#NotOnGitHub: Tell us about your favourite #OpenSource / #FreeSoftware projects that are not available on mainstream platforms, whether on a self-hosted cgit or available as an archive download only.
Tech Press don’t understand the #Fediverse, so how can they understand its growth?
To hear them talk, most of them believe that #Mastodon and the Fediverse are one and the the same. Some of them go so far as to call the Fediverse the “Mastodon network”.
Which means that they don’t have a clue about what the Fediverse entails, nor how it has grown.
Case in point: between Jan-May 2023, #Misskey and its forks grew by 300,000 accounts. No one in the Tech Press reported this.
Okay, perhaps they didn’t know because the bulk of growth happened in Japan. But still, this is fairly important to know since Misskey is now responsible for generating the bulk of Fediverse content. Even so, Tech Press think the Fediverse is about Mastodon.
And now, #Lemmy and #Kbin are experiencing lots of growth, with both collectively gaining 100,000 users in a week. This is quite a noteworthy event since the #RedditMigration is part and parcel of dissension on #Reddit – a pretty major Big Social platform.
Does the Tech Media report on this? Nope. But again, that’s because they don’t understand the Fediverse nor what it entails.
Then Meta signal that a new project they’re making, #P92 (a.k.a., #Barcelona), will be joining the Fediverse. There’s even screenshots that show this app interacting with remote Fediverse servers.
But instead of reporting about how this will affect the existing Fediverse, press such as the #BBC say this is an altogether different social network than Mastodon.
That’s right! Tech Press don’t even realize P92 will be joining the Fediverse – a social network that already exists!
Is this all ridiculous? Yes.
But this is why we have to be forthright about what the Fediverse is, what it entails, and why it all matters.
I'm not familiar with most of the other "things" like #Pleroma, #Akkoma, #MissKey, or #CalcKey, but I'll guess that those "things" (?server application projects?) are using a different sub-set of #ActivityPub protocol to service a different set of use case foci?
Different use cases might have different focus, such as microblogging (#Mastodon) or bulletin boarding (#kbin subbing for #reddit) or video streaming (#PeerTube subbing for #Youtube) or other use subset of social function?
In analogy to your last paragraph, if something doesn't work well on the Safari implementation of #HTTPS, it's Safari's problem.
Thank you for your thorough answer. While I personally don't know about a lot of the examples you provide, it made me think differently about how to frame questions.
@hankg@szbalint I wish as an admin that I could modify the signup form on #Pleroma/ #Akkoma to insert a small amount of HTML code that either embedded a Google Form/ Survey (or Microsoft, whatever) and asked users signing up one question (in addition to their username/ email so you can tie the response back):
Why do you want an account here?
That alone I think will cut down on 99.9% of the SPAM/ bot registrations.
Of all the instances on the fediverse, why do you want to behere?**
Still amused by all the posts declaring that "#Mastodon will never get any traction" because it doesn't have [insert completely unnecessary Twit feature here]. It's like people think Masto just suddenly appeared out of the ether six months ago. It's been here for years, and it's just fine. 😂
#ichbrauchmehrzeichen um meine Beiträge so zu beschreiben wie ich es gerne möchte. 500 Zeichen pro Trööt sind einfach nicht genug.
Auf #Twitter, #Instagram und #Facebook habe ich viel mehr Möglichkeiten. #Mastodon ist da einfach zu beschränkt, um ordentlich arbeiten zu können.
Ich hoffe, dass sich das ändern wird und die Anzahl an möglichen Zeichen auf 1.500 signifikant erhöht wird. Bei der Bildbeschreibung sind ja auch 1.500 Zeichen möglich, warum nicht im Trööt selbst?
@hamburg_damals du hast doch auf Twitter viel weniger Zeichen, außerdem hast du hier doch die Möglichkeit die Instanz zu wechseln oder den Client #Pleroma z.B. erlaubt oft mehr Zeichen.
frag doch mal @askfedi_de welche Instanz hier mehr als 500 Zeichen erlaubt.
But it's also not entirely @gruber's fault because the media doesn't really talk about the Fediverse, and when they do, it's as a synonym for "Mastodon".
How would @gruber know about the massive development efforts to build more user-friendly alternatives to Mastodon?
No one in the media talks about the growth of *key apps, and how they're now the #2 most used Fediverse platform.
The main reason why I can't move from my current #Pleroma installation to anything else ( #Akkoma, #Misskey, #Calckey, #Hubzilla or #Friendica ) is that none of them accept importing an existing backup from a different service into a brand-new account. At most you can migrate your address but not your posts.
Posted in German this morning, that surely many people are leaving #Mastodon early after signing up because the Web-UI doesn't really look nice.
That's why I would suggest telling every newcomer not only to try out other mobile-apps, but also web-apps like #Elk, #Phanpy, #Trunks and more (see the screenshots). In addition, one could also look at other services in the #Fediverse, I especially like #Calckey.
some servers running alternative softwares that i can endorse:
blaha.zone (Calckey server for LGBTQ+ people and their allies and accomplices)
charcha.cc (possibly running #pleroma server seeming to be aimed at #Indian members )
This doesn't really answer the question *, sure clients will have various monetization models (though WTH is transactions). The issue is what is the server/Bluesky PBLLC business model?
Are they going to start putting ads in the feed? Are they going to charge users or clients for access? Stay free and make it up in volume? I have no clue, not sure anyone does either.
@atomicpoet I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on the advantages/tradeoffs of #calckey, #pleroma, & #mastodon, since you're so involved in all of them. I briefly joined a Pleroma instance (ironically named mastodon.tech) but performance was terrible and I think it had been abandoned.
Mammoth for Mastodon is now available to download for free on the App Store! 🎉
It has the easiest way to join Mastodon with a great onboarding flow and no need to think about what server to join, it’s full-featured with complete Mastodon feature parity, and fully customizable to tweak it just the way you want and make it yours.
Something that really bugs me about #Pleroma and its forks like #Akkoma is that in the HTML they produce tag links do not have a rel=bookmark or whatnot attribute, so Mastodon does not recognize them as tag links and tries to produce a card for the first tag.
I just read a blog post about how and why #Akkoma split from #Pleroma. What scares me is that our divisive human nature was the true culprit behind the free-speech vs FOSS debacle that caused the split. I have written on #Medium about how human nature's divisiveness is dangerous, but I would have never thought it would splinter a software dev team working on a platform for the #fediverse.
I frequently see posts where instance admins are bemoaning Mastodon's lack of a given feature. Many times these are features that other Fedi microblogging systems like Akkoma/Pleroma already implement well.
So why aren't those as popular? Why are folks sticking with Mastodon?
Mastodon monoculture problem (rys.io)