home.social

#notonlymastodon — Public Fediverse posts

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

  1. CW: What the Mastodon overlords are allowed and justified to do, and what the non-Mastodon savages are not; CW: long (over 6,000 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, character limit meta, CW meta
    Yeah, I get it.

    Mastodon and its users rule supreme over the Fediverse. After all, the Fediverse was invented by Gargron. It started when Mastodon started, and everything that isn't Mastodon just latched onto Mastodon and its Fediverse.

    Mastodon users are the only civilised users in the Fediverse, the only ones with something like a culture. The Fediverse culture is Mastodon's culture as defined in the spring of 2022. All those who don't live by Mastodon's culture are uncivilised, uneducated, savage barbarians. And it isn't just the Mastodon users' right and privilege to educate them and shape them into good Mastodon users, it's their duty.

    Even when it turns out that these barbarians aren't even on Mastodon, that they're on something that's very much not Mastodon, they can't possibly have a culture of their own. After all, they don't live by Mastodon's culture, and if it isn't Mastodon's culture, it isn't culture at all. Not even if it predates Mastodon's current culture by over a decade like Friendica's culture does.

    Of course, this also means that when non-Mastodon users come and give Mastodon users unsolicited "advice" or recommend them to use Mastodon in a certain way that goes against Mastodon's culture, the Mastodon users are fully justified to silence them by any means available.

    What this means:


    When a Mastodon user uses "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" mutually synonymously, it's the right thing to do because that's part of Mastodon's culture. And it makes things easier to understand.

    When a non-Mastodon user explains that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, and that "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" do not mean the same, it's evil and intrusive and deeply disturbing.

    When a Mastodon user refers to any message in the Fediverse as a "toot", it's the right thing to do because that's part of Mastodon's culture.

    When a Misskey or Forkey user talks about "notes", it's irritating. When a Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte user distinguishes between "posts" and "comments", it has even less of a place in the Mastodon Fediverse.

    Features that only Mastodon has are actually mandatory for the whole Fediverse. Any Fediverse server software that hasn't got these features implemented in exactly the same way as Mastodon is broken.

    Features in non-Mastodon Fediverse server software that Mastodon doesn't have are wrong and evil and not allowed to be used.

    Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to limit their posts to no more than 500 characters. It especially disturbs those who refuse to move away from the official Mastodon phone app.

    Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to not cut their long posts into threads.

    Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to put content warnings into their summary/abstract field.

    Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to only use their summary/abstract field for content warnings. After all, that's what Gargron invented that field for.

    Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to tell non-Mastodon users that it was Evan Prodromou who invented that field as early as 2008. That he invented it as a summary field. That it was actually a Mastodon user who repurposed that field for CWs in 2017, the year after Mastodon was launched. Gargron only let it pass.

    Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to use that field for anything else than CWs.

    Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to add hashtags instead of CWs so that reader-side CWs can automatically be generated by filters. Even though Mastodon itself has literally introduced this very feature with version 4.0 in October, 2022.

    Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to not only write alt-texts for all the images they post, but to write them nicely long and detailed. After all, they've got 1,500 characters for alt-texts.

    Misskey and Forkey users are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to limit their alt-texts to no more than 512 characters because that's the maximum that Misskey and the Forkeys accept, and on top of that, due to a bug, they delete all alt-texts longer than that. From a Misskey/Forkey point of view, writing long alt-texts is like not writing any alt-texts at all. But the Misskey/Forkey point of view is invalid in Mastodon's culture.

    Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to toot to Lemmy any way they want, and that's the Mastodon way. If it doesn't work properly on Lemmy, then Lemmy is broken.

    Lemmy users, even Lemmy moderators, and other users of Fediverse software that supports groups are not allowed to tell Mastodon users how to post to Lemmy in a way that Lemmy understands.

    Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to even tell Lemmy users to limit their "toots" to no more than 500 characters and use hashtags, but not too many of them.

    Lemmy users and even Lemmy moderators are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to stop spamming Lemmy with mentions and with hashtags that don't work on Lemmy anyway, also because both highly irritate the Lemmy users. Almost all of them came straight from Reddit after their third-party apps were killed, and almost none of them have ever been on Twitter or Mastodon.

    Mastodon users and Mastodon admins are allowed and justified to block any and all non-Mastodon servers because they misbehave by Mastodon's standards.

    (streams) and Forte admins are not allowed to block the entirety of Mastodon, all present and future servers, by user agent (which, by the way, they're totally capable of) because it misbehaves by their standards. Mastodon doesn't misbehave, and the Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte standards are all wrong if they differ from Mastodon's standards.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Lemmy #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity
  2. @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
  3. @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
  4. @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
  5. CW: Uncomfortable truth about the Fediverse that'll totally scare Mastodon users; CW: long (over 2,400 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post meta, character limit meta
    When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.

    The "it" that you're supposed to see is:
    • The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
      There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
      Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
      The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be.
    • The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
      (Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.)
    • The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
    • The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
    • The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
    • The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.
    And if you've really paid attention:
    • The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
      The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters.
    • The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
      The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline, code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.

    Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse
  6. @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
  7. CW: The various issues with quote-posts on Mastodon that nobody on Mastodon is aware of; CW: long (almost 6,800 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, Mastodon looking bad in comparison with the rest of the Fediverse, quote-post meta
    Okay, everyone, sit down. I'll tell you a few things about Mastodon's quote-post feature that you know nothing about. Definitely not if all you know is Mastodon. Oh, and by the way, in case you don't know yet in spite of following me: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon.

    Mastodon has been quote-post-able for as long as it has been around


    Eugen Rochko is bringing quote-posts to Mastodon. But he is not bringing quote-posts to the Fediverse. The Fediverse has had quote-posts for 15 years.

    It was Mike Macgirvin who introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse in July, 2010, when he launched something called Mistpark back then and Friendica today (https://friendi.ca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica). That was five and a half years before Mastodon was launched.

    In fact, when Mastodon was launched, it immediately federated itself with Friendica and with Hubzilla, a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's own creator which has quote-posts, too. So when Mastodon was launched, it immediately became possible to quote-post Mastodon toots. Not on Mastodon itself, but on Friendica and Hubzilla.

    Just about everything that isn't Mastodon has already got quote-posts right now


    Here are a few (but not even all) Fediverse server applications that already have quote-posts:


    And they're all part of the Fediverse which means that they're all connected to Mastodon. People on all of these can theoretically read your Mastodon toots. And people on all of these can theoretically quote-post your Mastodon toots.

    Mastodon's quote-post opt-in is not a water-tight defence against being quote-posted


    So you can choose not to be quote-posted. But you can only choose not to be quote-posted by Mastodon users. This opt-in does not work with the rest of the Fediverse.

    First of all, that's because Mastodon's quote-post feature is not compatible with anything else out there. Mastodon's developers have chosen to re-invent the quote-posting wheel from scratch. They've intentionally chosen to do so in a way that's completely incompatible with everything else out there.

    Their intention was to reinforce Mastodon's appearance to its own users as the one and only Fediverse and ActivityPub gold standard and to make Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Firefish, Iceshrimp, Sharkey, CherryPick, Catodon, Mitra, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte etc. look broken. It's part of their plan to keep Mastodon users on Mastodon in the wake of Mastodon's market share in the Fediverse shrinking.

    Also, they did not publish any specifications on their quote-post implementation, so even those non-Mastodon developers who are fast enough didn't have a chance to implement support for Mastodon's opt-in.

    This means that even if you've set your posts to un-quote-post-able on Mastodon, everything I've listed above can still quote-post you with no resistance.

    Absolute Fediverse-wide protection against being quote-posted is impossible


    And don't get your hopes high that the day will come when nobody on the Fediverse will be able to quote-post you, whether they're on Mastodon or not. Such a setting is technologically impossible.

    Who says that? Mike Macgirvin says that. The guy who launched Friendica and brought quote-posts to the Fediverse 15 years ago, remember? This guy has built the Fediverse's most elaborate, most complex, most fine-grained, most advanced permissions system into (streams) and Forte.

    These two have reply control, the kind of which you couldn't image in your wildest dreams. I'm serious. They have permissions settings for almost everything on two or three levels, for your whole channel, individually per contact and sometimes even per post or per file or folder in the file storage.

    But they don't have quote-post permission settings. Because that's impossible to enforce Fediverse-wide. And even if it was possible, it'd be pointless. If they can't quote-post you, they'll copy-paste you. If they can't copy-paste you either because they're on a phone, they'll post screenshots of your toots.

    Mike also says, there is exactly one way to keep people from quote-posting you, and that's by not posting in public. Unfortunately, unlike what he has created, Mastodon has little between "public" and "DM", if anything.

    Mastodon cannot quote-post the non-Mastodon Fediverse


    This may be the big surprise: It has recently been discovered by chance that Mastodon's quote-post feature only works with Mastodon toots.

    On the one hand, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Sharkey, Friendica, Hubzilla etc. can quote-post just about everything that comes in from Mastodon. But on the other hand, no Mastodon 4.5 user will be able to quote-post anything from either of these. Or from Pixelfed or PeerTube or Loops or Castopod or WriteFreely or whatever.

    That's because Mastodon is looking for a quote-post opt-in. But nothing else in the Fediverse supports Mastodon's quote-post opt-in, also seeing as it's still officially in development. And it's highly unlikely that everything in the Fediverse will adopt another piece of non-standard, proprietary Mastodon tech.

    "Quote" actually means something else


    Lastly, Mastodon has the audacity to call this feature "quote".

    A "quote" is something else. Remember forums? Like, bulletin-board forums with subforums and all? Where posts are quoted in follow-ups, entirely or only partially? That's what a quote is. That has got nothing to do with quote-posts.

    Why I say that there's a difference? Because I also say that Friendica has had both quotes and quote-posts.

    It has had them for 15 years, both quotes (which it calls "quotes", go figure) and quote-posts (which it calls "quoted shares", and which include the original author of the quoted post, complete with their profile picture and a clickable link to them, as well as a clickable link to the original post).

    Hubzilla has both. (streams) has both. Forte has both. And I wouldn't be surprised if other Fediverse server software had both, too.

    The irony is that Mastodon itself has been able to render actual quotes since version 4.0 from October, 2022. At the same time, it will continue to be unable to render any quote-posts done outside of Mastodon for the foreseeable future.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #CherryPick #Catodon #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares