#googleplus — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #googleplus, aggregated by home.social.
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@stefan @scottjenson Indeed, flexible groups, both private and public, open en closed, seem to have a great potential. (a potential #GooglePlus never managed to sell, but I tend to think this has rather random, non-substantial reasons)
In any case, the popular format of #friends (#facebook) and connections (#LinkedIn) is hard to visualize or define as "circles" really: they constitute a personally unique set of connections that may be displayed much more like neurons, instead.
No matter how complicated to visually imagine, friend-connections (and their popular #platform implementation) make intuitive sense to people and people like to have friends. Most people won't make friends in the current #Fediverse, however.
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In der #edeka app kann man in der Prospekt ansicht den "Katalog teilen"
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In der #edeka app kann man in der Prospekt ansicht den "Katalog teilen"
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In der #edeka app kann man in der Prospekt ansicht den "Katalog teilen"
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In der #edeka app kann man in der Prospekt ansicht den "Katalog teilen"
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In der #edeka app kann man in der Prospekt ansicht den "Katalog teilen"
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Part three of my three-part introduction is finally up: What can you expect from my blog and what other services will my blog replace?
https://pygospa.codeberg.page/posts/blogging-since-2001-ish/
#introduction #introductions #blogosphere #boycottbigtech #unplugamazon #unplugmeta #unplugtrump #facebook #googleplus #instagram #wordpresscom #goodreads #trakttv #letterboxd #backloggd #discogs #boardgamegeeks #archive #oldposts
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Part three of my three-part introduction is finally up: What can you expect from my blog and what other services will my blog replace?
https://pygospa.codeberg.page/posts/blogging-since-2001-ish/
#introduction #introductions #blogosphere #boycottbigtech #unplugamazon #unplugmeta #unplugtrump #facebook #googleplus #instagram #wordpresscom #goodreads #trakttv #letterboxd #backloggd #discogs #boardgamegeeks #archive #oldposts
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Part three of my three-part introduction is finally up: What can you expect from my blog and what other services will my blog replace?
https://pygospa.codeberg.page/posts/blogging-since-2001-ish/
#introduction #introductions #blogosphere #boycottbigtech #unplugamazon #unplugmeta #unplugtrump #facebook #googleplus #instagram #wordpresscom #goodreads #trakttv #letterboxd #backloggd #discogs #boardgamegeeks #archive #oldposts
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Part three of my three-part introduction is finally up: What can you expect from my blog and what other services will my blog replace?
https://pygospa.codeberg.page/posts/blogging-since-2001-ish/
#introduction #introductions #blogosphere #boycottbigtech #unplugamazon #unplugmeta #unplugtrump #facebook #googleplus #instagram #wordpresscom #goodreads #trakttv #letterboxd #backloggd #discogs #boardgamegeeks #archive #oldposts
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Part three of my three-part introduction is finally up: What can you expect from my blog and what other services will my blog replace?
https://pygospa.codeberg.page/posts/blogging-since-2001-ish/
#introduction #introductions #blogosphere #boycottbigtech #unplugamazon #unplugmeta #unplugtrump #facebook #googleplus #instagram #wordpresscom #goodreads #trakttv #letterboxd #backloggd #discogs #boardgamegeeks #archive #oldposts
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Panic?
Oh... kay #Google !Dear deep #Privacy watchers:
I don't understand half of this, & generally avoid Google products if I can; don't do cloud, and stay un-logged in when possible.
I haven't enjoyed/respected Google since the genocide of the beloved #GooglePlus community, and the repeal of #DontBeEvil ...
BUT... even as a non-paranoid, non-Google-platform user who studies #media & #words ... Is this not ominous?
#technology #tracking #data #PID #security #icloud #telemetry
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@Infostack @andybaio I feel like you completely missed my point.
#Ello failed because the demand wasn't there. Ello made the same mistake #GooglePlus and #MeWe made. #Facebook users complain about Facebook, but don't join anti-Facebooks, because most of them don't hate Facebook as much as the people creating Facebook replacements do.
All the #Twitter alternatives are making the same mistake. Only difference in their favor is that Twitter may actually go out of business on its own.
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@kristinHenry depends on your definition of #SciArt l do miss posting #SciCom but it's never been the same since #GooglePlus shutdown.
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Google+ arşivimden 2012 yılındaki o paylaşımın görüntüsü. ツ
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@[email protected] My first post on Pixelfed. I‘ll start with older photos that were once in my #googleplus public album and will then see how I‘ll continue from there.
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Ironically enough I hit 15k on #GooglePlus about a week ago in 2013. This is the biggest following I've had since. I sure can pick a #SocialMedia site, huh? Jay, quit kicking people off the lifeboat. I don't wanna shut out the lights on yet another one.
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Found my 21-digit profile ID so I could try to retrieve my Google Plus out of the Internet Archive. Found some of my friends, but the archive missed me.
All the data Google keeps on me against my wishes, but they deleted that. Oh well.
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@nyquildotorg I loved the Ripples feature that early #GooglePlus had!
It was very neat to see it ripple through communities with reshares, and occasionally was a great way to find and tap directly into new audiences.
It probably also could be a privacy nightmare 😂
Early introductory example video of Google Ripples in action on Google Plus
Being able to scrub through the timeline and watch the post spread out to other people, with the size of the circles representing how big an audience it reached, and then being able to click on them to see the other circles it reached through them, filtering down deeper and deeper recursively. Getting an overview of the biggest 'influencers', languages, and stats like longest chain length, average shares per hour, and longest chain; I don't think I've seen a similar set of features since.
RIP #GoogleRipples and #GPlus. -
Am I the only one for whom #Microsoft pushing #AI into every single product is the same, but absolutely the same scenario like #GooglePlus was? With the expected flop at the end as well?
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@chmod777 for me it was during the sunsetting of #GooglePlus.
Looking at the join date of @[email protected] I've been here since 16 Sept 2018 -
GooglePlus would make more sense as part of the fediverse rather than anything else.
Luckily there are better things for us now like Mastodon and NodeBB!
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I wrote about SPECT a long time ago when I was doing #SciCom on #GooglePlus, which I converted to a blog.
https://medicalimaging.imagedistillary.com/2014/10/26/medical-imaging-101-pt-7-spect/
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It's been a while since I saw a #GooglePlus logo!
I always wore looked that service - the concept of circles was really nicely done I thought - but I guess not enough people felt the same way at the time ... -
CW: ActivityPub / Fedi server nitty gritty
@mattgrayyes #Friendica (which has a shared ancestor with #Streams) can also be worth looking into. It's a bit more #Diaspora* / #GooglePlus / Facebook-like.
It has some media type filters available, as well as more fine-grained contact type filters, and supposedly can also have multiple profiles per account, though I couldn't quickly figure that out in my old test account.#Hubzilla is also quite elaborate, but I never really got into it for the same reason Friendica never fully grabbed me; it felt too clunky and too unfocused in its features. That's what eventually made Mastodon my primary social media account after Google+ shut down; it was the most polished one, and had a more streamlined focus, as well as the more active mobile app ecosystem. I eventually settled on a #GlitchSoc fork instance because of its additional features such as formatting and longer post lengths, though nowadays I would also consider #Hometown because of its Article support.
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@CyberpunkLibrarian that still exists? I remember it was an alternative being built during the demise of #GooglePlus, and IIRC it was drawing too many right-wingers for my liking, though I could be misremembering.
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You know what is another thing I miss from #GooglePlus?
Being able to preview the snippet for links before posting, and the ability to select which of the page images to accompany the snippet. Especially if it would be combined with an optional alt text for the snippet media.
Yes, I know I could also just upload a screenshot or manually download and attach the relevant image, but this would feel a lot more streamlined.
#mastoDev #mastodon -
im absolutely convinced that creating a googleplus alternative in the fediverse would have an insane potential. I would totally love to design and iterate on it, I would just need frontend & backend devs 🙌
if you wanna talk abt that, please reply to this post or email me at [email protected]
boost appreciated 🚀
#fediverse #googleplus #fullstack #fullstackdevelopment #fullstackdeveloper
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Does anyone else miss Google+ ?
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かつての #GooglePlus のサークルっていう概念は今考えても良い機能だったと思う。自分専用のフォロワーグループみたいな機能で、特定のサークルにだけ見えるポストとか、公開範囲を柔軟に設定できた。
#mixi2 もリリースされたし #GooglePlus2 とかこないかな（こない :mastodance:
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FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server Data is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users (2023)
In May [2023], Mastodon server Kolektiva.social was compromised when one of the server’s admins had their home raided by the FBI for unrelated charges. All of their electronics, including a backup of the instance database, were seized.
It’s a chillingly familiar story which should serve as a reminder for the hosts, users, and developers of decentralized platforms: if you care about privacy, you have to do the work to protect it. We have a chance to do better from the start in the fediverse, so let’s take it. ...
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41434600
This is an issue that's troubled me since joining the Fediverse in 2016, and as one of the people heavily involved in the "Plexodus" diaspora from the late unlamented #GooglePlus. Whilst large commercial providers have their failure points concerning privacy and law enforcement, they've also often stood up to over-broad attempts to surveil peoples' online activity. Small instances on distributed systems often run as hobbies or very small-scale subscription / donation-based operations might avoid the roving eye of such efforts, but also lack resources, knowledge, and procedures for how to respond when such seizures occur. As the EFF notes, Kolektiva failed to alert its members (and remote contacts) until months after the FBI raid.
The EFF does have a promising guide to legal rights and considerations specifically tailored at the Fediverse:
"User Generated Content and the Fediverse: A Legal Primer"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer#KolektivaSocial #Kolektiva #EFF #ElectronicFrontierFoundation #CyberRights #FBI #OnlineRights #JacksonGames
Edit: This is a 2023 story.
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MySpace CEO: Facebook Didn’t Kill MySpace, Google Did – For Music https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/myspace-ceo-facebook-didnt-kill-myspace-google-did-for-music/ #googleplus #business #Facebook #Culture #myspace #youtube #google #News
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Ernsthaft:
Aktuell wünsche ich mir die
#Circles von #GooglePlus zurück. Das ist ja leider hier nicht möglich. :( -
@remcofugers
Ik kijk nog regelmatig op Twitter omdat daar veel gepost wordt en nog veel meer gebruikers heeft.
Maar ook veel meer bagger wat er voorbij komt waardoor ik dus de overstap gemaakt heb niets meer post daar.
Weer terug naar wat het was, met name het lezen van (F1) nieuws.De sfeer hier bevalt mij vele malen beter ondanks dat er veel minder gebruikers zijn.
Ik heb hier zelfs meer een soort van G+ sfeer.En ook Twitter etc zijn klein begonnen.
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♲ @[email protected]:Socialhome.Network as a searchable federation archive
The Socialhome node socialhome.network/ is both widely federated AND searchable by non-members. It displays both posts AND profile pages even to non-members, which is NOT the case for Diaspora* pods.
If you're looking for specific content from a now-defunct pod, Socialhome may be able to turn that up for you.
You can search for a specific profile by the its handle, e.g.,[email protected]or[email protected], for my present and now-defunct Joindiaspora profiles, using the site's Search feature.
My (now-offline at origin) Joindiaspora profile appears as:
socialhome.network/p/702b2f0c-…
Note that the profile GUID is NOT the same as it would be for my Joindiaspora profle itself (`d8210c0de509264f``). The Diaspora* GUID can be used to construct a URL visible from the Diaspora* Pod you have an account on and are logged in to, but not as a globally-viewable third-party-accessible URL. Socialhome solves this problem.
That is, if you are on Glasswings, this URL links to my Joindiaspora profile:
diaspora.glasswings.com/people…
But if you're not, it won't. Glasswings users might try a different pod such as Diasp.org:
diasp.org/people/d8210c0de5092…
Instead, third-party visitors are presented with a log-in / registration page. Socialhome solves this problem specifically.
There may be additional features / API apparent at the Socialhome GitLab repo: git.feneas.org/socialhome/soci…
Noting that that is a FENEAS URL, also likely to go offline in the near future, GitHub:
github.com/jaywink/socialhomeLimitations
The downsides to Socialhome seem to be that:- References to content and profiles does not follow Diaspora*-assigned GUIDs. That is, there's no automated way to refernece a specific post or profile.
- I'm not seeing an obvious way of exposing a JSON abstract of posts or profiles --- the Diaspora* trick of appending
.jsonto the end of a URL does not work, and I'm not seeing a JSON abstract in the raw HTML. There may still be an API.
It's not clear how widely or deeply content is federated, though some should be better than none. This option was brought to my attention by @isaackuo in comments here.
#Diaspora #DataArchival #Federation #SocialHome #Pluspora #Joindiaspora #DataMigration #Archives #Plexodus #GooglePlus #GPlus #FENEAS -
For Google Plus users only: A Walk Down Memory Lane.
Five years ago today, Google commenced the shutdown of Google Plus. The process took several hours as different geographic regions of the world went dark, one after another.
Here is a blog post with screen shots of what our beloved social networking platform used to look like.
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@ILoveNumAn welcome!
While Mastodon doesn't have native groups yet, there are some other Fediverse alternatives that do. The most notable example probably is #Friendica: https://fedi.tips/friendica-a-flexible-fediverse-server-type-with-long-posts/
While I do have a Friendica account myself, @[email protected], I don't find myself using it actively. In theory it's closer to what #GPlus is, in reality it just doesn't feel as polished, and I haven't been able to curate a home feed and 'circles' with it that keeps me active on the platform on a regular basis. The user interface and user experience of #Mastodon just feels a lot more thought through and polished.
The same applies to #Diaspora, the platform #GooglePlus probably took the whole idea of Circles from, where they are called "Aspects". There's also #Hubzilla, which has even more features, but which just felt slow and cobbled together. I would suggest you give them all a try though, as your experience and needs might differ from mine!Now, having said that Mastodon doesn't have native #groups yet, there is some third party support for them in the form of #Guppe (https://a.gup.pe/). Check out @FediTips for a good primer: https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/
Mastodon 'recently' did add a feature that reminded me of the early days of G+, which should help you discover people a bit easier than manually trawling hashtags, and that's the ability to follow a hashtag, so its posts will automatically appear in your home feed.
Finally, if you like the overall interface of Mastodon, but miss being able to format your posts by wrapping words in asterisks, underscores and the likes like G+ supported (though with less frustrations imho), or write posts longer than 500 characters (like this one), then I would suggest you also check out #GlitchSoc, a fork of Mastodon that adds a bunch of features which Mastodon for example itself has shown a resistance to to add. https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/
Best advice I can give is to just try out several different alternatives and then settle on the one that best suits your needs. :)Anyway, I hope this wall of text has been of some help. 😅
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Spricht mir aus der Seele der Artikel 😭😭😭
G+ war so ein großartiges Netzwerk und die Features bis heute unerreicht.#googleplus #gplusrefugee #gplus
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-plus-missing-features-to-today/
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@dansup where can I read more on what Collections are?
Is it similar to what #GooglePlus called #Collections?
(I was sure I had made a post tagged with that to explain what #GPlus' Collections were, but now I can't find it...) -
@stevenkennard here is Susanne
@Susanne711
Welcome!
A friend from G+, to any who remember us in those days.
#GooglePlusRefugee #GooglePlus #GPlus #followFriday #photographer -
Back in the early days of social networks I enjoyed trying out new networks. Even since the closure of #GooglePlus (and our collective archiving methods during the #Plexodus beforehand), I haven't really bothered.
I mean, sure, I tried out several alternatives during the #GPlus exodus, such as #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and re-tried #Diaspora* (though the pod I was one also shortly after announced its closure), and of course #Mastodon, just to find a new 'home'.
However, my heart was no longer really in it. For now Mastodon suits my needs (or at least the #GlitchSoc fork; shout out to those wonderful #GlitchSocial folks!) well enough, and I can't be arsed to even look at all the various alternatives that have popped up in my timelines since. (Most of which seem to show up for me, so I'm guessing most of them didn't really pan out anyway.)Part of me still misses G+ though; especially its early days, and some of the later features such as #Collections and #Groups.
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This GIF of me - from a livestream in 2023 where I did surgery on a cardboard shark to make to it foldable - is kind of difficult to explain. 😆
It was the good old Google+ days and I wanted to bring @Fluffy with me to visit online friends in the USA, so I had to make @Fluffy able to fit into my luggage and I decided to do this "operation" on a Google Hangout, so my G+ friends could participate. Those were the days. 😊
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While (re)watching #TragedyGirls (2017) I noticed this poster on a wall in the background of a scene. Brings back memories of the days where G+ was popular enough to make it into films.
Also - let's count the plurals (why?!?!):
⬩ Twitter: 3
⬩ Facebook: 2
⬩ Instagram: 2
⬩ YouTube: 2
⬩ Google+: 2 -
A realization after a few days on Mastodon: This feels not so much a replacement for birdsite, as it does for what was great about #Google+
Discoverable fascinating discussions, with intelligence and depth, about subjects of interest, with people I didn't yet know.
I've missed that, a lot, since G+ shut down several years ago.
Edit #GooglePlus #gplus
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CW: long (5000+ chars) toot in response to Chris Were's latest solo podcast episode, Stadia, Fediverse wishlist, Google Plus references, and podcast feedback
@ChrisWere as someone with a low-end laptop, I liked the idea of Stadia. Unfortunately the monthly subscription wasn't something that fit my budget. In hindsight I kinda wished I had, because all the refunds sound lovely. xD
As for a title for your podcast, how about something like "(Thought-share / Share a thought) with Chris Were"?
One of the positive things of the Fediverse indeed is the bit more thoughtful comments. For instance compared to Instagram it feels less like a circlejerk where people just comment to get comments back, or otherwise promote their own account.
In a way it feels rather like the early and late #GooglePlus, but without the risk / guarantee that Google will just pull the plug. There are some things I wish would be added though, most notably:- • consistent formatting support across protocols, or at least better fallbacks. This list being one example of that. On #glitchSoc I can use markdown to get a HTML-formatted list with bulleted list items. On plain #Mastodon however the whole list semantics get lost, and to a significant portion of users it wouldn't be clear that it was actually meant as a list. So, as a compromise I have to try to remember to add a manual bullet list character (•) so that it will at least appear as a list on non-formatting-supporting platforms. On others however I'll now likely have two leading bullets, and it'll likely get pronounced by TTS engines.I rather wish that the markdown gets sent and received as plain text by the platforms that don't support HTML formatting, rather than the HTML-formatted output which then gets outright stripped on the display end. Content-warning support between Mastodon and #Friendica is a similar thing.
- • migration of posts / #NomadicIdentity. It's great that we can migrate our follows and followers and various lists between #Mastodon instances. However, the thing I care about the most, my history of posts, would unceremoniously get left behind on the server. This isn't much of an issue if you are just moving servers because you like the community or features of another server better, as people can still access your older (public/unlisted) posts, but it is a loss when you migrate because the former server is getting shut down. I know that some Fediverse protocols do offer post migration, or even auto-mirroring, through nomadic identities, most notably those using the #Zot6 (or #Zap it's called now, I think?), but it'd be nice if Mastodon (which for better or for worse still feels like the leading platform of the fediverse) would also implement this, and if there was better support for migrating between these different platforms.
- • better visibility controls. It'd be nice if I could limit some posts to just a list of users, without having to tag them individually (and thus have it treated as a DM rather than a regular timeline post). Again, this is more of a Mastodon specific limitation; #Diaspora* and Friendica (iirc) most notably do support this already, with Diaspora*'s 'aspects' probably being closest to #GPlus's 'circles' feature.
- • 'Collections'. This was probably my favourite feature of Google Plus. Being able to group your posts under topics without having to rely on hashtags. You could add a separate header image for the collection as well as a description, both of which were nice additions, but the killer aspect of it to me was that you could specify if people would automatically follow that Collection when they'd follow your account. And like-wise, I could unfollow specific collections from people I'd follow, or follow just individual ones of them without following everything they posted. This made it possible to follow just someone's Doctor Who posts, or to follow someone's generic posts without having to listen to their political ranting.Sure, Mastodon has the $userprofile/tagged/#hashtag filter (e.g. https://toot.cat/@FiXato/tagged/Collections), but that is limited to public posts, and only supports a single hashtag at a time. Plus, you have to remember to use the right hashtag every time for each of your #collections. It feels like a hack, a bodge, rather than a full-fledged feature.
As for some (hopefully regarded as constructive) feedback to your podcast: I felt like it repeated itself a couple of times, and could probably have been 5 – 10 minutes shorter (which, yes, is kinda ironic (?) criticism given the length of my post 😅). After the Stadia segment you had your closing segment, which then basically went on into a segment about the #Fediverse, which I feel like could easily have been an episode of its own. For something I access through my Mastodon feed, I think 10 – 15 minutes is kinda the sweet spot when it comes to maximum length. (Though this might be more of a client-specific thing, as I couldn't continue scrolling my feed on Fedilab while listening, whereas that might've been an option on the web interface.)
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Forced revelation of information makes individual privilege more important (2014)
In practice, the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment.
-- Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google+
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27858439
#RealNames #anonymity #pseudonymity #identity #power #PowerRelationships #YonatanZunger #GooglePlus #DavidBrin #TransparentSociety
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Die #Kreise aus #GooglePlus waren wirklich nicht schlecht (im Gegensatz zum Rest), damit konnte man gut heterogene Empfängerkreise adressieren.
Das Problem mit einem #Mastodon-Account für private (nicht-öffentliche) Themen ist, dass ich nicht wüsste, wo ich die Grenze ziehen sollte.
Generell würde ich mir wünschen, dass man auch einzelnen Unterthemen eines Accounts folgen könnte (z.B. nur den Katzenfotos, nicht den Hundefotos).
Menschen sind halt einfach vielschichtig.
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@prex Sit down, get a snack and a drink, for this will be long.I wish someone made the federated G+
"The federated G+" was literally made before Google+ itself.diaspora*
Have you ever heard of diaspora*?
If not, let me take you back to 2010. Back then, it first came out that Facebook was spying on its users and selling their private data. In spring, four students asked for $12,000 of crowdfunding for an ambitious project: a free, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate, decentralised alternative to Facebook named diaspora*.
The word spread like wild fire. Tech media jumped upon it. Non-tech mass media jumped upon it. These four guys were about to develop a Facebook killer! Of the requested $12,000, they got over $200,000.
They started working in May, 2010. In October, they presented a first very early alpha version of diaspora* that could only run on Macs as servers. It would take the likely suicide of the project founder, the replacement of the whole development team and several years to even release a first beta. To this day, diaspora* did not have a 1.0 stable release.
In general, diaspora* did not become the huge, super-popular Facebook killer. It always remained obscure.Google+
Then came Google. They saw that people wanted to move away from Facebook, but they thought they had nowhere to go. And Google wanted to exploit the self-same source of income as Facebook. So they launched Google+.
Google+ was a blatant, full-on, all-out rip-off of diaspora*. The circles that almost everyone "knows" were invented by Google? diaspora*'s aspects, stolen by Google. Google's entire new corporate UI design with the black navigation bar at the top? diaspora*'s design.Like, cirlces? So ahead of its times!
Again: diaspora* had Google+'s circles before Google+ had circles. diaspora* has aspects, and Google stole them and named them circles.
Google got away with it easily. Nobody knew diaspora*. Nobody knew what diaspora* looks like. And diaspora* itself had other things to take care of than a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against a power-mongering Silicon Valley teracorporation or even a C&D against Google.The slow death of diaspora*
But seriously, diaspora* isn't worth looking at nowadays. It may have released a 0.9 beta last year, skipping 0.8 altogether. But it's withering away.
Shortly before New Year's Eve 2024, three major diaspora* pods shut down. According to one statistics website, diaspora* lost more than half its user accounts within three days. For April 1st, 2025, the shutdown of diasp.org, one of the biggest and most important pods, has been announced. JoinDiaspora, the old lighthouse pod, has been gone for quite a while now.
But diaspora*'s issues lie not only in its slow development, but also in its design decisions. It's beautiful, but it's minimalist to the point of being lack-lustre. Also, diaspora* does not support ActivityPub and never will. It only supports its own protocol. The developers have explicitly decided against supporting ActivityPub because Fediverse projects don't "implement ActivityPub", they "implement Mastodon". This, however, also means that diaspora* cannot connect to most of the Fediverse by far.Friendica
But: There's even better than diaspora* and Google+ that's free, open-source, decentralised and federated. And it was there before Google+. I'm not kidding.
Remember, it took four students, $200,000 of crowd-funding and five months (May to October, 2010) to create a first, very unfinished preview of diaspora*.
But the same year, it took one developer and protocol designer with some three decades of experience (@Mike Macgirvin 🖥️), zero crowd-funding and only four months (March to July, 2010) to create a first, very fleshed-out and useable release of something initially called Mistpark.
At this point, when the four diaspora* creators were still tinkering, Mistpark was already more powerful than both diaspora* and Mastodon are today. It already had everything a social network needs. It had diaspora*'s aspects before diaspora* had aspects and long before Google+ had circles; only it called them lists. And Mistpark's lists were diaspora*'s aspects and Google+'s circles on coke.
Since early 2012, Mistpark has been known as Friendica (official website). Since mid-January, 2025, it is the primary go-to alternative to Facebook in the Fediverse. And it has continuously been fully federated with Mastodon for as long as Mastodon has been around. Since January, 2016. Again, I'm not kidding.Friendica's descendants
But Mike didn't stop there. He went on and improved the same concept further and further by forking his own creations and advancing them technologically.
In 2011, he invented the concept of nomadic identity (something that Bluesky claims to have invented much later, but has yet to prove to be functional) to make identites more resilient against server shutdown, and he created another all-new communication protocol named Zot (today known as Nomad) for that purpose.
In 2012, he handed Friendica over to the community and forked it into something called Red, later the Red Matrix. It was the first not only decentralised, but nomadic social server application in the world. In 2015, it was redesigned, vastly expanded in features and renamed Hubzilla (official website).
To this day, Hubzilla is the one most powerful and feature-rich Fediverse server application. It is not a vague concept or in early development; instead, it has been a rock-solid multi-purpose daily driver for longer than Mastodon has been around.
Another one of its key features is what's the second-most advanced and fine-grained permissions system in the Fediverse, something that Mastodon doesn't have at all. Its privacy groups are diaspora*'s aspects or Google+'s circles on coke and 'roids because you can do things with them that are impossible even on Friendica, much less diaspora* or Google+, not to mention what Mastodon calls lists. They aren't called privacy groups for nothing.
In 2018, Mike handed the development of Hubzilla over to the community to concentrate on the further advancement of Zot. This led to:- Osada (2018, discontinued in 2019)
- Zap (2018, discontinued in 2022)
- another Osada (2019, discontinued later in 2019)
- yet another Osada (2020, discontinued in 2022)
- Redmatrix 2020 (2020, discontinued in 2022)
- Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty (2020, discontinued in 2022)
- Roadhouse (2021, discontinued in 2022)
- (streams) (code repository, 2021)
- Forte (code repository, 2024)
Except for the first Osada, all of them were or still are nomadic. Except for Zap until some point in 2019, all of them supported or still support ActivityPub. And they all had or still have an advanced permissions system which, at least on (streams) and Forte, even slightly surpasses Hubzilla's. Their access lists are at least on par with Hubzilla's privacy groups.Finally
If you're looking for a decentralised Google+ drop-in replacement, that'd be diaspora*. But diaspora* is dying, and it will never federate with Mastodon.
If you're also interested in something that's even better than Google+, check Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams).
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Google+ #GooglePlus #diaspora* #Mistpark #Friendika #Friendica #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Redmatrix2020 #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Lists #Aspects #Circles #PrivacyGroups #AccessLists -
@prex Sit down, get a snack and a drink, for this will be long.I wish someone made the federated G+
"The federated G+" was literally made before Google+ itself.diaspora*
Have you ever heard of diaspora*?
If not, let me take you back to 2010. Back then, it first came out that Facebook was spying on its users and selling their private data. In spring, four students asked for $12,000 of crowdfunding for an ambitious project: a free, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate, decentralised alternative to Facebook named diaspora*.
The word spread like wild fire. Tech media jumped upon it. Non-tech mass media jumped upon it. These four guys were about to develop a Facebook killer! Of the requested $12,000, they got over $200,000.
They started working in May, 2010. In October, they presented a first very early alpha version of diaspora* that could only run on Macs as servers. It would take the likely suicide of the project founder, the replacement of the whole development team and several years to even release a first beta. To this day, diaspora* did not have a 1.0 stable release.
In general, diaspora* did not become the huge, super-popular Facebook killer. It always remained obscure.Google+
Then came Google. They saw that people wanted to move away from Facebook, but they thought they had nowhere to go. And Google wanted to exploit the self-same source of income as Facebook. So they launched Google+.
Google+ was a blatant, full-on, all-out rip-off of diaspora*. The circles that almost everyone "knows" were invented by Google? diaspora*'s aspects, stolen by Google. Google's entire new corporate UI design with the black navigation bar at the top? diaspora*'s design.Like, cirlces? So ahead of its times!
Again: diaspora* had Google+'s circles before Google+ had circles. diaspora* has aspects, and Google stole them and named them circles.
Google got away with it easily. Nobody knew diaspora*. Nobody knew what diaspora* looks like. And diaspora* itself had other things to take care of than a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against a power-mongering Silicon Valley teracorporation or even a C&D against Google.The slow death of diaspora*
But seriously, diaspora* isn't worth looking at nowadays. It may have released a 0.9 beta last year, skipping 0.8 altogether. But it's withering away.
Shortly before New Year's Eve 2024, three major diaspora* pods shut down. According to one statistics website, diaspora* lost more than half its user accounts within three days. For April 1st, 2025, the shutdown of diasp.org, one of the biggest and most important pods, has been announced. JoinDiaspora, the old lighthouse pod, has been gone for quite a while now.
But diaspora*'s issues lie not only in its slow development, but also in its design decisions. It's beautiful, but it's minimalist to the point of being lack-lustre. Also, diaspora* does not support ActivityPub and never will. It only supports its own protocol. The developers have explicitly decided against supporting ActivityPub because Fediverse projects don't "implement ActivityPub", they "implement Mastodon". This, however, also means that diaspora* cannot connect to most of the Fediverse by far.Friendica
But: There's even better than diaspora* and Google+ that's free, open-source, decentralised and federated. And it was there before Google+. I'm not kidding.
Remember, it took four students, $200,000 of crowd-funding and five months (May to October, 2010) to create a first, very unfinished preview of diaspora*.
But the same year, it took one developer and protocol designer with some three decades of experience (@Mike Macgirvin 🖥️), zero crowd-funding and only four months (March to July, 2010) to create a first, very fleshed-out and useable release of something initially called Mistpark.
At this point, when the four diaspora* creators were still tinkering, Mistpark was already more powerful than both diaspora* and Mastodon are today. It already had everything a social network needs. It had diaspora*'s aspects before diaspora* had aspects and long before Google+ had circles; only it called them lists. And Mistpark's lists were diaspora*'s aspects and Google+'s circles on coke.
Since early 2012, Mistpark has been known as Friendica (official website). Since mid-January, 2025, it is the primary go-to alternative to Facebook in the Fediverse. And it has continuously been fully federated with Mastodon for as long as Mastodon has been around. Since January, 2016. Again, I'm not kidding.Friendica's descendants
But Mike didn't stop there. He went on and improved the same concept further and further by forking his own creations and advancing them technologically.
In 2011, he invented the concept of nomadic identity (something that Bluesky claims to have invented much later, but has yet to prove to be functional) to make identites more resilient against server shutdown, and he created another all-new communication protocol named Zot (today known as Nomad) for that purpose.
In 2012, he handed Friendica over to the community and forked it into something called Red, later the Red Matrix. It was the first not only decentralised, but nomadic social server application in the world. In 2015, it was redesigned, vastly expanded in features and renamed Hubzilla (official website).
To this day, Hubzilla is the one most powerful and feature-rich Fediverse server application. It is not a vague concept or in early development; instead, it has been a rock-solid multi-purpose daily driver for longer than Mastodon has been around.
Another one of its key features is what's the second-most advanced and fine-grained permissions system in the Fediverse, something that Mastodon doesn't have at all. Its privacy groups are diaspora*'s aspects or Google+'s circles on coke and 'roids because you can do things with them that are impossible even on Friendica, much less diaspora* or Google+, not to mention what Mastodon calls lists. They aren't called privacy groups for nothing.
In 2018, Mike handed the development of Hubzilla over to the community to concentrate on the further advancement of Zot. This led to:- Osada (2018, discontinued in 2019)
- Zap (2018, discontinued in 2022)
- another Osada (2019, discontinued later in 2019)
- yet another Osada (2020, discontinued in 2022)
- Redmatrix 2020 (2020, discontinued in 2022)
- Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty (2020, discontinued in 2022)
- Roadhouse (2021, discontinued in 2022)
- (streams) (code repository, 2021)
- Forte (code repository, 2024)
Except for the first Osada, all of them were or still are nomadic. Except for Zap until some point in 2019, all of them supported or still support ActivityPub. And they all had or still have an advanced permissions system which, at least on (streams) and Forte, even slightly surpasses Hubzilla's. Their access lists are at least on par with Hubzilla's privacy groups.Finally
If you're looking for a decentralised Google+ drop-in replacement, that'd be diaspora*. But diaspora* is dying, and it will never federate with Mastodon.
If you're also interested in something that's even better than Google+, check Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams).
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Google+ #GooglePlus #diaspora* #Mistpark #Friendika #Friendica #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Redmatrix2020 #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Lists #Aspects #Circles #PrivacyGroups #AccessLists