte.

Nomadic identity via ActivityPub was originally silverpill's idea, by the way. And that was in 2023. It turned out that this was actually doable, and so he and Mike started working on it, using experimental "nomadic" branches of Mitra and the streams repository respectively. Their approaches were naturally different: silverpill had to make something non-nomadic nomadic. Mike had to make something nomadic be nomadic using a protocol that wasn't made for nomadic identity.

Not only is silverpill's approach much more difficult because Mitra wasn't made for nomadic identity either, but he also took it upon himself to put everything into FEPs by and by. He is still publishing FEP after FEP. Nomadic identity is quite a complex thing from a "Fediverse equals ActivityPub" point of view; it's just that the Hubzilla/(streams) bubble is so used to it whereas silverpill actually has to explore and research something that's natural to Mike.

There's no common set of commands either. There can't be any. Forte, like everything else in the family all the way back to Friendica, is written in PHP. Mitra is written in Rust. Nobody has ever attempted to make something not written in PHP nomadic.

In fact, code sharing would be next to impossible anyway: Forte, like Hubzilla and early Mistpark/Friendika, is published under the MIT license, (streams) is in the public domain, but Mitra is licensed under the GNU Affero GPL v3. Any code coming out of Mitra's conversion to nomadicity would be AGPL-licensed Rust code. And MIT-licensed PHP code that was created when turning Nomad-based (streams) into ActivityPub-based, Nomad-less Forte would be useless for non-nomadic-to-nomadic conversions anyway.

So don't expect any how-to's or the like for converting non-nomadic, ActivityPub-only-by-original-design, login/account-equals-identity Fediverse server software to the same level of nomadicity as Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte until

• the first stable release of Mitra with full support for that level of nomadicity is officially rolled out
• silverpill declares that everything necessary for Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte-level nomadic identity via nothing but ActivityPub is cast into FEPs and finalised

Seeing as this has been in the making for some two years now, and I don't even know if the experimental nomadic branch of Mitra even allows cloning right now, I guess this will be a long way to go. He may actually first have to change Mitra from the standard Fediverse model of the account and the login being the identity to Hubzilla's, (streams)' and Forte's model of the identity being a container inside your account and one account being able to host multiple such identities. That's because you can't clone logins.

Oh, by the way, nomadic identity is not just about moving. It's not "moving-your-Mastodon-account-to-another-instance on coke". It's way more.

The core feature is cloning. Imagine you have full, live, hot backups of your Mastodon account on one, two, three, four or more other Mastodon instances. Imagine they all have the same identity, based on which one of them is your main instance. Imagine whatever happens on one of them is sync'd to the others in near-real-time. Imagine you can log into either of them and use either of them all the same, regardless of how many and which of the servers are actually online, as long as at least one is.

Moving is actually even more complex than cloning because it involves both cloning and changing the main instance of your identity.

Allow me to illustrate by supposing Mastodon works like Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte:

• Situation:
  
  • You have an account on digitalcourage.social with one channel, [email protected].
  • You want to move to troet.cafe.
• Step 1: You create an account on troet.cafe.
• Step 2: There can't be accounts with no channels. You have to add a channel.
  So you choose to move your channel [email protected] from digitalcourage.social to troet.cafe.
• Step 3: Your channel [email protected] is cloned over to troet.cafe.
• Situation now:
  
  • You have an account on digitalcourage.social with the main instance of your channel; its identity is [email protected].
  • You have an account on troet.cafe with a clone of your channel; its identity is still [email protected].
• Step 4: All data on your channel is synchronised over from your main instance on digitalcourage.social to your clone on troet.cafe. Posts, images, other files, followers, followed, settings, lists, filters etc. etc. pp. Everything.
• Now the main instance and the clone are identical.
  Up until here, the process of moving is the same as the process of cloning. What follow is exclusive to moving.
• Step 5:
  
  • The clone on troet.cafe is promoted to main instance.
  • As there can be only one main instance for each channel, the former main instance on digitalcourage.social is demoted to clone.
• Situation now:
  
  • You have an account on digitalcourage.social with a clone of your channel, formerly the main instance; its identity is [email protected].
  • You have an account on troet.cafe with the main instance of your channel, formerly a clone; its identity is [email protected].
• Step 6: All your connections on servers of nomadic software are changed from [email protected] to [email protected], both locally on the servers that you are on and locally on the servers that they are on.
• Step 7 (AFAIK, this only happens on (streams) and Forte in reality): All your outbound connections ("followed") on servers running non-nomadic software receive a follow request from [email protected] which, to them, is an all-new, independent identity.
• The actually move is done. What follows is the clean-up that really makes the move a move, namely taking care that nothing is left behind in the old location.
• Step 8: When these last steps are finalised, your clone on digitalcourage.social is deleted. After all, you wanted to move, not to clone.
• Step 9: As your account on digitalcourage.social has no channel on it anymore, the whole account is deleted.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mitra #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Nomad #FEP #MovingInstances #Clone #Clones

@Adam Dalliance @Alpha Male Martha Stewart 🍉🌈 Ideally, they'd flip Mastodon two birds at once and move to somewhere in the Fediverse that not only is not Mastodon, but that's very much not Mastodon. (This is where I really wish there was a native and fully featured iPhone, iPad and Android app for (streams) and/or Forte.)

The problem, however, is that the density of people who think "Fediverse" refers to only Mastodon is very high on mastodon.social, home of newbies, n00bs and those who basically want Twitter without Musk.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonSocial #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

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

• GNU social, the successor to @Evan Prodromou's StatusNet from 2008 (the actual start of the Fediverse, eight years older than Mastodon)
• @Mike Macgirvin ?️'s Friendica, now maintained by @Tobias and @Michael 🇺🇦
• @Mike Macgirvin ?️'s Hubzilla

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.

• https://friendica.fediverse.observer/list
• https://fedidb.com/software/friendica
• https://rumbly.net/communities?project=friendica
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?project=friendica
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?project=friendica
• https://hubzilla.fediverse.observer/list
• https://fedidb.com/software/hubzilla
• https://rumbly.net/communities?project=hubzilla
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?project=hubzilla
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?project=hubzilla
• https://rumbly.net/communities?type=streams_repository
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?type=streams_repository
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?type=streams_repository
• https://rumbly.net/communities?project=forte
• https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/communities?project=forte
• https://streams.elsmussols.net/communities?project=forte

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.

@Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸 At least you probably already knew that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon. I mean, I see you follow not only Bluesky users via Bridgy Fed, but also a few Pixelfed accounts.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@Kellam⚙️Бур This may come as a surprise, but: Nomadic identity is not an abstract concept or a science-fiction idea for the Fediverse.

It is reality. It exists. Right now. In stable, daily-driver software that's federated with Mastodon. And it has been for over a decade.

I'm literally replying to you here from a nomadic channel that simultaneously exists on two servers.

Nomadic identity was invented by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ (formerly American software developer of about half a century who has been living in rural Australia for decades now) in 2011 and first implemented in 2012. Almost four years before Mastodon was first launched.

In 2010, he had invented the Facebook alternative Friendica, originally named Mistpark and based on his own DFRN protocol.

Over the months, he witnessed lots of privately operated public Friendica nodes shut down with or without an announcement and the users on these nodes lose everything. He added the possibility to export and import Friendica accounts. But that would only help if a permanent shutdown was announced. It did not protect you against shutdowns out of the blue.

There was only one solution to this problem. And that was for someone's identity to not be bound to one server, but to exist on multiple servers simultaneously. The whole thing with everything that's attached to it. Name, settings, connections, posts, files in the file storage etc. etc., everything.

So in 2011, Mike designed a whole new protocol named Zot around this brand-new idea of what he called "nomadic identity" back then already.

In 2012, Mike forked Friendica into something called Red, later the Red Matrix, and rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up against Zot. Red was the first nomadic social networking software in the world, almost four years before Mastodon.

In 2015, ten months before Mastodon was first released, the Red Matrix became Hubzilla, the Fediverse's ultimate Swiss army knife.

I am on Hubzilla myself. This channel of mine is constantly being mirrored between its main instance on https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu and its clone on https://hub.hubzilla.de. Anything that happens on the main instance is backed up on the clone. I can also log into the clone and use that, and whatever happens there is backed up on the main instance.

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu could go down, temporarily, permanently, doesn't matter; I still have my channel, namely the clone. And I can declare the clone my new main instance.

Well, Mike didn't stop at Hubzilla and its original version of the Zot protocol. He wanted to refine it and advance it, but in ways that wouldn't be possible on daily-driver software.

Zot went through several upgrades: Zot6 in 2018 (backported to Hubzilla in 2020, along with OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on). Zot8 in 2020. Zot11 in 2021 which had become incompatible with Zot6 and therefore was renamed to Nomad. Today's Nomad would be Zot12.

Also, in order to advance and test Zot, Mike created a whole bunch of forks and forks of forks. Osada and Zap for Zot6 in 2018, followed by another short-lived Osada in 2019. A third Osada, Mistpark 2020 (a.k.a. Misty) and Redmatrix 2020 in 2020 for Zot8. Roadhouse for Zot11 Nomad in 2021. All Osadas, Zap, Misty, Redmatrix 2020 and Roadhouse were discontinued on New Year's Eve of 2022.

The most recent software based on Nomad is from October, 2021. It can be found in the streams repository. It is officially and intentionally nameless and brandless, it has next to nodeinfo code that could submit statistics, and it is intentionally released into the public domain. The community named it (streams) after the code repository.

I also have two (streams) channels, one of which is cloned so far.

The newest thing, and that's what the Friendica and Hubzilla veteran @Tim Schlotfeldt ⚓?️‍? referred to, is nomadic identity using nothing but ActivityPub, no longer relying on a special protocol.

This was not Mike Macgirvin's idea. This came from @silverpill, the creator and developer of the microblogging server application Mitra. He wanted to make Mitra nomadic, make it resilient against server shutdown. But he didn't want to port it to Nomad. He wanted to achieve it with nothing but ActivityPub.

So he hit up Mike. The two came to the conclusion: This is actually possible. And they began to work on it. Amongst the results were several FEPs coined by silverpill.

This time, Mike did not create another fork to develop nomadic identity via ActivityPub. He did it all on the nomadic branch of the streams repository while silverpill did his part on a special development branch of Mitra.

In mid-2024, after enough sparring between (streams) instances, between Mitra instances and between (streams) and Mitra, Mike was confident enough that his implementation of support of nomadic identity via ActivityPub was stable enough. He merged the nomadic branch into the dev branch which ended up being merged into the stable release branch in summer.

Now, at this point, (streams) didn't use ActivityPub for nomadic identity. It still used the Nomad protocol for everything first and foremost, including cloning. But it understood nomadic identity via ActivityPub as implemented on experimental Mitra.

However, while it worked under lab conditions, it blew up under real-life conditions. At this point, (streams) had to handle so many different identities that it confused them, and it couldn't federate with anything yet.

In mid-August, while trying to fix the problem, Mike eventually forked the streams repository into Forte. It got a name again, it got a brand identity again, it got its nodeinfo back, it was put under the MIT license again.

But most importantly: Any and all support for Nomad was ripped out, also to get rid of a whole number of IDs, namely those for Nomad-actually-Zot12 and for Hubzilla's Nomad-actually-Zot6. Forte only uses ActivityPub for everything. And so, Forte also had to fully rely on ActivityPub for nomadic identity, cloning and syncing.

For almost seven months, Forte was considered experimental and unstable. For most of the time, the only existing servers were Mike's.

But on March 12th, 2025, Mike Macgirvin released Forte 25.3.12, the first official stable release of Forte. This is what Tim wrote about. Because this actually made it into Fediverse-wide news.

Not because it's nomadic. Nomadic identity has been daily-driven for over a decade now.

But because it uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity. Which means that you can theoretically make any kinds of Fediverse software nomadic now, all without porting it to the Nomad protocol first.

For the future, Mike and silverpill envision a Fediverse in which one can clone between different server applications. A Fediverse in which one can have one and the same identity cloned across multiple servers of Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Mitra, Forte, Mobilizon, Lemmy, BookWyrm etc., all with the same name, all with the same content and settings (as far as the software allows; you will certainly not be able to clone your PeerTube videos to Mastodon and Lemmy).

Even if you don't intend to clone, it will make moving instances and even moving from one software to another dramatically easier.

If you're concerned about your privacy, let me tell you this:

Hubzilla's privacy, security and permissions system is unparalleled in the Fediverse. Except for that on (streams) and Forte which is another notch better.

I can define who can see my profile (my default, public profile on Hubzilla where each channel can have multiple profiles).
I can define who can see my stream and my posts when looking at my channel.
I can define who can see my connections (Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte don't distinguish between follower and followed; they aren't Twitter clones).
I can define who can look into my file space (individual permission settings per folder and per file notwithstanding).
I can define who can see my webpages on Hubzilla (if I have any).
I can define who can see my wikis on Hubzilla (no shit, I've got wikis on my Hubzilla channel).

On Hubzilla, I can define individually for any of these whether it's

• everyone on the Internet
• everyone with a recognisable Fediverse account
• everyone on Hubzilla (maybe also on (streams); anyone using ActivityPub is definitely excluded here)
• everyone on the same server as myself (AFAIK, only main instances of channels count here, clones don't)
• unapproved (= followers) as well as approved (= mutual) connections
• confirmed connections
• those of my confirmed connections whom I explicitly grant that permission by contact role
• only myself

There's a whole bunch more permissions than these. And they all have seven or eight permission levels (depending on whether the general non-Fediverse public can be given permission).

On (streams) and Forte, I can define whether things are allowed for

• everyone on the Internet (where applicable)
• everyone with a recognisable Fediverse account
• all my approved connections
• only me myself plus those whom I explicitly grant that permission in the connection settings

Yes, connection settings. Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte give you various ways of configuring individual connections, much unlike Mastodon. This includes what any individual connection is allowed to do.

Hubzilla uses so-called "contact roles" for that, presets with a whopping 17 permissions to grant or deny for any one individual connection. That is, what the channel generally allows, a contact role can't forbid.

(streams) and Forte still have 15 permissions per contact, but they lack some features which Hubzilla has permissions for. These permissions can be set individually for each connection, or you can define permission roles that cover all 15 permissions to make things easier.

Okay, how about posting in public vs in private? And when I say "private", I mean "private". It's "private messages" on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, not "direct messages".

Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte let you post

• in public
• only to yourself
• only to your connections ((streams) and Forte only; Hubzilla requires a privacy group with all your connections in it for this)
• to all members of one specific privacy group (Hubzilla)/access list ((streams), Forte); that's like being able to only post to those on one specific list on Mastodon
• to everyone to whom one specific non-default profile is assigned (Hubzilla only)
• to a specific group/forum (I'll get back to that later)
• to a custom one-by-one selection of connections of yours

Now, let's assume I have a privacy group with Alice, Bob and Carol in it. I send a new post to only this privacy group. This means:

• Only Alice, Bob and Carol can see the post and the conversation.
• Alice can reply to me, Bob and Carol.
• Bob can reply to me, Alice and Carol.
• Carol can reply to me, Alice and Bob.
• Nobody else can see the post. Not even by searching for it. Not by hashtag either. Not at all.
• Nobody else can see any of the comments.
• Nobody else can comment.

If one of them was on Mastodon, they'd see my post as a DM, by the way, and they could only reply to me. But that's Mastodon's limitation because it understands neither threaded conversations nor permissions.

Or how about reply control? This is something that many Mastodon users have been craving for quite a while now. Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have them. Right now. And they work. They have since 2012.

Hubzilla optionally lets me disallow comments on either of my posts. Users on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte won't even be able to comment; they won't have the UI elements to do so. Everyone else is able to comment locally. But that comment will never end up on my channel. It will never officially be added to the conversation. And at least users on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte will never fetch that comment from my channel as part of the conversation, i.e. never at all.

(streams) and Forte can go even further with all available options. They can disallow comments like Hubzilla. But in addition, they can allow only the members of one particular access list to comment, regardless of who can see the post/the conversation. On top of that, comments can be closed at a pre-defined point in the future. And then you even have a channel-wide setting for how long people can comment on your posts.

Oh, and there's even a setting for who is generally permitted to comment on your posts. And you can additionally allow specific connections of yours to comment on your posts.

Lastly, I've already mentioned groups/forums. Like, you know, Web forums or Facebook groups or subreddits or whatever. Like Guppe Groups on a mountain of coke and with moderation and permission control and optionally private.

Hubzilla has them, and it has inherited them from Friendica. (streams) has them. Forte has them. They're basically channels like social networking channels, but with some extra features. This includes that everything that's send to a group/forum as what amounts to a PM is automatically forwarded to all other members.

On Hubzilla, a forum can be gradually made private by denying permission to see certain elements to everyone but its own members (= connections): the profile, the members, what's going on in it. Depending on what you want or do not want people to see.

On (streams) and Forte, you have four types of forums:

• public, and members can upload images and other files to the forum channel
• public, but members cannot upload images and other files to the forum channel
• like above, but additionally, posts and comments from new members must be manually approved by the admin(s) until their connections are configured to make them full members
• private, non-members can't see the profile, non-members can't see the connections, non-members can't see what's going on in it, but members can upload images and other files to the forum channel

In addition, on all three, a group/forum channel can choose to hide itself from directories. This is always an extra option that's independent from public/private.

What we have here is the most secure and most private Fediverse software of all.

And, once again, at its core, this is technology from 2012. It pre-dates Mastodon by almost four years.

Finally, if you want to know how Hubzilla and (streams) compare to Mastodon: I have made a number of tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams).

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #NomadicIdentity #Security #FediverseSecurity #Privacy #FediversePrivacy #Permissions

@JustBob Discord has completely warped the term "server" for entire generations of Internet users. On Discord, "server" means "chatroom".

In the Fediverse, "server" doesn't mean "chatroom". It means "server". A computer.

For example, a rack computer with no screen and no keyboard and no mouse bolted into a server rack at a data centre.

Or an old laptop that someone had lying around or a Raspberry Pi mini-computer running at someone's home, connected to their landline.

On each one of these, a big or small Twitter can be running (Mastodon).

Or a wholly different Twitter (Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp, Sharkey, Catodon, Meisskey, Tanukey, Neko...).

(Here's the first important new thing for you to learn about the Fediverse: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon.)

Or a Facebook with a side of a blog and a cloud server (Friendica, (streams), Forte).

(Here's the second important new thing for you to learn about the Fediverse: The Fediverse is not only short-form microblogging. Look at this comment. Look at what I've done. Embedded links. Bold type. Impossible on Mastodon. But possible elsewhere in the Fediverse.)

Or a Facebook meets WordPress meets Google Cloud Services meets even more stuff on top (Hubzilla; this is where I am).

Or an Instagram (Pixelfed).

Or a YouTube (PeerTube).

Or a Twitch (Owncast).

Or a Reddit (Lemmy, /kbin, Mbin, PieFed).

Or a Goodreads (BookWyrm).

Or whatever. There are over 150 different server applications in the Fediverse.

mastodon.social, where you are, is only one of over 10,000 big and small Twitters of the same kind (Mastodon).

If Mastodon was like Discord, all 10,000+ Mastodon servers would run in one and the same gigantic data centre in the USA, owned by Mastodon, Inc. And they would all be property of Mastodon, Inc.

If the Fediverse was like Discord, all 30,000+ Fediverse servers would run in one and the same gigantic data centre in the USA, owned by Mastodon, Inc. And they would all be property of Mastodon, Inc. Also, they would be fully identical in functionality.

But as I've said above: They're all running on their own separate machines. With their own separate owners.

And the different server applications have different developers, and they are being developed independently from one another.

Okay, now comes the kicker: These server applications are not walled up against one another. Not only are all instances of the same server applications (e.g. Mastodon) connected to each other, but all instances of one server application are also connected to all instances of all the other server applications.

Imagine you're on Twitter. But your new friend is on Facebook. You can't follow a Facebook user on Twitter, and you can't follow a Twitter user on Facebook.

In the Fediverse, you can. You can be on Twitter. And follow a Facebook user. Directly from Twitter. Without a Facebook account.

Only that they aren't named Twitter and Facebook in the Fediverse. Twitter is named Mastodon or Pleroma or Akkoma or Misskey or Calckey or Firefish or Iceshrimp or Sharkey or Catodon or... There are dozens of Twitter alternatives in the Fediverse. Well, and Facebook is named Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte.

You can be on Mastodon. And you can follow Friendica accounts. From Mastodon. Without a Friendica account.

This comment is a very good example. You are on Mastodon, created by @Eugen Rochko in 2016 as an alternative to Twitter that aimed to be as close to Twitter as possible.

The server that you're on, mastodon.social, is owned by Mastodon, Inc. and running on one or multiple rack servers in San Francisco, California, USA owned by Fastly.

I am on Hubzilla, created by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ in 2012 by forking his own Friendica from 2010, and currently mainly maintained by @Mario Vavti and @Harald Eilertsen. Hubzilla has got nothing to do with Mastodon whatsoever. It started out as an alternative to Facebook, but not a clone, rather better than Facebook, with full-blown long-form blogging capability and a built-in file storage, and it has been enhanced greatly in functionality even beyond that.

The server that I'm on, Netzgemeinde, is owned and administered by @Mark Nowiasz, who has no affiliation with the Hubzilla developers, and running on a rack server in Nuremberg, Germany owned by Netcup.

And yet, you can see this comment coming from Hubzilla on Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Server #Instance #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Catodon #Meisskey #Tanukey #Neko #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Pixelfed #PeerTube #Owncast #Lemmy #/kbin #Mbin #PieFed #BookWyrm #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@Kevin Karhan :verified: To quote Arthur C. Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And for your average Musk escapees, Mastodon alone is more than sufficiently advanced. These people believe that there's some magic going on that makes their fully public posts private and secure regardless. They want perfect security, but with zero inconvenience, and they think Mastodon provides them with exactly this.

In fact, they expect Mastodon to be an absolutely perfectly safe haven, simply because it isn't a corporate silo. Little do they know how close to being a corporate silo Mastodon is, what with having a US-based company and a lighthouse instance that accounts for 22% of the whole Fediverse in terms of MAUs.

On top of that, more than half of all Mastodon users think the Fediverse is only Mastodon, and most of the rest can't imagine that anything in the Fediverse could possibly have features that Mastodon doesn't have. Not unless you slap them right into their faces like character limits over 500.

They cling hard to and rely on an imagination of the Fediverse that has never even been close to reality and never will.

As for The Bad Space, its blocklist looks like it's curated not by evidence, but by emotional triggers. Generally, some blocklists go so wild that you have to ask yourself whether the reason why nobody has tried to block out everything that isn't vanilla Mastodon is because that'd be too big an effort (two out of three Fediverse instances aren't Mastodon), or whether such people simply don't know how far the Fediverse extends beyond Mastodon, so they don't know what to block. I mean, there should be reasons enough to block everything that isn't Mastodon.

Blocklist import from other instances doesn't make things any better. Just like on all networks where everyone can run a server, the Fediverse, especially Mastodon, has got admins who really shouldn't run a server. It looks very tempting to pick blocklists by length rather than content, the longer, the more "secure", import a bunch of them, but not curate them because that'd be extra effort.

In this light, it's a good thing that Oliphant put the tier-1 to tier-3 blocklists onto the chopping block when switching from manual list curation to automated list aggregation a while ago. Especially tier 3 would have been easy to exploit with little to no curation, and there certainly were enough sufficiently paranoid Mastodon admins who'd subscribe to tier 3 without ever taking a single peek at the list.

Sometimes I feel like going to Mastodon's GitHub repository and submitting blocking or allowing entire Fediverse server applications by user agent, both for admins and for users, as a feature request, just to see what'll happen. Maybe dumbed down on the user side to a switch that blocks everything that isn't Mastodon. But maybe I should also mention that (streams) already has this feature on the admin side so that the Mastodon devs have to think up a way to sell this as invented by Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Blocklist #Blocklists #BlocklistMeta #CWBlocklistMeta