@Trenton Matthews @feld First step: Stop mollycoddling newbies by dragging them all to a few huge Mastodon instances and implying that Mastodon is the Fediverse.

Stop making Mastodon or even mastodon.social the frontpage of the Fediverse.

Have people know how big the Fediverse is. Have them know that there's more in the Fediverse than Mastodon, and I mean right away. Don't let them spend half a year on their huge instances in the belief that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

The longer they live with the mindset there's nothing else out there, the more they'll see all the other Fediverse projects as shoddy knock-offs of their beloved Mastodon. Or competition. Or intruders into their nice and cosy "Mastodon network" which isn't even an enclosed network.

This should also concern tech media and mass media. They have to stop talking about Mastodon as an enclosed network or even a monolithic, centralised website. They, too, have to treat Mastodon and everything else in the Fediverse the same.

The phenomenon is not Mastodon. The phenomenon is the Fediverse.

Oh, and I can name three active Fediverse projects that are older than Mastodon. So Mastodon wasn't the first either.

@eshep Well, the discoverability of forums themselves is better on Friendica than on Guppe. As I've said, Guppe only lists 50 forums, Friendica lists them all.

But in order to use Friendica, you need to know it exists.

Almost all newcomers to the Fediverse spend their first three to six months "knowing" that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

Then they start discovering stuff that's bolted onto Mastodon. Like Guppe.

Then they start discovering stuff that's actively being advertised on Mastodon by its creators with thousands upon thousands of boosts. This only applies to Pixelfed and maybe PeerTube. Still, to them, Mastodon is the only one of its kind.

Even later, they may stumble upon other ActivityPub-based microblogging projects. Not even all of them yet. If their worldview wasn't shattered in the previous paragraph, it is now.

And unless this happens through one of my posts, chances are it'll take them even longer to discover projects that a) go beyond microblogging, b) aren't based on ActivityPub while still speaking it and c) were even created before Mastodon. All three apply to Friendica. Seriously, I wouldn't wonder if many of those who have added @Fediverse News think it's on Mastodon.

Reactions upon the discovery of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon vary, especially if they come with being told that the Fediverse is not just Mastodon plus shoddy Mastodon knock-offs, but there's stuff in the Fediverse that's better at what Mastodon does than Mastodon itself. Some people react with disbelief, some react with out-right denial, and some react the Krikkit way and want everything that isn't Mastodon to be shut down or at least excluded from the Fediverse.

You've already written it: Guppe was created as a Mastodon add-on. Friendica is six years older than Mastodon and out-classes Mastodon in just about everything. Of course, those who have discovered Mastodon to be nice and cosy and perfect don't take the revelation that there's something that's better than Mastodon kindly, so it's only natural that they prefer Guppe.

Also, Guppe has the "advantage" over Friendica of not requiring another user account, another login, potentially another password to memorise. A killer feature for casual Mastodon users.

@Bruce G_NS Okay, let me explain it to you with a fictional dialogue between me and a Fediverse News subscriber who's convinced that all of the Fediverse is Mastodon.

Them: >implying that Mastodon is the Fediverse

Me: #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse.

Them: What do you mean?

Me: You're literally using something that isn't Mastodon, but in the Fediverse. Fediverse News is on Friendica.

Them: But Friendica is a Mastodon server.

Me: No, it isn't.

Them: But it has to be. How else can I possibly use it if it isn't on Mastodon?

Me: Because Mastodon and Friendica speak a common language, ActivityPub. Still, Friendica is an absolutely unrelated project. Face it, there's more in the Fediverse than just Mastodon.

Them: WTF? Then Friendica is a group add-on for Mastodon?

Me: No, Friendica has got literally nothing to do with Mastodon. It's wholly independent. Actually, it can do everything that Mastodon can do.

Them: So it's some shoddy Mastodon knock-off that can do forums?

Me: No. Friendica can do all that Mastodon can do without Mastodon, it can do it better than Mastodon, and it can do even more on top that Mastodon can't do.

Them: Lies. Why are you fucking lying to me?

Me: Oh, and Friendica is older than Mastodon. Mastodon is from 2016, Friendica is from 2010. When Mastodon was launched, Friendica had been around for a whopping six years already.

Them: Like. What. The. Ever-loving. FUCK?!?!?! Stop bullshitting me! Friendica is nothing but a fucking Mastodon clone, and all that's good about it is the forums, and I don't want anything else than that!

Me: I'm not bullshitting you. If I am, then so is Wikipedia. Release date: July 1st, 2010. That's a fact. Deal with it.

Them: So... there's... like two Mastodons, and they're both in the Fediverse? WTF?

Me: There are many projects in the Fediverse that are like Mastodon but with more features. Pleroma, Akkoma, MissKey, CalcKey, FoundKey... There are many other projects that aren't like Mastodon. Friendica is more like Facebook. I'm on Hubzilla which is even more powerful than Friendica and still older than Mastodon. And they can all communicate with Mastodon.

Them: What... WTF... NOOOOO I DON'T WANT ANY OF THAT I WANT MY FEDIVERSE TO BE ONLY MASTODON AND NICE AND COZY AND CUDDLY AND I DON'T WANT NOTHING ELSE IN MY BELOVED FEDIVERSE MAKE IT GO AWAY I WANT MY MASTODON-ONLY FEDIVERSE BACK NOOOOOOOO THIS IS TOO MUCH SOMEONE PLEASE FEDIBLOCK EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T MASTODON

End of demonstration.

I'm not even kidding, I've read a story about someone from the "Fediverse = Mastodon" crowd who actually blocked a Friendica user for telling them that the Fediverse is not just Mastodon and for allegedly "intruding" into their timeline with some black hacking magic or something.

Some people don't want there to be anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon.

Tobias

2017-04-01 20:00:13

Home

https://friendi.ca/

friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

^friendi.ca

@Christopher As I've said, there are many Mastodon users who have joined during the big migration in November who are still blissfully unaware that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon. You'll first have to tell them that.

Then they'll have to accept it.

Then you'll have to get into their heads that "Fediverse" means that everything connects with everything, and they can interact with Friendica or Lemmy from their Mastodon accounts. It sounds like black magic. I mean, it's the same as following someone on Facebook or Reddit while you're on Twitter yourself.

Also, many of those who joined Mastodon in late 2022 are so happy and giddy about it that they can't for the lives of them imagine that something else in the Fediverse could possibly have any advantage over Mastodon.

I've had someone tell me that everything that isn't Mastodon has to suck because only Mastodon is "feature-complete". I could have replied to him by pitting Mastodon against Hubzilla in features and listing up dozens of features that Hubzilla has that Mastodon doesn't while also stating that there's almost nothing that Mastodon has that Hubzilla doesn't. But I didn't.

Also, I think that whoever invented Guppe knew neither Lemmy nor Friendica nor Hubzilla at that point nor any of the other "Reddit clone" endeavours that were pretty much stillborn (Lotide, anyone?).

This is why it's dangerous to build "Fediverse projects" when you still think the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

@Christopher I guess my channel has accidentally become one of them. Especially this post. Count the likes. Not bad for Hubzilla.

Jupiter Rowland

2023-03-15 17:30:41

Re-inventing the federated wheel because you don't know that wheels exist

I keep seeing lots of people who are totally giddy about the #Fediverse, who are gushing over it, who want to promote it, who want it to spread.

And who want it to advance. To learn new abilities. To grow new features.

That's all fine and dandy.

But almost all of these people are still fully convinced that the Fediverse equals #Mastodon. And nothing else. At least not until Tumblr and P92 join the fray. Okay, maybe the #WordPress plug-in that's the talk of the town now that it has become official. Okay, maybe a few of them have also heard of #Pixelfed and/or #PeerTube because their makers are all over the Fediverse.

When these people are talking about the Fediverse, they mean Mastodon. And when they're thinking about the Fediverse, they're only thinking about Mastodon. Because that's all they know.

So these people want new cool features or even new cool use-cases in the Fediverse, stuff that Mastodon doesn't have. They want Mastodon to have it, or they want new projects to be launched that have these features.

If only they knew.

If only they knew that everything, literally everything they propose has already been done. Yes, in the Fediverse. In projects which are fully federated with Mastodon. Why don't they know? Because they've never heard of any of these projects, much less what they can do.

---

So they want "quote-tweets" in the Fediverse. Which means they want Mastodon to introduce them.

Tell you what: Mastodon is the only microblogging project in the Fediverse that doesn't have quotes. Not only will Eugen Rochko never introduce them, but all the other projects have them with Mastodon forks #GlitchSoc such as being the exception. #Pleroma has them. #Akkoma has them. #MissKey has them. #CalcKey has them. #FoundKey has them. #GoToSocial has them. The old heavyweights #Friendica and #Hubzilla have them, and so does Hubzilla's youngest decendant, the #Streams project. Et cetera.

You want "quote-tweets"? Switch to something that isn't Mastodon, and you've got "quote-tweets".

---

Or text formatting in posts like bold type, italics, underline, strikethrough, code blocks etc. Would be great if Mastodon had that, in spite of other people saying they don't want it.

Again: Pleroma already has it. Akkoma already has it. MissKey already has it. CalcKey already has it. FoundKey already hasit. GoToSocial already has it. Friendica already has it. Hubzilla already has it (look at this post at its source in a Web browser and weep). (streams) already has it. And so forth. This time, even Mastodon forks have it.

It has been done. It has been done many times. It has actually been done before Mastodon.

---

Next, long-form blog posting. We need something like #Medium in the Fediverse that isn't Medium itself. Mastodon's 500 characters are too few, and Twitter-like threads are inconvenient.

Except we already have that, too. #Plume and #WriteFreely are about as close to Medium as Mastodon is to Twitter, including clean and distraction-less layouts. Oh, and Hubzilla can do that, too.

By the way: Again, Mastodon is the only Fediverse project that can do microblogging that has a 500-character limit. Pleroma, Mastodon's oldest direct competitor, raised it to a default of 6,000. MissKey and its forks have 3,000 as a default. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have character limits of "go ahead, drop your short story in one post in its entirety," so virtually none at all. And yes, Hubzilla has long-form writing on top of that.

---

Speaking of Hubzilla: Most recently, there has been the idea to uncouple one's online identity from a specific instance. Your online self should no longer be firmly tied to any one server exclusively. Now, this sounds so ambitious, it might just as well be science-fiction.

What if I told you that just this very thing already exists as well?

No, really. No, I'm not making this up. But you should know by now that I'm not.

Better yet: It was conceived as early as 2011. By the guy who launched Friendica in 2010. He invented a new principle named #NomadicIdentity and a new protocol named #Zot. In its early stages already, even with no technical implementation yet, Zot was more powerful than ActivityPub is today.

In 2012, Zot became reality as the basis of a Friendica fork which later became known as #RedMatrix and, upon its 1.0 stable release in late 2015, which is still prior to Mastodon's initial release, Hubzilla. Hubzilla is still being developed and improved, and it has a fledgling but growing "successor of a successor" named (streams) which offers nomadic identity, too.

Now, what does this nomadic identity even look like? Well, not only does it let you move your channel(s) around from instance to instance with ease and, unlike on Mastodon, with absolutely everything on it. No, it also lets you have your channel on multiple instances at once. Identical clones, automagically kept in sync in real-time, all with the same identity, the same content, the same connections.

Your identity is no longer strapped down to one instance. Not only that, but your channel, your posts, your content is no longer hosted on only one server. This means that if one instance with one of your clones goes down, you still have spares.

---

Okay, so how about community groups/forums? That'd be cool.

Well, for one, there's #Guppe. It's basically bolted on Mastodon, and in practice, it's centralised because there's only one instance. But it's impractical to use.

Besides, this is becoming a running gag here, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have exactly this built-in and open for the rest of the Fediverse.

Better yet: There's also #Lemmy which amounts to a federated #Reddit or #HackerNews clone. So not only does Lemmy offer this, it specialises in it.

Hubzilla alone can provide Fediverse feature suggestions with "has been done" for years to come. Not to mention what else the Fediverse has to offer. Even if someone should want a free, non-commercial, decentralised, federated #GoodReads clone in the Fediverse, it has been done: #BookWyrm.

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