#gnusocial — Public Fediverse posts

@Hirad @Mehrad :kde: :emacs: :rstats: Which is curious, seeing as the GNU FM developer also started GNU social and scooped up StatusNet's abandoned code to merge it into GNU social. The idea was to use GNU social in some way to make GNU FM federate.

GNU social even implemented ActivityPub at some point, but GNU FM never did. Now GNU social is dead anyway.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #GNUFM #GNUsocial

@Chao-c'

The wiki reveals even different timeline:

"The wiki" sounds funny to someone who has three wikis of his own on his Hubzilla channel. Anyway...

To me, it seems, that Gargon simply was not as colossal nerd, as others, and somehow managed to create cult following of sufficient number of users, which were not really techies.

Gargron simply was lucky.

I think it was in 2016 already that German tech media got interested in decentralised alternatives to corporate silos. Mastodon caught their interest, being developed in Germany and all. Pleroma didn't, in spite of being developed in Germany, too, not to mention more feature-rich than Mastodon. Friendica was developed in Germany back then already, too, but it seemed like either tech media weren't interested in alternatives to something that needed alternatives much more than Twitter, or Friendica managed to continue to fly under the radar even then.

Anyway, Mastodon got media coverage, and nothing else did.

In 2017, right-wingers started attacking furries and queers on Twitter. They had to escape somewhere. Tumblr wasn't it, having been pretty much killed by being bought out and G-rated. But someone happened to know Mastodon due to the media coverage whereas nobody happened to know Pleroma due to no media coverage at all. So those furries and queers escaped to Mastodon. "Awoo" was briefly part of Mastodon's culture in the late 2010s due to the high furry-to-non-furry rate.

From then on, Mastodon had the two advantages of past media coverage and more users. The rest was like a snowball, essentially. The more users something has, the more users something gains by inviting them.

I guess Friendica and Hubzilla, both of which already existed back then, suffered from the same choice of mindsets: "If you build it, they will come," "We'll first need to get this and that fixed before we're ready for prime time," "Can't someone else take care of that? I'm bad at advertising stuff!" Plus, of course, people who really were bad at advertising stuff to anyone who's neither a developer nor a server admin.

I was thinking about need for decentralized social media since at least 2009, as I was watching the old web to slowly loose any relevance. (My Facebook account was canceled without any explanations as soon as perhaps sometimes like 2010?).

In 2009, there already was StatusNet. Granted, it was so obscure that vastly more people knew the "lighthouse server" Identi.ca than StatusNet itself. StatusNet supported the Twitter client API, but there were vastly more mobile apps that were hard-coded to Identi.ca than such where you could choose a StatusNet server because the huge majority of those who knew Identi.ca didn't even know it was part of a network. Identi.ca held some 90% of all StatusNet users.

By the way, what killed StatusNet was when Identi.ca changed its backend from StatusNet to pump.io and its protocol from OStatus to ActivityPump, thus becoming incompatible with the rest of StatusNet. What remained was largely unable to stand alone. What kind of helped Identi.ca (OStatus as a profile sucked so badly that Evan and Erin themselves had to whip up ActivityPump) did the opposite to StatusNet. A bit later, the FSF scooped it up, forked it to GNU social and eventually merged what was left of StatusNet into GNU social. It got ActivityPub support later on, but it's gone now, too.

Also, in 2010, Mistpark was around, and so was diaspora* (or what already existed of it at that time). diaspora* had tons of advance publicity due to its crowdfunding stunt, but then the four devs didn't manage to deliver before public interest had faded away, even with Mike's help on the protocol (not even kidding here). And speaking of Mike, he built Mistpark, but almost nobody came because he did nothing in terms of advertising. Even though Mistpark of May, 2010 was more powerful than diaspora* is today. Even though Mistpark took two months for a public alpha and four for a stable point release whereas it took diaspora* years to go beyond alpha, not to mention the entire development team being replaced.

I guess you would have been a prime Friendica user candidate. Particularly, you would have been one of those who were happy on a Friendica node without the performance-hogging Facebook connector in times when everyone was seeking out and piling onto the nodes with that connector, just to see them close registration at not even 150 accounts.

I was thinking about basing it on bunch of combined RSS feeds, the publicly compatible vs. the activity stream, which is not so different from from like ActivityPub is made today, except that signing of content with public keys is more advanced concept, that what I was able to imagine.

Well, they say that ActivityPub is glorified RSS with a rubbery spec.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Pleroma #StatusNet #Identi.ca #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #OStatus #ActivityPump #ActivityPub

@Maxi 11x 💉

Das Fediverse wird immer mehr zu Facebook und ich hab da wenig Lust drauf.

Das Fediverse war Facebook, bevor es von Millionen von ahnungslosen Mastodon-Newbies zu Twitter gemacht wurde.

Mehr als die Hälfte der Mastodon-Nutzer glaubt, das Fediverse sei nur Mastodon. Der weit überwiegende Teil derer, die eines Besseren belehrt wurden, glauben immer noch, das Fediverse sei

• (frühestens) 2016
• von Eugen Rochko
• als reine Microblogging-Plattform und Twitter-Klon
• mit einem Zeichenlimit von 500 Zeichen

erfunden worden. Und alles, was davon abweicht und nicht "offensichtlich (wie PeerTube & Co.) als Extra an Mastodon drangeklebt" worden ist, wird aufgefaßt als lästige Eindringlinge im Mastodon-Fediverse, die sich nicht an die Regeln des Mastodon-Fediverse halten und sich auch nicht an die Kultur des Mastodon-Fediverse anpassen.

Um das mal zurechtzurücken:

Im Januar 2016 ging Mastodon an den Start.

Im Juli 2010, fünfeinhalb Jahre vor Mastodon, startete Friendica (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica, https://friendi.ca) als Facebook-Alternative.

• Ohne Zeichenbegrenzung (tatsächlich 16.777.215 Zeichen).
• Mit allem, was eine gute Bloggingplattform an Textformatierung hergibt.
• Mit Inhaltswarnungen, die jeder für sich selbst automatisch generieren lassen kann mittels einer Liste von Schlüsselwörtern.
• Mit Titeln und Zusammenfassungen, und die Zusammenfassungen waren schon immer in dem Datenfeld, das Mastodon seit 2017 für CWs verwendet.
• Mit der Fähigkeit, andere Posts als Komplettzitate zu teilen. Und nicht ein einziges Mal ist das mißbräuchlich verwendet worden.

Jetzt regen sich Mastodon-Nutzer darüber auf, daß Friendica auf so infame und rücksichtslose Art und Weise ins Mastodon-Fediverse eingedrungen ist und seine Nutzer

• sich nicht ans 500-Zeichen-Limit halten
• alle mit ihren Textformatierungen nerven
• keine CWs schreiben
• dafür das CW-Feld mißbrauchen mit "Titeln oder was weiß ich, was das ist"

Daß Friendica schon seit über 15 Jahren quote-posten kann, weiß zum Glück beinahe niemand auf Mastodon.

Fakt ist aber: Friendica gab es nicht nur schon fünfeinhalb Jahre, als Mastodon startete, sondern es war auch schon fünfeinhalb Jahre im Fediverse, als Mastodon startete. Und es hatte auch schon gut fünf Jahre lang seine eigene Kultur, als Mastodon startete.

In dem Augenblick, wo Mastodon startete, verband es sich sofort mit StatusNet (von 2008, wofür Mastodon ursprünglich nur eine Alternativoberfläche war; heute GNU social, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Social, https://gnusocial.rocks/), Friendica und Hubzilla (von 2015, basiert auf einem Fork eines Forks von Friendica von 2012; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla, https://hubzilla.org). Und nicht umgekehrt.

Wir waren zuerst hier. Findet euch damit ab.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NichtNurMastodon #MastodonZentrizität #MastodonNormativität #StatusNet #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Zeichenlimit #Zeichenlimits #ZeichenlimitMeta #CWZeichenlimitMeta #500Zeichen #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteTröt #QuoteTröts #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebatte #QuoteTrötDebatte

@fastfinge What if I told you that just about the whole Fediverse supports quotes, only Mastodon doesn't?

What if I told you that #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse? What if I told you that I myself am not on Mastodon, although this post of mine has appeared on your timeline?

What if I told you that, in fact, the Fediverse has been around for much longer than Mastodon?

What if I told you that it started in 2008 with something called Laconi.ca, now known as #GNUsocial (#^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social)

Okay, GNU social doesn't really count as part of today's Fediverse because it doesn't support #ActivityPub. And okay, it wasn't called the Fediverse back then but the #FederatedSocialWeb. But still, the whole concept isn't new. It was not invented by Eugen Rochko.

Still, even today's Fediverse is more than Mastodon and older than Mastodon. And just about everything that isn't Mastodon supports quotes while still being fully federated with Mastodon.

But let me elaborate (warning, this post is over 12 times as long as a toot can possibly be):

#Friendica (#^https://friendi.ca, #^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica, #^https://joinfediverse.wiki/Special:MyLanguage/What_is_Friendica%3F) was launched in July 2010. That was six years before Mastodon. It was created by a guy named Mike Macgirvin as a decentralised, distributed, federated replacement for Facebook. No, not Twitter. Facebook.

From the very beginning, it had many features which Mastodon users keep demanding today. Including quotes. Again, when Mastodon was launched, Friendica had had these features in daily productive use for six years already.

And yet, people don't use quotes to harass others by "stealing" discussions. This is technically impossible on Friendica due to its architecture which is more like Facebook or a blog or a forum and less like Twitter or Mastodon. Threads aren't stand-alone posts floating around the timelines, loosely tied together by increasing numbers of mentions. Instead, they're start-post-and-comments structures. Replies aren't stand-alone posts. Replies are comments firmly tied to one start post by Friendica's internal structure.

Oh, and Friendica doesn't run on ActivityPub. It has its own internal protocol, #DFRN. Still, Friendica quickly created an ActivityPub connector and federated with Mastodon, thus becoming part of the Fediverse. Friendica federates with a whole lot of projects and platforms. In fact, there is a growing number of forums mostly frequented by Mastodon users which run on Friendica, such as FediverseNews.

I myself am on #Hubzilla (#^https://hubzilla.org, #^https://joinfediverse.wiki/Special:MyLanguage/What_is_Hubzilla%3F). It started life in 2012, still four years before Mastodon, as a fork of Friendica, created by Friendica's own inventor. In 2011 already, Mike had conceived an even more powerful protocol named #Zot which comes with features that are outright utterly unimaginable for Mastodon users such as #NomadicIdentity. Hubzilla even had its first stable release before Mastodon was launched.

And Hubzilla still has almost all the features Friendica has with a whole lot more on top. Again, including quotes. Again, yes, before Mastodon refused to have them. And again, yes, without anyone misusing them for harassment.

And again, it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to read this.

I should also mention that both Friendica and Hubzilla have technical barriers in the way of publicly quoting private or restricted posts, at least with references/a connection to the quoted post. Hubzilla in particular has access rights control on a level you couldn't possibly imagine in your wildest dreams.

And just about everything else in the Fediverse that's microblogging or macroblogging has official, built-in quote support.

• #Pleroma (#^https://pleroma.social/, #^https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Pleroma%253F) has quotes. And it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
  
• #Akkoma (#^https://akkoma.social/), a Pleroma fork, has quotes. And it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
  
• #MissKey (#^https://misskey-hub.net/en/, #^https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Misskey%253F) has quotes. And it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
  
• #CalcKey (#^https://calckey.cloud/, #^https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Calckey%3F) has quotes. And it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
  
• #FoundKey (#^https://akkoma.dev/FoundKeyGang/FoundKey) has quotes. And it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
  
• #GoToSocial (#^https://docs.gotosocial.org/, #^https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_GoToSocial%3F) has quotes. And it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.
  
• #Socialhome (#^https://socialhome.network/) has quotes. And it's part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon.

Yes, they're all federated with Mastodon. This means that users of any of these projects, including Friendica and Hubzilla, can read Mastodon posts and quote them in their replies, and these replies, in turn, can be read on Mastodon.

Okay, so the Fediverse has two, three, four... ten projects, and all but Mastodon support quotes, and nowhere are there people demanding the feature be removed due to rampant harassment?

No, these are only the microblogging and macroblogging projects, and only those of the macroblogging projects that aren't primarily for long-form blogging, i.e. that aren't mimicking Medium, that aren't mimicking WordPress, that aren't #Wordpress itself. Yes, there are WordPress blogs in the Fediverse, federated with Mastodon.

In fact, the Fediverse is even much, much bigger than that (#^https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/, #^https://the-federation.info/).

Now go block me for harassing you, for being an ableist swine because I treat blind people equally instead of mollycoddling them wherever possibly, even for being a fascist or just for shattering your worldview into itty bitty pieces. This post of mine stands.

CC @Patrick, the Linux guy so that you know that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon, too
Also CC @Ada @James