The #threadiverse refers to social link/news aggregation and forum implementations on ActivityPub like #lemmy and #kbin. The term has been used longer than Meta's #threads existence and Threads doesn't offer similar functionality and to my knowledge still isn't even talking AP yet. I'm cool with Meta joining the fediverse, but until they implement communities and voting dynamics, they need a different term than threadiverse. /rant
Listened yesterday to the @Flipboard "Dot Social #Podcast with @mike and @evan - it was fascinating to hear from one of the co-authors of #ActivityPub and it was fascinating counterpoint to the first episode with @mmasnick. I don't have a tech background but I am quite interested in questions of community and connection). From the outside, ActivityPub is fascinating for its sheer versatility.
@Flipboard@mike@evan@mmasnick How does your conception of the #Fediverse change if your entry point is #Mastodon with its focus on microblogging? What would happen if your entry point was #Pixelfed? Or #Lemmy / #Kbin? Or even #Flipboard? I'm also active on Pixelfed and Bookwrym but I think that subconsciously I think of Mastodon as "Home Base." I'd like to start thinking of each service as its own thing with distinct approaches. Another good episode!
Almost everyone who says "Mastodon didn't work for me" on Bluesky seems to have posted only "me me me" stuff for months (if that) on Mastodon, followed about 10-20 people, never replied to anyone and then gave up because "nobody there, it didn't fly".
It seems there is a big misunderstanding how this free and healthy social media works. We are not here for the easy wins, likes, shares and dopamine spikes. We are here because we accept the fact we are not part of the commercial hype machine. We choose natural engagement over spoiling algorithms, we choose conversation and meaning in our social media. At least that is how I see it.
@rolle Honestly, my issue with #Mastodon is people like you. You did not say you are here because you want to be here. Your reasons for being here can be summarized as an act of defiance or opposition. It's a negative position against a system of power. That implies that you believe social interactions can be reduced to power dynamics, even with complete random strangers.
That, right there, is my issue with people on any #socialmedia, to be frank. They are not in those spaces for anything positive; instead, it is some bizarre form of the Mini Max algorithm in Game Theory where they serve to block the other side as a strategy towards "winning". Ironically, a paradigm of opposition connotes competition which is ironically the opposite of cooperation that is the spirit behind the #fediverse so much so it underpins the idea of different technologies, sites, and platforms speaking to each other, such as how you can follow #Lemmy and #Peertube from here.
I wonder if the people who define their entire identity in a negative sense - opposition to something is a negative position against that thing, have any fun. Any inkling of happiness at all?
That's why people are leaving. They are leaving because #Mastodon is filled with insufferable, negative people who reduce social interactions down to social power struggles and try to use culture to influence other people because they are miserable.
As an occultist and someone who was raised by black radical family members, I find your "screed" not only banal but unoriginal. It is basically a reiteration of the basic praxis and ethos of a hacker. Gasp Which you are. At most, it is so mediocre it is boring. At worst, the antagonism, pedantic tone, and inability for people invested in #Mastodon to take criticism are insufferable and narcissistic.
Honestly, it is very spiteful. When you view your presence in a place not as something to enjoy but as something to oppose and frustrate someone else regardless of your happiness, that is spite.
Your post elegantly summarizes your basic #Mastodon user, which includes how spiteful, vindictive, and miserable the average #Mastodon user is.
Imho all #governments in all countries on all levels should communicate via the #fediverse, instead of via commercial services. Why should a profit-maximizing feed #algorithm, and an ad placement algorithm get between the citizen and their government in a democracy?
@evan a #lemmy group that only collects links to government-operated servers? Plus some metadata (insert some magic here) that links those to geography / jurisdiction, from which a map can be rendered, and perhaps Wikipedia could be populated…. Just thinking out loud.
I've been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon's responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that'll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn't be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can't have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they're probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there'd be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that's why they're separate to begin with. You don't see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don't necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the "All Content" tab if you'd like, they're styled differently enough that it's very clear when you're looking at a thread and when you're looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I've been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that's what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that's also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, "Wait, what's this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated," even if you tell them to ignore it.
It's probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I'm expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would've made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin's magazine system). However, this doesn't mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I'd love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn't mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
Well, for example if I could reply to a mastodon post from my lemmy account - the poster would see that there (not here - but could show up on my profile page), and might follow it, so it could gain followers. To write such a reply, I’d need to somehow view the original post while logged into lemmy. My comments here do federate to mastodon, and if somebody searched for related words (at least from the instance from which I followed my #lemmy account) they should find this. Your “virtual community” seems like a mastodon list (I have a dozen such topic lists, that system could be better, but is improving), indeed it would be helpful to consider that alongside a lemmy community for similar topic.
@masimatutu@feditips@FediFollows@fediverse
It’s so laughable if #Fediverse admins try to ban #Lemmy users from federating, only because they don’t like some of its founders and thereby effectively ban all #Lemmmy users from various instances, users who are not at all associated with those in any way.
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
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Today, I added a box of related/random collections - I must admit that the ones you created are fantastic. Collection names can be repeated since they are user-assigned. I added the option to mark a collection as official - those with the highest number of followers in a given topic and with a specific name can be marked and...
Regarding Collections: I'm wondering if it might be useful to allow transfer ownership of collections as well? Probably low priority, but this could be useful if:
The owner becomes inactive
A #kbin magazine or #lemmy community becomes problematic + has inactive moderators
Other magazines/communities become more/less relevant over time, thus the collection needing adjustments
Re 1:
Could be mitigated on kbin magazines due to magazine ownership transfers, however, may pose an issue on federated magazines from lemmy
Also could be mitigated by the creation of a new collection, hence probably low priority
Re 2:
Could be low priority in regard to certain magazines/communities becoming inactive over time, however, the chance to miss out on discussions and threads should possibly be considered
However, this is also mitigated by also creating new collections -- I just think people generally like to avoid migrating when followings settle in.
Transferring collection ownership could also be excessive/unnecessary? Thoughts? Does the status of an official collection change automatically based on the user count?
Also regarding collections: After following a collection -- going to a collection's page and attempting to unfollow is described as "delete". This may give off the wrong impression to unfamiliar users. Perhaps "unfollow", or "unfavorite" may be better suited? I also wonder if it may be more appropriate to have favorited collections appear at the top of the collections view so users can quickly find the collections they follow in order to avoid being buried by the popular ones. This could also potentially be solved by giving subscribed collections its own tab in the navbar next to magazines? Is that perhaps too many tabs in the navbar?
Anyways, thank you so much Ernest. I know some people were unhappy about /kbin's development progress for awhile, but I'm really glad I stuck with it. Despite the challenges that came your way, watching you get back into the swing of things and /kbin's growth has been a joy to be a part of. The consistent communication and having our feedback be heard is also a big plus. As always, looking forward to what else is on the way.
Edit: Also, really glad to hear you're prioritizing sustainability, balance, and a strong foundation for the future. I hope you're able to get the support you're looking for, so you can give this project the time and effort you think it deserves. It's clear you care a lot about this project.
Jerboa is currently incompatible with the latest beta of #Lemmy 0.19 and completely crashes trying to login to any instance. This happened with some earlier Lemmy upgrades too.
No biggie, a #Jerboa update will be along in due time.
just boosted the quoted post which comes from lemmy > boosting lemmy posts from the *keys is a rare event bc of federation issues on both ends > so yeah, let's celebrate 🎉 #federation#fediverse#lemmy#misskey
@william_1844@feditips
Yeah, so the reason I ask is because I saw a thing even longer ago (I think from Feditips?) about how you can get for example #Lemmy posts in your Mastodon account, but if you go to Lemmy itself then you have a more appropriate front-end, where in this case you would have a better threading experience, etc., so I was wondering which of them also support this pixelfed feature.
@NumbersCanBeFun
I think it's normal that we want to have a name for the network itself. Like we use Mastodon for microblogging-over-activitypub, I feel a need to have a name for reddit-over-activitypub. I use the word #Lemmy for that.
You can argue that that's wrong. I would probably agree, but without an alternative, I will say that. @wowwoweowza@ALostInquirer@ernest
What I like most about #Lemmy is that it is a content-orientated entrance to the Fediverse and that the content is structured accordingly, a kind of forum structure.
Most Fediverse services are account-orientated and (especially with #Mastodon)) the content is too mixed up for me and I miss the context.
What details of the software or the community do you like?
The term "community" is somewhat ambiguous here: the one "Lemmy community" doesn't really exist, because the whole Fediverse is the community. It's not limited to Lemmy users and can't be separated. At the same time, there are the various groups/topics, which are also called "communities".
RTR#30 Monthly recap and planned next steps
Today, I added a box of related/random collections - I must admit that the ones you created are fantastic. Collection names can be repeated since they are user-assigned. I added the option to mark a collection as official - those with the highest number of followers in a given topic and with a specific name can be marked and...
Forgive me, but… (lemmy.ml)
It’s my hope to see unity and cohesion is the Lemmy-verse. Looks like asklemmy@lemmy.ml has over 39k subscribers....
Fédiverser de PixelFed vers Lemmy
Fonctionnalité...
What do you like on Lemmy? (feddit.de)
What is your favourite characteristic of Lemmy? What details of the software or the community do you like?