Find the latitude of any place.  

Yes, s are that and !


Their interest is hegemony.

They won't be able to achieve that. For that, they'd all have to join forces. Instead, the big players would rather bash each other's heads in.
If Zuckerberg wanted to buy out the Fediverse through the SWF and assume full control over it, that'd go hard against what Flipboard wants, what Ghost wants, what Mastodon wants etc.
If you think Zuck and Gargron will join forces in EEE'ing the Fediverse, I have a bridge to sell you. If Zuck wants to EEE the Fediverse, this includes Mastodon which is why everyone panics. But Gargron himself wants to EEE the Fediverse, too. Mastodon users don't notice it, but everyone else does, from Misskey to (streams). And if he could, that'd include assuming indirect control over Threads by forcing Mastodon's proprietary, non-standard solutions upon it.
Write.as, maintainer of WriteFreely, is a supporter of the SWF, too. WriteFreely is basically one of the Fediverse's alternatives to Medium. Notice how Medium itself is a supporter. Medium won't try to build a monopoly and get rid of WriteFreely through the SWF if WriteFreely itself has a saying in this. And so does Automattic because Medium competes against WordPress.
Mastodon vs Write.as + Medium + Automattic = "The Fediverse is for microblogging, we won't support more than a tiny subset of HTML, and the rest of the Fediverse has to adjust" vs "Everything in the Fediverse must support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects."
And the SWF won't grant voting power according to how much money someone invests into it. Meta won't be able to out-vote everyone else by pumping a billion into the SWF. If that was possible, , as the very founder of the SWF, would have no voting power at all.
Lastly, these are the supporters. The financial backers. Not the only members and even less the only members the SWF will ever have. It's just kind of difficult for a Fediverse project with nothing but one or two spare-time devs behind it to join the SWF.
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#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MetaPlatforms #Threads #Automattic #WordPress #Medium #Write.as #WriteFreely #SWF #SocialWebFoundation #EEE #EmbraceExtendExtinguish And this could actually improve with more disabled Fediverse users because that'd mean more people who could tell us what they really need.
Ideally, they'd also not flock to only Mastodon, stick to Mastodon and largely ignore the rest of the Fediverse. Ideally, some of them would test Friendica and find it enough to their liking to start a public forum about accessibility in the Fediverse because that's something that needs to be discussed in a place that supports actual discussions between more than just two people.
My original images are extreme edge-cases in terms of describing them. My way of describing them is mostly based on assumptions and erring on the "too much" side to be safe. These assumptions include, but aren't limited to:
Based on these assumptions, I tend to spend an eternity describing one single image, and thus, I only rarely post images in the first place. I often don't even take images if I think it's impossible for me to sufficiently describe them. Virtual world pictures come with the disadvantage of showing people whole new worlds and making them want to explore these new worlds through these images, so based on my assumptions, .
For example, I've used my channel picture with that huge, weird building in it before. I went to three or four other places before, and this was the only one that I deemed possible to describe. It still took me two full days to research and describe it. The result was an alt-text of exactly 1,500 characters, including a bit over 1,400 characters of short description, and a full description of over 60,000 characters. And that was even after actually limiting myself to what can be seen if you're in that place, as opposed to describing images within that image with details that could only be seen if you teleported to the places shown in these images.
It's probably hard to say I haven't tried hard enough, but I guess hardly anyone has ever opened the summary/content warning, and hardly anyone ever will. My image descriptions may be useful for a few neurodiverse users who actually need such detailed descriptions and explanations, and they may be good for silencing the "alt-text police" which seems to increasingly go for not only alt-text availability, but also the quality of image descriptions. For most blind or visually-impaired people, they may be of only marginally more use than no image description, if at all.
By the way, I wanted to post another picture of the same building from another angle. The reason why I didn't was not because it would have been too tedious to describe it. It was because there are pictures in that building with human faces on them, and from that other angle, they became visible, for any definition of "visible" anyway. That would have meant a potential eye contact trigger by the definition I know.
So I didn't post that second image because Hubzilla gives me no means of hiding an image from users of Mastodon 4.2 or older or users of many mobile Mastodon apps. I've since started two (streams) channels on which I post images with faces or eyes because (streams) support's Mastodon's non-standard sensitive image flag. And I've considered replacing all my various profile pictures in the Fediverse with pictures with no face in them, although just about everyone else has at least one face in their profile picture.
It's clear that assumptions can be bad both ways. It's bad to assume that colours are useless in image descriptions, but all the things I assume up there lead to image descriptions that may be similarly useless, but due to their overwhelming length.
Disabled people want us to make things accessible to them based on what they actually want, not on what we assume they want. There's that slogan: "Nothing about us without us." They want us to listen to them.
However, it's impossible to listen to them . Right now, they don't, probably also because they're too few, and they're all only sitting somewhere where meaningful group discussions are prevented by technology. And if you have a question about accessibility in extreme edge-cases like mine, searching mastodon.social for blind users and DM'ing them, half a dozen at once, can't be the right way. Unfortunately, it's currently the only way.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility

Yes, s are that and !

I keep seeing painfully useless alt-text again and again myself.
Still, I'm wondering if there's any consent, any standard for alt-text quality that's specific to Mastodon. (I'm saying "Mastodon" because that's the only part of the Fediverse where alt-text matters, by the way.)
Whenever I post an image, rare as this may be due to the immense effort, I try to improve and optimise my way of describing images and making my image descriptions available to Fediverse users.
But there isn't much information available on what people want. I hardly have any sources for such information, I barely get any feedback for my image posts, and that feedback contradicts itself. On top of that, there's absolutely no place in the Fediverse where Fediverse accessibility could be discussed between more than just two users at a time.
So all I can do is try to assume what Mastodon users may want. And I'm very likely constantly stepping on people's toes or even throwing many of those who need image descriptions under buses while doing so.
I typically describe my original images twice, once with a shorter, purely visual description in the alt-text, once with a very long, very detailed description in the post that also contains all text transcripts and all necessary explanations that's also mentioned in the alt-text.
Now that I'm getting closer to finding an optimal way of describing and explaining memes based on established templates, I'm starting to question parts of the above method for my original images.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta Always. No exceptions anymore for I don't know how long. I don't forget to do something that takes hours or days for one image.
They're always 100% hand-written. Maybe copy-pasted from my own descriptions of similar images, but no AI involved.
And I'm constantly trying to improve my description style, so the older an image post is, the less I consider its image description(s) even halfway up-to-date. For example, I'm working on completely re-designing my way of describing and explaining memes.
I'd rather not post images at all than post them with what I'd consider sub-standard image descriptions.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta Add your location to a Google Map There could be several reasons for this.
One, "All my friends are here." They don't want to let go of large parts of their online social circle.
Alternatively, "But muh followers." They don't want to let go of their fame and move someplace that doesn't even have enough users to build up the same numbers of followers in no time.
Two, inconvenience. The Fediverse is too cumbersome to use in comparison with centralised corporate silos.
You can basically load onto your phone, enter a user name and a password, and bam, you've got a bustling feed.
On the other hand, while you can load Mastodon onto your phone, it asks you too many questions. There's that field where you have to choose an instance. And yes, leaving it on default is a choice you have to take. It doesn't railroad you hard enough.
And once you're online, your timeline is dead. Many have left because they thought the whole Fediverse is dead because their timeline was, because Mastodon was praised to them as, quote, "literally Twitter without Musk". You have to take care of getting content into your timeline yourself, and there's no assistant that helps you with it. Mastodon doesn't have training wheels, everything else in the Fediverse has them even less, but doesn't even require them.
Oh, and you can't load "Fediverse" onto your phone at all. Or anything else in the Fediverse that could largely do the same job as Mastodon if people knew about it.
Third-party apps Most of them have probably never in their lives used an online service through an app that doesn't have the same name as the online service.
Lastly, it isn't worth it. The only thing that may motivate them to move would be a place that's totally guaranteed to be an absolute, 100% safe haven for them with no harassment, no ableism and no hindrances in accessibility. Same goes for other marginalised minorities such as BIPoC or the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community, only that spoons aren't as much an issue for them.
However, these latter two may actually be known even on to not be perfectly safe in the Fediverse either. The very reason why BlackMastodon failed. So neither may be disabled people. Thus, the effort of leaving everything behind and learning to use new software might not be justified by the result if nothing much changes anyway.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Disabled #DisabilityTwitter #Mastodon #Fediverse I myself resort to

As for the last point, I've recently held on this. I wanted to know how and where people wanted meme images to be explained.
I had a few options, including explaining everything, including the explanations themselves, in the post and linking to places with explanations beyond the actual image.
I had read a while ago that people generally prefer everything being explained in the post, right where the image is. That's much more convenient than having to open Web sites that might not even be accessible and constantly having to switch back and forth between your Mastodon app with the image and your crappy mobile browser with some explanations.
to see what'd happen. Of course, only explaining the image wouldn't cut it if there are still things that people might not familiar with, namely the topic of the image (FEP-ef61) and the meme template (One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor). So I had to explain these as well. But even then, there were things that needed explanations because many people wouldn't know right off the bat what they are (Hubzilla, (streams), snowclones, image macros, advice animals). So I explained these on top of everything.
I ended up with an explanation for the image, two explanations for the image explanation and six explanations for the two explanations for the explanation. And over 20,000 characters of explanations. I could post these 20,000 characters in one go, and I did so on (streams), I have a character limit of over 24,000,000. But I had my doubts that this was actually what people wanted.
So I held the poll. Since nobody could estimate which option would require how many characters, I added the estimated character counts.
Results:

My verdict is: I'll give those who don't want a full set of explanations in the post what they want. But I will add links to further explanations, and they will work because I've always explained my images in the post.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Memes Hm...
Firefish is in maintenance mode. Its death has been announced for the end of the year.
Iceshrimp is basically in maintenance mode, too. It's being rewritten from scratch as Iceshrimp.NET in C# as opposed to Misskey's Node.js. It sounds promising, especially because all the old Misskey cruft will be absent from the new code, but it isn't ready yet.
Sharkey has lots of features, but it also seems to be buggy, and its devs are surrounded by a lot of drama.
The new hotness right now is CherryPick, a Sharkey fork. Better development, said to be more reliable than Sharkey, without the drama, and it seems to have even more features than Sharkey.
As for Catodon, itself an Iceshrimp fork, I haven't heard any news about it in ages. It could be that the development is waiting for Iceshrimp.NET to be fully released to rebase to it or something.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp.NET #Sharkey #CherryPick #Catodon
Wenn es in 14 Jahren (Start Friendica lt. Wikipedia 2010) keine Notwendigkeit fr eine Smartphone App gegeben hat, ist das doch eh ein Soziales Netz von Nerds, die eh nur den ganzen Tag am PC/Notebook hngen, oder

Ich war Anfang der 2010er schon auf Friendica, daher wei ich, wie es damals war.
Mike Macgirvin hat Friendica, das damals noch Mistpark hie, in vier Monaten entwickelt. Vom Mrz zum Juli 2010. Ganz alleine. Ohne Budget. Meines Wissens zu einem stabilen Punktrelease hin. Und Mike ist eigentlich Protokolldesigner. Er hat ja sogar das DFRN-Protokoll von Grund auf selbst entwickelt, auf dem Friendica basierte. Er ist kein Webdesigner und schon gar kein Mobilentwickler.
Zum Vergleich: diaspora* brauchte vier Entwickler, $320.000 an Crowdfunding und anderthalb Jahre fr eine erste Public Beta, die immer noch sehr unfertig war. Und diaspora* kann heute noch weniger, als Mistpark im Sommer 2010 konnte. Auch diaspora* hat keine offizielle App.
Nach einer dedizierten App htte damals auch kein Hahn gekrht. 2010 war es noch lange nicht soweit, da fast jeder ein Smartphone hatte und es als primres oder gar einziges digitales Endgert nutzte. Mit 3,5"-Bildschirmen, schwchlichen CPUs und magerem RAM nicht und mit lckenhaftem UMTS erst recht nicht. Der Standard war weiterhin der PC oder der Laptop zu Hause am DSL-Festnetz.
Damals war es noch lange nicht so, da es fr alles, absolut alles, was es online gab, eine dedizierte Mobil-App gab, geschweige denn so, da es vllig normal war, wenn gewisse Dinge nur ber eine Mobil-App gingen.
Das lag auch an der Smartphone-Landschaft. Das iPhone verkaufte sich besser als alles andere zusammen, hatte aber trotzdem als Zielgruppen nur Hipster, Apple-Fanbois, die vor jedem Gerterelease vorm Flagship Store zelteten, Angeber, fr die der Apfel auf dem Telefon wie der Mercedesstern auf dem Auto war, und Modepppchen, fr die der Apfel auf dem Telefon wie der Prada-Schriftzug auf der Handtasche war.
Android war noch neu und Nische. Fr kommerzielle Entwickler lohnte es sich bekanntlich erst, auch fr Android zu entwickeln, als das Samsung Galaxy S sich alleine besser verkaufte als das iPhone. Im Grunde war Android damals noch der wahr gewordene feuchte Traum vom Linux-Smartphone in Groserie, also das, was man sich von OpenMoko erhofft hatte, was ansonsten eigentlich nur Nokia mit dem legendren N900 in unverschnittener Form anbot.
Vorhandene Gerte waren ansonsten vielfach noch vom einstigen Klassenprimus Nokia und liefen mit Symbian, aber Symbian war tot, in absoluten Zahlen auch schon immer Nische und auch wieder ziemlich fragmentiert.
Das vorherrschende Mobilgert mit Internetzugang war folglich berhaupt keins.
Die Nutzerschaft von Friendica, bzw. wie auch immer es damals jeweils hie, setzte sich berwiegend tatschlich zusammen aus Computernerds. Der Anteil der Linuxnutzer war berdurchschnittlich hoch, zumal nicht wenige ihren Privatnode auf eigener Hardware zu Hause hosteten. Ansonsten gab es noch ein paar linksalternative Aktivisten, die sich wohl erhofften, auf Friendica fr die Behrden noch schwieriger aufzuspren zu sein als auf diaspora*, geschweige denn Facebook.
Groe Zielgruppenberschneidungen zwischen Smartphone- und Friendica-Nutzern gab es nicht. Apple und Friendica hatten fast gar keine Zielgruppenberschneidung, denn Apple stand fr genau den Vendor Lock-In, den Friendica durchbrechen wollte. Eine dedizierte iPhone-App fr Friendica htte von den damaligen Friendica-Nutzern ziemlich genau niemand gebraucht.
Friendica auch nur im Browser eines Smartphone zu verwenden, war weder Notwendigkeit noch irgendwie Standard, sondern im Grunde eher technische Demonstration. Guckt mal, das geht. Die richtig Wagemutigen versuchten, Friendica ber StatusNet-Apps zu nutzen. Das scheiterte natrlich oft daran, da die Mehrzahl der StatusNet-Apps auf Identi.ca hartgecodet war, das so gro war, da der Mehrnutzen, wenn die Instanz auswhlbar war, zu gering war. Aber auch das war eher Experiment als dringender Notwendigkeit geschuldet.
Selbst wenn mal ber eine Friendica-App nachgedacht wurde, und hier reden wir schon von frhestens ca. 2012, wo Friendica seinen endgltigen Namen hatte und von der Community bernommen worden war, dann war der Gedanke eher: "Ist vielleicht mal ganz spannend", aber definitiv nicht: "Brauchen wir unbedingt ganz dringend, weil fr die meisten Leute Friendica ohne dedizierte Smartphone-App nicht benutzbar ist."
Weil Friendica nie beworben wurde, war es immer weitestgehend unbekannt. Auch, nachdem das 2010 so hochgehypete diaspora* in der Obskuritt versunken war, war Friendica unbekannter. Die Facebook-Alternative war Google+. Pest und Cholera, aber wenigstens war es nicht Facebook, und man kannte es. Google+ zeigte, wie unbekannt diaspora* inzwischen war. Es war nmlich von A bis Z ein zentralisierter diaspora*-Klon, angefangen bei den Google+-Kreisen, die bei diaspora*s Aspekten abgekupfert waren (die Mistpark vorher schon hatte), aufgehrt damit, da Google bei all seinen Diensten einen Klon der diaspora*-UI einfhrte. Und niemand auerhalb von diaspora* und Friendica hat gemerkt, da das alles von diaspora* geklaut war.
So, und weil Friendica so unbekannt war, wuchs es kaum. Und damit kamen auch keine neuen fhigen Entwickler in die Friendica-Szene, die vielleicht dedizierte Friendica-Apps htten machen knnen. Apps, die unter den damals bestehenden Friendica-Nutzern wohl eh nicht so notwendig gewesen wren. Erschwerend kam ab 2015 der schleichende Exodus nach Hubzilla dazu.
Gibt es auer Friendica/Diaspora/GNU Social usw. noch ein Soziales Netzwerk, das auf Smartphone Apps verzichtet

Im nichtkommerziellen, dezentralen Bereich hat eigentlich nur Mastodon eine gute Abdeckung mit Smartphone-Apps und definitiv nur Smartphone eine offizielle App mit demselben Namen.
Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Firefish, Iceshrimp, Sharkey, CherryPick, Catodon usw. usf. werden zumeist ber Mastodon-Apps benutzt mit entsprechenden Einschrnkungen. Da gibt es meines Wissens keine speziell jeweils dafr ausgelegten Apps, was bei dem Wust an Forkeys auch Wahnsinn wre.
Hubzilla, (streams) und Forte sind alle von vornherein fr den Einsatz als PWA ausgelegt. Ende der 2010er hatte mal jemand eine dedizierte Hubzilla-App fr Android entwickelt, Nomad. Die ist aber im Dezember 2019 das letzte Mal aktualisiert worden und soll auf so manchem neueren Smartphone nicht mehr funktionieren. Und auch Nomad ist im Grunde nur ein spezialisierter Browser mit eigenem Zugriff auf ein paar Funktionen von Hubzilla.
Zugegeben, eine Hubzilla-App, die alle, aber auch wirklich alle Features von Hubzilla auf eine eigene Mobiloberflche packt, wre ein absolutes Monster. Stell dir eine gute, freie, quelloffene E-Mail-App vor. So eine Hubzilla-App wre noch heftiger. Fr (streams) und Forte wre es nur unwesentlich besser.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #iOS #Android #Apps #FediverseApps #Friendica Das ist ein Smartphone-User-Ding.
Als iPhone-Nutzer ist man es gewohnt, fr jeden Schei eine dedizierte App aus dem Apple App Store zu laden. Als Android-Nutzer ist man es gewohnt, fr jeden Schei eine dedizierte App aus dem Google Play Store zu installieren.
Smartphone-Nutzer sind vielfach eben keine Computernerds, die noch an den Desktop-Browser gewhnt sind. Viele von denen haben schlicht und ergreifend berhaupt keinen Computer mehr, weil sie alles, wofr sie einen Computer bruchten, mit dem Handy erledigen knnen. Vielleicht, wenn sie ein iPhone haben, haben sie zu Hause zustzlich ein iPad. Andere haben berhaupt noch nie einen Computer gehabt.
Wenn die $XYZ nutzen wollen, schnappen die sich ihr jeweiliges Mobilgert, machen den jeweiligen offiziellen App Store auf, installieren $XYZ und legen sofort los. Noch ein Grund brigens, warum Mastodon so populr ist: Mastodon kannst du als App auf ein iPhone laden. Pleroma nicht, weil es keine iOS-App namens "Pleroma" gibt. Friendica auch nicht, weil es keine iOS-App namens "Friendica" gibt.
Guck dir doch mal einschlgige Berichte bers Fediverse an. Da wird Mastodon nicht als Projekt oder so bezeichnet, sondern als "App". Aber nicht "App" = "server application", sondern "App" = Endnutzer-App, die man sich auf dem Smartphone installiert. Mastodon ist allzuvorderst eine Handy-App, wo irgendein komischer Hokuspokus im Hintergrund passiert. Doppelt komisch, weil man im Gegensatz zu Twitter und Facebook und Instagram und TikTok usw. sich eine "Webseite" aussuchen mu, wo man sich registriert, statt da es nur genau eine gibt.
Auch deswegen wird das Fediverse gern auf Mastodon reduziert: Mastodon ist so ziemlich das einzige Fediverse-Projekt, das auch eine Handy-App ist. Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Friendica, Hubzilla usw. kann man dem technisch wenig versierten Massenpublikum nicht als etwas verkaufen, was sie verstehen, nmlich eine Handy-App, weil sie keine Handy-Apps sind, weil sie keine gleichnamigen offiziellen Mobil-Apps haben. Also redet man gar nicht drber.
Dazu kommen noch zwei Punkte. Zum einen hat gerade iOS das Problem, da der vorinstallierte Browser, Safari, einfach kacke ist und den iOS-Nutzern die Lust aufs Benutzen von Webbrowsern insgesamt versaut. Vor allem, wenn sie nie einen anderen Browser gesehen haben, weil sie in ihrem Leben noch nie ein Endgert bedient haben, auf dem nicht iOS luft.
Zum anderen haben dedizierte Mobil-Apps den Vorteil, die Funktionalitt eines wie auch immer gearteten Online-Dienstes im Standard-UI-Stil des Gerts umzusetzen. Und nicht irgendwie. Es wirkt wie aus einem Gu und ist von vornherein nicht nur fr Mobilgerte optimiert, sondern fr Mobilgerte ausgelegt. Jemanden, der nur Smartphones und vielleicht noch Tablets kennt, kannst du mit einer UI, die fr Desktop-Webbrowser designt wurde, nicht hinterm Ofen hervorlocken.
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#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #iOS #Android #Apps #FediverseApps Das ist eben bei vielen "Fediverse"-Apps das Problem: "Fediverse" meint Mastodon, und die Apps sind hart nur gegen Mastodon gebaut. Das heit, die untersttzen zumindest einen Groteil der Features von Mastodon. Was aber andere Projekte mit Mastodon-API an Features haben, die Mastodon nicht hat, untersttzen sie nicht. Entweder lohnt sich das nicht, weil "keiner" irgendwas nutzt, was nicht Mastodon ist. Oder der Entwickler hat erst erfahren, da das Fediverse nicht nur Mastodon ist, als die App quasi schon fertig war.
Wer mit einer dedizierten App Friendica bedienen will ber das hinaus, was auch Mastodon kann, und sei es Textformatierung, hat nur zwei Mglichkeiten. Entweder Fedilab, das es nur fr Android gibt, dem auch einige Friendica-Features fehlen. Oder versuchen, sich als Tester fr das noch sehr unfertige Relatica zu registrieren. Unter iOS geht, wenn man sich nicht auf die Funktionalitt von Mastodon beschrnken will, nur entweder letzteres oder Webinterface im Browser.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #iOS #iOSApp #FriendicaWild party for World Peace Day at ZetaWorlds right now. Next to a lot of music about peace anyway.
When sang, Juno Rowland and I joined an impromptu backing band. It was a good idea to bring instruments.
Ruud managed to multi-task: DJ, dance and slap ladies' butts.
Of course, such a party could impossibly happen without the Starks, even though it isn't taking place at Stark. For some reason, Niki sent people good vibrations on several occasions by throwing around free Hitachi Magic Wands. Don't ask.
And yes, it's nice to be back at ZetaWorlds without having to resort to our spare OSgrid avatars.
One and a half more hours to go.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #ZetaWorlds #Stark #WorldPeaceDay #WorldPeaceDay2024 You mean two applications communicating with one another without any common language
No chance. No way, no how.
Both sides always require one common language to communicate with each other.
Maybe not at this stage, but could different protocols be adapted for that

That'd basically require at least one protocol to adopt another protocol wholly. Like, ActivityPub would have to include the AT protocol's whole set of communication standards and features.
But if ActivityPub has it, that doesn't mean Mastodon automatically has it, too. Mastodon would have to implement all this in addition to ActivityPub implementing it.
So. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.
Of all Fediverse projects, Mastodon has the worst track record of making itself compatible with anything that isn't Mastodon. It is largely developed like it was the whole Fediverse, without any regard for external compatibility.
And if Mastodon doesn't give a damn for being sufficiently compatible with other actual Fediverse projects and keeps introducing proprietary, non-ActivityPub-standard technology, why should it make itself compatible with something that doesn't have ActivityPub implemented in the first place and never will
If you don't want bridges, the only solution is to use something that "speaks multiple languages" itself.
Step 1: Say goodbye to the comfort of fully featured phone apps. Embrace the Web interface.
Step 2: Get a Friendica account. Don't worry, it's in the Fediverse. It has been around for five and a half years longer than Mastodon, and it has been continuously fully connected to Mastodon since Mastodon's own launch. Friendica was created with the goal of connecting to everything out there and then some. Until recently, this included Twitter, for a short while in the early 2010s, this even included Facebook. And now this includes Bluesky.
Step 3: Friendica's Bluesky integration works the same as its Twitter and Facebook integrations. It isn't true federation, it's more of an integration of another communications system. So you need an account there. Which means that, yes, I can't help it, you'll need a Bluesky account.
Step 4: Integrate that Bluesky account into your Friendica account.
Result: You can use Friendica to follow just about everyone in the ActivityPub-based Fediverse and just about everyone on Bluesky, connected to the bridge or not, and without the hassle of bridging.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Interoperability #Fediverse #Mastodon #Bluesky #FriendicaSo I started two weeks ago about how meme posts should best be explained. It was mostly about whether it's better to explain stuff in the post itself, or whether it's better to link to explanations.
The result:

This is really interesting. Not long ago, people, especially blind or visually-impaired people, kept telling me that information behind external links is inconvenient and leaning towards inaccessible, and that everything must always be explained in the post itself. Now, however, according to this, poll, absolutely nobody wants this.
I have a suspicion, however. I have a suspicion that the reason for this is because I've also given an estimated character count for the resulting post. And all of a sudden, not having all explanations served to people on a silver platter right away sounded better than having tens of thousands of characters piled upon them.
Me: "Do you want your explanations for meme posts in the posts themselves or as external links"
Everyone: "Links suck, they're inconvenient and impractical and not accessible enough, and they suck! Always explain everything in the post!"
Me: "Okay, that's well over 10,000 characters for one image then, all in one post!"
Everyone: "What Nope! Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope! ... Well, okay, then don't explain everything in the post if it keeps the post shorter!"
Hadn't I given character count estimations, the poll would have ended up with dramatically different results.
But why did almost three quarters of all voters vote for not even having links Is it because they don't trust me to give them useful links, and they think they can do better
No, it's most likely because they don't want me to put links into an alt-text. They expect me to do just that, even though links in alt-text don't work. They're Mastodon users, and they cannot for the lives of them wrap their minds around the possibility of describing or explaining an image anyplace else than in alt-text. Like, for example, in the post itself then.
So they voted for not having links to keep me from doing something stupid.
I could have told them that the explanation was to go into the post. But then I would have exceeded 500 characters, and I wouldn't even have had a third of the votes I had because so many Mastodon users would have shunned the poll altogether.
Speaking of 500 characters, this must be the reason for the two voters who wanted me to explain nothing: It was the only option that promised to stay under 500 characters. And these two are probably staunchly against "long posts" (= everything longer than 500 characters).
So here's what I've taken away from the poll.
One, people want the most convenient way of having meme posts explained to them. They do prefer explanations in the post itself, but not at the cost of not only long, but super-massive posts. If there's so much to explain that it'd amount to tens of thousands of characters, several dozen Mastodon toots worth of explanation, they prefer links over that.
I can go with that. It saves me a whole lot of work, at least if there is someplace that I can link to in order to have something explained. This will be fairly easy, if not perfectly easy, for Fediverse memes. For OpenSim memes, not so much.
Two, Mastodon users can't imagine images being described or explained outside the alt-text because nobody on Mastodon does that. It isn't like they don't want links. It isn't like they think they can find better explanations for memes or for things like Hubzilla or OpenSim than I can. It's more like they don't want links where links don't work, and they can't imagine me putting these links where links do work.
So I will provide links. But I'll provide them where they work. In the post. At the risk of Mastodon users not finding them, but then they won't find the explanation either because it, too, will be where Mastodon users don't expect it.
Three, yes, there are people who want to enforce a 500-character limit for the whole Fediverse. Including places which have had no character limit at all since before Mastodon was even made.
I don't care. They're a small minority. Besides, Hubzilla, where I am, has been in the Fediverse for longer than Mastodon, since times when the Fediverse had no character limit at all.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Memes #A11y #Accessibility It doesn't help that Mastodon itself is largely a bubble.
Some 70% of all Fediverse users are on Mastodon. But it seems like that within Mastodon itself, at least 95% of all posts originate from Mastodon. Maybe even more.
There are several reasons for this.
First of all, other projects don't federate with Mastodon that much.
Misskey is huge in East Asia, especially Japan. And Japanese Misskey users who hardly know English or not at all won't be interested in connecting with Western Mastodon users, so a large chunk of the second-biggest free project in the Fediverse is out of the equation.
Lemmy is the third-biggest, but Lemmy federates with Mastodon only barely so, also because Lemmy is all about discussion groups and enclosed conversations, both of which Mastodon simply doesn't support. Lemmy users can't follow Mastodon users because Lemmy users can't follow users, full stop. And Mastodon users have to wrap their minds around how to federate with Lemmy. It isn't as straight-forward as communication within Mastodon. And so they simply don't.
Other examples include Hubzilla and (streams) channels having ActivityPub off on purpose to keep ignorant and obnoxious Mastodon users out.
But this goes the other way as well. Mastodon can be outright hostile to non-Mastodon users. Why Because they don't behave like what Mastodon users are used to from Mastodon and, by extent, partly also Twitter. And they have joined the Fediverse in expectation of something that's one big distributed but homogenous Twitter clone. Anything that deviates from that may be disturbing.
There are Mastodon users who, upon seeing a post with over 500 characters, and be it in the federated timeline, block the poster. This alone cuts into the reach of everything that isn't Mastodon. Not few wish for a switch with which they can permanently filter out all posts with over 500 characters.
Others may block everyone who uses text formatting. Either it simply goes on their nerves. Or they can't imagine that it's even possible to format text in the Fediverse because they can't do that on Mastodon, so they think it's all some Unicode trickery. And as this Unicode trickery is not accessible and inclusive because it irritates screen readers, they deem whoever uses text formatting ableist and therefore blockworthy.
Then there's the issue of content warnings. They must be provided the Mastodon way, or you risk being blocked. However, not everything out there provides a) the right text field with b) the right label on it. Non-Mastodon projects may still label the summary field a summary field instead of a CW field like Mastodon does.
Friendica, for example, has done away with that text field entirely and users BBcode tags instead. Hubzilla doesn't provide any means of adding a summary/a Mastodon CW to a reply. And both have had their own way of adding CWs since long before there was Mastodon which their own users consider vastly superior to Mastodon's way.
In general, boosts are very important on Mastodon. I'd say that most activity on Mastodon is boosts because they're so easy to do on a phone without a hardware keyboard. Your reach on Mastodon depends on boosts.
But if you don't play exactly along Mastodon's written and unwritten rules, and if you don't adhere to the "Fediquette" which is entirely defined by only Mastodon users and geared towards only Mastodon's features (or lack thereof), you're boosted far less.
If you post more than 500 characters at once, it takes a lot for your post to get boosted.
If you post an image without alt-text, the post will be boosted dramatically less because not exactly few Mastodon users refuse to boost image posts without alt-text. You may even be muted or blocked for not providing alt-text. But alt-text only is a thing on Mastodon, and hardly anyone provides it outside Mastodon.
In general, anything that deviates from the standards defined by vanilla Mastodon will cut into your visibility on Mastodon deeply.
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#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Fediquette Na ja, die Mehrzahl ist "auf Mastodon". Aber eben nicht alle. Du jetzt gerade nicht und ich auch nicht.
Warum ist das so schwierig zu verstehen

Weil geschtzte 50% aller Mastodon-Nutzer "wissen", da das Fediverse nur Mastodon ist. Und die Newbies, die gerade frisch von rbergekommen sind, "wissen" das annhernd alle.
Und so benutzen sie "Mastodon" und "Fediverse" synonym und behaupten, alle, denen sie begegnen, seien auch "auf Mastodon".
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NichtNurMastodonSo hilarious how easily people are triggered by the announced shutdown of mozilla.social. Even if that doesn't mean that the Mozilla folks will leave the Fediverse altogether rather than joining another instance.
People seem to try to call for a total global boycott of everything that Mozilla has ever laid their hands on. From their iPhones and their stock Android phones on which they still use Google Chrome on factory settings and their Windows laptops on which they're ready to uninstall Firefox and switch back to either Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome.
Apple. Google. Microsoft. So what, at least none of them is Mozilla.
Oh, and people also prefer closed-source Vivaldi over free, open-source, inherently secure LibreWolf because the latter is a Firefox soft fork.
Speaking of which, I guess the preferred migration destinations of the mozilla.social users are:

Seriously, I expect absolutely none of them to move anywhere in the ActivityPub-connected Fediverse that's neither Mastodon nor Threads.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mozilla #MozillaSocial I'm not a dev, so I don't have the technical details down pat.
But Friendica and everything that came after it, including Hubzilla, handle conversations as something enclosed with exactly one (1) post and otherwise only comments, as opposed to Mastodon's loose chain of posts. Replies are always comments instead of posts, and they're always sent to the thread starter who is the owner of the whole thread, and who then distributes them to all participants.
Right after Friendica, permissions were introduced. These aren't stored with each comment separately and with the post only for the post itself. Rather, they're unified for the whole thread. The thread starter defines who is allowed to see what and who is allowed to do what. As opposed to Mastodon, commenters cannot change the permissions of their comments away from those of the start post.
Last year, (streams) switched to conversations as containers. To the outward, it works the same, but internally, it's different. Again, I'm not a dev. Mike Macgirvin has made all this. But to my understanding, this is when a thread really became an object of its own.
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#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Conversations

Two lost souls. One dying planet. Its time to reclaim the futureLONG COLD WINTER
From Mad Cave Studios Italy-based dream team, writer Francesca Perillo (Love Me: A Romance Story) and artist Stefano Cardoselli (Dont Spit in The Wind), comes their newest sci-fi dystopian confection, LONG COLD WINTER.

In...
cold winter Cave Studios

Makes me wonder if my own image posts are hardly boosted/reposted/renoted/repeated because they're too niche and special interest or because they're too long due to the long, detailed image description in the post itself in addition to the not exactly short short description in the alt-text.
I guess Mastodon users in general don't have a problem with boosting posts with alt-texts that fill the 1,500-character alt-text limit up to the last character, regardless of how accessible they actually are. But they generally won't boost anything that exceeds the default 500-character post limit by another tens of thousands of characters.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta I'm not even sure how much sense it would make to build something else on top of Zot.
Zot was tailor-made for what would become Hubzilla. Hubzilla is a Swiss army knife, a jack-of-all-trades, and Hubzilla is modular and expandable. The idea was not so much to make Zot a standardised protocol for others to build on, but to make Hubzilla something to build on in the shape of add-ons, so-called "apps" that could be attached to it.
With (streams), it's a bit different. Again, the idea here was not to take the Nomad protocol, which is firmly tied to (streams), and build something entirely new from scratch, but rather to fork (streams), turn it into something and give that something a name. That's the very reason why (streams) was put into the public domain.
Nomadic identity and especially the extensive permission controls that both have aren't exactly that easy to handle. Anything that uses Zot or Nomad would inevitably have to do a lot of things that Hubzilla or (streams) does and exactly the way Hubzilla or (streams) does it. It'd be much easier to add to Hubzilla or build on top of (streams) than to re-invent everything from scratch and hope it's compatible enough.
That said, the days of Nomad and Zot are counted. Mike himself is putting all his bets on ActivityPub. He is probably still be working on making ActivityPub nomadic and adding permissions on (streams)' level to ActivityPub. He doesn't do that because he wants to quit maintaining his own protocol, but because he wants the entire Fediverse to become nomadic and as secure as (streams).
If people obviously don't want to go where nomadic identity and permissions are, nomadic identity and permissions have to come to the people.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Zot #Nomad #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #NomadicIdentity
I found a really cool one called Zot that had cross site authentication, which made privacy settings really interesting and useful. Unfortunately, the developer took down all of the drive and instead created a reference application called (streams), the parenthesis are correct. (streams) has no good info or documentation. You have to read the code to figure it out.

A few corrections. Source: I've been using that stuff since before Mastodon was hot. Oh, and this is going to be long.
First of all, the creator, Mike Macgirvin , not only created the Zot protocol, but also a reference implementation at the same time. As in 2012. The reference implementation was named Red and a fork of his very own Friendica from 2010. Since Red turned out to be a not-so-good name, it was renamed Red Matrix. And as it didn't really take off, it was redesigned and renamed into in 2015. Hubzilla still exists today. I'm using it right now.
Mike kept advancing the Zot protocol further and further with a whole string of forks and forks of forks and so forth. Zot6 matured with Zap around 2019 and brought OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on with itself. Both were backported to Hubzilla, which has been maintained by someone else since 2018, in 2010.
Zot's killer feature is not OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, though. It's . The very thing it was designed for.
In 2021, Zot11 was reached, but it had advanced so far that it was no longer compatible with Zot6, so it was renamed to Nomad. Today's Nomad would be Zot12.
(streams) is only a semi-official name, given to it by the community, based on the name of . Officially, the application is not a project, it is intentionally nameless (no, I'm not kidding, this thing has no name), it is intentionally devoid of any traces of a brand identity, it intentionally had almost all nodeinfo code removed, and it was intentionally released into the public domain.
As (streams) is not a branded product, it does not have a website either.
The reason why it doesn't have any documentation is another one: The documentation it had was painfully outdated. It was basically handed on from fork to fork to fork and never touched. Parts of it have remained untouched since before Osada and Zap were forked from Hubzilla, and that was in 2018. Other parts still speak of Red, and that name ceased to exist in 2012. I know because Hubzilla's current documentation is every bit as old.
Hubzilla is right now having its entire documentation re-written from scratch in German and English by a community member.
For (streams), however, the only solution was to rip the whole documentation out because no documentation was deemed better than one that's so outdated it's useless.
It was considered not so bad for as long as how few people a) learned about (streams) and b) figured out how to find an open-registration instance of something that has neither third-party instance lists nor a unified instance identifier actually joined (streams). After all, they all came from Hubzilla, so they could figure out most themselves.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Zot #Zot6 #Nomad #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #NomadicIdentity #SingleSignOn #OpenWebAuth

Will on ever again mean more than this, as was meant ago

Es geht nicht mal um komplett oder nicht.
Es geht darum, da Mastodon lauter Eigengezchte eingebaut hat und noch einbaut, die mit dem ActivityPub-Standard null zu tun haben. Nicht standardkonform, im Grunde proprietr und auch schon mal berhaupt nicht dokumentiert auer im Quellcode.
Beispiel: Webfinger. ActivityPub braucht kein Webfinger. Mastodon setzt aber fest auf Webfinger. Und so mu alles, was mit Mastodon kommunizieren will, Webfinger verwenden.
Beispiel: sensible Bilder. Meines Wissens gibt es in der ActivityPub-Spec tatschlich ein Standard-Flag dafr. Den verwendet Mastodon aber nicht. Statt dessen hat Mastodon ein proprietres Flag, dessen Funktionsweise erst aus dem Quellcode rausgesucht werden mu. Wer als Fediverse-Entwickler will, da das eigene Produkt die eigenen Bilder auf Mastodon ausblenden knnen soll, mu dieses undokumentierte, proprietre Flag von Mastodon einbauen und vorher quasi noch reverse-engineeren.
Beispiel: CWs. Eugen Rochko hat Mastodons CW-Feld nicht erfunden. Das gibt's schon seit 2008, seit identi.ca. Aber das war nie ein CW-Feld. Das war immer ein Summary-Feld, also fr Zusammenfassungen. 2017 hat dann ein Tftler aus der Demo-Szene auf Mastodon einen Pull Request eingereicht, der das Summary-Feld fr Inhaltswarnungen mibraucht. Rochko hat das so abgenickt.
Mastodon htte das auch so machen knnen wie Friendica seit etwa sieben Jahren vorher und Hubzilla seit etwa zwei Jahren vorher. Automatisch per Keyword-Liste generierte CWs, und jeder kriegt genau die CWs und eben nur die CWs, die man gerade selbst individuell braucht. Aber nein...
Seitdem zwingt die Mastodon-Community, wo annhernd jeder glaubt, Mastodon htte das CW-Feld selbst fr CWs erfunden, die Nutzer aller anderen Projekte dazu, immer schn CWs ins Summary-Feld zu packen. Wer das nicht tut, wird auch mal blockiert. Wei ja keiner, da die Leute nicht auf Mastodon sind, geschweige denn, da sie vielleicht unter Umstnden oder gar generell auf dieses Feld gar keinen Zugriff haben.
Wenn's um die Befindlichkeiten der Mastodon-Community geht, die nur auf Mastodon und seine Einschrnkungen geeicht ist, knnte ich sogar noch weitermachen.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub #Webfinger #CW #CWs #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #CWMeta #ContentWarningMeta I hope there's a way for us to integrate Mike Macgirvin 's plans into this. AFAIK, they included not only nomadic identity via ActivityPub, but also to implement the highly advanced permissions system of , currently only implemented in the Nomad protocol, with native ActivityPub means.
There's no need to re-invent the wheel in a worse way than what already exists and in a way that's incompatible to existing solutions, just because nobody knows these solutions already exist.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ActivityPub #Streams #(streams) #Permissions Mastodon zieht andere Projekte nicht mit.
Klar, der normale "Wanderpfad" durchs Fediverse ist normalerweise mastodon.social -> andere Mastodon-Instanz -> "oh, es gibt im Fediverse auch noch was anderes als Mastodon" -> was anderes als Mastodon. Geschtzte 99,99% der Fediverse-Neulinge seit 30. Oktober 2022 kamen von Twitter nach Mastodon.
Aber Mastodon tut zum einen gerne nach auen so, als sei es selbst das Fediverse. Es versucht gar nicht erst, diese Annahme bei Newbies zu korrigieren. Im allgemeinen dauert es Monate, bis Newbies erfahren, da das Fediverse nicht nur Mastodon ist. Und das tun sie fast immer durch Nicht-Mastodon-Nutzer und da wiederum hufig durch "Reply Guys", die sich nicht an Mastodons (fehlendes) Konversationsmodell anpassen.
Zum anderen pfeift es in der eigenen Entwicklung weitestgehend auf Standards und auf Lsungen anderer Projekte, weil es bei letzterem zugeben mte, da a) es sie gibt und b) sie etwas gut gemacht haben, was Mastodon noch gar nicht gemacht hat. Auf die Art und Weise kann Mastodon den ganzen Rest des Fediverse "kaputt" aussehen lassen, sofern er nicht selbst Mastodons proprietre Non-Standard-Lsungen bernimmt.
An Standards oder schon existierende Lsungen hlt sich Mastodon hchstens dann, wenn Threads das schon vorher getan hat. Threads ist das einzige, wo Mastodon sich Inkompatibilitt nicht leisten kann.
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#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon
And I know for a fact that at least in some cases, quote posts are really just regular links to posts styled to look like quotes, so they don't really have all the expected functionality (at least in some apps, not sure about specific platforms).

That's the *key way. If it starts with "RE:", and an URL to a Fediverse message follows, it's automatically rendered as a quote-post.
Friendica and descendants do quote-posts as dumb copies, but with links to both the original poster who is notified and to the original post.
Whether Mastodon really wants to use an established and not too obscure standard remains to be seen. But if they do, it could be because they're pressured into using that standard by Threads.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFedisplaining #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares
Also worth mentioning that quote boosts, which have also recently received funding, will include work on privacy and safety features around them, possibly extending to other areas of the online experience.

These "privacy and safety features" are non-sense.
They're proprietary, they're non-standard, they're Mastodon-specific. And they are expected to work only by respecting a proprietary, non-standard, Mastodon-specific quote-post permission flag which probably won't even be documented anywhere except Mastodon's server code.
The opt-out feature will only work within a 100% Mastodon bubble and even that only if no non-Mastodon user finds content from within this bubble by searching mastodon.social for hashtags.
Mastodon is selling its whole quote-post feature as a total revolution, as the very introduction of quote-posts to the Fediverse. And it will work. I've once run . 71% of all voters thought the Fediverse does not have quote-posts right now. And that was in my bubble which, in comparison to Mastodon in general, is fairly Fediverse-savvy and full of non-Mastodon users.
But as a matter of fact, the Fediverse does have quote-posts right now! Almost everything that can do microblogging in a way has quote-posts.
Pleroma has quote-posts.
Akkoma has quote-posts.
Misskey has quote-posts.
Firefish has quote-posts.
Iceshrimp has quote-posts.
Iceshrimp.NET has quote-posts.
Sharkey has quote-posts.
Catodon has quote-posts.
Friendica has quote-posts.
Hubzilla has quote-posts.
(streams) has quote-posts.
And so forth.
They haven't introduced quote-posts to spite Mastodon. Some of them have had quote-posts since before Mastodon even existed. Friendica, for example, was created with quote-posts available, and that was five and a half years before Mastodon was created. For as long as Mastodon has existed, Friendica could quote-post Mastodon toots. And so could Hubzilla, created ten months before Mastodon.
In fact, all of the above can quote-post any Mastodon toot right now, with no problems, with zero resistance.
Guess what'll change when Mastodon introduces quote-posts plus the opt-in switch.
Well, Mastodon will be able to quote-post. Mastodon might be able to display quote-posts from outside properly, but probably not because it's ignoring that the rest of the Fediverse can quote-post.
But the rest of the Fediverse will still be able to quote-post just about all Mastodon toots. With no problems. With zero resistance. Even with the opt-in switched to off.
Because that switch is proprietary, non-standard and Mastodon-specific. Because only Mastodon even supports it.
This switch will cause many many more Mastodon users to learn the hard way that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon. Namely by encountering a post or comment from something that does not behave like Mastodon. And many many more Mastodon users will shit bricks in sheer terror upon this revelation.
If Mastodon really wanted this switch to be 100% waterproof, it would have to implement the feature request in its entirety. That includes defederation from all Fediverse instances that don't respect the opt-in switch.
Mind you, the defederation clause and the entire feature request came from someone in the firm belief that the Fediverse is Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. Just like about every other Mastodon user out there. So it was only targetted at rogue Mastodon instances with hacked source code.
In reality, however, it would require entire non-Mastodon Fediverse projects to be Fediblocked because they can quote-post without respecting Mastodon's quote-post opt-in switch.
All instances of Pleroma, of Akkoma, of Misskey, of Firefish, of Iceshrimp including Iceshrimp.NET, of Sharkey, of Catodon, of Friendica, of Hubzilla, of (streams) and so forth would have to be Fediblocked because they can quote-post without respecting Mastodon's quote-post opt-in switch. Every last one of them.
Mastodon's quote-post feature will either cause a rift through the Fediverse if this rule is put into action or even more people to shit bricks in terror and escape to Bluesky if it isn't.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Fedisplaining #CWFedisplaining #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp.NET #Sharkey #Catodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #FediblockMeta
1) what are streams / what do they do

(streams) is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla. Everything in this line of forks is/was made by Mike.
It's basically Hubzilla based on a more advanced protocol (Nomad, which would actually be Zot12, instead of Zot6), minus articles, minus webpages, minus wikis, minus multiple profiles per channel, minus all connections except Nomad, Zot6, ActivityPub and its own Atom feeds, minus a frontend for the CalDAV server, minus a few other features, but with ActivityPub included into the core and not disturbing nomadic identity as much, with first steps taken towards nomadic identity via ActivityPub (which, unfortunately, seems to have caused some bugs), with a somewhat improved UI, with a new UI theme, and with the permissions system reworked.
2) are you saying the future of Hubzilla is uncertain / in peril

(streams)' future is uncertain.
Hubzilla was handed over to the community in 2018. Ever since then, it has been maintained by Mario Vavti with some help mostly from Harald Eilertsen. It also has a lot more users than (streams).
(streams)' current problem is that it has no-one like Mario amongst its few dozen users. One of them has the ambition and may have the time, but he's so little of a developer that he has only just recently taught himself git to a) fork the streams repository and b) make his own branch based on a commit before the first preparations for nomadic identity via ActivityPub went into release. One or two more are apparently more skilled, but they don't have enough time.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) I can agree with all three points.
The first one is particularly important when using my preferred Fediverse software, Hubzilla and (streams), as well as Friendica. Unlike Mastodon, all three aren't monoliths they're rather modular with lots of add-ons that are delivered with the server installation, but that can be activated or deactivated by the admin. Not all instances have all features activated.
So if you don't have a feature at hand that someone promised you to have in Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams) in general, it wasn't necessarily a lie or lack of knowledge on that someone's side. It may rather be a case of the admin having deactivated that feature or not activated it in the first place.
The third point applies to (streams), too. Those of us who really know it saw it as the future of the Fediverse, at least ideally. But on August 31st, Mike Macgirvin threw in the towel and largely retired from Fediverse development altogether, leaving the streams repository to the community and unclear what'd happen to his few-weeks-old fork Forte.
It wasn't the first time that Mike has handed something over to the community. He did that with Friendica in 2012 when he concentrated on Red and the Zot protocol. He did it with Hubzilla in 2018 when he concentrated on Osada, Zap and Zot6. He did it again with Osada and Zap in 2020 when he concentrated on three new forks and the further advancement of Zot.
However, only Friendica and Hubzilla had big enough communities to really take over. Zap never really took off because it had no apparent advantages over Hubzilla in practice. Osada was soon discontinued because it was basically Zap with a different branding and different default settings. But at least Zap had someone to take care of it. And besides, on New Year's Eve of 2022, everything between Hubzilla and the streams repository was discontinued anyway because it was superseded by (streams) itself.
With (streams), it's different again. The existence of (streams) is fairly well-known on Hubzilla, except maybe among people who have only just joined Hubzilla. But hardly anyone knows what (streams) really is like, and that's only those who use it.
None of them has ever written and published a "test drive" that'd compare (streams) with Hubzilla. I've always wanted to, but I don't know if it makes sense anymore. It might even be counter-productive because it might lure people into (streams) at a point at which it's very buggy.
But as next to nobody on Hubzilla knows what advantages (streams) may have that might outweigh the cutting of lots of features, and as lots of features were cut on the way from Hubzilla to (streams) in the first place, there's zero incentive for Hubzilla users to try (streams).
And so there are only a few dozen (streams) users at best. There have never been more than seven public, open-registration instances, and they're dwindling now that nobody knows what'll become of the streams repository.
Worse yet, it looks like none of these few dozen users has both a) the time and b) the skills to pick up where Mike left. Several bugs are being hunted down, but it is unclear if anyone will fix them.
Fortunately, Mike has not entirely retired. Every few days or so, he is caught contributing to either the streams repository or Forte. But it looks like ironing out the bugs relies on community contributions.
Unfortunately, once-stable (streams) was left not only as a fairly unstable construction site, but it never reached the point that it was planned to reach: Fediverse-wide nomadic identity using ActivityPub. (streams) is nomadic, so it's possible to survive the shutdown of an instance if you've cloned your channel. But with there being fewer and fewer public instances, it becomes increasingly harder to find places where to clone your channel unless you set up your own instance.
Thanks to nomadic identity, it's possible to export the entirety of your channel into one or several JSON files. But these JSON files are so (streams)-specific that even the attempt at uploading them to a Hubzilla channel might destroy the whole hub. So nomadic identity couldn't save your channel if the last public (streams) instance vanished.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams)

Badlands I Utah by mcalma68

Motorbiking Hokkaido! Akan-Mashu National Park! Motorbiking Hokkaido! Akan-Mashu National Park! The Akan-Mashu National


Okay if I read that correctly if I want an Hubzila instance I need to setup one by myself cause there are no public ones provided by others. Which is, after reading the features, fully understandable,

Oh, there are several public, open-registration instances. See and .
Is there any information abour Friendica's filespace
Can I image this as an image only post, which is easily shareable. Is this more like a "cloud" where the image is stored ready to embed in an post

Friendica would be the Swiss army knife of the Fediverse if Hubzilla wasn't it.
Friendica's file space is just simply that, file space. With an integrated, very simple file management GUI. With subfolders. No fancy binary trickery, no obscuring, nothing. You can, for example, upload files and attach them to posts like you can attach files to posts on Mastodon, only that you upload them to a file space first, and you know exactly where your files are.
As for posts, I've already explained them. Friendica's flavour of Mastodon toots can be styled as full-blown blog posts with all shebang, and I mean all shebang. What WordPress and other specialised blogging engines can do, so can Friendica. All the tricks of the trade. Text formatting to no end, headlines, centred text, tables etc., even a title, an abstract/summary and a category which is fully separate from hashtags which Friendica supports as well.
And you can embed images in posts within the text, between paragraphs, tiny images can probably even placed right within a line. As many images as you want.
On Mastodon, you're limited to four images dangling below the post as file attachments. On Friendica, you can upload them to your file space and use a whole dozen of them to spice up a travel log post by putting them in-between paragraphs. Even though Mastodon can't even render that correctly.
Or you can upload the images to your Friendica file space, copy the image file URLs (which won't change, don't worry) and paste them into the HTML or Markdown code of your posts in a blog entirely elsewhere.
All the same goes for Hubzilla. But Hubzilla adds access permissions on top, and they don't necessarily all default to fully public. And Hubzilla adds WebDAV so you can use your Hubzilla file space as a cloud file storage which you can mount on your desktop OS, maybe even automatically.
However, I've already mentioned this caveat: If you want to upload an image to your Hubzilla file space and use it as an image in a Hubzilla post, you have to use Hubzilla's own built-in Images app so that Hubzilla recognises the file as an image. Upload it using the Files app or via WebDAV, and it'll be like any other file to Hubzilla.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #HubzillaToday I learned that you can't always give detailed descriptions of Fediverse software logos in alt-text.
That is, you can, but only one. Once you've got two, chances are you'll exceed 1,500 characters. Three or more, and you will definitely have to simplify the descriptions and leave details out.
I've just described the very simple (streams) logo in over 350 characters and the Firefish logo in almost 1,000 characters. Only these two would have so many characters combined that there won't be much room for more, such as text transcripts or even only describing where the logos are. And these are still somewhat limited.
I have to shorten them and discard visual information. The only alternative would be to do for meme posts what I do for my virtual world images, namely write two image descriptions, a short one for the alt-text and detailed one for the post which nobody will read because it's too excessively long.
Sorry, blind or visually-impaired users, for letting you down, but that's the way it is.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Fediverse #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #A11y #Accessibility Nein.
Denn Hubzilla basiert nicht auf ActivityPub. Es basiert auf Zot. ActivityPub ist zwar seit Juli 2017 verfgbar. Hubzilla hatte es zuerst, zwei Monate vor Mastodon. Aber es ist ein Add-on, es ist optional, standardmig ist es auf Nutzerseite sogar deaktiviert, und es kann fr ganze Hubs (= Serverinstanzen) deaktiviert werden. Und selbst mit deaktiviertem ActivityPub wre Hubzilla immer noch fderiert.
Wenn Hubzilla qua Basisprotokoll nicht Teil des Fediverse wre, wrde ich dir jetzt von auerhalb des Fediverse antworten.
Auch (streams) basiert nicht auf ActivityPub, sondern auf Nomad, einer Weiterentwicklung von Zot, nur da hier ActivityPub in den Kern eingebaut und standardmig aktiviert ist. Aber es kann im Gegensatz zu Nomad abgeschaltet werden.
Und soweit ich das mitbekommen habe, hat auch Friendica erst 2023 von seinem eigenen DFRN als Basisprotokoll auf ActivityPub umgestellt, das es schon seit 2019 untersttzt.
Gem der Definition "Fediverse = ActivityPub als Basisprotokoll" gehrt Friendica also erst seit der Umstellung auf ActivityPub dazu und nicht schon seit 2010, und Hubzilla und (streams) gehren gar nicht dazu. Gem dieser Definition fing das Fediverse erst an zu existieren, als das erste Projekt direkt auf ActivityPub aufgesetzt wurde.
Darber wird aber nirgendwo diskutiert und auf Mastodon schon gar nicht. 75% der Fediverse-Nutzer haben von Hubzilla noch nie auch nur gehrt, von (streams) haben noch weniger gehrt. Und da diese drei nicht schon immer auf ActivityPub basiert haben, wissen noch viel weniger Leute.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #DFRN #Friendica #Zot #Hubzilla #Nomad #Streams #(streams)
Last updated: 2024-09-25






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