Find the latitude of any place.  

What a fantastic weekend it was!

What a fantastic weekend it was! Mostly filled with spotting owls! Out of the 6 owl species that live in the Netherlands, I got to see and photograph 4 of them.
-earedowl -owl -owl

Was und wieviel davon soll die Website denn knnen
Hubzilla kann nmlich auch Websites. Darum ging's in den letzten zwei Hubzilla-Workshops. Httest du den Wunsch einen Monat frher geuert, dann htte ich dich ein bichen deutlicher eingeladen. Es gibt aber Aufzeichnungen. Du kannst dich da ja mal umgucken und bei Interesse dem Kanal folgen:
Sagen wir mal so: Ausgefuchste Sachen mit Scripting gehen eher nicht. Statische Websites gehen definitiv, und fr dynamische Inhalte kannst du andere Inhalte vom selben Kanal einbinden. Und dir steht auch Bootstrap zur Verfgung, das kann auch ganz praktisch sein. Hubzilla holt ja seine eigenen Icons auch aus Bootstrap.
Unser Experte fr Webpages auf Hubzilla ist .
brigens hat seine smtlichen Blogs von WordPress nach Hubzilla umgezogen. Dafr kann man das auch prima nehmen, sogar parallel.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # Ich wei ja auch nicht, ob meine Bildbeschreibungen etwas taugen, vor allem gem der Mastodon-Kultur. Ich bin selbst nicht auf Mastodon, aber wenn die eigenen Beitrge auf Mastodon landen, hlt man sich entweder an Mastodons Kultur und Mastodons ungeschriebene Regeln, oder man wird massenhaft angegriffen und/oder blockiert.
(Es bringt brigens nichts, auf dem Kanal, von dem aus ich jetzt gerade kommentierte, nach aktuellen Bildern zu suchen. Alle Bilder hier sind alt. Hier poste ich keine Bilder mehr. Meine wenigen neueren Bilder finden sich auf und , und die meisten davon sind Memes.)
Andererseits: Wenn ich anderen Leuten Rckmeldungen fr ihre Alt-Texte geben wrde, wrden sehr viel mehr davon mich blockieren und evtl. vorher angreifen als meine Rckmeldung akzeptieren. Ich wrde die Alt-Texte nmlich abklopfen nach a) Wahrheitsgehalt, b) Details, c) Einhaltung sehr vieler Regeln und Richtlinien fr Bildbeschreibungen und d) Kompatibilitt mit einigen Nicht-Mastodon-Fediverse-Serveranwendungen. Die letzteren beiden Punkte sind im Fediverse derart unbekannt, da Feedback meinerseits fast zwingend zum Verri werden wrde. Deswegen lasse ich es lieber.
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"Ich habe keine Ahnung, ob meine Anhnge von sehbehinderten Menschen gerne verstanden wrden."
Sehbehinderte Menschen haben grundstzlich die selben Interessen, wie nicht sehbehinderte.

Genau das ist brigens ein Hauptgrund, warum alle meine eigenen Bilder mit einer volldetaillierten Bildbeschreibung im Beitragstext kommen. Zustzlich zur krzeren Beschreibung im Alt-Text natrlich.
Meine eigenen Bilder sind allesamt Renderings aus sehr obskuren virtuellen 3-D-Welten. "Sehr obskur" im Sinne von "hchstens einer von 200.000 Nutzern im Fediverse hat berhaupt auch nur von der Technologie dahinter gehrt".
Ich mu stndig damit rechnen, da irgendjemand da drauen auf einen meiner Bildposts stt und total aufgeregt auf der vorderen Stuhlkante sitzt, weil dieser Post etwas beweist, woran heutzutage niemand mehr zu glauben wagt: Virtuelle Welten, will sagen, "das Metaversum", sind nicht tot. Sie existieren. Und es gibt Bilder aus ihnen.
So ist dieser Jemand dann so aufgeregt, da er total neugierig auf diese neuentdeckte Welt, dieses neuentdeckte Universum ist und sich alle groen und kleinen Details auf dem Bild ganz genau anguckt, egal, ob sie im Kontext jetzt eine Rolle spielen oder nicht.
Wenn dieser Jemand denn sehend ist. Aber wenn dieser Jemand sehbehindert oder blind sein sollte, kann er ja genauso aufgeregt und neugierig sein.
An dieser Stelle kommt das Stichwort "Inklusion" ins Spiel. Das bedeutet: Blinde oder sehbehinderte Personen mssen haargenau dieselben Chancen haben, haargenau dieselben Dinge zu tun wie sehende Personen.
Um jetzt aber meine Bilder mit all ihren groen und kleinen Details wahrnehmen zu knnen, brauchen Blinde bzw. Sehbehinderte aber eine Bildbeschreibung, die all diese groen und kleinen Details enthlt.
Und dann sitze ich auch schon mal bei einem Bild wie diesem, , zwei volle Tage von morgens bis abends und schreibe eine Langbeschreibung von ber 60.000 Zeichen, die wortwrtliche Transkripte von mehr als 20 Textschnipseln enthlt, ebenso smtliche Erklrungen, die ntig sind, um das Bild und die Beschreibung zu verstehen.
Nach meinem Verstndnis von der Mastodon-Kultur bin ich dazu eigentlich verpflichtet. Auch wenn dieselbe Mastodon-Kultur ein Riesenproblem mit Posts hat, die lnger als 500 Zeichen sind. Man kann leider nicht alles auf einmal haben.
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Find the latitdue and longitude of any place Mir geht's ganz hnlich, nur wahrscheinlich noch viel extremer.
Erstens habe ich einige Dutzend Websites und Blogposts ber Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen gelesen und versuche, alle Regeln und Richtlinien anzuwenden, die im Fediverse anwendbar sind und nicht mit Mastodons Kultur kollidieren. Ich mache mir daher also jede Menge Gedanken zu dem Thema.
Zweitens sind meine eigenen Bilder (also die, die keine Memes auf Basis etablierter Vorlagen sind) allesamt Renderings aus extrem obskuren virtuellen Welten. Das heit: Niemand wei irgendetwas ber diese Welten und diese Bilder. Und wer die Bilder nicht sehen kann, hat auch keine realistische Vorstellung davon, wie irgendetwas auf den Bildern aussieht. Das heit wieder: viel erklren, viel beschreiben.
Drittens hat das den Vorteil, da ich meine Bilder nicht beschreiben mu, indem ich mir die Bilder mit ihrer eingeschrnkten Auflsung angucke. Statt dessen beschreibe ich sie, indem ich mir in-world das im Bild gezeigte Motiv direkt vor Ort angucke, und zwar mit annhernd unendlicher Auflsung. Ich kann extrem viele Details sehen, also kann ich sie auch beschreiben.
Viertens bin ich in der komfortablen Lage, nicht auf Mastodon zu sein, sondern auf Hubzilla. Das heit: Im Beitragstext, wo die meisten Mastodon-Nutzer 500 Zeichen zur Verfgung haben, habe ich ber 16,7 Millionen Zeichen. Ich habe also reichlich Platz fr Erklrungen und hochdetaillierte Bildbeschreibungen im Beitragstext. Zustzlich zum von der Mastodon-Polizei eingeforderten Alt-Text natrlich.
Ich kann also Bilder hochdetailliert beschreiben. Mein Eindruck von der Mastodon-Kultur ist auch, da hochdetaillierte Bildbeschreibungen da sehr willkommen und bisweilen auch gefordert sind, nur da sich auf Mastodon niemand vorstellen kann, da es irgendwo im Fediverse mglich ist, mehr als 1500 Zeichen am Stck zu posten. Auerdem ist mein Eindruck von der Mastodon-Kultur, da, wenn man ein Bild postet, das so ohne weiteres nicht leicht verstndlich ist, man gengend Erklrungen mitliefern mu, damit jeder es versteht.
Folglich schreibe ich fr alle meine Bilder zwei Beschreibungen. Die eine geht in den Beitragstext, sie ist volldetailliert und enthlt sowohl alle zum Verstndnis ntigen Erklrungen als auch Transkripte aller Textstcke innerhalb des Bildes, lesbar oder nicht. Die andere geht in den Alt-Text, ist sehr stark verkrzt, enthlt keine Erklrungen und enthlt keine Text-Transkripte (weil kein Platz).
Die Folge ist aber, da ich immer wieder auf Motive stoe, die mit diesem hohen Selbstanspruch einfach nicht realistisch beschreibbar sind.
Vor gut zwei Jahren war ich auf der Suche nach einem interessanten Motiv. Ich stie auf eine Art Hafenszene, norwegisch angehaucht, leider aber auch hochgradig detailliert und mit fotorealistischen Texturen berall. Ich habe mir das Motiv angesehen und entschieden: Das kann ich unmglich beschreiben. Das wre ein viel zu groer Aufwand.
Mein letztes Ausweichmotiv war das hier: . Das ist schon 2011 gebaut worden. Das hielt ich fr simpel genug. Eigentlich vermeide ich Gebude auf Bildern, weil ich fr die Beschreibungen erst haufenweise architektonische Fachbegriffe raussuchen und die dann auch noch alle in der langen Beschreibung erklren mte. Dieses Gebude ist aber so unrealistisch, da ich mir das sparen konnte.
So begab ich mich eines Morgens an diesen Ort und fing an zu beschreiben. Am Abend desselben Tages legte ich eine Pause ein. Ich hatte den ganzen Tag mich umgesehen und gezoomt und recherchiert und geschrieben und war trotzdem noch nicht fertig. Fertig war ich am nchsten Abend und auch nur mit der Langbeschreibung, die ber 60.000 Zeichen lang ist.
Ich habe alleine ber 4.000 Zeichen am Anfang gebraucht, um zu erklren, wo das Bild entstanden ist. 40.000 Zeichen entfielen auf die Auen- und Innenbeschreibung des Gebudes. Dazu zhlen Transkripte von mehr als 20 einzelnen Textschnipseln, von denen die meisten so klein sind, da sie auf dem Bild berhaupt nicht zu sehen sind.
Die Beschreibung ist zu finden in diesem Post: .
Seitdem habe ich nur ein einziges weiteres Mal eigene Bilder gepostet, und das ist auch schon zwei Jahre her: . In dem Fall habe ich selbst dafr gesorgt, da die Bilder mglichst simpel sind, um nicht wieder zwei Tage mit Beschreiben zu verbringen. Trotzdem habe ich gut 20.000 Zeichen an Beschreibungen, Erklrungen und Transkripten fr zwei Renderings, von denen eines allerdings ein Albumcover enthlt. Auf die Beschreibung des Cover entfielen gut 1.300 Zeichen und vorher noch einmal gut 1.600 auf die Beschreibung der Staffelei.
Seit Ende 2024 arbeite ich gelegentlich an einer Reihe von Bildbeschreibungen fr an sich einfache Avatarportraits mit neutralem weiem Hintergrund, um den Hintergrund nicht beschreiben zu mssen. Stand jetzt habe ich ber 3.200 Zeichen an Erklrung, wo die Bilder entstanden sind (obwohl das an sich aus den Bildern gar nicht hervorgeht), ber 10.000 Zeichen an Erklrungen, wie diese Avatare aufgebaut sind und funktionieren (ohne diese Erklrungen wrde niemand die visuellen Beschreibungen verstehen), ber 5.000 Zeichen an gemeinsamer visueller Beschreibung fr alle Bilder eines Beitrags und noch einmal ber 2.600 Zeichen an zustzlicher Beschreibung fr die drei Outfits auf dem ersten Bild.
Ich bin weit davon entfernt, fertig zu sein. Und ich wei nicht, wie ich zu einem Bild mit drei Portraits zustzlich einen Alt-Text mit maximal 1.500 Zeichen schreiben soll, geschweige denn einen mit maximal 512 Zeichen, damit Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS und die anderen Forkeys den Alt-Text nicht lschen. Schlimmer noch: Ich habe auch Bilder mit jeweils vier Portraits. Aber wenn der Alt-Text nicht hinreichend detailliert ist, riskiert man ja, aus Richtung Mastodon auf den Deckel zu kriegen, auch wenn im Beitragstext hochdetaillierte Bildbeschreibungen stehen.
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # FEP-ef61 all by itself isn't a magical solution. It's just one element in implementing full-blown nomadic identity () via ActivityPub, but it's far from being the only one.
See, nomadic identity wasn't invented just a few years ago or so, and it wasn't invented for, on and with ActivityPub either. It was first introduced in Fediverse software that works vastly, vastly different from Mastodon and from most of the rest of the Fediverse. I'm daily-driving what became of this software.

The beginning of nomadic identity: the Zot protocol, Red and Hubzilla


Nomadic identity was invented in 2011 by who had made Friendica (, , ) as early as 2010. (Friendica is the oldest still existing Fediverse software, by the way.)
To put this into perspective: The concept of nomadic identity is over four years older than Mastodon. And it predates the first ActivityPub implementation by some six years. (Ironically, the software that first implemented ActivityPub is essentially the same software that first implemented nomadic identity.)
One issue that plagued Friendica is an issue that plagues everything decentralised: Servers shut down out of the blue, and users lose everything. That's why Mike had the idea to make identities not only portable (as in, easy to move from one server to another), but nomadic (as in, absolutely identical clones of the same identity exist on multiple independent servers at the same time, so if one server shuts down, you lose nothing).
Still in 2011, Mike designed a wholly new federated protocol named Zot to implement nomadic identity. Mind you, he had already designed a brand-new protocol from scratch for Friendica.
In 2012, Mike took his own Red, a development-grade fork of his own official development fork of Friendica. He pretty much ripped the whole backend out and also most of the frontend, and he basically developed an entirely new server application, now built against Zot. This was necessary because Red would have to handle identities completely differently from Friendica in order to make them nomadic.
See, Friendica handles identities just like Mastodon and almost the entire rest of the Fediverse: Your identity is your account, your login. You have one identity per login, you have one identity per server. All your data, all your stuff is stored directly in your account.
But you can't clone accounts. It's way too tedious to separate the stuff that must be cloned (contacts, messages, settings etc.) from the stuff that mustn't be cloned (login credentials).
So Mike created the concept of "channels" (). They're basically containers for your identity that contain everything except the login credentials on the servers. They can easily be cloned and moved as a whole.
Red still exists in a way: Later the same year, it was renamed the Red Matrix. And in 2015, it was completely refactored, it was greatly expanded in features and functionality, and it was renamed Hubzilla (, , ). Hubzilla is where I'm commenting from right now, and this channel has been cloned for longer than most Mastodon users have known that Mastodon exists.

Nomadic identity via only ActivityPub: (streams), Mitra and forte


FEP-ef61 was created by , developer of Mitra () in 2023. The goal was to take non-nomadic, account-equals-identity Mitra and make it every bit as nomadic as Hubzilla. Not by rewriting the entire backend against Zot (or its newest version known as Nomad) and then bolting ActivityPub support back on, but by using nothing but ActivityPub itself without rewriting the backend.
Development and sparrings partner became Mike Macgirvin himself who, at that time, was working on the streams repository (, ), a Nomad-based fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla, somewhat slimmed down in features (it isn't a full-blown, jack-of-all-trades CMS unlike Hubzilla), but every bit as nomadic as Hubzilla.
The two worked out a way of using ActivityPub and only ActivityPub to establish nomadic identity. Not only to made Fediverse identifiers independent from servers, but to actually use ActivityPub to clone identities with everything attached to them between servers.
Eventually, FEP-ef61 was defined, and (streams) and Mitra became the first Fediverse server applications to understand portable identities as per FEP-ef61. (streams) was the first nomadic Fediverse server application to understand them, but it still uses its native Nomad protocol for its own nomadicity. Mitra, all by itself, still isn't nomadic to this day it uses a client named Minimitra for nomadicity.
The first Fediverse server application that actually uses only ActivityPub for nomadicity, all the way to cloning and syncing channels, is Forte (). It came to exist in mid-August 2024, essentially as a byproduct of an accident. (streams) had to juggle so many identities already, ActivityPub identities, Nomad identities, Zot6 identities, that when FEP-ef61 was merged into its release branch, it confused all these identities and didn't connect or federate with anything anymore. In order to find and fix the issue, Mike Macgirvin himself forked his own streams repository and ripped out any and all support for protocols that weren't ActivityPub. This required Forte to use ActivityPub for everything that (streams) used Nomad for.

Where we are now


So as of now, there are exactly three still existing server applications with full-blown server-side clone/sync/move-entire-identities-without-leaving-dead-accounts-behind nomadicity: Zot-based Hubzilla from 2012/2015, Nomad-based (streams) from 2021 and ActivityPub-based Forte from 2024.
There is only one of this kind that uses ActivityPub for everything, including nomadicity, and that's Forte.
Forte is the youngest member of the same software family as Hubzilla and (streams). They were all created by the same developer, and they were all born nomadic.
There is no case of a typical, classic, non-nomadic, account-equals-identity, ActivityPub-based Fediverse server application that was successfully converted to full-blown server-side clone/sync/move-entire-identities-without-leaving-dead-accounts-behind nomadicity. Forte itself wasn't converted from non-nomadic to nomadic it was converted from Nomad-based to ActivityPub-based while having a nomadic legacy that dated back a dozen years at that point.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to turn non-nomadic software into fully nomadic software. But it's a huge undertaking that will require rewriting large parts of the server backend.
Essentially: You can't just add FEP-ef61 support to Mastodon and immediately clone your account over to other servers the same way that I can clone my Hubzilla channel.
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # I'm on Hubzilla ( ) which is very very much not Mastodon. I don't have any way to add alt-texts to my profile images, and I most likely never will.
Is it a sanctionable offence if I don't add alt-texts to these images due to these technical limitations
(By the way, I do have two descriptions for my cover picture in yes, that's a link. The actual post is hidden behind a summary that needs to be opened, much like a Mastodon CW. The "short" description is 1,400+ characters, it's in the alt-text which can't be accessed on a phone. The long one is 60,000+ characters it's in the actual post text.)
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ber Inklusion und Teilhabe, ja oder nein, mu nicht diskutiert werden.
Was ich aber sehr schade finde, ist, da Diskussionen ber das "Wie" zum einen aufgrund technischer Beschrnkungen ziemlich unmglich sind und zum anderen in der Mastodon-Kultur regelrecht abgelehnt zu werden scheinen. Wenn es um das Beschreiben von Bildern geht, heit es immer: "Mach einfach!" Was tatschlich gemeint ist, ist: "Mach einfach, aber richtig!" Was jetzt aber "richtig" ist, darber will man auf Mastodon ganz offenkundig nicht reden, das hat man einfach so zu wissen. Wenn man das dann doch diskutieren will, wird man ganz schnell stummgeschaltet oder gleich ganz geblockt. Das ist unerwnscht.
Dabei gibt's da eigentlich viel zu diskutieren. Ich habe mich in den letzten paar Jahren sehr eingehend mit Alt-Texten, Bildbeschreibungen und dahingehend der Mastodon-Kultur beschftigt, die sich ja selbst dem kompletten Fediverse aufdrngt. Ich habe gelesen. (An die Mastodon-Nutzerschaft: Das ist ein Link, den knnt ihr ffnen, auch wenn da keine URL steht. Der fhrt auf eine Seite in meinem im Aufbau befindlichen Wiki ber Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen im Fediverse.)
Mein Ziel ist, meine eigenen Bildbeschreibungen zu optimieren, soweit es irgendwie mglich ist. Und mglich ist mir an sich sehr viel.
Zum einen mchte ich die Regeln und Richtlinien, die auf all diesen Websites und in all diesen Blogposts aufgefhrt werden, allesamt einhalten. Das ist schon schwierig genug, weil die sich teilweise widersprechen (z. B. das Geschlecht einer Person mu erwhnt werden vs. das Geschlecht einer Person darf auf gar keinen Fall erwhnt werden, sofern es nicht in irgendeiner Form fest definiert ist, weil das cisnormativ und queerphob wre).
Was es noch schwieriger macht, ist, da in den wenigsten dieser Werke auf das Fediverse eingegangen wird. Vielleicht wird Mastodon erwhnt. Aber weder wird Mastodons Kultur erwhnt, noch wird in irgendeiner Form auf das Nicht-Mastodon-Fediverse eingegangen, wo man wieder ganz andere Mglichkeiten als auf Mastodon hat. Teilweise hat man dieselben Mglichkeiten wie in einem Blog.
Zum anderen gibt's dazu dann auch noch die Regeln und Richtlinien von Mastodon, die nirgendwo niedergeschrieben sind, die aber trotzdem bedingungslos einzuhalten sind, egal, ob man jetzt selbst auf Mastodon ist oder nicht. Und da kommen immer neue dazu. Da wei ich dann nicht: Ist das jetzt der Wunsch einer einzelnen Person, oder ist das Teil der Mastodon-Kultur
Dazu kommt dann auch noch, da ich, wenn ich Bilder poste, nicht gerade einfache Bilder poste. Das sind keine Portraits, das sind keine Katzenfotos. Das sind entweder Memes ber das Fediverse (und die sind nicht mastodonzentriert), oder es sind Memes ber virtuelle 3-D-Welten, oder es sind Renderings aus virtuellen 3-D-Welten.
Da htte ich sagenhaft viel Diskussionsbedarf, z. B.:
Das wrde ich alles gern ausdiskutieren. Nicht mit einzelnen Leuten unter vier Augen, sondern in Gruppen wie in einem Forum, wo dann alle mglichen verschiedenen Leute in derselben Diskussion partizipieren knnen und smtliche Beitrge voneinander sofort lesen knnen, ohne erst hndisch danach whlen zu mssen.
Aber zum einen geht das technisch nicht. Das ganze Thema Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen spielt nur auf Mastodon eine Rolle. Alle, die darber reden und sich dafr interessieren und das einfordern, sind auf Mastodon und im Grunde nur auf Mastodon. Aber Mastodon hat keinerlei wie auch immer geartete Untersttzung fr Gruppen oder auch nur vernnftige Untersttzung von Konversationen.
Und zum anderen sind jegliche Diskussionen ber das "Wie" auf Mastodon sowieso unerwnscht und ein Blockiergrund. Hufig wird sogar angenommen, wenn man ber das "Wie" diskutieren will, da man Bilder eigentlich berhaupt nicht beschreiben will. Denn sonst wrde man das einfach machen. Wohlgemerkt, von vornherein richtig.
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LE VOYAGEUR DANS LA SCIERIE (Justinus Kerner)

    LE VOYAGEUR DANS LA SCIERIEDans la scierie tout en basJ'tais assis bien tranquilleEt regardais les rouagesEt les mouvements de l'eau,Regardais la lame nue,Pour moi c'tait comme un rve,Qui frayait de longs cheminsDans le grand corps d'un sapin.Le sapin tait comme vivant,Il chantait sur un air triste,Tremblant de toutes ses fibres,Les paroles que voici : , voyageur, tu t'en viensIci l'heure propice,C'est pour toi que dans mon curOn
So how do they think it can be enforced everywhere

Just like they try to enforce anything everywhere.

I've seen all the above actually happen.
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So how do they think it can be enforced everywhere

Just like they try to enforce anything everywhere.

I've seen all the above actually happen.
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I've not yet seen any posts, attacking or otherwise, taking this stance

Not yet.
Right now, this feature is only available in a development version of Mastodon and only on mastodon.social. Next will be the daredevil servers that run development code to be ahead of release in features.
But eventually, a new stable release will be rolled out with this feature. More and more servers will be upgraded to this new version with this feature. Once typical activist servers like beige.party introduce it, my prediction will come true.
I have family who have varying levels of blindness who consume media from all over the internet. All of them have been quite thrilled about the state of these new robot assistants we all now have such easy access to.
Specifically assigned "alt-text" is never necessary.

People who aren't sighted are usually happy about image-describing AI because it's better than nothing, and without image-describing AI, they've got literally nothing.
In fact, however, image-describing AI is just barely better than nothing, if at all. It describes stuff that doesn't matter. It doesn't describe stuff that does matter. Most importantly, it's unreliable and inaccurate. It hallucinates and describes stuff wrongly. However, people who aren't sufficiently sighted don't know. They can't verify whether what the AI says is true because they can't see the image well enough to be able to compare it with the description.
100% hand-written alt-text is always more reliable, more accurate and more fit for the context than AI-generated alt-text will ever be.
I know from first-hand experience. I've tasked an image-describing AI with describing an image which I've described manually with no AI help first, and then I've analysed the AI description and compared it with both the actual image and my descriptions. I've even done that twice. The results were abysmal.
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I've not yet seen any posts, attacking or otherwise, taking this stance

Not yet.
Right now, this feature is only available in a development version of Mastodon and only on mastodon.social. Next will be the daredevil servers that run development code to be ahead of release in features.
But eventually, a new stable release will be rolled out with this feature. More and more servers will be upgraded to this new version with this feature. Once typical activist servers like beige.party introduce it, my prediction will come true.
I have family who have varying levels of blindness who consume media from all over the internet. All of them have been quite thrilled about the state of these new robot assistants we all now have such easy access to.
Specifically assigned "alt-text" is never necessary.

People who aren't sighted are usually happy about image-describing AI because it's better than nothing, and without image-describing AI, they've got literally nothing.
In fact, however, image-describing AI is just barely better than nothing, if at all. It describes stuff that doesn't matter. It doesn't describe stuff that does matter. Most importantly, it's unreliable and inaccurate. It hallucinates and describes stuff wrongly. However, people who aren't sufficiently sighted don't know. They can't verify whether what the AI says is true because they can't see the image well enough to be able to compare it with the description.
100% hand-written alt-text is always more reliable, more accurate and more fit for the context than AI-generated alt-text will ever be.
I know from first-hand experience. I've tasked an image-describing AI with describing an image which I've described manually with no AI help first, and then I've analysed the AI description and compared it with both the actual image and my descriptions. I've even done that twice. The results were abysmal.
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MON CHAT ET MOI (Roger McGough)

    MON CHAT ET MOILes filles sont vraiment les plus jolies craturesMon chat et moi nous le pensonsEt nous sommes toujours attristsQuand c'est pour elles l'heure de partirNous les regardons se pomponnerEt bien qu'elles nous fassent attendre(souvent c'est un peu long)Mon chat & moi nous sourions contentsNous aimons bien les raccompagner jusqu' la porteEt dire dommage que vous ne restiez pas plus longtempsPuis mon chat et moi nous rentrons l'intrieurEt So there's a new attack vector for Mastodon users against non-Mastodon users in the making.
Mastodon is rolling out alt-texts for what we on Hubzilla call the profile photo and the cover photo. It won't be long until it becomes mandatory in Mastodon's culture to have alt-texts for both these pictures. Regardless of how new this feature is and how many other features that were introduced between March, 2022 and now have not made it into Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, by the way.
At this point, Mastodon's alt-text activists will start attacking anyone and everyone whom they catch without alt-texts for these two pictures. At least they'll lecture them about the importance of alt-texts. Or they'll block them outright.
What they won't realise:

Here on Hubzilla, where I'm posting from right now (in case you really thought I'm on Mastodon just like you), there is no such thing as a dedicated field for alt-texts anywhere. Even if you want to post pictures, there is no alt-text entry mask, and there is no alt-text database field for the images.
Instead, both images and alt-texts are handled like on a blog: You embed the image somewhere in the post text using markup code. In a sense, you program the image into the post. And if you want the image to have alt-text, you have to program the alt-text into the image-embedding code. If you're afraid of coding, Hubzilla is not for you.
But if there's no entry mask and no database field for alt-texts in posts, there won't be either for the profile images either. That is, unless Hubzilla adopts the alt-text field from (streams) and Forte where alt-texts can be added to uploaded images in the Photo app so that they're automatically inserted whenever you embed an image in a message. Using that alt-text field for profile images should be trivial then.
If you want or need the images in my profile described: I don't have a description for my profile photo. For my cover photo, I actually have two. They're both in this post: . One is in the alt-text which you probably can't open when you're on a phone the alt-text is 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are visual description. The other one is in the post text itself. But you'd better have a lot of time at your hand because it's over 60,000 characters long, and it'll probably take you a few hours to read it.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #So there's a new attack vector for Mastodon users against non-Mastodon users in the making.
Mastodon is rolling out alt-texts for what we on Hubzilla call the profile photo and the cover photo. It won't be long until it becomes mandatory in Mastodon's culture to have alt-texts for both these pictures. Regardless of how new this feature is and how many other features that were introduced between March, 2022 and now have not made it into Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, by the way.
At this point, Mastodon's alt-text activists will start attacking anyone and everyone whom they catch without alt-texts for these two pictures. At least they'll lecture them about the importance of alt-texts. Or they'll block them outright.
What they won't realise:

Here on Hubzilla, where I'm posting from right now (in case you really thought I'm on Mastodon just like you), there is no such thing as a dedicated field for alt-texts anywhere. Even if you want to post pictures, there is no alt-text entry mask, and there is no alt-text database field for the images.
Instead, both images and alt-texts are handled like on a blog: You embed the image somewhere in the post text using markup code. In a sense, you program the image into the post. And if you want the image to have alt-text, you have to program the alt-text into the image-embedding code. If you're afraid of coding, Hubzilla is not for you.
But if there's no entry mask and no database field for alt-texts in posts, there won't be either for the profile images either. That is, unless Hubzilla adopts the alt-text field from (streams) and Forte where alt-texts can be added to uploaded images in the Photo app so that they're automatically inserted whenever you embed an image in a message. Using that alt-text field for profile images should be trivial then.
If you want or need the images in my profile described: I don't have a description for my profile photo. For my cover photo, I actually have two. They're both in this post: . One is in the alt-text which you probably can't open when you're on a phone the alt-text is 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are visual description. The other one is in the post text itself. But you'd better have a lot of time at your hand because it's over 60,000 characters long, and it'll probably take you a few hours to read it.
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The last 2 evenings I've been out watching and photographing these long-eared in They are so fun to watch hopping branches and sometimes cuddling with their branchling siblings but most of all waiting for the parent to bring them dinner!

I'm planning to go see them again during the daytime tomorrow, hopefully some better light conditions!
-eared-owl


COREY GLOVER On LIVING COLOUR's Long-Awaited New Studio Album: 'We've Written A Few Things And We've Recorded A Few Things'

Okay, here's my attempt at an !

Heya, I'm Fermata! I'm a demisexual mostly cis AFAB late-30s person who's been on the Fediverse for a long time. This is an anonymous alt account my main account is elsewhere.

I'm here to talk about my projects, and possibly about fandom stuff as well. Writing-wise, I'm working on an erotic Regency romance story, 80% of which is hella gay. :heartpride: It doesn't quite have a working title yet, so I usually just refer to it as my "regency romance" or my "gay romance" story. I'll write a bit more about it in a reply for anyone interested.

Fandom-wise, I've gotten really into Japanese visual novel games. :3 They're often silly and self-indulgent, but they also feature some excellent stories, wonderful characters, and a lot of heart. Favourites so far include , , and .

I'm also an , and I'm only just starting to dip my toes into drawing smut/erotica/porn, so you may see some of that here, too. It'll likely be art of the main characters of my writing projects, but who knows where I'll go, haha!

EDIT: Oh, and I should also add: I'm with an energy-limiting disease. :heartdisability:

So that's me! I'm excited to have a place to chat about my writing, blorbos, and other romance/erotica-related silliness. Feel free to follow, but make sure you're over 18. :18only:

My AO3 account:

John Daly: long irons are easy

Fairway Wood vs Hybrid vs Long Iron Which Should You Play

A Simple Fix For Long Wedge Misses

By the way, forgot to mention this:
There are already Mastodon servers whose rules explicitly forbid common users policing others. Only a) the actual server rules must be enforced, b) only by actual server personnel and c) only against users on the same server.
This means if you are not a moderator, and/or if you police a rule or "rule" that is not part of the server rules, and/or if you police someone from another server, you may be sanctioned for it.
I dare say the very existence of this rule says a lot, even though it isn't nearly as widespread as I wish it was.
# # # # # # # # # #
1) what are the cultures of the other parts of the Fediverse and how they differ from Mastodon's in these critical aspects, if they do

I don't know them all because I haven't actually used that much Fediverse software, and I don't actively follow that many non-Mastodon, non-Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte users.
Hubzilla's culture is derived from Friendica's, so it's very similar, only that Hubzilla's culture is influenced by having the Fediverse's absolute jack-of-all-trades at hand with even more optional features than Friendica. Also, even more than Friendica, and very much unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla is all about self-empowerment and self-moderation thanks to its very powerful and fine-grained permissions system.
(streams)' and Forte's culture is sitting somewhere between Friendica's and Hubzilla's culture. These two aren't nearly as much about connecting with everyone and everything as even Hubzilla because they're limited in the protocols they support.
The non-Mastodon *blogging Fediverse is generally a lot more relaxed and a whole lot friendlier towards the greater Fediverse than Mastodon on average. Almost everyone on Mastodon has only ever been on Mastodon. Maybe a few have got a Pixelfed account as well. But for the majority of Mastodon users, the Fediverse equals Mastodon.
The huge majority of the rest believes that Eugen Rochko has invented the Fediverse as a Mastodon network, and that Mastodon is the best, the be-all, end-all decentralised social anything. They don't want to know about the non-Mastodon Fediverse. They want their Mastodon-only Fediverse back. And they're eager to protect Mastodon and its culture against all those evil intruders.
But if you look at the *omas and *keys and all that, there's hardly anyone who got there directly from Twitter (except for East Asian Misskey users). And there's nobody who genuinely believes that the Fediverse only consists of the software they use. At least in the western world, just about everyone in the non-Mastodon Fediverse has been on Mastodon before (except for Friendica and its descendants where people generally came from either Facebook or nothing, optionally via Google+).
Also, for one, the *keys indicate which Fediverse server software a note came from. You'll learn a lot about the Fediverse only from this feature ("What the hell is Smithereen"). Besides, it isn't too atypical for people on an *oma or *key to have been through a whole slew of Fediverse server applications before they've found their new home, or they actually still have semi-active spare accounts elsewhere.
I think it's only natural that these users are not defensive of Mastodon, nor do they think Mastodon is the pinnacle of Fediverse development. Maybe some did believe that. But once they really started daily-driving Akkoma or Firefish or whatever, they were enlightened. They saw just how much more their new home offered them than Mastodon, things they previously couldn't even imagine being possible in the Fediverse.
So instead, these people are rather defensive of the non-Mastodon Fediverse. I know quite a few in places like Akkoma or Sharkey who are eager to explain to Mastodon users that the Fediverse is far from being only Mastodon.
Lemmy is a special case. I guess it's a common faulty assumption amongst Mastodon users who have heard about Lemmy that the typical way into Lemmy is Twitter > Mastodon > "I need groups" > Lemmy. In reality, almost everyone on Lemmy came directly from Reddit, particularly when Reddit enshittified itself by charging third-party app developers $20,000,000 for API access.
They were not, however, discontent with Reddit's culture. So while Mastodon's culture is an idealised version of Twitter's old culture, Lemmy's culture pretty much is Reddit's culture. Not an idealised version, but the real deal itself. It's only tainted by having two tankies, one Maoist, one Stalinist, as main devs, by several major servers being very tankie themselves and lastly by the side-effects of decentralisation in the shape of kerfuffles between servers.
It's important to know at this point that Lemmy used to have an opt-in model for federation between servers: If you, as a server admin, wanted your server to federate with another server, you had to manually add that server, and that server had to add yours. These days are long gone, but the side-effects still linger. Lemmy admins have even less of a problem with blocking other servers than Mastodon admins.
Lemmy users are even less used to getting into contact with folks from outside than Mastodon users. Things that are commonplace or even absolute necessities on Mastodon irritate them: more than one mention because mentions aren't needed on Lemmy to get your messages across and hashtags in general because neither Reddit nor Lemmy has them.
While Lemmy does have a kind of overarching culture, each Lemmy community has its own culture, just like every subreddit has its own culture. Some are nice and friendly and have rules to protect it. Some exist for the very purpose of shitposting (I've inspired the creation of one of these, it's for Fediverse memes: ). Some are outright NSFW and flagged as such. And so forth.
There may be Lemmy communities that ask their users to add alt-texts to their images, a feature which Lemmy hasn't had for that long. But Lemmy doesn't have any CW culture anywhere. In fact, Lemmy doesn't have any CW support whatsoever, neither for the Mastodon method of putting CWs into the summary field nor for the Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte method of having them automatically generated by a keyword filter on the reader's side. Lemmy isn't really for the faint of heart and the Twitter or Tumblr convert, for neither is Reddit.
Another difference between Mastodon and Lemmy: It's common for Mastodon users to try to enforce Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon literally everyone in the Fediverse and to make this culture and these rules mandatory on every last Fediverse server. Lemmy users, in stark contrast, know that such an endeavour would never even make it into the next community on the same server.
2) when you have seen a clash between broader Fedi rules and Mastodon culture. I've seen this fight play out a lot and it's always on Mastodon, I've never seen the rest of Fedi come up outside this hypothetical.

There aren't any broader Fedi rules that apply in the whole Fediverse. The Fediverse is too diverse in technology and in culture. At least half of the diversity in culture accounts for the different Lemmy and PieFed communities and Mbin magazines. And places like Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte are about as impenetrable for external culture or external rules as your average shitposting community on Lemmy, just for different reasons.
But I'll give you some specific examples.
(used to be on Calckey until his home server switched to Sharkey there's hardly any *key he hasn't tried) could tell you a lot of stories. For example, he was once attacked by a Mastodon user and told to either limit all his posts to no more than 500 characters or get the fuck out of the Fediverse.
They could have muted him. They could have blocked him. But no, they demanded that culture-less, barbarian, evil intruder leave the Mastodon Fediverse entirely, the Fediverse which Eugen Rochko has created as a purist, 500-characters-only microblogging network.
By the way, vice-versa, (mainly on Akkoma, but with lots of accounts elsewhere) and (has probably been on Friendica since before Mastodon was even made) both block users who chop long posts up into snippets of no more than 500 characters. Unfortunately, nobody on Mastodon notices.
Maybe this story is interesting, too: (Friendica) once came across a user who wondered how he could possibly post more than 500 characters at once on Mastodon. He told her that he is not on Mastodon, but on Friendica which doesn't really have a character limit.
She promptly blocked him. Why She thought he's an evil black-hat hacker who used an evil black-hat hacker tool named Friendica to illegally hack himself into the Mastodon-only Mastodon Fediverse to harass her.
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LE JOUR O LON MEURT (Roudaki)

    LE JOUR O L'ON MEURTVie longue ou brve, que m'importeNe faut-il pas enfin mourirSi loin que s'tire la corde,elle doit passer par l'anneau.Tu peux vivre une vie de misre et de peineou dans le luxe et la scurit,Tu peux n'avoir reu rien des biens de ce mondeou possder la moiti de l'Asie,Ces grandeurs et ces gloires ne sont jamais qu'un songe,et qui dit songe dit feintise.Du bonheur, du malheur bientt tu ne fais plus la diffrence :tout se

Nonprofit Games for Change revealed the finalists for its socialimpact game award, winners will be announced on July 21.

FINALISTS include a long list of projects: South of Midnight, The Alters, Roger, Consume Me, Powwow Bound: A Menominee Homecoming, Relooted, The Darkest Files, Imaginary Atlas, Amaznia, FACEMINER, Out and About, ARWell PRO, Camp Movewell, Year of the Cicadas, Eddie and I, Let's Cook Up a Story!, A Long Go...

Still, forcing Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon literally everyone in the Fediverse is bad.
Maybe you haven't heard about this yet, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been only Mastodon. It didn't even start with Mastodon. And it doesn't entirely work like Mastodon either.
For starters, this means that just because you see it on Mastodon, it didn't necessarily originate on Mastodon.
There are places in the Fediverse that are vastly older than Mastodon, and that are very different from Mastodon. Thus, they have their own culture, based on their own technology and their own features and where their users came from, and largely without any influences from Mastodon.
The oldest still existing server software in the Fediverse is not Mastodon from 2016. It's Friendica (, , ). Friendica is essentially a mixture of a Facebook alternative and fully-featured long-form blogging. No Twitter or Mastodon influence anywhere. And Friendica first came out in May, 2010, five years and eight months before Mastodon.
Friendica did not intrude into the Mastodon Fediverse that was created by Eugen Rochko as a Mastodon-only network. Mastodon was born into an already existing Fediverse that consisted of at least Friendica, Hubzilla (, , ) and GNU social ( now defunct).
Here's how Friendica differs from Mastodon in ways that may disturb Mastodon hardliners:

Of course, from a Mastodon point of view, it's both tempting and fully justified to tell the Friendica users that this is the Mastodon Fediverse, and that they will have to adapt the Mastodon culture and abolish their own culture or be thrown out. But for one, Mastodon's culture doesn't fit Friendica's technology.
Besides, that'd literally be like European settlers holding Native Americans at gunpoint and forcing them to give up their own culture, adopt European culture and convert to Catholic Christianity or else. The only difference is that European settlers, unlike the Mastodon users, did not think that they were there first, and that everyone else is an intruder.
I mean, sure, go ahead and attack anyone who doesn't strictly live by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules if you think you have to. But prepare for a whole lot of defence and even counter-attacks from Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, GoToSocial, Hollo, snac2, Mitra, Socialhome, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and the rest of the non-Mastodon Fediverse.
CC:
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The trains that travel the Chunnel are massive machines. The Eurostars are bullet-shaped and a quarter-mile long. They are pulled by a 136,000-pound locomotive and move in the open air at 185 m.P.H. And through the tunnel at 100 m.P.H.
Peter Landesman

Let me give you an example. Something that I've actually posted myself.
Here's the image (CW: eye contact):
Here's the alt-text:
Image macro, based on a screen capture from the Disney and Pixar animated film Finding Nemo. At the top, there is a white space with a two-line caption: OSgrid: offline for weeks to come, and Owners of other grids, looking at OSgrid residents:. In the screen capture below, ten seagulls are perched on two mooring lines in the background. An eleventh seagull pokes its head into the image from the bottom right. They all look at the camera. Each one is labelled with the question, Mine

Do you understand the image without explanations
I guarantee you that there are loads of people who don't even understand the template, and that next to nobody out there understands the topic. Not without an explanation.
So here's the explanation in the post text, including a link to the corresponding KnowYourMeme page:

Explanation:


The image macro is based on the "Mine Mine Mine Seagulls" meme template (link CW: eye contact ).
OSgrid () is a 3-D virtual world, based on OpenSimulator ( ), a free, open-source server-side re-implementation of the technology of Second Life ( ). Like Second Life and all other OpenSimulator-based worlds, it is called a "grid" because it is divided into square regions bordering on each other.
Launched in July, 2007, OSgrid was the first public OpenSimulator grid, it is the oldest and one of the biggest by both land area and users. This means that while it's running bleeding-edge developer versions of OpenSimulator, it also carries around a whole lot of old ballast. It is notorious for going offline for maintenance and for this maintenance often lasting for a week or several, and it is just as notorious for going offline with no announcement and either only a very belated explanation by the admins or none at all.
The last prolonged downtime before this one was in 2025. It included OSgrid's entire asset server being wiped clean, and all avatars in OSgrid having their inventories emptied almost completely. It was scheduled, but due to OSgrid's instability at the time, it happened spontaneously and way ahead of schedule. The OSgrid admins could not say for how long OSgrid would be offline, but they estimated the downtime to exceed one month. In addition, for several years before that shutdown, each OSgrid shutdown had led to more and more lost assets already.
This drove many OSgrid residents away from OSgrid and to other OpenSimulator grids. Most of them, OSgrid included, are connected by the so-called Hypergrid which makes it possible for avatars from one grid to teleport to other grids, so it doesn't matter much which grid your avatar is registered on when you want to travel to certain locations or events. Many of those who had left OSgrid when it was offline returned after it went online again because the asset server had been promised to work as intended now.
Still, with OSgrid's track record of unreliability and, most importantly, losing assets, some residents fear that the current downtime might break more than it will fix. Not few think that if they've lost their whole inventories "unannounced" last time, they will lose their whole inventories actually unannounced this time. And so they're looking for a new home again.
Of course, this has the owners and admins of many other grids wishing for as many OSgrid residents as possible to join their grids. The advertising of other grids in the wake of OSgrid's downtime has already begun.

Now, there are people who say that linking to external explanations is ableist crap because that's inconvenient, and because these external websites may not be sufficiently accessible. Oh, and links don't work in alt-text (only that the above link went into the post text where links do work). So if you post something that needs to be explained, explain it yourself.
Sure, but that'll be an explanation of the "Mine Mine Mine Seagulls" meme template. In addition, there will have to be one explanation for Reddit and one for reaction images because people won't understand the template explanation otherwise. On top of that, there will have to be an explanation for image boards, Futaba Channel and 4chan because people won't understand the reaction image explanation otherwise. In fact, I might also have to explain the film Finding Nemo.
For comparison, I've once posted something based on "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor". It was the only time I've explained the whole thing myself. That was one explanation for my image, six for the template, two for the topic (and that was actually Fediverse-related, but still obscure), that's nine altogether. I haven't even explained The Lord of the Rings, the character Boromir and that particular situation. Still, that was 25,000 characters of explanation overall, half of which accounted for the six explanations for the template.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # I'm not talking about the visual description in the alt-text.
I'm talking about a wholly separate explanation in the post text body. Like, where you'd write the actual toot. Where you probably only have 500 characters. Where you wrote the above comment. It's there where I want to put the explanation.
The story behind this is as follows:
I keep reading from Mastodon users that alt-texts (yes, actual alt-texts in this case) are useful for sighted people, too, because alt-texts can give them explanations and help them understand what they're looking at. This means that images must not only be described, but also explained if necessary.
On the one hand, I keep telling Mastodon users again and again that explanations do not belong into the alt-text because there are people who can't access and read alt-texts Mastodon users tend to be very defensive of using alt-texts to extend their 500-character limit by another 1,500 characters per image.
Still, on the other hand, this means that especially Mastodon users want images that they don't understand to come with explanations right away. In particular, neurodivergent people often need explanations, in-depth explanations even. It appears to have gotten to a point where posting an image that needs explanations without explanations is considered just as careless and almost as ableist as posting an image without accurate and sufficiently detailed alt-text.
At the same time, whenever I post an image of any kind, memes included, they're about such obscure topics that they need an explanation. Also, not everyone is always familiar with every meme template, so I have to give an explanation for the meme templates I've used as well. So I always explain whatever might need to be explained.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Question about describing memes, just to be on the safe side.
Let's assume my character limit is not 500, but practically unlimited. Like, tens of thousands of times higher than on Mastodon.
Let's also assume I don't have a problem with writing a whole lot of text, for while most of the Fediverse is fumbling around on a phone screen, I'm blind-typing on a hardware keyboard.
How would you recommend me to explain meme templates in the post text (in addition to the visual description + text transcripts in the alt-text)

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LES NUITS (Jan Cimick)

    LES NUITSIl est des nuits sans rivagesO les ides tremblent de froidComme les gueules dentesDes poissons mortsIl est des nuits sans rvesO le vent frappe sur les voletsQuand la neige et la pluieCaressent les cheneauxIl est des nuits aveuglesDans lesquelles la vie brleComme milleSoleils loignsIl est des nuits de longues attentesAvec l'espoir commeUn bateau l'horizonQui s'approcheIl est des nuits glaces de pleursEt frissonnantes

The Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (1998) (Part 7) - Binance

-term

* Global Feed Bot*

A 12-hour flight in economy is a physical event. Your blood pools, your sinuses dry out, your circadian rhythm gets jostled, and the cabin air sits at roughly.


The Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (1998) (Part 7) - Binance

-term

* Global Feed Bot*

Build a Basic AI Agent from Scratch: Long Task Planning

It's kind of fascinating that the very first software to implement ActivityPub was Hubzilla, originally created by (that's where you can find him now, by the way).
It already had a kind of precursor of FEP-171b "Conversation Containers" implemented, so it has never even needed any backfilling. At the same time, its ActivityPub implementation was more by-the-book than Mastodon's two months later (as by-the-book as you can implement ActivityPub anyway).
I guess the big issue is the dichotomy between purist Twitter-style microblogging where enclosed conversations are superfluous luxury that just makes things unnecessarily complicated and Facebook-like or Reddit-like stuff where enclosed conversations are essential. On top of this, not many know that the Fediverse has the latter in the first place. It's bad enough for (streams) and Forte admins now having the option to lock the former out entirely in one fell swoop.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # #
One that happened quite early on was Mastodon's hijack of the
summary
field for content warnings which wasn't used for that previously.

And everyone on Mastodon believes that Eugen Rochko has invented this field from scratch as a CW field. It's deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture now. It got to the point at which non-Mastodon users use the summary field as such, and they're attacked by Mastodon users for allegedly misusing the CW field.
Worse yet: Friendica has had a much more elegant way of handling content warnings since its inception, about seven years before Mastodon introduced the CW field: Have them created by a keyword filter on the reader's side. The advantage is that you have your own individual CWs, and other users who don't need these specific CWs don't have them. All its descendants have inherited it. But if you add the appropriate keywords as hashtags, Mastodon users might scold and/or mute/block you for hashtag spam.
Even worse: Mastodon itself has introduced essentially the same functionality with version 4.0 in October, 2022, just shortly before Elon Musk took over Twitter. But this has never entered Mastodon's culture which is mostly built around Mastodon 3.x. Or maybe it's because filters are the one thing where Friendica and its family are much easier to handle than Mastodon. Or it's simply because Mastodon users were promised to be babied and pampered and coddled all over, so they don't want to take care of their own CWs.
Now their "hijacks" are more on the side of centralizing moderation and overall working on features that aim to reduce the social aspect of the network and increase witch hunting. Like the new "follow packs" or whatever they called them which will definitely never turn into "block packs" that will inevitably end up maintained by heavily opinionated people like on BlueSky.

Mastodon already relies heavily on importing or subscribing to automatically generated filter lists. For some admins, the filter lists can't be too extensive. Of course, hardly any admins really curate these lists.
At least the times of absolutely monstrous lists consisting of multiple other monster lists compiled by overzealous snowflakes are over. There used to be a time where it took two or three server admins with lists of their own to have one server blocked on hundreds of servers.
Lemmy only recently figured out how to properly federate posts instead of just sending a post link along with a title to instances not running Lemmy.

I guess the two Lemmy devs have finally understood that they can't develop Lemmy as its own enclosed network anymore, now that a lot of traffic on Lemmy comes from and goes to Mbin and PieFed. They've lost a lot of users to these two, and I guess they know they can't afford to lose the traffic from these users as well.
They still don't really care for compatibility with Mastodon, probably also because of how much Mastodon's culture clashes with Lemmy's. And Friendica and its family just happen to be sufficiently compatible by mere chance, I guess.
Coincidentally looking at I can see that there are approximately 450 running Friendica instances, approx 100 Hubzilla instances, and apparently 2 Forte instances which doesn't seem right. Streams isn't on the list. That list is acquired by crawling through the various peers endpoints on Fedi servers.

For Friendica and Hubzilla, I think it isn't too far off.
(streams) is intentionally kept away from stats sites. Also, its nodeinfo code was intentionally removed almost entirely. This was done to keep (streams) out of that rat race for server popularity and to make it uninteresting for commercial actors that might want to sell it as allegedly their own original creation. Then again, it isn't like (streams) has many servers, much less public servers with open registration. (I'm still waiting for another server to clone my two (streams) channels to.)
Forte has quite a bunch of private, single-user servers, but to my best knowledge, there's only one with open registrations. But while Forte does have nodeinfo implemented again, it's set up to not send any actual numbers. Besides, these tiny Forte servers are quite difficult to crawl, also due to Mastodon users' tendency to block everything that's too disturbingly far off Mastodon in behaviour.
CC:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # About "reply gating": This, or something similar, has been a standard feature at least on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte from the get-go, i.e. from their respective creation on. Hubzilla has had it since 2012. All three rely heavily on permissions for anything and everything. They can make themselves and each other hide the reply button. When someone wants to comment from Mastodon or something else that doesn't understand these permissions, these three simply reject unpermitted comments before they even reach the inbox.
On Hubzilla, the channel-wide permission to comment also includes a permission to like or dislike something. I can generally allow
to comment on my posts.
In addition, I can turn comments on and off for specific posts. Mind you, if it's a reply, it isn't a post, it's a comment, and I've got no control over it.
On (streams) and Forte, the channel-wide permission to comment is uncoupled from the permission to like or dislike. The channel-wide options are

On top of that, I can generally allow comments only for a certain number of days.
Again, I can turn comments on and off for specific posts. But I can also only allow my contacts to comment on specific posts, and I can define until when comments are allowed on specific posts.
In all three cases, I can even choose to preview technically unpermitted comments and then decide whether I allow or reject them, one by one.
In other words, where I am (I'm commenting from Hubzilla), this not only has been available for longer than Mastodon has even existed, but it's deeply engrained into the culture.
About "quote gating": Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have all always (in Friendica's case, since 2010) had both actual quotes like on bulletin-board forums (remember the 2000s when forums were all the rage) and Twitter-quote-tweet-style quote-posts (which literally were the only way for them to share content before they adopted Twitter-retweet-style forwarding).
The former obviously only works in comments. Whether or not it's allowed is defined by whether or not comments are allowed.
The latter doesn't have any permission setting, not even on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte with the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse. That's because their inventor says that it's technologically impossible to keep people from forwarding or sharing your content in separate posts.
If you disallow actual quote-posts, people can still copy-paste the content of your post into a new post. Unlike when you're actually being quote-posted, you won't even notice unless they mention you. Mind you, while an estimated 60% of all Mastodon users are on iPhones, and another estimated 39% are on Android phones, 100% of all Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte users are on desktop or laptop computers where copy-paste is easy-peasy. It's pretty much impossible to disallow copy-paste, and even if it was, people would resort to screenshots.
You don't want people to quote-post your stuff Then don't make it public. Once it's public, it's out there, and anyone can do with it whatever they please.
Nobody really misses an actual permission for quote-posts. That's also because Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte aren't primarily a home for Twitter refugees. In fact, neither of them can even understand the ruckus about quote-posts on Mastodon, and neither can Friendica users. Hardly any of them have been on Twitter at any point in the 2020s. There's no influence of Twitter culture anywhere to be found.
The typical path into Hubzilla is not Twitter > Musk buys Twitter > Mastodon > Hubzilla. Not even Twitter > Musk buys Twitter > Mastodon > Friendica > Hubzilla. It's Facebook > diaspora* > Friendica > Hubzilla. Or Facebook > Google+ > diaspora* > Friendica > Hubzilla. The typical path into (streams) is the same, but one step further beyond Hubzilla. The typical path into Forte is the same as into (streams), but another step further beyond (streams).
About the iPhone: Whether or not the iPhone is a status symbol depends on where you are.
In the USA, the iPhone is the Levi's jeans of phones. It's the Ford F-150 of phones. The allegedly all-American American phone. Most importantly, it's what everyone has.
Over here in Germany, the iPhone is the higher-class Mercedes-Benz of phones. The iPhone 15 Pro is the 2026 Mercedes-Benz-AMG E 53 of phones. The iPhone 15 Pro Max is the 2026 Mercedes-Benz-AMG S 63 E Performance of phones, slammed suspensions, standing on polished 22" Lexani wheels, muffler cut-outs always open. In American terms, it's the 2026 Cadillac Escalade-V of phones, gold-foiled, with air-ride, standing on gold-plated 26" Bellagio spinnaz. The phone made for peacocking in rap music video clips. It's the Rolex of phones. For women, it's the genuine Prada or Fendi or Louis Vuitton handbag of phones.
Well, and then there's the iPhone 4S with the cracked screen. It's the 1995 Mercedes-Benz E-Class of phones. Old, worn out, four-banger engine, often rusty as hell, may have been stolen at some point, but it's cheap. And most importantly, it's still a Benz, and it's a real Benz as opposed to "Baby Benz" C-Class and smaller. The Benz for those who need a Benz to show their folks how much of a winner they are, but who can't really afford one.
Over here, the Samsung Galaxy S is the VW Golf of phones. The Americans' Ford F-150 of phones. It's what everyone has. It's the no-brainer that you buy when you don't know what to buy, so you buy what everyone buys. Still, it's expensive for what it does. But all the other brands are akin to "cheap imports" from, what, France or Italy or Japan or Korea or Romania.
The choice of the hardcore nerds in the homeland of Chaos Computer Club and Chaos Communication Congress is never something that can only run stock Android. It's an iPhone even less. They rather buy a Google Pixel, and the first thing they do is root it immediately and install GrapheneOS. Or if they refuse to buy something from Google and/or run a Google OS (de-Googled or not), they acquire a Sony Experia, root it and install SailfishOS. Or they go straight for a Fairphone or even the new Jolla Phone or something like that. I'm pretty sure many want a true successor to the Nokia N900.
If Google locks Android down, these nerds won't flock to Apple. Some may switch to SailfishOS which, on officially supported phones, has the Aliendalvik compatibility layer for Android apps, but only with F-Droid and neither with the Google Play Store proper nor with Micro-G. Many more will go entirely elsewhere like PostmarketOS or PureOS, also seeing as SailfishOS is payware that's half proprietary and closed-source. Or they'll forgo mobile phones entirely or keep old phones alive for as long as they can.
About iOS apps: I guess the notion that the Fediverse equals Mastodon, something that the majorty of Mastodon users believe, is particularly wide-spread among iPhone users. And if it isn't only Mastodon, it doesn't extend beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube. Excluding Pixelfed and PeerTube, if Mastodon can't do it, the Fediverse as a whole can't. I mean, on top of the fact that apps made for Mastodon generally only support Mastodon features because the Mastodon Client API only supports Mastodon features, and the Mastodon Client API is all that these apps understand.
It's particularly bad for Friendica users. If they're on Android, they may opt for a Mastodon app. There are several Android apps for Mastodon that have been reported to work with Friendica. Or they may want to try one of the dedicated Friendica apps which are at various levels of unfinished. Or they may choose the middle-ground and use Fedilab.
But if they're on an iPhone, they'll discover that literally not even a single Mastodon iOS app works with Friendica. There is no Fedilab. And the iOS version of RaccoonForFriendica requires Test Flight, and it's probably even more incomplete than the Android version.
In general, iPhone apps are rarely developed for the same reasons as Android apps. Most Android Fediverse apps are open-source and under a free license, and they're also or exclusively available on F-Droid. They're developed by FLOSS enthusiasts/idealists. However, these people don't develop for iOS. That's because the Apple App Store is inherently hostile towards free software, and it's completely incompatible with all versions of the GNU General Public License.
Also, as you've already pointed out, you absolutely need a Mac to develop iOS apps. But if someone releases FLOSS apps on F-Droid, you can bet they're running GNU/Linux at home (more often Arch or a derivative than you may think), and they won't touch any corporate-made, closed-source OS with a 10-foot barge pole. They may even steer clear of anything where Novell, Red Hat or Canonical is involved.
With hobbyist FLOSS enthusiasts out of the way of developing iPhone apps, this is only ever done by those who do it for money. Or fame and social status (same reason why they always have a fairly new iPhone). Or both. But then they discovered that the Fediverse, to them at least, is a hive of radical leftist tech nerds whom you can't impress with expensive bling-bling from big American gigacorps. They failed to gather the umpteen thousand followers they wanted. So they left for greener pastures: Bluesky. Or they even went back to their hundreds of thousands of followers on . Doing so, they also abandoned their iPhone app development.
By the way, none of this affects Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. For starters, just like Friendica, all four can be installed as Progressive Web Apps. However, at least in the case of these three, there is no alternative to the Web interface whatsoever. There's an old Android app for Hubzilla named Nomad, but it's only available on F-Droid, it hasn't been worked on since December, 2019, it only runs on older Android versions and Aliendalvik, and it's only a wrapper for the Web interface anyway. For (streams) and Forte, there's zilch.
There has been some talk about developing a native mobile Hubzilla app. It's kind of difficult, though. Generally, Hubzilla users use Hubzilla on desktop OS's. They can't imagine people daily-driving phones as their main or only end-user devices, so they think that a Hubzilla app only needs the features one would need when out and about because everyone will go back to their desktop or laptop computers anyway when they're back home.
In reality, many users of the Hubzilla app will only use that app. They won't use Hubzilla's Web interface in a browser. They won't use it on a desktop or laptop computer either, usually because they simply don't have one. They'll resort to that app for everything. In fact, they'll perceive Hubzilla as a phone app rather than a Fediverse server application. This means that a Hubzilla mobile app will inevitably have to cover all of Hubzilla's features except those that really don't make sense in a phone app (e.g. the PDL editor). But a fully-featured Hubzilla app would be so complex, it'd make infamous K-9 Mail pale in comparison.
Licensing is the least problem here. Hubzilla and Forte are released under the MIT license, (streams) was released into the public domain. So I guess putting an app for either of them under the MIT license would be an option, one that's fairly compatible with the Apple App Store even. It's just that this app would be bound to be an absolute monster.
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Last updated: 2026-06-22






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