Trying to follow my #Bookwyrm account from here, but it keeps swapping to “you have requested to follow” while I’m not getting a notification on the Bookwyrm side 🫠
Realized that my tinkering with #GoToSocial, #Takahe, #CalcKey and #Snac2, continuing to use #Pixelfed, #Lemmy and #Bookwyrm, and looking for compatibility problems are part of the same impulse that had me trying out every web browser I could find in the early 2000s and deliberately using Firefox and Opera on Linux as my daily drivers instead of IE on Windows.
It's a drop in the ocean, but it's my push for interoperability over #monoculture.
I saw some of his art online and thought it looked like “Invisible Hands” from Liquid Television, which I LOVED. Same artist! This didn’t have quite the same level of twisted, creepiness as that animated series, but I was so happy to find his work in comic form. There’s more too.
I'm moving my 2023 book thread to #Bookwyrm, the Fediverse equivalent of Goodreads. Apparently, you can see/interact with Bookwyrm posts from Mastodon and vice versa but it took me awhile to figure out how:
I had to follow my Bookwyrm account from here + (optionally?) vice versa. Now I can Boost my Bookwyrm posts into Mastodon for you to see. Gonna try it in a few...
Reporting back on cross-posting from #Bookwyrm to Mastodon: it works! And without the expected delay of the post appearing in my Mastodon feed.
However, it doesn't pull the body of the post over, just the headline of my review (rating and image too). Which makes you have to click through, and removes discoverability since the hashtags are in the body post as well as my tag for the #Bookstodon group. Also! No way to enter ALT text for the image. 😕
Conclusion: at the moment, cross-posting from #BookWyrm doesn't meet all of my needs (ALT text for book cover image, hashtags for Mastodon discoverability, no importing of full Bookwyrm post text, adding additional images since I read comics too, no tagging Mastodon accounts).
I'll keep posting separately on each platform since I want to contribute to both. So resuming my 2023 reading thread here. Eh heh heh. 😬
The more I use different #fediverse apps, the more I feel that we are on the edge of a different future, in the early stages of something that we haven't seen before.
In the last few months, I've used #Mastodon, #Misskey, #Calckey, #Funkwhale, #lemmy, #Peertube, #Bookwyrm and #Pixelfed. Soon, I'm going to try an install of #kbin. In the not too distant future, we will see #GreatApe bringing more options for video chat to the Fediverse. There are countless more platforms that I haven't had a chance to try.
The network formed by the interconnections between those apps is the Fediverse; a Federated Universe. Federated, because everything out there is connected with everything else, in one giant network. What I am truly beginning to appreciate is just how real that vision is, and just how disruptive to our future it's going to be. More than a truism, these the fediverse platforms really will allow us to see and interact with nearly anything else out there.
The platform we use no longer determines the information we can access; it doesn't build walls around us. Instead, what out choice of platform determines, is how we interact with information, rather than determining what information we are able interact with in the first place. The walls in the walled garden haven't so much been torn down, as simply never built.
I can write a blog post, and someone on Mastodon can reply to it. I can make a group post on lemmy, and someone from Calckey can reply to it. I can see an awesome photo on Pixelfed, bring it in to #Akkoma and boost it for everyone else to see. And then anyone who sees it can interact with it.
The cross platform interactions are still imperfect. Standards are still being developed, code is still being written and features are still being defined, but the future is right here, we are on the cusp of something new and amazing.
Of course, this is all old news to someone who has been part of the fediverse for years now, but it feels different now. The momentum is here, we are seeing a shift and I think once we cross that precipice, once we have normalised the cross channel interactions we are starting to develop, it's going to be very hard to go back.
I'm curious how people use the #fediverse. Do people have just one account on #Mastadon, #misskey or wherever they post everything from, or do they have an account on a #pixelfed instance for photos, a #bookwyrm instance for book stuff, etc... and just renote as they need across their main ID?
I've tried avoiding talking about #Tumblr directly (though there was far less reason to do so, before recently).
Making any project a foil to another existing work will always define it in terms of that other work and, I think, comes off as a waste of everyone else's time.
But I've been seeing a lot of excitement around Tumblr adding #ActivityPub and it has me…Concerned™.
Not due to the size of an instance this would add to the network (though it's a fair concern) nor due to possibly making
corporation (though that /is/ relevant) but we've started developing federated software that we, collectively, can own with no binding need for corporate reliance and…we're already discussing trading that away?
Like, – unless #Tumblr open-sources, /first/ (and I mean #AGPL or equivalent; not even just #GPL), and I'm able to run it on my own server – going to #Tumblr or recommending people to them is just losing the ownership you would otherwise have with a #PeerTube, #GoToSocial, or #BookWyrm.
There's a built-in book catalogue powered by Wikidata in collaboration with @inventaire
BookWyrm is part of the Fediverse and accounts on BookWyrm servers can be followed by people from Mastodon etc, for example @mouse is the BookWyrm founder's account.
Anyone (except corporations) can start their own BookWyrm server by installing the software, and there's a managed hosting service for people who join the top tier on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/posts/64768354).
PixelFed uses the same federation protocol as Mastodon, which means Mastodon users can follow people on PixelFed and vice versa. You can try following a PixelFed account right now such as @Iancylkowski or @JoseMel or @connyduck
You can use PixelFed through a web browser, and there are also free open Android apps like @PixelDroid and FediLab (@apps).