♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣

@RookieNerd @fediverse

Hmm… There is a misconception on what the #Fediverse is and what is the goal, which unfortunately is what the press are telling people.

1. The Fediverse is about bringing down the walls (silos / walled-garden).

2. It never had the goal or objective or vision to replace Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, Blogspot.

The Fediverse software available today are the materialised ideas of developers who believe in a federated SocialWeb, which by the way, is the original #Web3 (not crypto). It goes all the way back to 2005 (probably earlier, I don’t have my notes).

The goal was to get existing silos to open up and federate.

It just that, there are more developers who are excited about it, so we started to see serious projects related to the Fediverse. If I remember correctly, Misskey was not a Fediverse project when it first started. So, one would say Misskey was the first non-federation project that joined the fediverse network.

If these silos don’t federate, it’s fine too, because there are existing software and instances available.

And it has always been about choice.

If users want to stay with silo #SNS by all means. The fediverse is not here to replace them, the fediverse is here as an option and as a solution to the issues plaguing silo networks (like ads, privacy, content license, to mention a few).

That’s what the fediverse is about and always have been to this day. It is never about replacing this and that, or recruiting people to switch over and encourage them to delete their silo SNS accounts. These other things were simply the passion and convictions of the users who migrated and some of the developers who developed fediverse software, it’s not part of the fediverse itself.

It’s just a protocol. Again, I’ll use email here. If you have a server, you can choose to install your own email software. The protocol is there. Various email software are there. OR, you can just use Yandex or Gmail or Zoho and use the custom domain feature (or use their email hosting services).

If Twitter and Facebook implement the protocol, hooray! Mission accomplished. If they don’t, that’s fine either.

So, yeah, people are hating that Instagram will implement the #ActivityPub protocol and join the #Fediverse network. They have valid reasons and it is understandable. However, the fediverse started to be a #WebStandard protocol to allow federation and bring back the #SocialWeb as it was intended to be.

For us who were there in 2005 already, and when the first Fediverse software and instance came online in 2008, that is still our vision and goal, to bring down the walls of silo SNS.

@RookieNerd @fediverse

Do not recommend one software and/or one instance.

Using your scenario, would you recommend photography instances based on #Mastodon knowing Mastodon only allows up to 4 “attached” images? Not only that, Mastodon will only display 4 images even if there are more than that?

Or, are you going to recommend #Pixelfed designed for images. Or, maybe #Firefish, #Friendica, #Hubzilla, #Streams, which all allow more than 4 images and will display all the images even if it exceeds their software’s attach limit?

Quite frankly, in my opinion, with the image display alone, Mastodon is highly not recommended. So, the number of users and instances Mastodon have does not make it the best #Fediverse software, as you have mentioned earlier, “Mastodon is the level of UX other projects should aim to”. It’s not.

The best approach is we understand what the user needs and suggest to them the appropriate software and instances that will suit their needs.

Let’s forget about the Fediverse for a while.

We have to remember that not everyone is on Twitter or Facebook. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals who only have an Instagram account. Why? They don’t need Twitter and Facebook.

In Korea, for example, they have their own culture and platforms for communication Twitter/Facebook-like, so they don’t need those. But many of them have Instagram accounts.

Now, let’s go back to the Fediverse.

If those are the users we are reaching out to, then there should be no problem recommending Pixelfed. Because for these target market, their only concern and type of use is to share, well, photos or their latest digital artwork. They don’t care about a Twitter/Facebook-like experience or use.

That brings us back to the features of #ActivityPub. It is an “added benefit”.

1. Users who want to follow this content creator can do so using their existing account.

Okay, you can’t do this with #Lemmy, the last time I checked, however, you can do it with #Kbin. That’s a Lemmy limitation, not the fediverse.

2. For the content creator who migrated to the fediverse, in particular, Pixelfed in our scenario, they have a greater reach because they’re federated.

(Extra: You can actually turn Pixelfed into a regular Twitter-like software if you are using the web UI. Although, last time I heard it will be removed eventually.)

(Extra 2: BookWyrm also allows Twitter-like feeds and interaction, it’s not restricted to just books.)

@RookieNerd @fediverse

It’s just the way it is. Different hosts, different host configurations, different fediverse software, different software configs, and all that.

Few people are aware today but when Google Mail was first beta tested (very early invite days), we did experience a lot of issues. Mails from Y!Mail not arriving. There was also one time when a mail from another server arrives garbled.

Apologies for using the email analogy again.

Let me use the mobile analogy as another example. Here in the Philippines, I don’t know in other countries, we’ve had interoperability issues a decade or two ago. The Philippines is the SMS capital of the world, so imagine our frustration because the two major (and only) SMS providers cannot interoperate reliably.

Two different networks. Two different systems. Trying to federate to each other.

There will indeed be interoperability issues.

They haven’t really solved it, but it was at least minimised.

So, yes, we have to accept that it is going to be a long road until we achieve the level wherein these challenges you have mentioned are minimised in the fediverse as well. I’m sure, politics aside, the #ActivityPub developers are finding ways. ^_

@RookieNerd @fediverse

Not being able to sync’d has to do with the hosting and how the admin set up their instance configuration.

Depending on the software, there is usually a feature for “polling”. This is the part of the #fediverse software where an admin can set how frequent the software will push and pull content and check profiles.

They also check how active an account is, be it local or otherwise, because believe it or not, polling an less or inactive account is also taxing on the server host.

These backend features or settings allows an instance to run. Imagine having 100 users who follow 100 users each. And the server is polling those 100 local users and the 100 users each.

Different fediverse software have done a different way to manage this. Some moved to other database instead of using mySQL. Some are using a different programming language instead of Ruby.

And a lot of other things we will never know about unless we look into their respective source codes.

I’m going to use the overused email analogy here, believe it or not, you don’t actually receive every email sent to you. We’re talking about legit emails here, they’re just lost.

No technology can be perfect. Polling, sync’ing, there will always be something that will not reach you. However, developers and engineers are doing their best to minimise this (like in email land).

The way I see it, people were spoiled by silo or closed-network or closed-garden #SNS. Of course, within your own, it is easier to ensure everything is received. Like, again, in email, sending to the same domain there’s a 100% guarantee it will be received. So, people expect it will be the same.

And if you explain the technical side of things, most people will run away and say, “just fix it” or “not ready for primetime”. But they never did that for the web (HTTP/S) and email (SMTP). When Chromium / Google Chrome was very buggy, everyone continued to migrate to it anyway. When developers were calling to kill IE6, corporations still use IE6 and were only forced when Microsoft seriously killed it.

Most people accept the flaws of software and services they recognise and already using but will not accept the flaws of the fediverse. I think that’s what we should understand so we can change people’s minds and have a better approach.

@RookieNerd @fediverse

#Firefish #Pleroma (and its forks) #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #SocialNetwork to mention a few, fits your description. ^_