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.
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.
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.
#Lemmy core devs running an AMA on Monday, 7 Aug, 1500 CEST
See post: lemmy.ml/post/2671212
Generally, I think it's valuable for people to be able to get to know their platform's devs and their admins better. So I think this is a pretty cool idea.
The story here, AFAIU, is that it's the same developer porting the app from a reddit to lemmy backend. I've never used it, but android users have been excited for it from what I've seen.
what I take from this, though, is that even with the anger against Reddit, there’s no talk of leaving in the comments on that post!
you hate the site and all of their changes so much and it’s only been getting worse… why do you stay? even the content is already worse, and even worse on the subs that have the new Reddit tipping system… why stay?
"How Reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history - The Verge"
Meanwhile #RedditMigration is still happening and there are more groups added to the #Fediverse by the day. #Malaysia even has a #Lemmy instance & members are really happy to be there. i suspect this is repeated everywhere in the Fediverse right now.
Honestly, I suspected they would never change the #Reddit CEO's mind.
But they sure made themselves heard on the way out 😏
Apart from running it well and keeping up to date (recent update seems to have gone well, with a nice example of instances and admins helping each other!?), some redditers seek the big instances?? Curious how communities will adapt.
Since the lemmy issue is getting overrun with people talking about other proposals, I'm thinking about submitting this as a #FEP. Is that still a useful process? I don't know how many projects look to FEPs for implementation guidance.
My #redditmigration has gone great! I am using the #kbin client, but also following a ton of threads (subreddits) on #lemmy. It works so much better than I expected and is already workable to replace Reddit. I think things will only get better as the #threadiverse grows and more esoteric/niche areas get populated.
Reddit was my last corporate social media holdout, and I am glad the company inspired me to finally jump ship with bad corpo behavior!
Two reasons the ongoing Reddit protests are important:
the protests keep the pressure on reddit and can lead to ongoing news coverage (which also keeps the pressure on reddit) . Otherwise, reddit will be able to spin the narrative "see? we told you it would just blow over and it did"
kbin, Lemmy, and other alternatives aren't yet at the point where they're ready for millions of redditors. For example, the modCoord post makes the important point that a lot of reddit's moderation functionality isn't accessible ... but almost none of this functionality even exists yet on kbin and Lemmy. So most people aren't going to leave yet.
Don't get me wrong, leaving now is also a good option if you can find what you want elsewhere! But not everybody's there yet.
With the #redditMigration, I've been looking around for a way to self host my own #lemmy or #kbin instance, and just like with #Mastodon, the instructions and requirements are prohibitive.
There's no Docker container, official or otherwise
No Docker compose file, let alone a helm chart
There are instead long, painful instructions on how to self-host on a bare metal instance you have to maintain manually, like it's 2003.
We talk a lot about #Lemmy, but has anyone heard of #Aether? Just found it on @privacytools. I just want to know if anyone has used it and what their experience was like.
It appears that it is peer-to-peer but uses its own protocol unfortunately and not #ActivityPub.
RTR#30 Monthly Recap and Planned Next Steps (kbin.social) en
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...
Reddit is ending Reddit Gold and users are furious (mashable.com) en
The website has been knocking it out of the park for popular decisions lately /s...
Call to action - renewed protests starting on July 1st (reddit.com)
The latest from /r/ModCoord.