Since the BridgyFed drama, there might be four more reasons for Mastodon users to want Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) out of the Fediverse. I mean, aside from their usual atrocities like their users writing well over 500 characters, using text formatting, quoting and quote-posting like it's totally normal. Because it is for them. And aside from no instance on any of the three having rules and moderator numbers on par with Mastodon.
One, they aren't based on ActivityPub. They're technically bridged to Mastodon. They're bridged one instance at the time, and the bridge is a plug-in on the instance and therefore part of the project. But still, it isn't that much different from BridgyFed connecting Bluesky to the rest of the Fediverse.
Two, since they aren't based on ActivityPub, they're aliens. Aliens of basically the same kind as Bluesky, only that they've mostly got those features that Mastodon has that Bluesky doesn't. But the BridgyFed drama isn't about Bluesky's features or lack thereof, and it isn't only about Bluesky being commercial either. It's also about Bluesky being too different in technology, functionality and culture. But let me tell you a secret: Bluesky is probably much closer to Mastodon than Hubzilla. I mean, I've already mentioned how Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) users "misbehave" from a Mastodon point of view. You won't see any of this come from Bluesky anytime soon.
Three, Friendica is already fully federated with Bluesky. It's a feature that was introduced with the latest stable release.
Four, speaking of Friendica, that allegedly "hate-fuelling" Fediverse News is a public group account on Friendica. Only that the user who started that particular thread is on Firefish, and Fediverse News only automatically forwarded what he had posted.
When I created Mistpark (which became Friendica), there was nothing really. StatusNet existed but was basically decentralised Twitter and zero privacy. Everything was public. I think you could DM somebody on your own instance. Photos were 100% public. Like Mastodon. Then there was 6d which was in perpetual beta and was basically text webmail with a buddylist. And an old project called AppleSeed that was technically advanced, but your stream was assembled in real time by fetching every remote post before displaying it on the page. It took ten minutes to load a page. Diaspora was vapourware by a bunch of kids with zero development or messaging or any related experience.
I didn't start by creating a social network. I started by implementing a protocol to provide decentralised privacy and permissions and let people protect their photos and videos and share them only with certain people. And it was technically sound. Not even Facebook had a way to do that. And then I added conversations and a way that you could tweak the permissions to make it work like any corporate social network or account type that ever existed. And then started federating with everything I could. Something I learned back in my email days - "A message is a message. The protocol is irrelevant."
Everything I've done either before or since then is a variation on this theme.
And an old project called AppleSeed that was technically advanced, but your stream was assembled in real time by fetching every remote post before displaying it on the page. It took ten minutes to load a page.
I've read about AppleSeed back then, and I was wondering why they re-invented the wheel. After all, we already had Friendika and Diaspora*, and Diaspora* was a completely superfluous waste of $320,000 because it had no advantages over Friendika. I didn't know that AppleSeed was that old.
Diaspora was vapourware by a bunch of kids with zero development or messaging or any related experience.
Yup. The project was launched in 2010. It took a whole bunch of devs a good eight years for a first beta version, and a first stable point release is announced for 2024. Considering it took you four months for a stable release of Mistpark that probably could do more right off the bat than what Diaspora* can do today...
Not to mention that all the first four devs knew was Macs, and they built Diaspora* against an OS that's highly unlikely to find in data centres. And even when there was a Linux version, it required a version of Ruby on Rails that had to be built from sources on any server distro out there.
I should've given up a long time ago as well. I thought somebody would be interested in a social network with protected media, like sharing photos of the kids with grammy, but not every pervert on the planet. Or a consent based network with comment controls so that every message you transmit doesn't become an open invitation to spam, abuse, and harassment.
@Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ It was just before its time. And just like Mastodon got a big boost thanks to the whole Twitter fiasco, I think that with all of the tracking and web scraping and harassment problems people are currently having, more people will start to realize that they need what you have built.
The actions of masses of people is a mystery. "You can have safety and privacy, and still talk to your friends on Mastodon." "No, I have to join Mastodon because my friends joined it."
@Bill Statler Bonus points if they absolutely have to be on the same instance as their friends, but they still claim they know everything about the Fediverse.
@jupiter_rowland the irony around Bluesky is it was intended to federate (yes on their protocol, but it is an open protocol) and they still have not really federated themselves. What exactly were they expecting to happen?
@Danie van der Merwe Well, either Bluesky had the same mindset as Diaspora* back then. Be decentralised internally, but a walled garden towards the outside world. Diaspora* would still be isolated without Friendica's tedious work back in the day, and Bluesky wants to be the same. Yes, with not even only a public API, but laying the whole protocol open.
Either that, or Bluesky just wanted to draw some attention to itself in the wake of the Mastodon hype and therefore announced decentralisation, albeit with its own protocol. And with features on top which they imply having invented, but which have been around since 2011 (Zot protocol). "Bluesky is Twitter without Musk, it'll be decentralised like Mastodon, and it'll have better decentralisation than Mastodon!" Only that they've now discovered that actually going all the way in decentralisation as announced is a) difficult and b) not worth it anyway, considering Bluesky's success without decentralisation. Unless, of course, this has all been a ruse to begin with, and Bluesky has never intended to go full decentral.
Also, it's obvious that, like Threads, Bluesky doesn't know anything about the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. If they did, they would have also known: If they lay their protocol open, some third party will make use of it. And if Friendica can federate with something, it probably will, because that's part of what it stands for.
@jupiter_rowland ah yes I forgot Diaspora's stubbornness to stick only with their own protocol. Lucky my Friendica account connects as I have tons of followers from Diaspora.
@jupiter_rowland Hi Jupiter. I learn new stuff each time i read your posts, it seems, but here i'm quite struggling. I seem to be entirely ignorant of most of the things you've mentioned above.
"the BridgyFed drama" ... 🤷♀️
"Mastodon users to want Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) out of the Fediverse" ... they do? OMZ! Why? I mean, yes i read & understand all your points about our formatting & character limits, but i had no idea this was causing some adverse Masto user conflict 😮
"aren't based on ActivityPub" ... OMZ, i nearly fell over at this one. I thought everything in the fediverse was predicated on this, in that that was how the fediverse was even a thing. Geez i am so ignorant. 🤦♀️
"Friendica is already fully federated with Bluesky" ... oh, well, this one i do dislike. Now i need to research how i can block #Bluesky; i really want nothing to do with it, nor #Threads.
"allegedly "hate-fuelling" Fediverse News is a public group account on Friendica" ... sigh. I simply don't understand how i am so unaware. I am active each day in my account, yet somehow remain cluelessly obliviously ignorant of nuclear wars raging around me. Sigh.
This means that the AT Protocol Servers (currently Bluesky, Friendica) can talk to ActivityPub servers (Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, PeerTube, Pixelfed, etc., etc.).
Some people are so angry that they are flipping out and dropping F bombs.
And there are many protocols in the fediverse. ActivityPub is the most popular, but there are also Zot, Nomad, OpenWebAuth, Diaspora, and more. There is even a protocol called Scuttlebutt.
For example, Hubzilla uses the Zot protocol to talk to other Hubzilla servers, and Streams uses the Nomad protocol to talk to other Streams servers. Streams uses Zot to talk to Hubzilla. And both can use ActivityPub as well.
And far as Friendica federating with Bluesky, the administrator of the server would have to activate that. So not all Friendica servers would support AT protocol since it is an optional addon the admin would have to install.
The reality is that we have over 46,000 independently operated servers on the fediverse, and that is growing every day. Bluesky would simply be server number 46,001.
@scott Hello Scott, t/y muchly for taking the time to explain that helpfully for me. 🤗 At the risk of appearing even more stupid...
"building a bridge between ActivityPub and AT Protocol" ... yes i had heard of that, but til now had been naively unaware of all the Sturm und Drang this is apparently generating, eg... "so angry that they are flipping out and dropping F bombs" --> to the extent that i am doing my several hours of daily fediversing, i spend all that time in my Home timeline, not in the local server nor global timelines, & in my Home i follow a very large number of #hashtags, + a smaller but not negligible number of accounts. Clearly an unintended by-product of my curation has been to insulate me almost entirely from these apparent "range wars" raging beyond my purview.
You listed #Friendica twice, ie, in both of the "protocol camps". Is that a typo, or deliberate? If the latter, it might explain & resolve my confusion when reading Jupiter's OP, given somehow i had been thinking that Friendica is using AP.
"Scuttlebutt" ... i love this, & shall now immediately begin searching for suitable instances i can join! 😜
"far as Friendica federating with Bluesky, the administrator of the server would have to activate that" ... yes, that's exactly as i hoped it would be, which is why before, & again now, i have cc'd @alfred
Most of the hate was directed at the developer who created the bridge and appeared as replies to his post announcing the bridge. Unless you were following him, or visited his channel on his website, you probably would have missed it anyway. The developer seemed to take it well and listened to people's feedback, but some people were inexcusably mean and hateful. Lots of F bombs directed at the developer. And there was a lot of ignorance about how the fediverse actually works (i.e. most didn't know that their posts are already federated beyond Mastodon).
When AT Protocol officially federates, Friendica admins will have the option of turn on AT protocol support natively, which means that Friendica would become a server on the AT protocol network, just like Bluesky. It will probably be one of the first implementations of AT protocol outside of Bluesky itself. Friendica also supports ActivityPub natively as well, so if an admin has both turned on, they are operating on both networks simultaneously. That's why they are listed on both sides.
Scuttlebutt is an interesting protocol. It is designed for social interactions using devices that are not always connected to the internet or not connected to the internet at all. Devices basically pass on messages to one another without the use of the internet. (At least that is my limited understanding of it.)
The nice thing about platforms like Friendica, Hubzilla, and Streams is that they are big on user choice and control. So even if your administrator activated it, you still have some control as a user as to whether you see posts from Bluesky.
And there was a lot of ignorance about how the fediverse actually works (i.e. most didn't know that their posts are already federated beyond Mastodon).
...much less beyond ActivityPub.
Not to mention that a lot of Mastodon users don't understand how Mastodon works. They think it must have a pool of all accounts and all posts and all that somewhere, and the BridgyFed Bluesky bridge will give Bluesky unlimited access to it all.
They also think that Bluesky will be able to post nasty stuff to everyone, even those who aren't connected to anyone on Bluesky. They think the same about Threads, because in their heads, they're still on Twitter where the secret-sauce algorithm would probably allow for that to happen.
@jupiter_rowland@scott #Mastodon
Hi Jupiter I like the framing of this "How does Mastodon work?" post as it describes 'me' or a typical user and prompts them to then think "so how if not all the account and posts somewhere?" etc etc...
I think it's a good way to educate actually, and could you reply again what you would reply typically to your own post if someone asked "ok so how is it if not that?" since I / they would be ready to hear at that point
and then kind of rounding your words towards how it will not be true that "Bluesky bridge will give Bluesky unlimited access to it all." (or at least the commercial company access and plans to exploit things unlike existing others on the Fediverse and like never before... (not even the smaller Nazi's probably because they don't have no money or care, but Capitalism... I'm not so sure!)
I think it's a good way to educate actually, and could you reply again what you would reply typically to your own post if someone asked "ok so how is it if not that?" since I / they would be ready to hear at that point
Let's see if I can make this halfway understandable. But it's going to be looooooooong.
First of all, Bluesky only knows what's being delivered to it. Not by BridgyFed. By Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse through BridgyFed. BridgyFed does not scrape any information itself. Neither does Bluesky, also because it can't do that through Bluesky.
No, really. No, no, really. Calm down.
No, Bluesky won't have your profile and your posts right off the bat. In fact, Bluesky won't have any of the posts you've posted until now unless someone with at least one Bluesky follower boosts one of your old posts. And even only then, Bluesky will only have that one single post.
So what does Bluesky get from you then?
Well, normally, nothing. No, really.
At first, Bluesky won't even know you exist, much less where. Again, BridgyFed is not a scraper, and Bluesky doesn't have a Fediverse scraper either. And even if it had one, it wouldn't work through BridgyFed because BridgyFed doesn't support that.
And seriously: If Bluesky really wanted to scrape the Fediverse, it wouldn't do that through that tiny third-party keyhole that's BridgyFed! It'd set up search crawlers like Google that crawl Fediverse instances and send everything they find to Bluesky.
But Bluesky doesn't do that. I can reassure you that Bluesky doesn't do that.
Because Bluesky isn't interested in the Fediverse.
No, really, it isn't. If it were, it would have used ActivityPub right away instead of developing a wholly new and incompatible protocol. Or it could at least have included its own ActivityPub "translators" just like Hubzilla and (streams) have them and like Friendica used to have until it switched to ActivityPub.
But does Bluesky support ActivityPub in any way? No, it doesn't. Even though ActivityPub would have made a whole lot of things a whole lot easier for Bluesky itself already, it doesn't. Go figure.
Which goes to show that Bluesky isn't interested in the Fediverse. Bluesky doesn't want your data. And, again, if it did, it wouldn't rely on a third-party bridge to get them.
Okay, so again, what does Bluesky get from you?
Again, nothing. At least at first.
Now, let's suppose someone with at least one Bluesky follower mentions you in a public post. That public post also goes to that Bluesky follower, thus to Bluesky, with a link to your profile in it.
Then Bluesky has your name, and it has the URL of your profile. No different from how Mastodon works.
But it doesn't go through that link and scrape all your profile information. It isn't interested in that.
And besides, Mastodon profiles or any other Fediverse profiles are probably completely and utterly incompatible with Bluesky's profile structure anyway. So all that stuff would have to be "translated to Blueskyish". Extra effort for something that Bluesky isn't even interested in. Again, if it were, don't you think it'd use ActivityPub instead of their own AT protocol? Yeah, but it doesn't.
**So from when on will Bluesky know your profile?
Normally, not at all.
Only when someone from Bluesky wants to follow you. And you've either got your profile set up so that anyone can follow you without your explicit consent. Or you actively confirm that follow request.
Then you're connected to Bluesky.**
And only then will Bluesky know you. As in know your profile. Or what profile information makes it through BridgyFed in the first place. And what of it Bluesky has a way of handling. Maybe not more than your profile picture and your profile text. All stuff that's public anyway, and that Google might have scraped a gajillion times already.
But it will not have your whole backlog of posts.
I mean, if you start following another Mastodon user who has been here for four years, you won't get four years worth of their old posts piled upon your timeline either, right? Or has that ever occurred to you? I guess not.
This is not only because Bluesky doesn't do that. This is because Mastodon doesn't do that. It doesn't send any old posts to new followers, and it doesn't request old posts from new followers.
Let me show this to you from somewhere else in the Fediverse.
I'm on Hubzilla. Hubzilla supports importing old posts to a certain degree. If I follow someone on Hubzilla or (streams), I think, also on Friendica, I get their 10 latest posts into my stream. And I get them as new posts. The perk of this is that I can interact with fairly certain posts that only connections are allowed to interact with (yes, that's possible here) by connecting to the poster.
Also, if I subscribe to an RSS or Atom feed, depending on the feed, I get a certain number of old posts.
But if I connect to someone on Mastodon, I don't get even a single one of their old posts. Because Mastodon doesn't support that.
I don't get their ten latest posts, and I don't get their whole post history either or what's left of it after auto-deletion.
If Hubzilla which supports such stuff doesn't get them, then Bluesky won't get them either. Regardless of what Bluesky may or may not want, and regardless of what BridgyFed is or isn't capable of. Mastodon won't send them, full stop.
The only posts from you that Bluesky will ever get are your public posts which you send after letting someone on Bluesky follow you. And public posts from you that someone with at least one Bluesky follower boosts.
And "public" really means "public". Just because you're on Mastodon and no longer on Twitter, doesn't mean you're in a fully safe haven and fully shielded from the world outside Mastodon. Yes, that's an uncomfortable truth if you've believed otherwise up until now, but it's the truth. Deal with it. You'd have to deal with it sooner or later anyway.
Seriously, what the Fediverse desperately needs is 10-minute videos from a true Fediverse expert, done in the style of "Academic expert explains science like I'm 5 years old" videos with colourful animations, that explain the Fediverse to journalists as well as to fresh or aspiring 𝕏 converts.
And that would take someone who
really knows the whole Fediverse inside-out, all the way into its deepest nooks and crannies
still doesn't only "speak dev" or "speak admin" and can actually make things understandable to your average tech-illiterate 𝕏 user with only a phone
can make such animations
can also make these videos fully accessible, not only with a verbatim transcript, but, if necessary, with additional real-time audio descriptions that optionally tell blind or visually-impaired users what happens on-screen, even if what happens on-screen only serves as illustrations for the explanations
@msdropbear42 there is no actual federation with Bluesky yet, it is only an addon for now, which mostly works like the Tumblr addon for example: you have to have an active account there and use it to log in to settings>social networks>bluesky import/export. Also, some servers do not have the addon at all. So there is basically no native federation with Bluesky at all for the moment.
"the BridgyFed drama" is regarding this post about someone building a Bluesky / ActivityPub bridge for when Bluesky starts federating (they built their own protocol 🤮).
"Mastodon users to want Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) out of the Fediverse" I haven't seen this myself, but it wouldn't surprise me because a lot of users of Mastodon and platforms that modeled themselves off of Mastodon have this sense of entitlement and see other platforms as intruders in the space (even if that other platform was here first), it's a lesser part of why they get so upset over things like bridges to other networks or new platforms like threads joining.
"aren't based on ActivityPub" ActivityPub is pretty new in the space, the oldest in the space is Diaspora. Friendica is native ActivityPub and has a checkbox for native support of Diaspora and OStatus in the admin settings, both of which are older than AP
"Friendica is already fully federated with Bluesky" Not quite true, especially as Bluesky does not yet federate. There's a plugin for Friendica which, at the moment, allows users on that server to use a puppet account on Bluesky (meaning you need a Bluesky account and the server is just copying to/from that puppet account). There are plans for that plugin to evolve into fully supporting federating with Bluesky when they do federate however. That will depend on whether your host has that plugin installed. If they do, then Bluesky servers (of which there will be multiple, not just the one that currently exists now) will appear just the same as AP servers in your feed, and likewise you can block them the same way.
"allegedly "hate-fuelling" Fediverse News is a public group account on Friendica" I haven't seen the claim myself, but the thread above was shared to the Fediverse News Friendica group. Since Groups are kind of a hack in AP (there's no actual group protocol feature), most Mastodon users are completely unfamiliar with them, so they think it's a regular user who's boosting/spamming all the conversation
"aren't based on ActivityPub" ActivityPub is pretty new in the space, the oldest in the space is Diaspora.
The oldest one is actually OStatus, the protocol behind Laconi.ca/StatusNet/GNU social. It's from 2008. Diaspora* came out in September 2010.
Friendica is native ActivityPub and has a checkbox for native support of Diaspora and OStatus in the admin settings, both of which are older than AP
Friendica is native DFRN. It was launched in July 2010, so it's six years older than Mastodon and eight years older than the ActivityPub standard. Also, Friendica does things internally which AFAIK are still impossible with pure ActivityPub. Like on Hubzilla and (streams) to different degrees, ActivityPub is optional, but I think it's on by default for both nodes and accounts.
"Friendica is already fully federated with Bluesky" Not quite true, especially as Bluesky does not yet federate.
Not by Mastodon standards, but by Friendica standards.
In 2011, Friendica federated with Facebook. I'm not even kidding, it actually did. This federation required a Facebook account which was more or less remote-controlled from Friendica while also mirroring the Facebook friends list and the Facebook timeline into Friendica. But Friendica let this count as full federation. This ended when Facebook changed its TOS for external apps: They were no longer allowed to extract data.
Also, both Friendica and Hubzilla have a Twitter "bridge" to this day. It works the same as the Facebook connection, but it, too, counts as full federation by Friendica and Hubzilla's standards.
At least Friendica is also fully federated with Tumblr by its own standards. This wouldn't be possible without a Tumblr account either.
And the WordPress cross-poster available for both counts as federation, too.
"allegedly "hate-fuelling" Fediverse News is a public group account on Friendica" I haven't seen the claim myself, but the thread above was shared to the Fediverse News Friendica group. Since Groups are kind of a hack in AP (there's no actual group protocol feature), most Mastodon users are completely unfamiliar with them, so they think it's a regular user who's boosting/spamming all the conversation
...which led them into blocking the whole forum or even the entire Friendica node in their fuming rage.
Not by Mastodon standards, but by Friendica standards.
It's good also to have and find a common sense interpretation between two different jargons. In the end, the conversation is fragmented.
You post the same thing on , say, twitter and activitypub and bluesky and your blog.
You got feedback from the two different protocols and for you it's maybe well aggregated under your post, but people watching on twitter won't see and benefit from the feedback you got from a bluesky user.
Maybe you answer to a comment from B and C can see your reply but can't fetch the message you're answering.
It's not a constructive collective conversation, you are having 3/4 different conversations.
@alfred@jupiter_rowland@luca@shiri@msdropbear42 It's not "federation" by Friendica standards either. In Friendica jargon these are called "Cross Posting Connectors". They're not federation in any sense, they require separate native accounts on those platforms and just allow you to view and post to those accounts from your Friendica home timeline. They're a user convenience feature. They don't take content from those other networks and actually put them into the Fediverse or vice versa.
"aren't based on ActivityPub" ActivityPub is pretty new in the space, the oldest in the space is Diaspora.
The oldest one is actually OStatus, the protocol behind Laconi.ca/StatusNet/GNU social. It's from 2008. Diaspora* came out in September 2010.
Friendica is native ActivityPub and has a checkbox for native support of Diaspora and OStatus in the admin settings, both of which are older than AP
Friendica is native DFRN. It was launched in July 2010, so it's six years older than Mastodon and eight years older than the ActivityPub standard. Also, Friendica does things internally which AFAIK are still impossible with pure ActivityPub. Like on Hubzilla and (streams) to different degrees, ActivityPub is optional, but I think it's on by default for both nodes and accounts.
"Friendica is already fully federated with Bluesky" Not quite true, especially as Bluesky does not yet federate.
Not by Mastodon standards, but by Friendica standards.
In 2011, Friendica federated with Facebook. I'm not even kidding, it actually did. This federation required a Facebook account which was more or less remote-controlled from Friendica while also mirroring the Facebook friends list and the Facebook timeline into Friendica. But Friendica let this count as full federation. This ended when Facebook changed its TOS for external apps: They were no longer allowed to extract data.
Also, both Friendica and Hubzilla have a Twitter "bridge" to this day. It works the same as the Facebook connection, but it, too, counts as full federation by Friendica and Hubzilla's standards.
At least Friendica is also fully federated with Tumblr by its own standards. This wouldn't be possible without a Tumblr account either.
And the WordPress cross-poster available for both counts as federation, too.
"allegedly "hate-fuelling" Fediverse News is a public group account on Friendica" I haven't seen the claim myself, but the thread above was shared to the Fediverse News Friendica group. Since Groups are kind of a hack in AP (there's no actual group protocol feature), most Mastodon users are completely unfamiliar with them, so they think it's a regular user who's boosting/spamming all the conversation
...which led them into blocking the whole forum or even the entire Friendica node in their fuming rage.
@jupiter_rowland Yes, and don't forget that Mastodon just recently migrated to ActivityPub itself - it started off with OStatus so it could federate with as many existing foreign servers as possible.
Add comment