#permission — Public Fediverse posts

@william ⁂ maggos In this regard, Mastodon has only got one major advantage: It has an official app.

Phone users used to see Twitter as a phone app that they loaded from their app store. Mastodon is the only *blogging thing in the Fediverse that they can load from their app store.

This is one reason why just about all Mastodon newbies use the official app and why they're on mastodon.social (it's the default in the official app, and since they don't know what this setting does, they leave it on default).

Mastodon even gets away with an official app that's far from good, much less fully features. All the newbies don't have anything to compare with. If Mastodon is a phone app to them, then the official app's feature set is Mastodon's feature set. If a feature isn't implemented in the official app, then Mastodon doesn't have it. I dare say that well over 80% of all Mastodon users have never in their lives used Mastodon's Web UI.

If someone takes the step and moves from the official Mastodon app to Ivory or Mona or IceCubes or Tusky or Fedilab or something like this, it's almost always the first time in their lives that they use an online service through an app that has a different name than the online service. Many people couldn't even imagine doing that.

This means that if Friendica and Hubzilla want to be more successful, growing beyond Mike's old "if you build it, they'll come" credo and advertising more isn't sufficient. People must be able to load Friendica/Hubzilla onto their phones from their app store. This requires an official app named "Friendica"/"Hubzilla" with a native, up-to-date iOS UI in the Apple App Store and one with a native, up-to-date Android UI in the Google Play Store. The existence of an official phone app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store is essential for being considered existent in the first place.

A commonplace attitude on Friendica and even more so on Hubzilla is that both can be installed as a PWA. But seriously, 99.9% of all phone users don't even know that PWAs exist. They don't know what that is. Not to mention that they expect and demand a native mobile UI in the style of their phone OS and not a generic Web UI.

Now, what would this app have to look like?

If the advantages of Friendica and Hubzilla over Mastodon are to be emphasised and underlined, and if this app is to become people's one and only daily driver UI, it will have to be fully featured. Minus the settings for the Web UI (e.g. the theme settings and the PDL editor on Hubzilla), minus stuff that you'll never need if you only ever use the phone app and never the server UI (e.g. Webpages on Hubzilla), but otherwise fully featured. This would also demonstrate just how vastly more powerful Friendica and Hubzilla are than Mastodon.

The obvious downside is that such an app would be a feature monster. Bigger and more feature-laden than any Android e-mail app or OpenStreetMap editor.

There has been some talk about building an official Hubzilla phone app. Some Hubzilla users have proposed an app that only offers the very basics. However, their idea behind this is not to make the app easier for newbies to use, but to make it easier for the developers to build. They're often still stuck in the early 2010s when phone apps for websites were considered gimmicks. They think that people will only use the app when they're out and about, and when they're back home, they'll sit down behind their computers and use the Web interface. Thus, phone apps only need the most basic features implemented.

But 2026 is not 2011. The huge majority of Mastodon users only use Mastodon through a phone app. Even when they're at home. As I've said: If the app doesn't have a feature, the whole product doesn't have the feature, regardless of whether or not the feature is implemented in the server backend and even in the Web frontend.

Besides, even Friendica's basic features that you'll need all the time are a lot. Hubzilla's basic features that you'll need all the time are even more numerous.

Shall people be limited to posting in public when they're on a phone because the phone app doesn't have any permission settings?

Shall people be limited to posting to their contacts when they're on a phone because someone decided that support for groups would make the phone app too complex?

Shall people wait until they're home, and they've got some time to fire up a computer, open a Web browser and log onto the Web interface to accept connection requests because the phone app doesn't have any connection settings? What if they don't have a computer?

Let's face it, social networking itself is a complex thing. And I mean actual social networking. Not misusing glorified SMS as a social network. Real social networking. Facebook-level social networking. Google+-level social networking. MySpace-level social networking.

Thus, a social networking phone app with all features necessary for real social networking has to be complex. This isn't a Friendica/Hubzilla issue. Don't believe that the official Facebook apps are simple.

This is also why so many prefer 𝕏 over Facebook. Facebook is complex. Facebook isn't just register, follow, post. 𝕏 is much more simple. 𝕏 is glorified SMS. 𝕏 is literally just register, follow, tweet. Facebook is rocket science whereas 𝕏 is for dumb-dumbs.

And it's because Mastodon is so lacking that it's for dumb-dumbs by Fediverse standards. In fact, if you don't read those panicky "it's too complicated because you have to know what a server is" posts, if you just load the app and create an account, Mastodon, through the official app, is for dumb-dumbs by all standards.

However, those who actually are on Facebook are willing to put up with something more complex. They need something more complex than glorified SMS for dumb-dumbs. They need the extra features that Facebook has that 𝕏 doesn't, even if these are the very features that deny Facebook the "for dumb-dumbs" attribute.

Send them to Mastodon, and they'll be irritated and even repelled because this feature isn't there, and that feature isn't there, and that feature is cut down beyond recognition, and they can't find any interesting people (not because Mastodon is decentralised, and the interesting people are on other servers, but because Mastodon's directory sucks arse in comparison with Facebook's), and what's with that stupid character limit?

On Friendica and Hubzilla, this feature and that feature have been there for longer than Mastodon itself, that feature is even more powerful than on Facebook proper, interesting people are being shoved into their faces once they've filled out their profile, even more so once they've got some connections, and there is no character limit worth speaking of.

But as long as Friendica and Hubzilla don't have official, fully daily-driveable phone apps named "Friendica" and "Hubzilla" respectively, they simply don't exist.

Granted, there's another obstacle. Many Mastodon users say the Fediverse needs a Facebook alternative. If you tell them about Friendica and its descendants, some will be very thankful because they've genuinely never heard of any of these.

Others will tell you that they know Friendica and maybe even Hubzilla. But they also say that none of these are Facebook alternatives. For when they say, "alternative," what they really mean is, "1:1 clone, just with a different name and decentralised and with ActivityPub and without spying and without the recent enshittification and without the evil CEO, otherwise absolutely identical."

One big aspect of this is that, as they say, the Fediverse needs an alternative to Facebook Groups. Friendica groups are exactly that because they were designed to be exactly that. Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups, Forte groups, all just that. But according to these people, they don't count because they aren't handled in precisely the same way as Facebook groups. Facebook groups aren't separate accounts. And different equals bad.

What really has me shake my head is that those who want a 1:1 Facebook clone continue to use Mastodon as a Facebook alternative. Even though Friendica and its family are vastly closer to Facebook regardless. Even though Mastodon not only doesn't have groups at all, but it doesn't even have any support for external groups. Is shouting into the void with a bunch of hashtags and hoping the right people will hear you really that much better than a Friendica group or a Hubzilla forum or maybe a PieFed community?

By the way: Just how faithful a Twitter clone is Mastodon really, seeing as Misskey and the Forkeys have the odd Twitter feature that Mastodon still lacks, seeing as even Mastodon gradually becomes more complex than 𝕏, much more so than when-it-still-was-good Twitter?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #PieFed #Privacy #Permission #Permissions #Groups #FediverseGroups #FediGroups #App #PhoneApp #iPhoneApp #iOSApp #AndroidApp #SocialNetwork #SocialNetworking #Twitter #𝕏 #Facebook #FacebookGroups

@Jörgi It does work Fediverse-wide, i.e. as a Hubzilla user, I can send posts and other content specifically to those in a certain privacy group (= Mastodon list on coke and 'roids from before there was even Mastodon), regardless of where they are. They could be on Hubzilla, on Friendica, on Mastodon, on Misskey, on Pixelfed, doesn't matter.

But there is one limitation.

Most Fediverse server software out there will understand anything coming from Hubzilla with limited permissions as a one-on-one DM. This means that in a thread with limited permissions, e.g. Mastodon users will only be able to discuss with the thread starter, but not with the others who were granted permission to receive the start post.

If I have a privacy group with Alice and Bob in it, and both are on Mastodon, and I send a post to only this privacy group, Alice and Bob will both receive the post as a DM. They will only be able to have a conversation with me. Alice won't know that Bob got the post, Bob won't know that Alice got the post, and Alice and Bob will not be able to converse with each other within this conversation thread.

It's only Hubzilla and its still existing descendants, (streams) and Forte, that fully understand this special permission setting because they have a permission system that's very similar to Hubzilla's whereas Mastodon & Co. don't have any permission system to begin with.

So if Alice is on Hubzilla, and Bob is on (streams), and one of them replies to me, the other one can and will see that reply and will be able to interact with that reply. Like, Alice can reply to me, Bob can reply to Alice, and absolutely nobody else in the Fediverse will see my post or Alice's reply or Bob's reply.

By the way: (streams) and Forte literally have "privacy by default". While privacy groups are an optional, off-by-default feature on Hubzilla, access lists (practically the same) are part of the core on (streams) and Forte. And all your posts go to an access list named "Friends" by default unless you go and configure your channel to post in public by default. Conveniently, all your new connections are automatically added to the "Friends" access list by default.

Is it part of the protocol? That's where it should be defined

For the longest time, namely until last August, it wasn't available on ActivityPub-based software at all. For Hubzilla itself is not based on ActivityPub.

It was first implemented in an early "pre-cursor" version of Hubzilla from 2012 that was built on a protocol specifically designed by Hubzilla's creator for a) privacy by design and, especially, b) resilience against server shutdown. That was five years before ActivityPub was first shown and six years before it became a standard. The protocol was (originally) named Zot, and Hubzilla is still based on Zot6 with ActivityPub being supported via an optional add-on that's on by default for servers, but off by default for new channels. (By the way, Hubzilla was the first software to ever implement ActivityPub.)

There's also (streams) from October, 2021, a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla by Hubzilla's own creator which is based on what's actually a newer version of Zot, but which has advanced so much that it's incompatible with Hubzilla's Zot6, so it's named Nomad now. (streams) has Nomad as its base protocol, it also supports Zot6, and it optionally supports ActivityPub, only that ActivityPub is built into the core now and always on by default.

ActivityPub-based software with this permission system did not exist until August, 2024 when the self-same creator forked the streams repository into something new named Forte, ripped out any and all support for protocols that aren't ActivityPub and ported all of (streams)' features to ActivityPub.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Permission #Permissions #PrivacyGroups #AccessLists #Privacy #PrivacyByDesign #PrivacyByDefault

@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