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That's one nice thing about Hubzilla: You can customise the UI apart from theming. You can completely change the layout. (Not sure if you can do that with Saiwal's themes, but you can with Redbasic.)
By default, a new channel has barely got any icons in the navbar and not even that many in the app menu. The right-hand end of the navbar of a new channel only contains icons for search, HQ, help and the app menu. You can configure under Apps which icons shall appear where. Star them, and they're in the menu. Pin them, and they're on the navbar.
In fact, whereas (I think) Friendica has all its features on all the time, Hubzilla is very modular. Many of its features are optional and off by default they're called "apps". If you don't need it, don't activate it, and you won't have UI elements for it.
Even the various pages can be rearranged in the PDL editor. You don't need something, throw it out. You only need one sidebar, choose a layout with only one sidebar instead of both. You can do without any sidebars, pick a layout without sidebars.
Saiwal's theme previews have to show what can be done with them. Hence, a lot of UI elements are in place that either can be configured away or have to be configured into place in the first place.
For example, if you look at the AdminLTE preview: You only have to pin the apps that you need all the time. If you want to, you can unpin them all, and they're gone. But then you'll have to go via the Featured Apps menu to get to them. You can slim that down as well, but then you have to open the Apps page to get to them.
The entire wide dark navigation bar on the left can be folded in if you don't need it. Fold it out when you need it.
Main Navigation looks like a homebrew element that doesn't necessarily have to be default. The Archives field can be configured away or has to be configured into place.
The buttons below the posts can't be reduced that much. The speech bubble unfolds the comments. Then come thumb up and (optional, off-by-default) thumb down. Next comes repeat (= share on Friendica). The smiley is for replying with nothing but one emoticon I think this is actually an optional feature, too.
Now, when I look at the Solidified preview: Almost every other button on the left-hand bar is for an app that isn't even activated by default. Most of the rest are for features that are available right away, but their buttons usually aren't.
Most of what's on the right was probably configured in for the showcase. Even if it's there by default, it can be removed.
The centre only seems cluttered because the posts are arranged across three columns instead of all in one. Even there you can choose how to arrange the posts.
Have you taken a look at yet
It was created by the same guy as Friendica, and it's a descendent of Friendica. (Forked to Free-Friendika, then forked to Red, both in 2011, then largely rewritten against a brand-new protocol in 2012, then renamed Red Matrix, then greatly expanded in features and renamed Hubzilla in 2015.)
One could say it's Friendica
It does not provide any previews for links, though I'm sure something like this can be developed as a third-party addon.
If you want to try it, it's quite tricky to find a good hub with 3rd-party themes installed to start on. There aren't any in North America don't go looking for them.
You may want to get in touch with pepe about joining his hub. It's well-equipped, it's well-maintained, but keep in mind it's in Europe.
If you find Hubzilla to your liking, and you want to have your own hub hosted, . Pick one you like, set up your own hub, activate the add-ons you need, install the third-party themes and add-ons you need, get it to run properly, and then clone your daily-driver production channel over from Whoville. Make the instance on your own hub the main one, and keep the one at Whoville as a clone in case your hoster is offline, or something else is wrong with your hub.
I could come up with a bunch of conspiracy theories for this behaviour.
Enforcement of Mastodon dominance.
A front against Mike Macgirvin, inventor of the most "disruptive" Fediverse software from a Mastodon point of view, as well as all his creations and inventions.
Forcing a grass-roots development under corporate control and eradicating the grass-roots part. Essentially "embrace-extend-extinguish", but trying desperately to speed-run the "embrace" and "extend" parts to cut to the "extinguish" part as quickly as possible.
The only way this could possibly fail is if Mastodon decided not to play along because more people consider Mastodon the ActivityPub reference implementation and Fediverse gold standard than not.
Write your image descriptions 100% by hand, full stop.
For starters, AI descriptions are bad. AIs hallucinate. AIs misidentify stuff if they don't know it. AIs don't mention stuff at all if they don't know it.
Besides, AIs can only generate generic image descriptions. They don't know the context. They describe stuff that doesn't matter for anyone. They completely omit stuff that does matter because they don't know that it matters. Only you yourself can individually tailor image descriptions to the context of the post.
First of all, Mastodon offers you 1,500 characters per alt-text. Not 10,000.
Otherwise, no. No, you absolutely shouldn't.
It isn't uncommon among Mastodon users to say, "Okay, we've only got 500 characters in our toots which we also need for mentions and hashtags and even CWs. But we've got 1,500 characters per alt-text! So let's use the alt-texts to expand our character limits!"
What next to nobody on Mastodon knows: Not everyone can access alt-text. There are people who can't, and for whom everything only written in alt-text is lost forever.
Accessing alt-text either requires a screen reader or at least one hand that's working properly enough. You have to hold a phone, or you have to click something, or you have to hover a mouse cursor over the image.
But there are people who are sighted enough that they don't need a screen reader, so they don't have one. At the same time, however, they don't have any sufficiently working hands. Or they don't have hands at all because both their hands were amputated after some accident.
And yet, they can operate a computer. They control it entirely by keyboard. With a headpointer, if need be (a pen strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys, one by one).
If you write something into the alt-text and only into the alt-text, none of these people will ever be able to read it.
If you really need more characters, then you've got two options.
If you absolutely must stay on Mastodon (because you like the UI, or because you're on an iPhone, and you absolutely must use your favourite Mastodon phone app), you can ask around for servers with a higher character limit.
If you only want to stay in the Fediverse and connected to Mastodon users, and it doesn't have to be Mastodon, but you don't want to go through the hassle of looking for servers with over 500 characters, you can move to, for example
When I read the Bonfire suggestion, I was about to suggest Hubzilla, the most powerful Fediverse server application.
In case you don't know it: It basically evolved in 2015 from a fork of a Friendica fork, and it was created by Friendica's inventor. It probably has one of the best user documentations in the Fediverse, but it also has quite a steep learning curve, and newly created channels require quite a bit of configuration before you can really use them.
The same guy still maintains two more recent members of the same software family, (streams) from 2021 and Forte from 2024. They aren't quite as blistering with features as Hubzilla (they lack all the CMS stuff: articles, cards, wikis, webpages), and they don't offer nearly as many connection options as Friendica and Hubzilla.
Although they're still somehow complex, and although they don't have much of a user documentation, I dare say they're easier to get into because they don't require quite as much undocumented initial configuration after creating a channel.
All three offer groups (Hubzilla calls them "forums"), but no subforums. Whereas Friendica groups can only be co-administered by someone on the same server, groups/forums on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can be co-administered by anyone on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte.
However, there aren't any phone apps for them. They can be installed as progressive Web apps, though, and their Web UIs transform into mobile mode quite well AFAIK.
And that's the issue. It has to work with languages switching not only mid-text, but mid-sentence, like so (taken from a very old image description of mine):
Granted, I wouldn't put something this long into the alt-text. But I can't exclude someone being in a situation in which a text transcript that'll go into the alt-text causes the language to switch mid-sentence.
And that's the issue. It has to work with languages switching not only mid-text, but mid-sentence, like so (taken from a very old image description of mine):
Granted, I wouldn't put something this long into the alt-text. But I can't exclude someone being in a situation in which a text transcript that'll go into the alt-text causes the language to switch mid-sentence.
Come to think of it, ideally, I'd provide individual image descriptions with text transcripts in all languages that appear in the image myself.
This way, if I have a sign in French, English and German, I can add a verbatim transcript of the French text to the French description, a verbatim transcript of the English text to the English description and a verbatim transcript of the German text to the German description.
If I only provided an English description, and if I only gave translations of the French and German parts of the sign, neither French nor German readers would have a verbatim transcript of anything in the sign. French readers, for example, would get a French machine translation of my English translation of the French text instead of getting the French text itself as a verbatim transcript.
Come to think of it, ideally, I'd provide individual image descriptions with text transcripts in all languages that appear in the image myself.
This way, if I have a sign in French, English and German, I can add a verbatim transcript of the French text to the French description, a verbatim transcript of the English text to the English description and a verbatim transcript of the German text to the German description.
If I only provided an English description, and if I only gave translations of the French and German parts of the sign, neither French nor German readers would have a verbatim transcript of anything in the sign. French readers, for example, would get a French machine translation of my English translation of the French text instead of getting the French text itself as a verbatim transcript.
To be honest, what I had in mind wasn't screenshots of text although describing screenshots of foreign-language text can be tricky itself.
Here are some snippets from my first long image description. It's outdated in a way, but it provides good examples. And this image description did go into the message text (with an additional, shorter description in the alt-text).
To my best knowledge, there's no way a screen reader can switch from English to German, to English, to German, to English within one sentence. Or from English to German, to French, back to English, again, within one sentence.
Or how about these two sentences from another, even longer image description
The screen reader would have to switch from English to Latin, back to English, mid-sentence, not to mention that the screen reader would have to know how to properly pronounce a dead language.
To be honest, what I had in mind wasn't screenshots of text although describing screenshots of foreign-language text can be tricky itself.
Here are some snippets from my first long image description. It's outdated in a way, but it provides good examples. And this image description did go into the message text (with an additional, shorter description in the alt-text).
To my best knowledge, there's no way a screen reader can switch from English to German, to English, to German, to English within one sentence. Or from English to German, to French, back to English, again, within one sentence.
Or how about these two sentences from another, even longer image description
The screen reader would have to switch from English to Latin, back to English, mid-sentence, not to mention that the screen reader would have to know how to properly pronounce a dead language.
I'm pretty sure that posting this will turn out completely futile. But I'll try anyway.
I'm especially asking the Mastodon alt-text enforcers: How must foreign-language text be transcribed, both by Web accessibility standards and by Mastodon's alt-text standards
Let's assume I have some text in an image that's in a different language than the post and therefore in a different language than the image description. But I still have to transcribe it.
Now, according to image-describing rules, text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim. Word by word, character by character, exactly identical to the original in the image.
Here's the catch: Screen reader software may not be able to reliably switch the language in which they read out text in the middle of a description. They definitely cannot switch the language in the middle of an alt-text, I know that, just like they cannot navigate within alt-text.
This means that if I describe an image in English, but there's French text somewhere, a screen reader may read it out as gobbledygook instead of proper French. It may read the French text like it's English.
But even if the screen reader did read out the French text in proper French, someone who doesn't understand French won't understand the text.
This leaves me with two options:
The latter option would produce weird results if applied to a sign with essentially the same text in French, English and German where the French and German texts translate into something that slightly differs from both each other and the English text. I've happened upon this before.
I'm pretty sure that posting this will turn out completely futile. But I'll try anyway.
I'm especially asking the Mastodon alt-text enforcers: How must foreign-language text be transcribed, both by Web accessibility standards and by Mastodon's alt-text standards
Let's assume I have some text in an image that's in a different language than the post and therefore in a different language than the image description. But I still have to transcribe it.
Now, according to image-describing rules, text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim. Word by word, character by character, exactly identical to the original in the image.
Here's the catch: Screen reader software may not be able to reliably switch the language in which they read out text in the middle of a description. They definitely cannot switch the language in the middle of an alt-text, I know that, just like they cannot navigate within alt-text.
This means that if I describe an image in English, but there's French text somewhere, a screen reader may read it out as gobbledygook instead of proper French. It may read the French text like it's English.
But even if the screen reader did read out the French text in proper French, someone who doesn't understand French won't understand the text.
This leaves me with two options:
The latter option would produce weird results if applied to a sign with essentially the same text in French, English and German where the French and German texts translate into something that slightly differs from both each other and the English text. I've happened upon this before.
Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept
For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. , and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.
Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.
If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.
This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.
Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.
After all, I'm working on with . I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.
I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)
A few goodies:
This would actually be quite counter-productive if it was hard-coded, especially on Mastodon.
See, the Fediverse can create content that Mastodon can't even properly display. Or rather, stubbornly refuses to display because of its self-imposed limitations.
Commercial news platforms like Ghost and Flipboard, specialised long-form blogging applications like WordPress, WriteFreely and Plume, the "Facebook-style social networking" side in the shape of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, they can all send messages into the Fediverse that make use of all formatting tricks in the HTML book and then some. But if Mastodon, with whichever frontend, were to display them, it would often completely and utterly deface them.
Mastodon has no support for titles, at least not in messages which it actually displays. It pretends they don't exist.
Mastodon has no support for ordered lists with numbers or letters. It changes them into bullet-point lists.
Mastodon has no support for tables, for horizontal rules, for text colours, for text sizes except in headlines etc. It "sanitises" them into plain, unformatted text entirely.
Most importantly, Mastodon has no support for embedded images and for more than four images in one message.
For example, let's assume someone writes a beautiful travel blog post on WordPress with the ActivityPub add-on activated. The post has ten images embedded between paragraphs with the paragraphs referencing the images.
If Mastodon tried to render this blog post, it would rip all images out of the text where they should be embedded. If you're lucky, it would hang four of these images up underneath the post and silently discard the other six so you'll never know they exist. If you're unlucky, Mastodon would silently discard all ten images.
This, by the way, is the very reason that it's good that Mastodon usually "displays" such posts with their title, their summary and a link to the original that'll open at its source in your Web browser. It'll allow you to see the post as it was intended by the author. Mastodon itself won't.
At the very least, the links in such Mastodon-generated "previews" must continue to lead to their sources and open in a Web browser. The very reason why these "previews" exist is so that Mastodon can keep clinging to its purist microblogging principles while at the same time not defacing the posts which are "previewed" with links.
Also, there must always remain the option to look at messages at their source, and be it stashed away in a menu.
If you want all of this to disappear just so that phone users are spared from their browsers ever popping up whenever they tap something in their Mastodon apps, then you'll deprive the Mastodon users of any way of seeing anything in the Fediverse without Mastodon's limitations.
Long
If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.
And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.
Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.
But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.
If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.
I've just discovered a certain Mastodon account that seems to automatically post images of Second Life avatars. It can be lucky to only have eight followers, one of them being a search engine, the others being Second Life users.
If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.
And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.
Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.
But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.
If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.
I don't want to alarm you, but:
Friendica ( ) has introduced full-text search to what would become the Fediverse as early as May, 2010.
Hubzilla ( ) inherited this feature from Friendica. Hubzilla first came out in March, 2015.
For reference: Mastodon first came out in January, 2016. It immediately federated with Friendica and Hubzilla. In case you don't believe this: Take a look at my profile on its home server. Does that look like Mastodon
The Fediverse has full-text search right now, and it has had full-text search for five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. This is the status quo.
If you want your content to be private, don't make it public in the first place.
No enclosed threaded conversations. Very limited HTML rendering. No formatting the text of your own messages. No emoji reactions. No images embedded in messages. No more than four images dangling below a message as file attachments.
If anything, someone who is not a Mastodon dev and not even daily-driving Mastodon should soft-fork Mastodon's Web UI and modify it so that it can adjust to the backend and offer all the features of the backend.
If you use it with snac2, you have the full set of snac2's features available.
If you use it with Akkoma, you have the full set of Akkoma's features available.
If you somehow manage to use it with Friendica, you have the full set of Friendica's features available.
Maybe there could be some options in the configuration that can (but don't by default) limit certain features to Mastodon's standard for those who really need the Mastodon UX with a non-Mastodon backend.
Da stehen eigentlich nur solche, die entweder versucht haben, mir gegenber ihre Mastodon-Zentrizitt und ihre Mastodon-Kulturnormen gewaltsam durchzusetzen, oder mich geblockt haben, weil sie genau daran gescheitert sind.
Ansonsten verbinde ich mich kurz mit ihnen, um ihre Folgeanfrage zu besttigen, aber schon mit limiterten Berechtigungen und aktivem Filter, und lsche die Verbindung gleich wieder. Folgen tun sie mir dann ja weiterhin.
Oder wenn ich mit ihnen verbunden bleiben mu, gibt's eben gewisse Berechtigungen nicht, oder ich filtere gnadenlos alles raus, was mich nicht interessiert.
Das kann jede Menge Grnde haben.
Ernsthaft: Wenn du dich im Fediverse nicht absolut wie ein typischer Mastodon-User verhltst und auch dein Profil nicht so auslegst, da es auf Mastodon wie ein Mastodon-Profil aussieht, dann wirst du gleich massenhaft geblockt.
Moment, mal langsam.
Es drfen nie Informationen ausschlielich im Alt-Text verfgbar sein! Keine Erklrungen und auch sonst nichts.
Alles an schriftlichen Informationen, was fr sehende Menschen nicht aus dem Bild direkt ersichtlich ist, gehrt in den Beitragstext.
Der Grund ist: Es gibt Menschen, die an Alt-Texte nicht herankommen.
Man braucht ja, um an einen Alt-Text heranzukommen, einen Touchscreen oder so etwas wie eine Maus. Manche Menschen knnen aber aufgrund krperlicher Behinderungen beides nur schlecht oder gar nicht bedienen, z. B., weil sie einen sehr starken Tremor haben (Parkinson o. .) oder gleich berhaupt keine Hnde. Trotzdem knnen sie einen Computer bedienen. Aber sie knnen eben keine kleine "Alt"-Schaltflche klicken oder tippen und auch keinen Mauscursor auf ein Bild schieben und ihn da liegenlassen.
Andere haben selbstauferlegte technische Einschrnkungen. Manche Hardcore-Linux-Nutzer haben sich entschieden fr einen super-leichtgewichtigen, spartanischen Fenstermanager wie i3wm oder ratpoison, der aber keine Untersttzung fr eine Maus hat. Es drfte aber wohl kein Web-Frontend im Fediverse geben, wo man den Alt-Text eines Bildes mit einem Tastatur-Shortcut ffnen kann.
Was im Alt-Text steht, knnen diese Menschen nicht lesen, weil sie den Alt-Text gar nicht erst ffnen knnen. Das heit: Informationen, die nur im Alt-Text stehen, sind ihnen verwehrt.
Ich arbeite schon seit lngerem an einem Wiki zum Thema Bildbeschreibungen und Alt-Texte im Fediverse/fr das Fediverse. Es wird sehr umfangreich werden mit gut 30 Kriterien fr gute Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen.
Allerdings ist das Wiki auf Englisch und noch ziemlich unfertig. Auf Deutsch kann ich es schon deshalb nicht schreiben, weil die ber 50 Referenzen, die ich dafr verwende, auch alle auf Englisch sind und es keine deutschsprachigen Pendants dazu mit denselben Informationen gibt.
Bei einigen Punkten wei ich selbst noch gar nicht, was ich da schreiben soll. Da widersprechen sich die Anforderungen auch schon mal (z. B. Texte mssen immer Zeichen fr Zeichen exakt originalgetreu transkribiert werden vs. barrierefreie Handhabung von komplett oder in Teilen fremdsprachigen Texten).
Vielleicht knnte auch etwas verwirrend sein, da ich zwischen "Alt-Text" und "Bildbeschreibung" unterscheide. Aber das ist tatschlich nicht dasselbe, was auch im Wiki erklrt ist. Also behandle ich es getrennt.
Auerdem ist das Wiki nicht nur auf Mastodon zugeschnitten. Vor allem wird es keine Schritt-fr-Schritt-Anleitungen fr die Mastodon-Weboberflche (oder irgendwelche anderen Weboberflchen) und fr Mastodon-Apps geben. Der eine oder andere Tip wird sogar auf Mastodon schwierig bis gar nicht umsetzbar sein.
Falls dich das Wiki trotzdem interessiert: Es ist Teil des Hubzilla-Kanals, von dem ich gerade antworte.
Friendica if you're looking for something that isn't that overwhelming, if you're looking for something with native Android apps available (don't ask for iOS apps for anything here), and if you can live without features like polls or nomadic identity.
Hubzilla if you think you can tackle a steep learning curve with some help from a very good user documentation and a helpful community, if you want Facebook with a side of optional CMS and/or groupware features, if you need nomadic identity to make your channel(s) resilient against server issues and shutdowns, and if you don't mind using the Web interface on a phone.
(streams) and Forte if you need something that's a bit more fit for today's Fediverse, if you need something nomadic without Hubzilla's extra features, if you don't mind using the Web interface on a phone, and if you're willing to wait for more public servers or willing to run one yourself.
I have a number of comparison tables that include Mastodon as well.
What I don't like about this draft is that it communicates the existence of exactly four alternatives, two to WhatsApp and Telegram, one to Instagram and, I guess, one to literally everything else.
Oh, and by the way, no, Mastodon is not a good alternative to Facebook. There are dedicated Facebook alternatives in the Fediverse that are much closer to Facebook in functionality than Mastodon right now.
This does not entirely apply to the whole Fediverse. To most of the Fediverse, including Mastodon, but not to all of it.
Some server applications offer something called nomadic identity (). Your identity is defined by one server, but it is not permanently stuck to that server. And all your stuff can not only be moved around from server to server, but even exist on multiple servers simultaneously, constantly kept in sync with each other.
This isn't even new. It was first introduced on a fork of a Friendica fork named Red in 2012. Four Fediverse server applications offer it now:
There's also Mitra that uses a special client, Mini Mitra, to establish nomadic identity on the client side.
Nomadic identity goes way beyond what the ATmosphere promises. The ATmosphere does not give you the option to clone your identity between independent relay/AppView stacks. If you're on bsky.app, and bsky.app is down, you have nothing, and you can't do anything to mitigate this. This Hubzilla channel is cloned between two servers. If one goes down, I still have the other one.
This can't work, and for one particular reason. And you should actually know this reason after eight years in the Fediverse:
The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It's far from being only Mastodon.
It isn't 10,000 servers running one application. It's 40,000+ servers running over 150 different applications. And I'm not talking about Mastodon and otherwise Mastodon forks either.
From your words, I can clearly see that you want the whole Fediverse to be moderated by Mastodon standards.
But then you have Mastodon mods who are "based and Mastodon-pilled", and for whom the Fediverse either is or shall be only Mastodon. These mods moderate Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte servers by Mastodon's standards. Which, by the way, not only clash with the culture on these servers, but even with the technology on these servers. Friendica works a whole lot differently from Mastodon Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte even more so.
Oh, and especially Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte don't even have the concept of moderators. I'm absolutely serious here. They don't have Mastodon's concept of reports. Why not Because they're geared towards self-moderation. Everyone is given the power to moderate their own channels. Unimaginable on Mastodon, also because this involves technologies and features that are unimaginable on Mastodon such as the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse. Mastodon's culture is about being pampered and coddled. The culture on these three is about self-defence.
Also: You can't force Mastodon-style Mastodon moderation upon a (streams) server. You can try. But you won't succeed. The server admin won't let you. Again, I'm dead-serious here.
Unlike on Mastodon, a (streams) admin has various counter-measures available to get rid of your Mastodon mod.
Stuff like this, by the way, Mastodon forcing its culture upon the non-Mastodon Fediverse, is the very reason why (streams) and Forte have built-in ways to defend themselves against Mastodon. And this is one reason why Hubzilla sticks to ActivityPub being optional on each channel.
Back to the Mastodon mods. They'll probably only know Mastodon. More importantly, they probably won't know anything about groups. They'll probably think the Fediverse doesn't even have groups. They'll only know users following other users.
And then they'll have to moderate on Lemmy. They'll have to moderate a group. Something they didn't even expect to exist. In a place where users can't follow other users, only subscribe to groups, because it's essentially a Reddit clone.
Worse yet, they'll have to moderate a Lemmy community with 10,000 members. All of whom are former Redditors. All of whom live by a culture that's directly derived from Reddit with no influence from Twitter or Mastodon at all. None of whom have ever been on Twitter or Mastodon. Almost none of whom even know that Mastodon exists. And many of whom have their experiences with power-tripping Lemmy moderators, so if you think they're easy to rein in with a culture that isn't theirs, you're very wrong.
(Greetings from Hubzilla.)
I guess that, more often than not, the only new developments that are widely welcome are those that happen on Mastodon, that still don't make Mastodon feel different, and that don't introduce features to Mastodon that are (considered) bad on .
This alone is the reason why many Mastodon admins hold on to older Mastodon versions for their dear lives: They want to boycott new Mastodon features which they don't like, but they don't have what it takes to soft-fork or even only hard-fork Mastodon and remove the new features.
Now, when it comes to developments in the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, they tend to be even more nerve-grating for Mastodon users because they often aren't in line with Mastodon and its culture at all. That is, many Mastodon users don't even notice that these features exist unless these features directly hit their timeline. But once they do, they're considered bad new developments even though they've actually been around for much longer than Mastodon itself.
For example, quote-posts and full-text search. Mastodon users tend to be staunchly against both because they're used to harass and dogpile minorities on . If at all, they're only okay with these if they come with an opt-in, and/or if server admins can turn them off entirely.
If only they knew that Friendica has had both since May, 2010, five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. That Friendica has been search-indexing and able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's very launch. I guess they'd demand the immediate destruction of Friendica or at least its complete and permanent defederation.
By default, a new channel has barely got any icons in the navbar and not even that many in the app menu. The right-hand end of the navbar of a new channel only contains icons for search, HQ, help and the app menu. You can configure under Apps which icons shall appear where. Star them, and they're in the menu. Pin them, and they're on the navbar.
In fact, whereas (I think) Friendica has all its features on all the time, Hubzilla is very modular. Many of its features are optional and off by default they're called "apps". If you don't need it, don't activate it, and you won't have UI elements for it.
Even the various pages can be rearranged in the PDL editor. You don't need something, throw it out. You only need one sidebar, choose a layout with only one sidebar instead of both. You can do without any sidebars, pick a layout without sidebars.
Saiwal's theme previews have to show what can be done with them. Hence, a lot of UI elements are in place that either can be configured away or have to be configured into place in the first place.
For example, if you look at the AdminLTE preview: You only have to pin the apps that you need all the time. If you want to, you can unpin them all, and they're gone. But then you'll have to go via the Featured Apps menu to get to them. You can slim that down as well, but then you have to open the Apps page to get to them.
The entire wide dark navigation bar on the left can be folded in if you don't need it. Fold it out when you need it.
Main Navigation looks like a homebrew element that doesn't necessarily have to be default. The Archives field can be configured away or has to be configured into place.
The buttons below the posts can't be reduced that much. The speech bubble unfolds the comments. Then come thumb up and (optional, off-by-default) thumb down. Next comes repeat (= share on Friendica). The smiley is for replying with nothing but one emoticon I think this is actually an optional feature, too.
Now, when I look at the Solidified preview: Almost every other button on the left-hand bar is for an app that isn't even activated by default. Most of the rest are for features that are available right away, but their buttons usually aren't.
Most of what's on the right was probably configured in for the showcase. Even if it's there by default, it can be removed.
The centre only seems cluttered because the posts are arranged across three columns instead of all in one. Even there you can choose how to arrange the posts.
Have you taken a look at yet
It was created by the same guy as Friendica, and it's a descendent of Friendica. (Forked to Free-Friendika, then forked to Red, both in 2011, then largely rewritten against a brand-new protocol in 2012, then renamed Red Matrix, then greatly expanded in features and renamed Hubzilla in 2015.)
One could say it's Friendica
- entirely running on its own protocol, Zot6
- with that makes it possible to clone your channel across multiple servers and making it resilient against server outage
- with multiple channel (identities, like complete Friendica accounts, but without separate logins) on one account/login, and you can switch between them without logging out and back in again (all with multiple profiles like on Friendica)
- without Bluesky integration
- with less pandering to Mastodon
- with an even better permissions system
- with full (client-side and server-side) OpenWebAuth support
- with polls
- with WebDAV access to your file space
- with a built-in CalDAV calendar server
- with an optional built-in CardDAV addressbook server
- with optional articles, planning cards, wikis and webpages
- with a very extensive, detailed and well-written built-in help system
- with the ability to integrate git repositories with 3rd-party add-ons and themes that can even be upgraded with shell scripts as easily as the whole hub
- with 3rd-party themes available that change the entire UI and UX instead of reskinning the existing UI, especially the by
It does not provide any previews for links, though I'm sure something like this can be developed as a third-party addon.
If you want to try it, it's quite tricky to find a good hub with 3rd-party themes installed to start on. There aren't any in North America don't go looking for them.
You may want to get in touch with pepe about joining his hub. It's well-equipped, it's well-maintained, but keep in mind it's in Europe.
If you find Hubzilla to your liking, and you want to have your own hub hosted, . Pick one you like, set up your own hub, activate the add-ons you need, install the third-party themes and add-ons you need, get it to run properly, and then clone your daily-driver production channel over from Whoville. Make the instance on your own hub the main one, and keep the one at Whoville as a clone in case your hoster is offline, or something else is wrong with your hub.
I could come up with a bunch of conspiracy theories for this behaviour.
Enforcement of Mastodon dominance.
A front against Mike Macgirvin, inventor of the most "disruptive" Fediverse software from a Mastodon point of view, as well as all his creations and inventions.
Forcing a grass-roots development under corporate control and eradicating the grass-roots part. Essentially "embrace-extend-extinguish", but trying desperately to speed-run the "embrace" and "extend" parts to cut to the "extinguish" part as quickly as possible.
The only way this could possibly fail is if Mastodon decided not to play along because more people consider Mastodon the ActivityPub reference implementation and Fediverse gold standard than not.
Write your image descriptions 100% by hand, full stop.
For starters, AI descriptions are bad. AIs hallucinate. AIs misidentify stuff if they don't know it. AIs don't mention stuff at all if they don't know it.
Besides, AIs can only generate generic image descriptions. They don't know the context. They describe stuff that doesn't matter for anyone. They completely omit stuff that does matter because they don't know that it matters. Only you yourself can individually tailor image descriptions to the context of the post.
First of all, Mastodon offers you 1,500 characters per alt-text. Not 10,000.
Otherwise, no. No, you absolutely shouldn't.
It isn't uncommon among Mastodon users to say, "Okay, we've only got 500 characters in our toots which we also need for mentions and hashtags and even CWs. But we've got 1,500 characters per alt-text! So let's use the alt-texts to expand our character limits!"
What next to nobody on Mastodon knows: Not everyone can access alt-text. There are people who can't, and for whom everything only written in alt-text is lost forever.
Accessing alt-text either requires a screen reader or at least one hand that's working properly enough. You have to hold a phone, or you have to click something, or you have to hover a mouse cursor over the image.
But there are people who are sighted enough that they don't need a screen reader, so they don't have one. At the same time, however, they don't have any sufficiently working hands. Or they don't have hands at all because both their hands were amputated after some accident.
And yet, they can operate a computer. They control it entirely by keyboard. With a headpointer, if need be (a pen strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys, one by one).
If you write something into the alt-text and only into the alt-text, none of these people will ever be able to read it.
If you really need more characters, then you've got two options.
If you absolutely must stay on Mastodon (because you like the UI, or because you're on an iPhone, and you absolutely must use your favourite Mastodon phone app), you can ask around for servers with a higher character limit.
If you only want to stay in the Fediverse and connected to Mastodon users, and it doesn't have to be Mastodon, but you don't want to go through the hassle of looking for servers with over 500 characters, you can move to, for example
- Akkoma (5,000 characters can be configured by the admin, so the actual limit may be higher)
- Misskey (3,000 characters hard-coded)
- Sharkey or CherryPick (3,000 characters can be configured by the admin, so the actual limit may be higher)
- Friendica or Hubzilla (16,777,215 characters limited by the maximum size of the message text database field)
When I read the Bonfire suggestion, I was about to suggest Hubzilla, the most powerful Fediverse server application.
In case you don't know it: It basically evolved in 2015 from a fork of a Friendica fork, and it was created by Friendica's inventor. It probably has one of the best user documentations in the Fediverse, but it also has quite a steep learning curve, and newly created channels require quite a bit of configuration before you can really use them.
The same guy still maintains two more recent members of the same software family, (streams) from 2021 and Forte from 2024. They aren't quite as blistering with features as Hubzilla (they lack all the CMS stuff: articles, cards, wikis, webpages), and they don't offer nearly as many connection options as Friendica and Hubzilla.
Although they're still somehow complex, and although they don't have much of a user documentation, I dare say they're easier to get into because they don't require quite as much undocumented initial configuration after creating a channel.
All three offer groups (Hubzilla calls them "forums"), but no subforums. Whereas Friendica groups can only be co-administered by someone on the same server, groups/forums on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can be co-administered by anyone on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte.
However, there aren't any phone apps for them. They can be installed as progressive Web apps, though, and their Web UIs transform into mobile mode quite well AFAIK.
And that's the issue. It has to work with languages switching not only mid-text, but mid-sentence, like so (taken from a very old image description of mine):
The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".
Granted, I wouldn't put something this long into the alt-text. But I can't exclude someone being in a situation in which a text transcript that'll go into the alt-text causes the language to switch mid-sentence.
And that's the issue. It has to work with languages switching not only mid-text, but mid-sentence, like so (taken from a very old image description of mine):
The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".
Granted, I wouldn't put something this long into the alt-text. But I can't exclude someone being in a situation in which a text transcript that'll go into the alt-text causes the language to switch mid-sentence.
Come to think of it, ideally, I'd provide individual image descriptions with text transcripts in all languages that appear in the image myself.
This way, if I have a sign in French, English and German, I can add a verbatim transcript of the French text to the French description, a verbatim transcript of the English text to the English description and a verbatim transcript of the German text to the German description.
If I only provided an English description, and if I only gave translations of the French and German parts of the sign, neither French nor German readers would have a verbatim transcript of anything in the sign. French readers, for example, would get a French machine translation of my English translation of the French text instead of getting the French text itself as a verbatim transcript.
Come to think of it, ideally, I'd provide individual image descriptions with text transcripts in all languages that appear in the image myself.
This way, if I have a sign in French, English and German, I can add a verbatim transcript of the French text to the French description, a verbatim transcript of the English text to the English description and a verbatim transcript of the German text to the German description.
If I only provided an English description, and if I only gave translations of the French and German parts of the sign, neither French nor German readers would have a verbatim transcript of anything in the sign. French readers, for example, would get a French machine translation of my English translation of the French text instead of getting the French text itself as a verbatim transcript.
To be honest, what I had in mind wasn't screenshots of text although describing screenshots of foreign-language text can be tricky itself.
Here are some snippets from my first long image description. It's outdated in a way, but it provides good examples. And this image description did go into the message text (with an additional, shorter description in the alt-text).
On the ramp to the teleporter, there is a black sign that reads, "Wenn Durchgehen nicht klappt, Klicken Sie das Bild zum Teleportieren. When Walk-Through does not work, Click the Image to teleport."
The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".
To my best knowledge, there's no way a screen reader can switch from English to German, to English, to German, to English within one sentence. Or from English to German, to French, back to English, again, within one sentence.
Or how about these two sentences from another, even longer image description
At the bottom of this area, "Patefacio radix" is written in medium dark grey letters, in a wide sans-serif typeface and in what is likely to be small caps. It is Latin for "open source".
The screen reader would have to switch from English to Latin, back to English, mid-sentence, not to mention that the screen reader would have to know how to properly pronounce a dead language.
To be honest, what I had in mind wasn't screenshots of text although describing screenshots of foreign-language text can be tricky itself.
Here are some snippets from my first long image description. It's outdated in a way, but it provides good examples. And this image description did go into the message text (with an additional, shorter description in the alt-text).
On the ramp to the teleporter, there is a black sign that reads, "Wenn Durchgehen nicht klappt, Klicken Sie das Bild zum Teleportieren. When Walk-Through does not work, Click the Image to teleport."
The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".
To my best knowledge, there's no way a screen reader can switch from English to German, to English, to German, to English within one sentence. Or from English to German, to French, back to English, again, within one sentence.
Or how about these two sentences from another, even longer image description
At the bottom of this area, "Patefacio radix" is written in medium dark grey letters, in a wide sans-serif typeface and in what is likely to be small caps. It is Latin for "open source".
The screen reader would have to switch from English to Latin, back to English, mid-sentence, not to mention that the screen reader would have to know how to properly pronounce a dead language.
I'm pretty sure that posting this will turn out completely futile. But I'll try anyway.
I'm especially asking the Mastodon alt-text enforcers: How must foreign-language text be transcribed, both by Web accessibility standards and by Mastodon's alt-text standards
Let's assume I have some text in an image that's in a different language than the post and therefore in a different language than the image description. But I still have to transcribe it.
Now, according to image-describing rules, text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim. Word by word, character by character, exactly identical to the original in the image.
Here's the catch: Screen reader software may not be able to reliably switch the language in which they read out text in the middle of a description. They definitely cannot switch the language in the middle of an alt-text, I know that, just like they cannot navigate within alt-text.
This means that if I describe an image in English, but there's French text somewhere, a screen reader may read it out as gobbledygook instead of proper French. It may read the French text like it's English.
But even if the screen reader did read out the French text in proper French, someone who doesn't understand French won't understand the text.
This leaves me with two options:
- Transcribe the foreign-language text verbatim, add a translation afterwards.
This would make the foreign-language text understandable, but it would also produce gobbledygook. - Give a translated transcript of the foreign-language text that's as close to the original as possible.
No gobbledygook, but I'd break the rule of always transcribing text verbatim.
The latter option would produce weird results if applied to a sign with essentially the same text in French, English and German where the French and German texts translate into something that slightly differs from both each other and the English text. I've happened upon this before.
I'm pretty sure that posting this will turn out completely futile. But I'll try anyway.
I'm especially asking the Mastodon alt-text enforcers: How must foreign-language text be transcribed, both by Web accessibility standards and by Mastodon's alt-text standards
Let's assume I have some text in an image that's in a different language than the post and therefore in a different language than the image description. But I still have to transcribe it.
Now, according to image-describing rules, text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim. Word by word, character by character, exactly identical to the original in the image.
Here's the catch: Screen reader software may not be able to reliably switch the language in which they read out text in the middle of a description. They definitely cannot switch the language in the middle of an alt-text, I know that, just like they cannot navigate within alt-text.
This means that if I describe an image in English, but there's French text somewhere, a screen reader may read it out as gobbledygook instead of proper French. It may read the French text like it's English.
But even if the screen reader did read out the French text in proper French, someone who doesn't understand French won't understand the text.
This leaves me with two options:
- Transcribe the foreign-language text verbatim, add a translation afterwards.
This would make the foreign-language text understandable, but it would also produce gobbledygook. - Give a translated transcript of the foreign-language text that's as close to the original as possible.
No gobbledygook, but I'd break the rule of always transcribing text verbatim.
The latter option would produce weird results if applied to a sign with essentially the same text in French, English and German where the French and German texts translate into something that slightly differs from both each other and the English text. I've happened upon this before.
Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept
For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. , and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.
Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.
If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.
This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.
Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.
After all, I'm working on with . I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.
I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)
Longtemps couvert par une clause de confidentialit, laccord dachat sign entre et a t publi en septembre 2023, aprs une dcision de la Haute Cour obtenue par .
I've written an article with several feature comparison tables between- Mastodon
- Friendica
- Hubzilla (rebuilt from a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's creator)
- (streams) (fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla by the same creator)
- Forte (fork of the streams repository by still the same creator
A few goodies:
- Mastodon:
500 characters requires source code modifications to get more
Friendica:
16,777,215 characters - Friendica:
Can render and create the full gamut of HTML text formatting
Mastodon:
Can only create plain text can only render a small subset of HTML text formatting - Friendica:
Have as many images pro post as you want
Embed them within the text
Mastodon:
Limited to 4 images
Images can only be file attachments - Friendica:
Shows you all content in the Fediverse just like the author intended it
Mastodon:
"Sanitises" away half the formatting, all embedded images and all images except for the first four, just for the sake of purist microblogging - Mastodon:
Timeline consists of single messages with no context
Friendica:
Timeline consists of complete conversations, all the way back to the start post, with all branches (ignores and blocks notwithstanding) - Mastodon:
Conversations consist of toots and more toots, loosely strung together with mentions
Replies only reach those who are visibly mentioned
Friendica:
Conversations consist of exactly one post and otherwise comments
Replies go from the replier to the thread starter and from there to all participants in the conversation without having to mention anyone - Friendica:
Has groups built in (groups are accounts with special settings)
Mastodon:
Has no support for groups whatsoever, much less its own groups
Most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse has groups - Friendica:
Lets you federate with the whole Fediverse
Lets you federate with diaspora*
Lets you include and remote-control a Bluesky account
At least used to be able to do the same with a Tumblr account or a Twitter account
Lets you crosspost to Dreamwidth, Libertree, LiveJournal and XML-RPC-based blogs like WordPress
Mastodon:
Just barely so federates with the Fediverse
Tries to make everything that isn't Mastodon look broken
Would love for the Fediverse to be only Mastodon - Mastodon:
Makes the whole Fediverse look like Mastodon
Friendica:
Shows you which server software a message came from
This would actually be quite counter-productive if it was hard-coded, especially on Mastodon.
See, the Fediverse can create content that Mastodon can't even properly display. Or rather, stubbornly refuses to display because of its self-imposed limitations.
Commercial news platforms like Ghost and Flipboard, specialised long-form blogging applications like WordPress, WriteFreely and Plume, the "Facebook-style social networking" side in the shape of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, they can all send messages into the Fediverse that make use of all formatting tricks in the HTML book and then some. But if Mastodon, with whichever frontend, were to display them, it would often completely and utterly deface them.
Mastodon has no support for titles, at least not in messages which it actually displays. It pretends they don't exist.
Mastodon has no support for ordered lists with numbers or letters. It changes them into bullet-point lists.
Mastodon has no support for tables, for horizontal rules, for text colours, for text sizes except in headlines etc. It "sanitises" them into plain, unformatted text entirely.
Most importantly, Mastodon has no support for embedded images and for more than four images in one message.
For example, let's assume someone writes a beautiful travel blog post on WordPress with the ActivityPub add-on activated. The post has ten images embedded between paragraphs with the paragraphs referencing the images.
If Mastodon tried to render this blog post, it would rip all images out of the text where they should be embedded. If you're lucky, it would hang four of these images up underneath the post and silently discard the other six so you'll never know they exist. If you're unlucky, Mastodon would silently discard all ten images.
This, by the way, is the very reason that it's good that Mastodon usually "displays" such posts with their title, their summary and a link to the original that'll open at its source in your Web browser. It'll allow you to see the post as it was intended by the author. Mastodon itself won't.
At the very least, the links in such Mastodon-generated "previews" must continue to lead to their sources and open in a Web browser. The very reason why these "previews" exist is so that Mastodon can keep clinging to its purist microblogging principles while at the same time not defacing the posts which are "previewed" with links.
Also, there must always remain the option to look at messages at their source, and be it stashed away in a menu.
If you want all of this to disappear just so that phone users are spared from their browsers ever popping up whenever they tap something in their Mastodon apps, then you'll deprive the Mastodon users of any way of seeing anything in the Fediverse without Mastodon's limitations.
Long
Pour ce ciel (Supervielle)
Pour ce ciel encor vif de couleurs et de flchesO passent des oiseaux prisonniers d'un long jour,Pour ces doigts pntrs par l'ombre des caressesEt qu'un frisson du soir vient chercher par-dessous,Pour cet arbre si proche et qui dj ressemble de beaux souvenirs remuant dans leurs cendres,Pour la Terre profonde o nous sommes couchs,Pour ce miroir plaintif sous le ciel renvers.(Supervielle)LE FORAT INNOCENT1930Recueil: Oeuvres potiquesLES POEMES DE LHUMOUR TRISTE (Supervielle)
LES POEMES DE L'HUMOUR TRISTE moi-mme quand je serai posthume.Tu mourus de pansympathie,Une maligne maladie.Te voici couch sous l'herbette- Oui, pas de marbre, du gazon,Du simple gazon de saison,Quelques abeilles, pas d'Hymette.On dit que tout s'est bien passEt que te voil trpass ..Ces messieurs des Ombres FunbresVers le fond fumeux des tnbresTe guidrent d'un index srMais couronn d'un ongle impur.Et c'est ainsi que l'on vousDo vient cette immense douceur (Supervielle)
Illustration: David Caspar Friedrich D'o vient cette immense douceurQui m'enveloppe au crpuscule,Quand le chant des oiseaux reculeDevant le calme et la langueurDu crpuscule l'heure o le ciel plein d'amourVient bercer notre me trouble,A l'heure o s'arrte l'ide,L'heure mauve ou le ciel est lourdD'immense amour Quand l'eucalyptus long et sombrelve aux cieux son front sereinEt le calme dont il est plein,Quand merge du fond de I've just discovered a certain Mastodon account that seems to automatically post images of Second Life avatars. It can be lucky to only have eight followers, one of them being a search engine, the others being Second Life users.If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.
And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.
Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.
But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.
If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.
I've just discovered a certain Mastodon account that seems to automatically post images of Second Life avatars. It can be lucky to only have eight followers, one of them being a search engine, the others being Second Life users.
If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.
And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.
Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.
But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.
If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.
I don't want to alarm you, but:
Friendica ( ) has introduced full-text search to what would become the Fediverse as early as May, 2010.
Hubzilla ( ) inherited this feature from Friendica. Hubzilla first came out in March, 2015.
For reference: Mastodon first came out in January, 2016. It immediately federated with Friendica and Hubzilla. In case you don't believe this: Take a look at my profile on its home server. Does that look like Mastodon
The Fediverse has full-text search right now, and it has had full-text search for five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. This is the status quo.
If you want your content to be private, don't make it public in the first place.
PAUVRE PETIT TROTTIN (Supervielle)
PAUVRE PETIT TROTTINIl fait froid. L'ouvrire en la salle alourdie,Coud ternellement de sa tremblante main,Fatigue de souffrir, et, la journe finie,Elle a bien peu d'argent pour acheter son pain.Pauvre petit trottin !..Il fait nuit. L'ouvrire en la rue triste tousseRegagne son logis aprs un long chemin.Dans sa petite chambre elle s'endort enfinMais il y fait trop froid pour la rverie douce.Pauvre petit trottin !Enfin voil la grve. Hlas! c'estLOUBLI (Supervielle)
L'OUBLIChaque jour de mon cur emporte quelque chose,Une fleur d'autrefois ou un rve d'antanEt je voudrais chasser cet oubli qui s'impose,Mais je m'en aperois alors qu'il n'est plus temps.L'oubli, l'affreux oubli, m'engloutit dans le vide,Il tue mes passions, mes rves, mes amours,Quand je veux retrouver le pass des beaux jours,Je revois sa place un squelette rigide.Chaque jour de mon coeur emporte quelque chose.Je croyais y avoir deux tristes yeuxSOUVENIR (Supervielle)
Illustration: Edward John Poynter SOUVENIR Mademoiselle A. O.Les doux soirs de printemps que je passais prs d'elleOnt laiss dans mon me un radieux azur,S'largissant toujours et s'ouvrant comme l'aileD'un grand aigle planant calme dans le ciel pur.Les brises, doucement, passaient chaudes et lentes,Des tideurs parfumes erraient vagues dans l'air,Les fleurs exhalaient des longues senteurs aimantes,Qui montaient et mouraient comme l'eau de la mer.Les ...which, unfortunately, would limit the features of the backend to what Mastodon itself can do. Because nothing else is implemented in the frontend.No enclosed threaded conversations. Very limited HTML rendering. No formatting the text of your own messages. No emoji reactions. No images embedded in messages. No more than four images dangling below a message as file attachments.
If anything, someone who is not a Mastodon dev and not even daily-driving Mastodon should soft-fork Mastodon's Web UI and modify it so that it can adjust to the backend and offer all the features of the backend.
If you use it with snac2, you have the full set of snac2's features available.
If you use it with Akkoma, you have the full set of Akkoma's features available.
If you somehow manage to use it with Friendica, you have the full set of Friendica's features available.
Maybe there could be some options in the configuration that can (but don't by default) limit certain features to Mastodon's standard for those who really need the Mastodon UX with a non-Mastodon backend.
Just uploaded this cut. Raining to Second Song by Neil Young The Chrome Hearts. A very expressive tune. Time to rock. Check it out:
Fr mich wre es Overkill, jeden, der sich mit mir verbinden will, wo mir aber irgendwas nicht pat, sofort in Superblock einzutragen.Da stehen eigentlich nur solche, die entweder versucht haben, mir gegenber ihre Mastodon-Zentrizitt und ihre Mastodon-Kulturnormen gewaltsam durchzusetzen, oder mich geblockt haben, weil sie genau daran gescheitert sind.
Ansonsten verbinde ich mich kurz mit ihnen, um ihre Folgeanfrage zu besttigen, aber schon mit limiterten Berechtigungen und aktivem Filter, und lsche die Verbindung gleich wieder. Folgen tun sie mir dann ja weiterhin.
Oder wenn ich mit ihnen verbunden bleiben mu, gibt's eben gewisse Berechtigungen nicht, oder ich filtere gnadenlos alles raus, was mich nicht interessiert.
Das kann jede Menge Grnde haben.
- Dein Profiltext ist fr Mastodon-Verhltnisse unnatrlich lang.
- Dito, aber das Mastodon-Webinterface (da solche Leute sich dein Profil auf Friendica angucken, ist sehr unwahrscheinlich) hat deinen Profiltext kurzgehackt. Doof. Block.
- Dein Profiltext zeigt nicht die mastodontypische Freundlichkeit und auch keine mastodontypische Unfreundlichkeit.
- Du hast tatschlich in deinem Profil keine Felder ausgefllt, die Mastodon bernimmt. Fr denjenigen hattest du also bis auf das Bild ein Blankoprofil.
- Derjenige hat sich tatschlich die Mhe gemacht, dein Profil im Original anzugucken. Das war aber kein Mastodon. Das konnte nicht mit rechten Dingen zugehen. Block.
Ernsthaft: Wenn du dich im Fediverse nicht absolut wie ein typischer Mastodon-User verhltst und auch dein Profil nicht so auslegst, da es auf Mastodon wie ein Mastodon-Profil aussieht, dann wirst du gleich massenhaft geblockt.
Moment, mal langsam.
Es drfen nie Informationen ausschlielich im Alt-Text verfgbar sein! Keine Erklrungen und auch sonst nichts.
Alles an schriftlichen Informationen, was fr sehende Menschen nicht aus dem Bild direkt ersichtlich ist, gehrt in den Beitragstext.
Der Grund ist: Es gibt Menschen, die an Alt-Texte nicht herankommen.
Man braucht ja, um an einen Alt-Text heranzukommen, einen Touchscreen oder so etwas wie eine Maus. Manche Menschen knnen aber aufgrund krperlicher Behinderungen beides nur schlecht oder gar nicht bedienen, z. B., weil sie einen sehr starken Tremor haben (Parkinson o. .) oder gleich berhaupt keine Hnde. Trotzdem knnen sie einen Computer bedienen. Aber sie knnen eben keine kleine "Alt"-Schaltflche klicken oder tippen und auch keinen Mauscursor auf ein Bild schieben und ihn da liegenlassen.
Andere haben selbstauferlegte technische Einschrnkungen. Manche Hardcore-Linux-Nutzer haben sich entschieden fr einen super-leichtgewichtigen, spartanischen Fenstermanager wie i3wm oder ratpoison, der aber keine Untersttzung fr eine Maus hat. Es drfte aber wohl kein Web-Frontend im Fediverse geben, wo man den Alt-Text eines Bildes mit einem Tastatur-Shortcut ffnen kann.
Was im Alt-Text steht, knnen diese Menschen nicht lesen, weil sie den Alt-Text gar nicht erst ffnen knnen. Das heit: Informationen, die nur im Alt-Text stehen, sind ihnen verwehrt.
Ich arbeite schon seit lngerem an einem Wiki zum Thema Bildbeschreibungen und Alt-Texte im Fediverse/fr das Fediverse. Es wird sehr umfangreich werden mit gut 30 Kriterien fr gute Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen.
Allerdings ist das Wiki auf Englisch und noch ziemlich unfertig. Auf Deutsch kann ich es schon deshalb nicht schreiben, weil die ber 50 Referenzen, die ich dafr verwende, auch alle auf Englisch sind und es keine deutschsprachigen Pendants dazu mit denselben Informationen gibt.
Bei einigen Punkten wei ich selbst noch gar nicht, was ich da schreiben soll. Da widersprechen sich die Anforderungen auch schon mal (z. B. Texte mssen immer Zeichen fr Zeichen exakt originalgetreu transkribiert werden vs. barrierefreie Handhabung von komplett oder in Teilen fremdsprachigen Texten).
Vielleicht knnte auch etwas verwirrend sein, da ich zwischen "Alt-Text" und "Bildbeschreibung" unterscheide. Aber das ist tatschlich nicht dasselbe, was auch im Wiki erklrt ist. Also behandle ich es getrennt.
Auerdem ist das Wiki nicht nur auf Mastodon zugeschnitten. Vor allem wird es keine Schritt-fr-Schritt-Anleitungen fr die Mastodon-Weboberflche (oder irgendwelche anderen Weboberflchen) und fr Mastodon-Apps geben. Der eine oder andere Tip wird sogar auf Mastodon schwierig bis gar nicht umsetzbar sein.
Falls dich das Wiki trotzdem interessiert: Es ist Teil des Hubzilla-Kanals, von dem ich gerade antworte.
LES SAISONS ET LES LVRES (Supervielle)
LES SAISONS ET LES LVRESLe Printemps est un doux sourireQu'illumine un rayon dor,L'ouragan se change en zphyre,Lorsqu'il est las d'avoir pleur.L't de baisers plus brlantsUnit les lvres demi-closes,Et tous les curs sont palpitantsAux senteurs des lys et des roses.Les lvres unies se dtachentEn l'Automne, et les souvenirsDes ivresses passes se cachentEn longs et langoureux soupirs.Mais les yeux se couvrent de pleurs,L'Hiver, lesYou mention better alternatives to Facebook, what do you suggest
Friendica if you're looking for something that isn't that overwhelming, if you're looking for something with native Android apps available (don't ask for iOS apps for anything here), and if you can live without features like polls or nomadic identity.
Hubzilla if you think you can tackle a steep learning curve with some help from a very good user documentation and a helpful community, if you want Facebook with a side of optional CMS and/or groupware features, if you need nomadic identity to make your channel(s) resilient against server issues and shutdowns, and if you don't mind using the Web interface on a phone.
(streams) and Forte if you need something that's a bit more fit for today's Fediverse, if you need something nomadic without Hubzilla's extra features, if you don't mind using the Web interface on a phone, and if you're willing to wait for more public servers or willing to run one yourself.
I have a number of comparison tables that include Mastodon as well.
What I don't like about this draft is that it communicates the existence of exactly four alternatives, two to WhatsApp and Telegram, one to Instagram and, I guess, one to literally everything else.
Oh, and by the way, no, Mastodon is not a good alternative to Facebook. There are dedicated Facebook alternatives in the Fediverse that are much closer to Facebook in functionality than Mastodon right now.
This does not entirely apply to the whole Fediverse. To most of the Fediverse, including Mastodon, but not to all of it.
Some server applications offer something called nomadic identity (). Your identity is defined by one server, but it is not permanently stuck to that server. And all your stuff can not only be moved around from server to server, but even exist on multiple servers simultaneously, constantly kept in sync with each other.
This isn't even new. It was first introduced on a fork of a Friendica fork named Red in 2012. Four Fediverse server applications offer it now:
- Hubzilla, which is what became of Red in 2015 it's based on the Zot6 protocol, but it can also speak ActivityPub
- (streams), a Hubzilla descendant it's based on the Nomad protocol, but it also speaks ActivityPub
- Forte, a direct (streams) fork it's based on ActivityPub it was the first server application to implement nomadic identity with ActivityPub
- Tootik, the only one that isn't related to Friendica/Hubzilla it's based on ActivityPub, but it's in the GeminiSpace and not in the World-Wide Web
There's also Mitra that uses a special client, Mini Mitra, to establish nomadic identity on the client side.
Nomadic identity goes way beyond what the ATmosphere promises. The ATmosphere does not give you the option to clone your identity between independent relay/AppView stacks. If you're on bsky.app, and bsky.app is down, you have nothing, and you can't do anything to mitigate this. This Hubzilla channel is cloned between two servers. If one goes down, I still have the other one.
This can't work, and for one particular reason. And you should actually know this reason after eight years in the Fediverse:
The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It's far from being only Mastodon.
It isn't 10,000 servers running one application. It's 40,000+ servers running over 150 different applications. And I'm not talking about Mastodon and otherwise Mastodon forks either.
From your words, I can clearly see that you want the whole Fediverse to be moderated by Mastodon standards.
But then you have Mastodon mods who are "based and Mastodon-pilled", and for whom the Fediverse either is or shall be only Mastodon. These mods moderate Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte servers by Mastodon's standards. Which, by the way, not only clash with the culture on these servers, but even with the technology on these servers. Friendica works a whole lot differently from Mastodon Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte even more so.
Oh, and especially Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte don't even have the concept of moderators. I'm absolutely serious here. They don't have Mastodon's concept of reports. Why not Because they're geared towards self-moderation. Everyone is given the power to moderate their own channels. Unimaginable on Mastodon, also because this involves technologies and features that are unimaginable on Mastodon such as the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse. Mastodon's culture is about being pampered and coddled. The culture on these three is about self-defence.
Also: You can't force Mastodon-style Mastodon moderation upon a (streams) server. You can try. But you won't succeed. The server admin won't let you. Again, I'm dead-serious here.
Unlike on Mastodon, a (streams) admin has various counter-measures available to get rid of your Mastodon mod.
- They could activate the User Agent Filter and add "mastodon" to the filter list. Bam, all of Mastodon blocked, all present and future servers, in-bound and out-bound.
- They could activate FedUp which blocks everything that doesn't support enclosed threaded conversations, and Mastodon doesn't, so Mastodon is blocked, too.
- If everything else fails, they could turn ActivityPub support off for the whole server, thus cutting everything off that isn't (streams) or Hubzilla. (This, by the way, is even available to individual users.)
Stuff like this, by the way, Mastodon forcing its culture upon the non-Mastodon Fediverse, is the very reason why (streams) and Forte have built-in ways to defend themselves against Mastodon. And this is one reason why Hubzilla sticks to ActivityPub being optional on each channel.
Back to the Mastodon mods. They'll probably only know Mastodon. More importantly, they probably won't know anything about groups. They'll probably think the Fediverse doesn't even have groups. They'll only know users following other users.
And then they'll have to moderate on Lemmy. They'll have to moderate a group. Something they didn't even expect to exist. In a place where users can't follow other users, only subscribe to groups, because it's essentially a Reddit clone.
Worse yet, they'll have to moderate a Lemmy community with 10,000 members. All of whom are former Redditors. All of whom live by a culture that's directly derived from Reddit with no influence from Twitter or Mastodon at all. None of whom have ever been on Twitter or Mastodon. Almost none of whom even know that Mastodon exists. And many of whom have their experiences with power-tripping Lemmy moderators, so if you think they're easy to rein in with a culture that isn't theirs, you're very wrong.
(Greetings from Hubzilla.)
I guess that, more often than not, the only new developments that are widely welcome are those that happen on Mastodon, that still don't make Mastodon feel different, and that don't introduce features to Mastodon that are (considered) bad on .
This alone is the reason why many Mastodon admins hold on to older Mastodon versions for their dear lives: They want to boycott new Mastodon features which they don't like, but they don't have what it takes to soft-fork or even only hard-fork Mastodon and remove the new features.
Now, when it comes to developments in the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, they tend to be even more nerve-grating for Mastodon users because they often aren't in line with Mastodon and its culture at all. That is, many Mastodon users don't even notice that these features exist unless these features directly hit their timeline. But once they do, they're considered bad new developments even though they've actually been around for much longer than Mastodon itself.
For example, quote-posts and full-text search. Mastodon users tend to be staunchly against both because they're used to harass and dogpile minorities on . If at all, they're only okay with these if they come with an opt-in, and/or if server admins can turn them off entirely.
If only they knew that Friendica has had both since May, 2010, five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. That Friendica has been search-indexing and able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's very launch. I guess they'd demand the immediate destruction of Friendica or at least its complete and permanent defederation.
Great evening here in atlanta hitting a few long irons
Last updated: 2026-08-27
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