Which of the Fediverse projects are worth getting into?

ContentConsumer9999, 5 months ago

Nobody in this thread seems to have mentioned #Kbin. It's an instance that aims to combine the #microblog structure of instances like Mastodon with the thread structure of instances like Lemmy.

0x1C3B00DA, 5 months ago

Takahē is looking for new maintainers. It's a microblogging server in the beginning stages of development. As far as I know, there aren't many (if any) instances outside the main development instance.

idkfa is a new fediverse project from ted unangst, who is the creator of honk (another AP microblogging project)

otter, 5 months ago

As a user: Pixelfed is a nice replacement for Instagram. It’s very clean and it captures what Instagram used to be years ago

It just needs users. Right now I’m following artists and creatives

Crul, 5 months ago

I tried Pixelfed (very briefly) not so long ago. I didn’t find a propper way to search for content. How do you discover new content?

otter, 5 months ago

I started with the ‘Discover’ page for some stuff, but I think I found most things by searching relevant hashtags. Once I had a few people followed, I also took a peek at who was resharing/liking/commenting to find more people. I haven’t used it THAT much yet, but there’s enough content to scroll through every now and then

Crul, 5 months ago

Thanks!

heyazorin, 5 months ago

Pixelfed has a very nice webapp. If you don’t like the official one, install it from web on your phone.

Bebo, 5 months ago

Are there mobile apps for pixelfed?

otter, 5 months ago

Yep! An official app and a few third party ones

pixelfed.org/mobile-apps

The mobile site works fairly well if you don’t want an appa

Bebo, 5 months ago

That’s good. What are your favourite apps that you would recommend?

otter, 5 months ago

I haven’t tried that many of them, and I stuck with the official app because it felt the most familiar (feels like instagram)

So out of the ones I’ve tried, I’d recommend either the official app or the mobile site as they’re more likely to have the latest features. Pixelfed’s dev has been super fast with the improvements so it might be worth it?

Chozo, 5 months ago

I've been enjoying Firefish for my Mastodon content. I like the extra features and interface better than stock Mastodon.

Though, unless I just can't find it, there doesn't appear to be any way to follow a hashtag on Firefish, which is a bit of a bummer. The antenna feature is alright at filling in this gap, but it's not perfect.

Firefish works mostly okay with third-party apps, but none of them seem to be able to do some of the more advanced features like the live, auto-refreshing feeds, which is a feature I rather enjoy. So I've been pretty content with just using the PWA on my phone for the time being. The mobile interface is solid enough that I don't feel a strong need for a dedicated app just quite yet. Notifications can be delayed by a few minutes, but I can tolerate that.

Blaze, 5 months ago

Though, unless I just can’t find it, there doesn’t appear to be any way to follow a hashtag on Firefish, which is a bit of a bummer. The antenna feature is alright at filling in this gap, but it’s not perfect.

To be fair, most people don’t seem to tag their content anyway, so I guess antennas are just as effective

Kyyrypyy, 5 months ago

There is also “Owncast”, but it seems to suffer from the same issue that peertube does; there is no integrated revenue system for the streamer, so there is little reason to put effort in to the quality, as well as it being fairly unknown, so even if you set up donos etc. the audience isn’t there.

The discoverability don’t help, since there isn’t really s good way to filter out all the “24/7 radio” -streams, so even if you actively follow the frontpage, or a category, you have to skim trough them manually. Also, there is no proper language filter (at least if you don’t have an account), and it seems it’s more popular with non-english speaking streamers.

MysticKetchup, 5 months ago

For Microblogging so far I’ve used Mastodon because it seems to have the most feature complete apps from what I’ve seen (Megalodon and Tusky are both good). For the most part they interface together, I follow people on Misskey.

While it’s got a good amount of activity I don’t use it as much as Lemmy since the advantage here is that things are sorted into communities so it’s easier to find good content. You can follow tags on Mastodon, but because it has no real algorithm and the “toots” are less substantial than Lemmy submissions I find that you get a lot of banal status updates. It also has to compete with Bluesky which has more name recognition being made by ex-Twitterites that also draws more users away from it. If you can find good people to follow it’s good but I think we’re still waiting on a critical mass of people to move from the former site.

exelica, 5 months ago

Yeah apps are pretty necessary for me so its good to know that Mastodon has good ones. I get brain damage reading tweets so maybe Mastodon wouldn’t be so bad. I do like Lemmy though.

ginerel, 5 months ago

This might be subjective, but imo, while Mastodon has the most feature complete apps, it's not the most feature complete platform out there. Hell, even Kbin is more feature complete than Mastodon. I recommend trying Friendica, Hubzilla or Streams for a larger feature set.

heygooberman, 5 months ago

You’re absolutely right about PeerTube. However, given the recent decisions made by YouTube and its parent company on adblocking, I think we might see a surge in PeerTube content and development soon.

One thing I have noticed in the past year is that whenever Big Tech services become compromised or make controversial decisions, the Fediverse equivalent starts to bloom. I joined Mastodon and Lemmy earlier this year because of the controversies surrounding X and Reddit. Now that YouTube has done the same, I think we will soon see a “great migration” to PeerTube.

Just my two cents.

exelica, 5 months ago

I never had that problem with adblocking. It still works for me (Windows, Ublock, Firefox). The content on PeerTube isn’t on par with YouTube and there isn’t a financial incentive for the entertaining creators to move to PeerTube