Hi,
Does anyone here have an account on Fediverse (Mastodon, GNU Social,
Pleroma, Diaspora, Friendica). If yes, what's your experience with it?
--
Paolo Vincenzo Olivo - gopher://tilde.pink:70/1/~snowcrash/
PGP fingerprint = 39F1 9E55 77AF 6BF3 005 B181 8F2A 9A4D 9001 2186
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> writes:

Does anyone here have an account on Fediverse (Mastodon, GNU Social,
Pleroma, Diaspora, Friendica). If yes, what's your experience with it?

I was on/in Identica, Diaspora, GNU Social, Mastodon and maybe more of
the 'free' ones and comparing to the text only alternatives (IRC, News,
and other oldtimers and plaintexters) none of the new social media felt
right for me. I'm probably asocial. :-Þ I don't want to see or hear
the others. In plain text they are all equal. Justice is depictured
with a blindfold for a reason?
--
Take Back Control! — Mesh The Planet!
smtp/tor: yeti@anetphabw4n7gheupc7d2gla4m4yuec622f6qadfypd6lgnhipodbyqd.onion finger yeti@tilde.institute
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On 2022-02-02, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

I was on/in Identica, Diaspora, GNU Social, Mastodon and maybe more of
the 'free' ones and comparing to the text only alternatives (IRC, News,
and other oldtimers and plaintexters) none of the new social media felt
right for me.

Speaking for myself, I was never born an adamant enthusiast of social
networks (myspace, facebook, instagram). However...
I've been on and off reddit and microblogging platforms for quite some
time. I remember twitter from when I was a teen and it was still a nice
place to be in. In the last few years, I've tried participating on
Fediverse more than once, but it really looks like a echo chamber at
times: you see a bunch of loners seldom interacting with one another and sharing content which will be ignored by the largest majority of users,
and, from a practical standpoint, lost forever.
Usually when I try to reply to a post and start an interesting debate, I
am ignored but the few users which I like to get along to and chat. It
seems that some are only interested in followers, likes, boost and
somebody to tell them they're right and that their reasoning is devoid
of fallacies.

The decentralized nature of fediverse falls short to me when I see how
the federation system of ActivityPub makes communities lock themselves
down in the private garden, unpredictably cut off part of the fediverse
based on variable and seldom public blocklists. I 100% endorse
blocking far right, abusive, spamming instances, as well as those with
a history of harassment, intolerant language, violent, enforcing bans,
and code of conducts, etc..), but I've see good portions of the floss
social ecosystem disappear from my feed without notice more than
once and that's why I decided to create an account on the SDF instance,
which appeared at the same time, a reliable service provider and a
transparent mod.

But then again, there's the fact that content is not indexable unless
properly hash-tagged, which makes it extremely hard to find people with
mutual interests and be found in turn. I tried combining multiple
approaches: looking for hashtags, browsing the 'see what's happening'
timeline of instances I thought I might be interested into, scrolling
through recommendation lists, etc...Unfortunately few days ago, a
Mastodon update at SDF made me lost most of those mutual connection,
namely all locked accounts belonging to remote instances.

Self-hosting would solve at least part of those problems, and I have a
decent experience with self-hosting. But then again, I ask myself: is it
worth the trouble? Well, as long as it came down to building my own mail,
xmpp, nntp server, then yes, but the idea of hosting a mastodon server
doesn't attract me as much.

I think that, over the years, the only place I've felt could really suit
me and which I never stopped attending are Q&A fora (love the PHP era, vBullettin), Usenet, and similar platforms. I've been a heavy Yahoo
answers user in my high school years ....:/
I like their inherent asynchronous nature, the fact that content
is (should be) ore carefully thought, revised and formatted
before being posted, which it makes it easier to find (e.g. based on
topic), select, filter, understand, but also much more useful for
readers to come. Mailing lists are ok, but it's not something I enjoy particularly, due to the fact that SMTP makes it harder than NNTP to
separate threads, that everything ends into the same inbox, requiring
one to have a separate mail address in order to prevent that giant mess
from hiding personal important messages.
Now that I think about it, I always wondered why opensource project
would rather use mailing lists as opposed to newsgroups.

I'm probably asocial. :-Þ I don't want to see or hear
the others. In plain text they are all equal. Justice is depictured
with a blindfold for a reason?

And yet you're here, aren't you?

Regards
--
Paolo Vincenzo Olivo - gopher://tilde.pink:70/1/~snowcrash/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-02-03, snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> wrote:

On 2022-02-02, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

I was on/in Identica, Diaspora, GNU Social, Mastodon and maybe more of
the 'free' ones and comparing to the text only alternatives (IRC, News,
and other oldtimers and plaintexters) none of the new social media felt
right for me.

Speaking for myself, I was never born an adamant enthusiast of social networks (myspace, facebook, instagram). However...

I'm @tomasino@tilde.zone on mastodon and @tomasino@pixelfed.tomasino.org
for pixelfed. I have a diaspara somewhere I never check too.

I use mastodon quite frequently and pixelfed is becoming a really solid platform too. Peertube has a bit longer way to go.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-02-07, James Tomasino <tomasino@cosmic.voyage> wrote:

I'm @tomasino@tilde.zone on mastodon and @tomasino@pixelfed.tomasino.org
for pixelfed. I have a diaspara somewhere I never check too.
I use mastodon quite frequently and pixelfed is becoming a really solid
platform too. Peertube has a bit longer way to go.

Very well, I'm following you in this very moment, thanks!
--
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.„

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

I use Misskey

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022, snowcrash wrote:

On 2022-02-02, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

I was on/in Identica, Diaspora, GNU Social, Mastodon and maybe more of
the 'free' ones and comparing to the text only alternatives (IRC, News,
and other oldtimers and plaintexters) none of the new social media felt
right for me.

Speaking for myself, I was never born an adamant enthusiast of social networks (myspace, facebook, instagram). However...
I've been on and off reddit and microblogging platforms for quite some
time. I remember twitter from when I was a teen and it was still a nice
place to be in. In the last few years, I've tried participating on
Fediverse more than once, but it really looks like a echo chamber at
times: you see a bunch of loners seldom interacting with one another and sharing content which will be ignored by the largest majority of users,
and, from a practical standpoint, lost forever.
Usually when I try to reply to a post and start an interesting debate, I
am ignored but the few users which I like to get along to and chat. It
seems that some are only interested in followers, likes, boost and
somebody to tell them they're right and that their reasoning is devoid
of fallacies.

The decentralized nature of fediverse falls short to me when I see how
the federation system of ActivityPub makes communities lock themselves
down in the private garden, unpredictably cut off part of the fediverse
based on variable and seldom public blocklists. I 100% endorse
blocking far right, abusive, spamming instances, as well as those with
a history of harassment, intolerant language, violent, enforcing bans,
and code of conducts, etc..), but I've see good portions of the floss
social ecosystem disappear from my feed without notice more than
once and that's why I decided to create an account on the SDF instance,
which appeared at the same time, a reliable service provider and a transparent mod.

But then again, there's the fact that content is not indexable unless properly hash-tagged, which makes it extremely hard to find people with mutual interests and be found in turn. I tried combining multiple
approaches: looking for hashtags, browsing the 'see what's happening' timeline of instances I thought I might be interested into, scrolling
through recommendation lists, etc...Unfortunately few days ago, a
Mastodon update at SDF made me lost most of those mutual connection,
namely all locked accounts belonging to remote instances.

Self-hosting would solve at least part of those problems, and I have a
decent experience with self-hosting. But then again, I ask myself: is it worth the trouble? Well, as long as it came down to building my own mail, xmpp, nntp server, then yes, but the idea of hosting a mastodon server doesn't attract me as much.

I think that, over the years, the only place I've felt could really suit
me and which I never stopped attending are Q&A fora (love the PHP era, vBullettin), Usenet, and similar platforms. I've been a heavy Yahoo
answers user in my high school years ....:/
I like their inherent asynchronous nature, the fact that content
is (should be) ore carefully thought, revised and formatted
before being posted, which it makes it easier to find (e.g. based on
topic), select, filter, understand, but also much more useful for
readers to come. Mailing lists are ok, but it's not something I enjoy particularly, due to the fact that SMTP makes it harder than NNTP to
separate threads, that everything ends into the same inbox, requiring
one to have a separate mail address in order to prevent that giant mess
from hiding personal important messages.
Now that I think about it, I always wondered why opensource project
would rather use mailing lists as opposed to newsgroups.

I'm probably asocial. :-? I don't want to see or hear
the others. In plain text they are all equal. Justice is depictured
with a blindfold for a reason?

And yet you're here, aren't you?

Regards

--
Paolo Vincenzo Olivo - gopher://tilde.pink:70/1/~snowcrash/

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

reply test [please sorry]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2022, tel@tilde.pink wrote:

I use Misskey

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022, snowcrash wrote:

On 2022-02-02, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

I was on/in Identica, Diaspora, GNU Social, Mastodon and maybe more
of
the 'free' ones and comparing to the text only alternatives (IRC,
News,
and other oldtimers and plaintexters) none of the new social media
felt
right for me.

Speaking for myself, I was never born an adamant enthusiast of social
networks (myspace, facebook, instagram). However...
I've been on and off reddit and microblogging platforms for quite some
time. I remember twitter from when I was a teen and it was still a nice
place to be in. In the last few years, I've tried participating on
Fediverse more than once, but it really looks like a echo chamber at
times: you see a bunch of loners seldom interacting with one another
and
sharing content which will be ignored by the largest majority of
users,
and, from a practical standpoint, lost forever.
Usually when I try to reply to a post and start an interesting debate,
I
am ignored but the few users which I like to get along to and chat. It
seems that some are only interested in followers, likes, boost and
somebody to tell them they're right and that their reasoning is devoid
of fallacies.

The decentralized nature of fediverse falls short to me when I see how
the federation system of ActivityPub makes communities lock themselves
down in the private garden, unpredictably cut off part of the fediverse
based on variable and seldom public blocklists. I 100% endorse
blocking far right, abusive, spamming instances, as well as those with
a history of harassment, intolerant language, violent, enforcing bans,
and code of conducts, etc..), but I've see good portions of the floss
social ecosystem disappear from my feed without notice more than
once and that's why I decided to create an account on the SDF instance,
which appeared at the same time, a reliable service provider and a
transparent mod.

But then again, there's the fact that content is not indexable unless
properly hash-tagged, which makes it extremely hard to find people with
mutual interests and be found in turn. I tried combining multiple
approaches: looking for hashtags, browsing the 'see what's happening'
timeline of instances I thought I might be interested into, scrolling
through recommendation lists, etc...Unfortunately few days ago, a
Mastodon update at SDF made me lost most of those mutual connection,
namely all locked accounts belonging to remote instances.

Self-hosting would solve at least part of those problems, and I have a
decent experience with self-hosting. But then again, I ask myself: is
it
worth the trouble? Well, as long as it came down to building my own
mail,
xmpp, nntp server, then yes, but the idea of hosting a mastodon server
doesn't attract me as much.

I think that, over the years, the only place I've felt could really
suit
me and which I never stopped attending are Q&A fora (love the PHP era,
vBullettin), Usenet, and similar platforms. I've been a heavy Yahoo
answers user in my high school years ....:/
I like their inherent asynchronous nature, the fact that content
is (should be) ore carefully thought, revised and formatted
before being posted, which it makes it easier to find (e.g. based on
topic), select, filter, understand, but also much more useful for
readers to come. Mailing lists are ok, but it's not something I enjoy
particularly, due to the fact that SMTP makes it harder than NNTP to
separate threads, that everything ends into the same inbox, requiring
one to have a separate mail address in order to prevent that giant mess
from hiding personal important messages.
Now that I think about it, I always wondered why opensource project
would rather use mailing lists as opposed to newsgroups.

I'm probably asocial. :-? I don't want to see or hear
the others. In plain text they are all equal. Justice is depictured
with a blindfold for a reason?

And yet you're here, aren't you?

Regards

--
Paolo Vincenzo Olivo - gopher://tilde.pink:70/1/~snowcrash/

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 16/02/22 at 00:57, snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> wrote:

On 2022-02-07, James Tomasino <tomasino@cosmic.voyage> wrote:

I'm @tomasino@tilde.zone on mastodon and @tomasino@pixelfed.tomasino.org
for pixelfed. I have a diaspara somewhere I never check too.
I use mastodon quite frequently and pixelfed is becoming a really solid
platform too. Peertube has a bit longer way to go.

Very well, I'm following you in this very moment, thanks!

I'm going to admit, I still struggle to understand the whole fediverse.
I am @ramiferous@fosstodon.org and also @ramiferous@pixelfed.social
(I hardly use pixelfed though). I can't seem to wrap my head around the different instances and how they are 'seperate'. It's really not all
that inviting to anyone who isn't dedicated to the cause.

Anyone care to give me a 'fediverse for dummies' lecture?

--
pfr[-at-]sdf.org
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-03-26, pfr <pfr@sdf.org> wrote:

On 16/02/22 at 00:57, snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> wrote:
I'm going to admit, I still struggle to understand the whole fediverse.
I am @ramiferous@fosstodon.org and also @ramiferous@pixelfed.social
(I hardly use pixelfed though). I can't seem to wrap my head around the different instances and how they are 'seperate'. It's really not all
that inviting to anyone who isn't dedicated to the cause.

Anyone care to give me a 'fediverse for dummies' lecture?

I'll take a stab at it. Let's start by talking about email. You have an
email address from a provider. Maybe that's SDF, maybe it's gmail. You
can send email to any other email address, right? The user will get it
on their system and be able to read and respond to you. That's a
federated system. Different servers running different software
controlled by different individuals or groups all align on how to
communicate via a specific protocol. Your end-user experience may differ
from place to place, but it's all email.

The fediverse is the same. The protocol is (currently) ActivityPub,
which encapsulates a lot of different types of things with more variety
than an email. These are posts with the ability to reference other
users, comment, boost/share, etc. If you have a Mastodon account on any
given instance you can write messages, respond to people, upload
pictures, and so on. If you have a pixelfed account it's still using ActivityPub, but the focus is on maximizing the user experience for
image sharing. A mastodon user can follow a pixelfed account, though,
and vice-versa. The underlying protocol is the same.

Peertube is following up closely as well but still has more work left to
do to truly integrate into the growing ecosystem.

As an end-user you have to consider how you want to engage with these
systems. Do you want a twitter-like experience? Then you're probably
going to want Mastodon, Miskey, or Pleroma. These are software platforms
built on Activity Pub focused on that type of activity. If you want an Instagram-like experience, then you want Pixelfed. You may want both,
and create accounts on two instances of the relevant type. Some people
even go a step further and have multiple accounts on multiple instances
in order to engage in different ways with different communities.

Since this network of instances isn't homogeneous or centralized,
different instances will federate and pull in content from other
instances in different ways based on the network topology. That means
you may see some things in one place and not another just because those
bridges haven't been built up. As users follow more instances the
network grows and fluccuates. Even so, you'll always have a "louder
voice" in your instance of content from that instance itself (a local
timeline) and the instances followed by users of your instance (sort of
like a nearest neighbor). For that reason choosing a home instance may
matter to you and help you feel welcome and engaged faster.

This is a newer dynamic of the fediverse that doesn't have a lot of
parallels that users are familiar with, at least not in the past few
decades.

Anyway, I hope that helps you understand the systems.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-03-26, James Tomasino <tomasino@cosmic.voyage> wrote:

On 2022-03-26, pfr <pfr@sdf.org> wrote:

On 16/02/22 at 00:57, snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> wrote:
I'm going to admit, I still struggle to understand the whole fediverse.
I am @ramiferous@fosstodon.org and also @ramiferous@pixelfed.social
(I hardly use pixelfed though). I can't seem to wrap my head around the
different instances and how they are 'seperate'. It's really not all
that inviting to anyone who isn't dedicated to the cause.

Anyone care to give me a 'fediverse for dummies' lecture?

I'll take a stab at it. Let's start by talking about email. You have an

In addition to Tomasino's great summary, there happened to be a thread just yesterday about the sort of larger goals of the system.

Incidentally, you can find me there as @jgoerzen@floss.social or https://floss.social/@jgoerzen

Now then, on to the thread...

https://mastodon.social/@humanetech/108032599558344594

"What is the vision of the Fediverse?"

Some responses:

"many smaller, self-regulating communities cooperating to build a positive, pro-social environment for connecting with others"

"having a social platform that isn't controlled by a mega corp and for profit interests. Where people can build communities that serve them."

"A family of social platforms who communicate with whoever is willing to speak the same (public) language, thereby not relying on hostaging their users."

"Social media done right:

* Loosely coupled communities, each enforcing its own policies.
* Interoperation between micro-blogs, blogs, photo collections, and all other
types of social media.
* Timelines free of ads and spam.
* First class privacy.
* First class blocking and filtering. You see only what you want to.
* Users pay for service rather than being monetised."

" a beauty of the fediverse is that there is room for advertising-based platforms to join it, but interoperability means that users will be able opt out
of such platforms without losing touch with their friends who stay there "

"A diversity of different small communities with their own emphases, giving people a genuine freedom to choose where and how they want to communicate, but without having to give up connections to people because of platforms."

"Connect world's communities, small or large. Inclusive and non-toxic. Let each community decide how things should be run. Giving the voice and control back to community members, not big corporations."

- John
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-02-03, snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> wrote:

and code of conducts, etc..), but I've see good portions of the floss
social ecosystem disappear from my feed without notice more than
once

Sadly, some of the floss instances are poorly moderated, as in they
don't react to reports, or see no problem in behaviour others deem
abusive. Theres a bunch of reasons, for example "free speech" means a
different thing in the USA vs in europe, and "free speech" in queer safe
space context is another different beast.
Sometimes people just don't agree and have different standards.

So, from the persepective of a cautious instance the example floss instance
is made up of interesting users and some bad actors. You could block
single remote users and fight the windmills or block the whole instance alltogether. I am on a such a cautious instance, and while it sucks I
can't follow some people I'd like to it's nice not having to deal with
abusive content.

I remember the old usenet saying, be conservative in what you send out
and liberal in what you accept in. On fedi that isn't the case, on a lot
of instances.

~pickles
--
pickles@tilde.pink - gemini://tilde.pink/pickles https://pickleslair.neocities.org
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-02-02, snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> wrote:

Does anyone here have an account on Fediverse (Mastodon, GNU Social,
Pleroma, Diaspora, Friendica). If yes, what's your experience with it?

I am on Mastodon (@pickles@bsd.network and non-tech @orko@weirder.earth)
To me, Fedi is a bit of a mix between the old-school, grass-roots social networks and modern aspects, like images, video, and (gasp) mobile apps.
It's comfortable to browse from the couch :)
--
pickles@tilde.pink - gemini://tilde.pink/pickles https://pickleslair.neocities.org
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113