Sometimes I wish I could go around, grab every single one of those who have joined since the #TwitterTakeover by the shoulders, shake them and tell them, now listen here, #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse. Tell them there's more to the #Fediverse than #Mastodon until they understand why my "toots" look so weird. Also tell them it isn't worth fighting for Mastodon to include certain features. There are more microblogging services in the Fediverse, and they all have these features already, and they all connect to Mastodon.

So you want quote-tweets? Stop pestering Eugen Rochko for including something in Mastodon which he firmly rejects. Go join e.g. #Akkoma instead, and you've got your quote-tweets. And you can always reconnect with all your Mastodon friends just the same as on Mastodon.

Many are positively surprised when they learn that. They've spent some four months in the Fediverse, thinking Mastodon is all there is to the Fediverse. It feels like a whole new world to be explored.

But I've come to the realisation that millions of Mastodon users don't want any of that. They don't want to know about other projects in the Fediverse. It confuses them. They've spent their entire online lives in monolithic, centralised, corporate data silos like #Facebook, #Instagram and #Twitter. It was hard enough to wrap their minds around Mastodon's decentralised architecture with lots of independent #instances, now called #servers.

All they wanted was a Twitter clone without #ElonMusk, but otherwise identical to Twitter. When someone showed them mastodon.social (which isn't even the official Mastodon website; this is), they expected to find just that. And then they first had to learn what instances are and afterwards choose one because mastodon.social didn't let them in. They're still shell-shocked from that. In fact, many of them still wish there were no instances, and Mastodon was a centralised silo like Twitter, for that'd make things easier.

Worse yet, there isn't that one fully-featured mobile app on Apple App Store and Google Play Store that bears the same name as the whole project. There is one, but it sucks, and everyone urges them to use a third-party app that isn't even named Mastodon. So they have to pick something again, and then they have to remember the name of their Mastodon app because it doesn't have "Mastodon" written under the icon.

And then folks like me come along and tell these people that the Fediverse is #NotOnlyMastodon. That some of the instances out there aren't on Mastodon, but parts of wholly different projects. Now, they've just gotten used to the Fediverse being decentral and made up of lots of independent instances of Mastodon. But then someone overthrows this hard-to-grasp world view once again by mentioning that it is, in fact, not only Mastodon that the Fediverse is made of. Worse yet, that someone starts rattling down name after name of other Fediverse projects.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. That's too much. Too much information for someone who came to Mastodon expecting an iPhone app for another black-box internet platform.

Mastodon had just started feeling cosy to them. Well, except for too much #Linux and #FLOSS technobabble. And except for still being hard to use with all these instances and a lack-lustre official mobile app. In fact, except for this lack-lustre official mobile app being the only available iPhone app for Mastodon until recently because everyone only made apps for Android for reasons that don't belong here. They feel like they finally know the Fediverse, that they don't have to learn anything about it anymore, and they've come to love what they know.

But all of a sudden, all these other Fediverse projects burst into their lives. All at once. More nerdy tech information is being shoved down their throats. And the Fediverse doesn't feel the same anymore, now that they know that not everything is Mastodon.

Again, yes, some may look at me in curiosity, their chin resting on their palms, and say, "That's intriguing, tell me more!"

But many others reject this entirely. They cover their ears and go, "La la la la la, I don't want to hear it!" They're those people who speak of the Fediverse as if it's only Mastodon, whom you tell that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon, and who then continue speaking of the Fediverse as if it's only Mastodon. They want it to only be Mastodon because that's easier to understand, and they ignore everyone and everything that says otherwise.

Truth be told, they may have an additional justification. And that's the kind of people who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon, and whose posts come "flooding" into Mastodon. Weeaboos, furries and other weirdos on #Pleroma. Worse tech geeks on #Akkoma and #CalcKey than even those on Mastodon. On top of that, even worse tech geeks in the shape of the "supremacist" old guard from #Friendica, #Hubzilla and #Streams who play key roles in all rallys against centralised services that'd make Mastodon easier to use for former Twitter users.

A closer look may reveal that all their projects are "unusable" for someone who is used to Mastodon, even more so for someone who freshly comes over from Twitter or Facebook. And yet, all of them even claim that what they use is better than Mastodon. Another reason to not like a not-only-Mastodon Fediverse.

Another reason, in fact, to want the Mastodon-only Fediverse "back" that never even existed in the first place.

However, you can't really protect these people from the parts of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, even if you want to. For a user of something that isn't Mastodon, this is even more difficult. In particular, you can't pretend to them that you're on Mastodon when what comes out of your instance clearly doesn't look like it came from Mastodon. And I'm not necessarily only talking about character counts. You can't help but go on confusing them. That is, unless you want to sacrifice all the extra features of the project you use and move to Mastodon itself.

In all honesty, I expect a campaign for fediblocking everything that isn't Mastodon to emerge before the end of the year. And no, the campaigners won't want to hear that this is nigh-impossible. They'll want it to happen, no matter how.

Seems like a good day to remind everyone #newhere and everyone else that this is the fediverse, or as I like to call it; the social web. It is made up of people using servers of many different types that all connects to each other, and can share social interactions across systems.

There are no rules, and no authority to enforce rules of any kind, but we do liberally block both users and servers we find annoying or don't want to interact with. That's part of how we ensure a free and safe environment for everybody.

There's no silly artificial limitations, so you don't need to split your posts into several mini-posts. That's just annoying, and make them harder to read and reshare. If your server imposes such silly artificial limitation, ask your server admin to fix that. You can also move your account to a different server (or run your own) if you don't agree with how your server is run.

You can make the fediverse be what you want it to be. Do you want a social platform to spread your ideas to a wider audience you can have it be like that. If you rather want it to be a tool for sharing photos and updates between trusted friends or family you can make it be like that. And if you want both, that's fine too!

There are many different types of servers that have different features, and different strengths. Take some time to poke around and find one that has the features that you want. Just because one type of server is very popular, does not mean it will be the one that is best for you.

Last, but not least: The fediverse is not run by a company or corporation. It's developed, expanded and run by all of us that takes part in it. This includes the software itself, but also the servers and of course the content. It's up to us all to shape it and make it into what we want it to be.

Thank you!

#fediverse #TheSocialWeb

@m0bi13

@miklo @zen_xen_ni

Jak dla mnie, to niema szans na pełne otwarcie tej nowej platformy na fedi, chyba że czasowe, dopóki nie zbiorą nowych niewiniątek idących na rzeź. Potem zaczną się odcinać od federacji i federacja może paść, lub stracić na znaczeniu, tak jak to miało miejsce z Google i Jabberem.
Kilka dni temu była dyskusja na ten temat, tyle, że dotyczyła Jabbera.
Oni muszą mieć kasę i wielkie korporacje idą po trupach, żeby tą kasę zdobyć.

Co do tych długich filmów, to faktycznie może być duży problem, bo jak już wspomniano, to takie małe instancje mogą nie ogarnąć tego. Za duże koszty na przestrzeń dyskowa i łącze. Ciekawe, jakby to zostało rozwiązane. Może jakiś lokalny cache dla kilku instancji, lub tylko linki do filmów. Ciężko stwierdzić jak to się potoczy.

#fediverse #jabber #google

@DaywalkingRedhead I've never really seen #PeerTube as a #TikTok replacement. Maybe the devs could say something about it (@PeerTube).

@EamonnMR I'm not quite sure what exactly you mean with "app".

If you mean whether users of different mobile apps for the #Fediverse can stay in contact with users with the mobile app named "Mastodon" that you install from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, that's the wrong question. But the answer is yes.

If you mean whether users of different projects (platforms, server apps etc.) in the Fediverse that aren't Mastodon can stay in contact with Mastodon users, then: Yes, they can. Each project I've mentioned is federated with Mastodon, i.e. they all connect to Mastodon, and their users can interact with Mastodon users.

That's the magic of the Fediverse. And that's the actual idea behind the Fediverse. After all, the Fediverse is not only Mastodon.

@{mattl@social.mat.tl} They don't have to put up with all these features.

If they want cool new features, they may move to e.g. Akkoma or CalcKey or Friendica or whatever. If they don't, they can stay on good old Mastodon.

What they won't get, though, is a 100%, 1:1 Twitter clone, just without Elon Musk.

@Phoenix Thank you!

@Genders: ♾️, 🟪⬛🟩; Soni L. Do you mean me myself in my specific situation or "you" as in anyone with whichever app is the most popular on whichever hardware/OS platform is the most popular?

Do you mean which steps I personally would take using Hubzilla through Firefox on desktop GNU/Linux? Or which steps a beginner would have to take, e.g. using the official Mastodon app on an iPhone?

I could tell you the former, but it'd be of little use for most here. I can't tell you the latter because I don't have any practical experience with it.

Funny how, in spite of the rising number of likes, many people seem to misunderstand what I've written.

Here's a short explanation.

People: We want bold type and italics and stuff in the Fediverse! And quote-tweets! And more than 500 characters! Please, #Mastodon, include it!

Me: Join #Akkoma (

), and you've got your bold type and italics and quote-tweets and thousands of characters! And you can still talk to people on Mastodon! Easy as that.

Or if you don't like Akkoma, try #Pleroma (

).
Or #MissKey ().
Or #CalcKey ().
Or #GoToSocial (https://gotosocial.org/).
Or if you don't mind something bigger, #Friendica ().
Or if you don't mind a hard-to-handle feature monster, #Hubzilla (#^https://hubzilla.org/).
And all of them let you stay in contact with your friends on Mastodon.

#MastodonIsNotTheFediverse. Nor is Mastodon the best the #Fediverse has to offer.

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.