Yes, Calckey is undergoing a full rebranding!! But it's more than that. We've worked for MONTHS on this, and there's going to be a lot of changes and exciting things coming up. This includes:
Press releases?!?!
A super sick trailer video
A full roadmap for the next couple YEARS
A new flagship server that will be AUTOMATICALLY MIGRATED TO from calckey.social (a Fediverse first!)
A cute new mascot :calc_swear: <(I'm not cute?!)
A new code hosting service with better CI/CD
The stable release you've all been waiting for, but not as v14.0.0... as v1!!
I would appreciate it if people could help me get more federated on my new instance. Please boost this post if any of the following tags apply to you so I can follow!
Many people are asking me, "How will #ActivityPub ultimately be #Meta's own undoing?"
Meta's current business model is not built for an open protocol like ActivityPub. It's very much dependent on them owning and controlling the network effect of services like Facebook and Instagram.
Not only does Meta want to collect all your personal data -- they want to control it too. They enforce this control through proprietary APIs. In this sense, they're not different from Twitter and Reddit.
The point of ActivityPub is that services, such as #Mastodon, #Kbin, and #Calckey, can depend on an open protocol instead of a proprietary API.
What if I, the admin of calckey.social, don't like what a dev is doing? Well, too bad. The protocol is open. I might be able to twiddle with my own server, but I can't do jack with anyone else's.
And what if I'm a greedy asshole who wants to monetize the user data on my server? Too bad for me, everyone on my server can migrate elsewhere.
This is not how Meta does business. In almost all ways, ActivityPub is counter to their business. Yet, here they are -- wanting to join the Fediverse.
The tech industry is awash in stories of big corporations that own proprietary tech that become undone by open standards.
Remember IBM's dominance of PCs? It was undone by the EISA standard.
Remember Novell's dominance of networking? It was undone by the bundling of TCP/IP in operating systems.
Remember AOL's dominance of online services? It was undone by the World Wide Web.
ActivityPub is yet another standard that pierces the opaque walled gardens that largely depend on proprietary technology owned by one company. And Meta happens to be one company that owns an opaque walled garden.
If history is to be repeated -- and usually it's worth learning from history -- then Meta opening the door to ActivityPub is company suicide. It's the first domino to fall before everything else in their catalogue of walled gardens also falls. Contrary to popular opinion, creating an ActivityPub enabled social network does not "kill" ActivityPub -- it validates it.
As it happens, I've known quite a few people who work at Meta. I have a little insight into what they're thinking.
Most folks at Meta know very well that Facebook will eventually die. But not just Facebook, Instagram too. Social networks, by their nature, are generational and transient. They have a shelf life.
Meta very much wants to build the app that kills Facebook and Instagram.
They have to build it because they can't acquire competition. That will raise the ire of regulators.
Likewise, Meta have already tried to leverage their own proprietary APIs to build compelling platforms. We've already seen this with the likes of Portal and Oculus.
What's apparent is that, even for a Big Social company like Meta, it is extremely hard to build a network effect from scratch. Sure, billions of people use Facebook and Instagram, but it was a whole lot of work for Meta to do that themselves.
And what was the end result of building Facebook and Instagram's network effect? More regulation by governments.
Thus, ActivityPub gives Meta two things it craves: the ability to piggyback on the network effect of an open protocol, and the ability to head off regulators by saying, "Hey, we don't own this protocol -- we're no different from Mastodon and Calckey."
Again, open protocols usually mean the demise of big corporations who leverage success through proprietary APIs. And ActivityPub will be no different.
Meta joining the Fediverse means that Automattic was right to build ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. It also means competitors, such as Apple and Microsoft, should probably start investing in ActivityPub.
What else does it mean? That small developers should start building apps that appeal to people who use Meta services. They should build these apps based on garden-variety ActivityPub -- because Meta can't own or control ActivityPub.
Calckey is a Fediverse server type which includes lots of features that Mastodon doesn't yet have, such as emoji reactions, markdown, customisable interfaces, widgets and lots more.
To see for yourself, have a look on the official website at:
Alright, this is priceless - this is why we say that the #Fediverse is magical!
So, @kraft who works at Automattic (creator of WordPress) pops in to check out #Calckey. We start a chat about how they have a "Share to Mastodon" button, but that doesn't cover the richness of platforms in the Fediverse. Bam, less than 12 hours later, Automattic are officially discussing how they could implement a "Share to the Fediverse" button, connecting the rest of the platforms potentially to hundreds of millions of websites using WordPress.
Yet another question people are asking me: "How can I, a common person, help hasten the demise of #Meta through #ActivityPub?"
Again, I want to re-emphasize this. #Fediblock is not an all-purpose tool. It's useful as a hammer. But in this scenario, we don't just need a hammer. We need drills, pliers, saws, and blowtorches.
That said, we must protect communities that choose to defederate from Meta. Which means that if those servers don't want to receive messages from any Meta-owned services, we must not only be respectful of that, we should make damn sure that those servers are quarantined from Meta. So much of the success of fighting Meta will require safe spaces from Meta.
The next thing we need is lots and lots of nodes. Currently, we only have ~25,000 nodes on the Fediverse but we need more. Preferably, these nodes should be small, agile, and well-moderated. If you have the finances and/or skill to run a node, it's important that you do so. To compete with Meta, we need to build scale -- and the easiest way to build scale is by adding more nodes to the Fediverse.
What will also be key is lobby servers. These will be servers specifically set up for migrants from Meta-owned services to help onboard them towards the rest of the Fediverse. To run such a lobby server, they need to be welcoming, moderated well, and free of the elitists and gatekeepers that poison so much of the Fediverse currently.
How to get people from Meta to try out the rest of the Fediverse? We need people willing to be ambassadors on #P92 who are ready and willing to evangelize the rest of the Fediverse. Folks like @tchambers are very good at this on Twitter, and I have no doubt that we can do the same with P92. Except this time we'll have the benefit of federation already happening 😉
Now if there's one thing I've learned about the growth of the Fediverse it's that bad corporate decisions pay dividends. We've already experienced waves of migration from Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit. And I have no doubt that it's only a matter of time before Meta makes another corporate mistake -- as they tend to do.
In which case, we need to strike fast. When another Cambridge Analytica happens, we need to remind everyone on Meta about the lobby servers that are on standby, and ready to take them on. Unlike previous migrations, let's not be unprepared for this. Let's be especially prepared since Meta plans to join the Fediverse.
Finally, we need more devs. Specifically, we need devs willing to build innovative server and client software that takes aim at Meta. And to do that, we need to support the devs that currently exist -- show evergreen devs pondering whether they should invest here that we, as a community, are appreciative of our current devs.
If you like #Mastodon, #Calckey, #Kbin, #Friendica, etc., it's important that you open up your hearts as well as your wallets and fund the next stage of Fediverse development.
This will take a lot of work. But if you want to fight Meta, challenge their dominance of social media, this is what must be done.
Personally, I'm hyped about the future of the Fediverse -- regardless of whether Meta eventually lives to tell the tale.
Ok, nice little social media experiment, how does the fediverse fare during an earthquake?
A midnight earthquake just hit my home city, which basically never gets earthquakes. Probably no damage at all from this one, but we all definitely felt it, which is unusual for us! (Prob ~4 on Richter scale)
Where did I go first to check if others felt it? NGL, the place I went last time there was a tremor … Twitter. And to be fair, on the top of my feed were posts from people I follow (who aren’t here) that live in my home city, tweeting about it, including links to official reports. This was very nice, as this time I was scared and thought my apartment building might be in trouble.
I quickly check #mastodon and #calckey. Nothing in timelines. Not surprising, I don’t really follow anyone or many that live in the same city as me.
Searching, mastodon’s hashtag search does ok, and surfaces a bot or two that also confirm the quake (@lastquake). But not many people, I’m not really finding a conversation. This is on an instance with ~50k users.
#Calckey’s full text search though (on calckey.social)?
Quicker. Just typed earthquake without worrying about hashtags.
And better results. More people were brought up, which is kinda what you’re after from social media during an event … reassurance. It was also surprising, as calckey has only ~2k users and therefore smaller visibility of the fediverse, but still gave me more connectivity just through search than my bigger mastodon instance.
Which is really an interesting demonstration of how hashtags can be problematic. Plenty of people were reaching out, asking “anyone feel that earthquake?”, they just forgot or didn’t think to use a hashtag, and so couldn’t find me through mastodon. And why would you in a (slightly) nervous situation like that. “Hmmm, is this the best hashtag, do you think people will search for it … I should probably check if it exists first?” … is not a thought goes through your mind.
I basically never visit Twitter since I left, but this was a nostalgic little episode. It was nice to see the fediverse wasn’t really behind big social. Though the lack of discovery facilities on mastodon really did show themselves here.
The Feditext iOS client for Mastodon, GotoSocial, Firefish, etc. now has its own account on fedi.software! Please follow us here for official Feditext updates and announcements.
Alright #CalcKey junkies, I'm a Mastodon instance admin and I'm an engineering group lead at Automattic (think the company of WordPress' founder) who is leading the work to add Mastodon as a supported service for our Jetpack Social product.
That said, what's the sell to get me to spend more time here?
The federation-info only lists 3,470 Calckey users and does not count the biggest Calckey server, which is calckey.social. And calckey.social has over 2,000 accounts. That's a pretty big server to miss.
And now let's consider fediverse.observer. They report a drop in Calckey users despite there being a big increase in sign-ups for May on calckey.social alone. Even more befuddling, they report 0 comments from Calckey. This is not possible. I'm seeing comments on Calckey daily.
https://fedidb.org reports an accurate count, which is that Calckey has over 9,000 accounts spread over 315 servers.
We, calckey.social, are now the largest #Calckey server on the Internet.
Currently, 1,056 people have joined calckey.social, and growth continues fast.
This server has only been online since February, but 800 people have joined within the last 2 weeks.
To keep pace with growth, we have added four moderators who will assist us as this server continues to gather interest. Even though we're growing fast, user safety is of paramount importance.
Being the largest Calckey server comes with great responsibilities. We are validating the potential scale of Calckey, while also welcoming new users who have never used the software before.
We, the mod team, embrace this challenge and look forward to continuing to shepherd the growth of this fantastic community!
Great news: calckey.social just registered its 1,000th account!
This comes one week after reaching 500 accounts!
This is a major milestone in the growth of the #Calckey community! The enthusiasm for this project is off the charts -- and we're thrilled you've made the server your home on the Fediverse!
Ok, I’ll admit it, I can see the appeal of #calckey. Dare I say it is better than #mastodon… 😱
The few things that are absolutely winning me over:
the social tab as well as all the other post discovery tabs. It sounds so dumb, but discovery is actually really nice! Not just for my posts, but to see other posts! It’s such a no-brainer!
quote-posts. Ok, I was really skeptical of it, but honestly the fediverse is just full of lovely people and being able to slap context onto a post or point to another post within a post is incredible
the big-ass text limit, good lord
the reactions to post
If I were to describe #mastodon, I would say it’s kind and stable, but boring. If I was to describe #calckey, it would be fun and hectic, but early and buggy
Point blank, a mass Fediblock isn't going to work with #Meta.
The cold truth is that people will use #Barcelona whether it federates or not. Even if it fails, Barcelona will probably have more users out of the gate than almost every project save Mastodon. Hell, it will probably eclipse #Bluesky too.
And even if you convince every server to defederate -- which you won't -- this will not be a PR coup for the Fediverse. Newspaper headlines won't blare "Fediverse successfully resists Meta." Instead, they will probably follow @gruber take with "Open source zealots complain that an open protocol is open."
Again, as I've said countless times, I'm not saying you should federate with Barcelona or any Meta-owned property. If you want, defederate. The joy of the Fediverse is freedom of association.
But a mass Fediblock doesn't solve a few important problems with Meta, and perhaps makes them worse.
The most critical problem is that Meta users need to migrate away from Meta-owned social networks. Until now, a migration path has simply been unfeasible to most. But when Barcelona gets launched, it is possible that many of them will become aware of a greater Fediverse.
How to build that awareness? By interacting with them through services beyond Barcelona.
This approach works. I've interacted with many Mastodon users through services beyond Mastodon, and this has resulted in adoption of other Fediverse software. #Calckey is a case in point.
However, there's a bigger problem concerning Meta: Fediverse replacements for Meta-owned social networks aren't getting mass adoption. And it's not because these apps aren't good.
#Pixelfed is an #Instagram replacement. It is also one of the slickest apps on the Fediverse. Yet, Pixelfed only has 150,000 registered accounts.
#Friendica is a #Facebook replacement. It's been around since 2010. It is a mature product that does many things very well, but Friendica only has 17,000 registered accounts.
The software is great but we are failing to effectively market the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Now I'm trying my darnedest to change this, and so are many people. But facts are facts. Fediverse alternatives to Meta are a blip on the radar.
Refusing to federate with Barcelona won't change this. How do I know?
Because we don't federate now, and the status quo remains intact.
Meanwhile, Meta is practically gifting Pixelfed and Friendica an opportunity for federation, and it would be foolish to not consider broader implications.
How is it that more people aren't considering this opportunity?
Dare I say that most people -- including devs -- suffer from myopia concerning what the Fediverse is. The Fediverse is not Mastodon, and it is wrong to view the Fediverse solely through the eyes of Mastodon.
And I'll go further: by focusing Barcelona on text, I suspect that Meta is likewise making the same mistake of viewing the Fediverse as a "Twitter killer".
What they may not be considering is that the Fediverse might be a "Meta killer" too. And connecting Barcelona to the Fediverse is opening a can of worms Meta hasn't entirely considered yet.
If Barcelona is indeed text-based, what will happen when a Barcelona user encounters Pixelfed and asks, "Why does this post show reels? And why can't I do the same?"
Believe me, this is the kind of content that triggers migration.
We need to think bigger than Fediblock. Yes, for your own mental health and safety, you may not want to federate with Barcelona. However, there needs to also be a means for Barcelona users to encounter content outside Barcelona.
Perhaps there needs to be "lobby" servers that help Barcelona users enter the greater Fediverse -- helping them make the switch beyond Meta.
For those who don’t know @kainoa, he’s the very sharp college student and developer who had the insight to realize Misskey was a great alternative to Mastodon for building a future-facing Fedi platform, so he forked it to #Calckey and built a team to grow it. #Calckey’s development has already influenced other platforms, so I feel he’s quite worthy of support from all quarters. I try to do my part. Can you help him out, too?
Follow generously. If you don't follow anyone, you won't have anything in your Home feed! That's fine if you're here to broadcast, but it might be hard to find followers if you don't follow.
Lead generously. If you don't let anyone follow you, you won't have any reach into networks outside your own. That's fine if you want a private experience, but remember: nothing is really private in the Fediverse. Even DMs are not really private.
Mute on a whim. You can silence users and threads with a click, either temporarily or permanently. You don't have to take any shit.
Block at will. Silencing the bigot not good enough? You can block individual users, or whole domains. Probably most of the worst of the worst are already defederated from your instance. But if not, you can do it yourself, for yourself.
#Mastodon is NOT the #Fediverse. You can migrate from Mastodon instance to Mastodon instance. Or, you can migrate from Mastodon to #Calckey. You can have a #Pixelfed user, and see and boost your pics in your Calckey timeline, or Mastodon timeline, or #Lemmy or #kbin or, or, ... Don't limit yourself to this one playground. YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL.