#soyjak — Public Fediverse posts

Ever wondered why the "Facebook alternative" side of the Fediverse is easy to deploy and so lightweight in spite of its feature wealth?

[spoiler=Caution: Image hidden due to eye contact, crying, anger and Japanese profanity]

Explanation:

This image is a collage based on various memes.

The top row makes use of Wojaks, it basically is a Wojak comic. The two Wojaks on the right are Soyjaks, the third one from the left is essentially the same combination of a Soyjak and a Crying Wojak as seen in the Soyjaks vs Chads format. "Baka", as said by the Soyjak in the top right, is Japanese for "idiot" and hints at Misskey, as well as large parts of its target audience, being Japanese. It has become a meme of its own.

The bottom row re-uses the "Moth Lamp" meme. This time, however, "lämp", intentionally spelled with an umlaut as per the meme, does not mean a light source. Instead, it stands for a so-called "LAMP stack" which is the bare minimum Web server equipment.

• L stands for Linux and refers not to the operating system kernel, but to the whole software platform.
• A stands for the Apache HTTP Server.
• M stands for the MySQL database management system, nowadays usually in the shape of the MySQL fork MariaDB.
• P, in this case, stands for the PHP scripting language used for dynamic websites.

The three Fediverse server applications represented as moths in the bottom row, captioned with "LÄMP", are Friendica, a very powerful Facebook alternative created by Mike Macgirvin in 2010, Hubzilla, a very versatile and extremely powerful "federated content management system" which Mike Macgirvin himself created from 2015 out of his own Friendica fork, and the intentionally nameless application in the streams repository from 2021, itself at the end of a long line of forks by Mike Macgirvin again, starting at Hubzilla. None of the four have any exotic or heavy-weight server software requirements. They need JavaScript for parts of the UI, but otherwise, they can run on a bone-stock Web server, requiring remarkably few CPU and RAM resources.

The four projects in the top row, on the other hand, have more exotic and/or heavy-weight requirements.

The one in the top left is diaspora* from later in 2010 than Friendica, the only one in the image that does not support ActivityPub at all (it is only connected to the few Fediverse projects which support its own protocol, including Friendica and Hubzilla). diaspora* and Mastodon next to it are both written in Ruby on Rails. Thus, they require more hardware resources per user identity than the three at the bottom while not even nearly offering the latter's features.

Next to them, Pleroma from 2016 is famous for being much more lightweight than Mastodon while still offering more. But it is written in the fairly exotic Elixir language. Also, it can't use MySQL; it is only compatible with more complex PostgreSQL. In the meantime, Misskey, which dates back to 2014, is entirely based on JavaScript: It is written in Microsoft's TypeScript with Vue.js for the frontend. Let's say there's a reason why the former Firefish fork and now Misskey fork Iceshrimp is currently being re-written from scratch in C# as Iceshrimp.NET.

#Fediverse #diaspora* #Mastodon #Ruby on Rails #Pleroma #Elixir #PostgreSQL #Misskey #JavaScript #TypeScript #Vue.js #Friendica #Hubzilla #(streams) #MySQL #PHP #LAMP stack #Meme #FediMeme #Fediverse Meme #Wojak #Wojak comics #Soyjak #Crying Wojak #Moth #Lämp #Moth lamp #EyeContact #CWEyeContact #Profanity #CWProfanity #Swearing #CWSwearing #Swear word #Crying #CWCrying #Tears #Anger #CWAnger #Sensitive #⚠️