We've been discussing these issues, amongst others lately in the Fediverse-City room on Matrix, what with the relative demise of Meetup.com following its acquisition by WeWork, and the rise of *events over at Faceplant further obviating them having much to do with a plethora of event management projects exploding onto the scene for the past couple of years.
It's been a while since I've visited #Faceplant, so long in fact, I only recently became aware a couple of years ago that they had a marketplace that has largely supplanted craigslist, and finding out just today that they in fact have some sort of events system - that speaks volumes, I think, toward my dedication to dogfooding my #FOSS and simply ignoring, for the most part, there are still some privacy disrespecting operators in the deprecated monolithic silo space of social networking.
#Mobilizon, #Hubzilla, #Rebased, and #Friendica have their own take on how these event management systems should #Federate through the rest of the #Fediverse, while others mentioned in the article below, including #WordPress try to fit into that niche in a cooperative, interoperable way... and it's paying off. Bigtime.
It's a good read, events are powerful for hobbyists, technologists, sports enthusiasts, and just about any kind of IRL or remote attendance awareness and organizing; so it only stands to reason that #DeSoc, and social networking in general include the capabilities to seamlessly propagate events as globally possible.
At the very least, events are heralded as one of the best ways to get free pizza 🍕 and beer 🍺 with others that have common interests. After a veritable shitload of funding from many sources, including NGI0 and even larger corporate sponsors, we're approaching a place where anyone with a Fediverse account, even on the smolweb or most obscure platforms like Threads, will be privy to things like announcements, RSVP, alerts, Etc., of upcoming events, regardless of whether your Fediverse platform of choice directly supports event management.
And it is perhaps a little ironic, that #Threads users themselves will likely have at their disposal, an event notification and management capability in direct conflict with the one that Meta wants them to use - I dunno how that's going to work out, but I think it's pretty kewl that nobody else does either at this time.
#tallship#Fediverse_City#NGI0 h/t to @silverpill for the heads up on the following article, he just always seems to know where that rabbit is hiding in the tophat and pulls it right out when it's most needed, lolz.
Es irren ja durchaus welche hier herum, die noch auf der Suche nach dem für sie perfekten Zuhause im #Fediverse sind. Die vielleicht ihren Blog, ihre Fotosammlung und ihre SocialMedia-Aktivitäten gerne unter einem Dach hätten, oder die ihre Postings gerne auch noch auf Plattformen wie Bluesky oder LinkedIn crossposten möchten, und die für all diese Möglichkeiten und viele weitere (siehe Bild unten) gerne auch ein Angebot mit Bezahlmodellen nutzen würden, damit das "Geschäftsverhältnis" zum Instanzenbetreiber und die Finanzierung von vorneherein geklärt ist.
Wer es ausprobieren möchte: https://micro.blog
@StefanMuenz Crossposten heißt aber nicht föderieren oder gar anderen im Fedi folgen können. Das scheint einfach nur eine weitere Plattform außerhalb des Fediverse zu sein. Einen Link zu technischen Details fand ich auf der Seite nicht. So eine universale Wollmilchsau a la Open Source scheint #Hubzilla zu sein. Hab darüber mal einen Vortrag gesehen.
The #Mastodon software setting of #Spoutible is now a dropdown menu. Currently only for mastodon.social and mastodon.online.
Maybe it's temporary but if it's not, they'll have to add at least a hundred reputable and popular servers. Also, it's Mastodon software only. There are far more software, older and/or better than Mastodon which will probably not get support, at least as far as the approach I am seeing.
does anyone know of any good fedi front end clients that are tailored towards long form blog posts? i want to turn todiy into a multi media platform, and not just microblogging, but i don't wanna have to run a separate server/subdomain for every format! I think i like the idea of using #GoToSocial as a backend because it seems pretty flexible! i dont want my users to need a bazillion accounts lol. Im looking at #writefreely , and it would be awesome to use its front end somehow. #fediadmin
YES!
This is precisely what every university (and scholarly society!!) should be doing: have their own instance and drop X like a hot potato:
"an instance has been created [... ] on university servers, which is open to the university's organizational units. The active use of X will be significantly reduced."
I wanted to try the default mastodon social instance to get the hang of it - and I know there’s all kind of specific-interest ones like for art, music, tech, games, etc. but does anyone out there have some recommendations for other decent, all-purpose ones?
I suddenly wonder if there's a Fediverse equivalent of the way Patreon gives the option to make posts only visible to donors. I know #Hubzilla's channels system and ACL ought to make it possible but I don't know if theres's already a payment processor and automated tools to make it easier to manage.
Reminder to self: always post the best photos of a photo group on Pixelfed (or Friendica or WordPress etc.) in the first four positions so that other services like Mastodon (or Firefish etc.) show those!
Auf unserer Mastodon-Instanz für Freiburg und Umland bieten wir Euch ein föderiertes soziales Netzwerk an. Was genau es mit Mastodon auf sich hat und wie es überhaupt funktioniert, erklärt beispielsweise Mobilsicher in dem Artikel Mastodon – das bessere Twitter?
Wer lieber hören mag, kann sich ein halbes Stündchen mit dieser Podcastfolge von Besser – Der Podcast beschäftigen: Mastodon #S01E06. Im Rahmen einer ganzen Reihe von Fediverse-Episoden erklärt Micha als „Experte“ Lorenz dem „Neuling“ das Fediverse und die einzelnen Plattformen. Erwartet also keinen nerdigen Expertentalk!
Auch wenn es auf Mastodon noch nicht so viele Accounts gibt wie auf den großen, kommerziellen Plattformen, ist die Kommunikationsqualität eine ganz andere. Probiert es aus! 🎉
Damit Ihr seht, dass sich dort doch schon einige interessante Institutionen und Menschen tummeln, hier eine kleine Liste mit Accounts, denen es sich zu folgen lohnen könnte:
Landesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Baden-Württemberg: @lfdi Vielen Dank übrigens an Dr. Stefan Brink für die Initiative, die bawü.social Instanz für öffentliche Stellen in Baden-Württemberg einzurichten! 🍾
Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit: @bfdi
Vielleicht fällt auf, dass nicht alle oben aufgeführten Accounts auf unserer eigenen Instanz liegen. Genau wie bei E-Mails, können auch hier Nutzende verschiedener Angebote miteinander kommunizieren: Gmail spricht ebenso selbstverständlich mit GMX wie freiburg.social mit bawü.social und anderen. Das nennt man Föderation und wird in diesem Artikel erklärt.
#Streams galaxy
-- note 1: communication with the Fediverse is standard practice in this universe.
#Hubzilla galaxy
-- note 1: developed a way to communicate across the Mycelial Web (a.k.a. the multiverse). Can also communicate with BlueSky and diaspora.
#Friendica galaxy
-- note 1: developed a way to communicate across the Mycelial Web (a.k.a. the multiverse). Can also communicate with BlueSky and diaspora.
#X#Twitter Mycelium (closed borders; isolated; have not discovered there are other mycelium/universes besides their own)
#Tumblr Mycelium (closed borders; isolated; rumours has it their government decided against connecting with the other mycelium/universes, but they are aware)
#Flickr Mycelium (closed borders; isolated; aware of other mycelium/universes)
Danke, das das Fediverse so bunt an Software ist und jeder seine Software finden kann. 👍
Falls ihr eine Funktion vermisst, liegt es vielleicht auch nur daran, das ihr die falsche Software für das Fediverse nutzt.
Mastodon scheint für viele zu reichen, nur ist Mastodon nicht alles
@fediverse Let's face it. When talking about the Fediverse, it is very hard to sell interoperability between different types of instances as a major advantage.
Do not recommend one software and/or one instance.
Using your scenario, would you recommend photography instances based on #Mastodon knowing Mastodon only allows up to 4 “attached” images? Not only that, Mastodon will only display 4 images even if there are more than that?
Or, are you going to recommend #Pixelfed designed for images. Or, maybe #Firefish, #Friendica, #Hubzilla, #Streams, which all allow more than 4 images and will display all the images even if it exceeds their software's attach limit?
Quite frankly, in my opinion, with the image display alone, Mastodon is highly not recommended. So, the number of users and instances Mastodon have does not make it the best #Fediverse software, as you have mentioned earlier, “Mastodon is the level of UX other projects should aim to”. It's not.
The best approach is we understand what the user needs and suggest to them the appropriate software and instances that will suit their needs.
Let's forget about the Fediverse for a while.
We have to remember that not everyone is on Twitter or Facebook. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals who only have an Instagram account. Why? They don't need Twitter and Facebook.
In Korea, for example, they have their own culture and platforms for communication Twitter/Facebook-like, so they don't need those. But many of them have Instagram accounts.
Now, let's go back to the Fediverse.
If those are the users we are reaching out to, then there should be no problem recommending Pixelfed. Because for these target market, their only concern and type of use is to share, well, photos or their latest digital artwork. They don't care about a Twitter/Facebook-like experience or use.
That brings us back to the features of #ActivityPub. It is an “added benefit”.
Users who want to follow this content creator can do so using their existing account.
Okay, you can't do this with #Lemmy, the last time I checked, however, you can do it with #Kbin. That's a Lemmy limitation, not the fediverse.
For the content creator who migrated to the fediverse, in particular, Pixelfed in our scenario, they have a greater reach because they're federated.
(Extra: You can actually turn Pixelfed into a regular Twitter-like software if you are using the web UI. Although, last time I heard it will be removed eventually.)
(Extra 2: BookWyrm also allows Twitter-like feeds and interaction, it's not restricted to just books.)
Being fed up with the shenanigans at the walled garden social media hubs like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram I was on the lookout for something more exciting and less frustrating (keyword “Enshittification”). In November 2022 I set up an account on a Mastodon instance and quickly after that, two accounts on different Pixelfed instances. I wanted to use them for separate purposes: Mastodon like Twitter, and Pixelfed like Instagram for my Home Cooking and Photography interests.
Because of the nature of the Fediverse with each of its different social media services spread over many instances, it seemed tricky at the beginning to find accounts to connect to, especially for Home Cooking. At some point I read about Groups and I thought that’s a concept worth trying to find more people with the same interest. I set up a Home Cooking group on chirp.social and pretty quickly found some stumbling stones in the way I was trying to use it.
That’s when I first realised that most things in the Fediverse work quite well as long as you stick with Mastodon as your base because many useful additions are geared towards it, groups and WordPress blog linking are good examples for that. But there are many more social media services which are supposed to interconnect with each other using the ActivityPub protocol and not a lot of information about which service works best for what. When you find a problem there is hardly anybody who had the same kind of issue as it seems that most people stay within just one service bubble. So I started joining other services and started following my own accounts just for the fun of it.
At the point of writing I have accounts on these services (the plan is to try even more):
Mastodon (similar to Twitter)
Pixelfed (similar to Instagram)
Friendica (similar to Facebook)
Firefish (was Calckey) (similar to Twitter)
Hubzilla (seems like the grandparent of social media, but don’t let the seemingly very simple interface lure you into underestimating its powers)
Diaspora (I haven’t had a lot of time to test yet but because it uses a different protocol its interconnectivity is very limited)
WordPress (a blog service)
In addition I have a group administrator account on chirp.social and have interactions with a group on gup.pe
Juggling my various accounts I got so confused about what works and what doesn’t between them that I set up a big table that I was completing bit by bit, ticking off open questions in a more strategic way. Some issues that I found are caused by the specific setup of a service, others have no explanation whatsoever. Especially commenting on posts from a different service and then answering them can be a sticky issue. I should probably join GitHub to log everything, but I have no time for that kind of engagement right now.
I realised quickly that the table format is not the clearest way to show what is going on between services, so with my latest new account that joined the Fediverse (this WordPress blog), I decided to write a whole post highlighting what works and what doesn’t from the perspective of a blog user (WordPress and the Fediverse). The plan is to do this for the other services too.
This is where I got to so far with my table (updated 4/12/23, can be downloaded as PDF below the image):
🟢✅✅ Green fields means that interactions between services seem to work well in both directions – or not at all (but intentionally so, e.g. because of a different protocol).
🟡✅💢 Yellow fields means there are either some one sided problems or some weird things happen that I still need to research further.
🔴💢❌ Red fields means something does not work at all.
⚪️❤️ White fields with hearts contain short comments about the services.
It’s best to ignore these for now as I’m still learning about the ins and outs of some of them and most likely do them a disservice out of ignorance.
⚪️ Just white means that I have not tested yet.
DISCLAIMER: The table is obviously not complete in any way and based on my personal experiences trying out pretty basic tasks. Sometimes problems are caused by just one single instance and how code is implemented there.
At the same time services get updates and issues I have seen might just magically disappear.
Or new ones appear. 😅
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The best place to comment or ask questions about this post is my Mastodon – Testing account: Sylkeweb on Mastodon