Posts by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
(DIR) Post #AvZrLFgHsb3G4aNRKq by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-06-27T07:20:52Z
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@Strypey The main reason devs haven't wanted to use the C2S API in the AP spec is network effect. Clients devs don't want to use it because Mastodon doesn't, and servers devs don't want to use it because their services wouldn't work with all the clients following the Mastodon API.It's actually tempting to imagine a vicious circle here: If almost everything has the Mastodon client API implemented, it isn't worth developing dedicated client apps that also cover other servers' extra features.Instead, the reason why all kinds of server applications have the Mastodon client API implemented is because they absolutely need some phone apps that work with them. Just look around the Fediverse. Almost everyone is exclusively on phones nowadays. And especially iPhone users wouldn't touch a Web browser with a 10-foot barge pole if they don't absolutely have to, so expecting them to use the Web UI means you're stuck in a bubble or a time where smartphones are still a gimmick.That's why even Friendica has implemented the Mastodon client API. I mean, Mastodon and Friendica are very different, and the Mastodon client API only covers a small fraction of what Friendica can do. It actually doesn't cover some critical everyday features.At the same time, there's little to no incentive for those who can develop mobile apps to make apps for anything that isn't Mastodon. Many start working on Fediverse apps at a point when they still believe the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Or if they don't, at least they've never heard of Pleroma and its family, Misskey and its family, Friendica and its family (where Hubzilla would require a wholly different app than Friendica, and (streams) and Forte would require a wholly different app than both) etc. Or they genuinely think that developing the umpteenth iPhone app for Mastodon is worth the effort more than developing the first stable dedicated iPhone app for Friendica. It's a miracle that stuff like Aria for the *key family exists.It seems like of all the server apps that don't do *blogging (purist long-form blogging stuff like WriteFreely excluded), Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are the only ones that don't have the Mastodon client API implemented. And I can't see them do it. For one, their devs steer clear of all proprietary, non-standard Mastodon technology. But other than that, these three are even less like Mastodon than Friendica, and they work even less like Mastodon. Even using a Mastodon app for stuff like basic posting is out of question because it pretty much requires access to the per-post permission settings, something that Mastodon doesn't have implemented, and therefore, neither do the apps for it.Now, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can be installed as so-called Progressive Web Apps. But only Hubzilla veterans ever do that, and that's for three reasons: One, next to nobody has ever heard of the very concept of PWAs. Two, all that people know is installing apps from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. And three, people want native mobile interfaces in the style of whatever phone they use. It doesn't matter how well the Web UIs of these three adapt to mobile screens, especially since 90% of all phone users have totally forgotten that you can rotate a phone sideways.Hubzilla actually has its own client API, and I think (streams) and forte have their own one, too. But nobody has ever even only tried to build a native mobile app for either of them. Hubzilla's devs even have to admit that they don't know how well Hubzilla's client API works because there has literally never been a sufficiently-featured counterpart to test it against. All there is is an extremely basic Android app built by one of them that's available as a download somewhere, and all it can do is send very basic posts, I think, even only at your default settings. It's just a proof of concept.The ActivityPub C2S API is just as untested.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonAPI #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ActivityPub #API #ClientAPI #MastodonAPI
(DIR) Post #Avbau4qepzCdhsASbg by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-06-28T08:06:37Z
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@Strypey Locally writing content to the database of an ActivityPub-based server will inevitably require a local user account on that very server.I mean, we already have OpenWebAuth magic sign-on which was invented by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ for Hubzilla in 2017, and which also has full implementations in his later server applications (streams) and Forte and a client-side implementation on Mike's first project, Friendica. But without an actual account on another server, OpenWebAuth can only authenticate you on that other server as a guest and grant you certain guest permissions. It does not give you all the powers of a local user, at least not without a local account.Also, if you want to actually log in on another server, you will inevitably need local login credentials on that server. Which means that a user account with these login credentials must be created prior to you logging in on that server so that that server knows your login name and your password. Even if you want to use something like OAuth, that server will still require to know your credentials. They will have to be in that server's database before you can successfully log in.A server cannot and will not authenticate you against credentials in a wholly different remote server's database. What you and many other Fediverse users dream of can only be solved in two ways and both only theoretically because, in practice, they are just as impossible or at least very unfeasible.Either if you register an account on one Fediverse server, that account with the exact same credentials is simultaneously created on literally all other Fediverse servers, and on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, you also automatically get a channel along with that account. This also means that each Fediverse server that's installed and spun up for the first time will immediately have to create tens of millions of accounts so that everyone all over the Fediverse automatically has login credentials on that server. I guess it should be clear that this is impossible, also because this requires a) a centralised list of absolutely all Fediverse accounts and identities and b) a centralised list of all Fediverse servers to be hard-coded into every last instance of every last Fediverse server out there.Now, I keep reading stuff like, "But I don't want to use all Fediverse servers!" No, but you want to be able to use any Fediverse server. And then you will have to have an account there. How is the Fediverse supposed to know in advance which servers you will visit this year, the next two years, five years, ten years so that accounts can be automatically created for you exactly there and nowhere else?See? And that's why, if you want to be able to use any server like with a local account, every server must be prepared for it before you arrive.Or drive-by registration: You visit a Fediverse server for the first time, your active login is recognised by that Fediverse server, and an account is created for you on the fly with the exact same login credentials as where you're already logged in. That's its own can of worms.Also, it requires remote authentication. OpenWebAuth. As I've already said: This is technology that's eight years old, and that's being daily-driven right now. But: You will never have this on Mastodon. There actually is a pull request for Mastodon from two years ago that would have implemented client-side OpenWebAuth support. It was never merged. It was silently rejected by the Mastodon developers. The PR was closed in November, 2024.Some people go even further: They don't just want their login credentials wherever they go, they want their whole identity cloned to everywhere. They want all their stuff, all their posts and comments and DMs, all their followers and followed, all their settings, all their filters etc. etc. pp., they want it everywhere all the same. Like a nomadic identity (an invention by Mike from 2011, first implemented in 2012) across up to 30,000 servers.Now, you and many others on Mastodon are probably going to cry out, "YES, YES, PLEASE MAKE THIS REALITY!"But seriously: I myself have actually cloned enough Hubzilla and (streams) channels of mine in my time. None of them even had nearly as much content on them as your Mastodon account. And I can tell from a lot of personal experience that this cannot be done within a blink of an eye.Nomadic identity won't come to Mastodon anyway. Nomadic identity via ActivityPub is probably being daily-driven already. Forte has it, and it relies on it. But Mastodon will never implement it. In particular, Mastodon would rather re-invent the "nomadic identity" wheel in a way that's incompatible with what we already have than implement something made by Mike Macgirvin. Not after all the head-butting that has happened between Mike and Gargron over the years.And OpenWebAuth won't come to Mastodon either. Probably also for the same reason.CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo @Ben Pate 🤘🏻#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #OpenWebAuth #SingleSignOn #NomadicIdentity
(DIR) Post #AvcQ880SzHUpDaDH3A by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-06-29T07:55:50Z
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@Strypey Still, the headbutting was often justified for Mike. Unless, of course, you say that Mastodon is and has always been the one and only Fediverse gold standard and the one and only ActivityPub reference implementation.I'll give you an example: In July, 2017, Mike's Hubzilla was the very first Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. Mike played strictly by the rules. As Hubzilla has a character limit of over 16.7 million and supports text formatting on the same level as the best long-form blogging platforms out there, he declared Hubzilla long-form and made Hubzilla send Article-type objects. Just as the spec demands.In September, Mastodon became the second Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. But Gargron did not play by the rules. He only implemented a tiny subset of the protocol, namely what suited him. And he also broke it: Mastodon could display Article-type objects at their full length. But Gargron staunchly refused to implement any support for anything that goes beyond plain text. The ActivityPub spec explicitly says that Article-type objects are formatted. But Gargron wanted Mastodon to be a purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging platform. And stuff like bold type, italics, headlines, embedded in-line images or titles aren't purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging.And so Mastodon took fully formatted, long-form-blog-style posts from Hubzilla and ripped everything out that wasn't plain text. It basically defaced Hubzilla posts. That is, it had been defacing Friendica and Hubzilla posts all the same ever since it was launched. But this time, there was a spec that actually defined what Mastodon was doing as wrong. And that spec had been finalised and pronounced a W3C standard meanwhile.So Mike asked Gargron to please follow the official ActivityPub spec and make Mastodon support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects.Gargron refused. Old-skool microblogging is plain text and only plain text, full stop.This went back and forth. Eventually, Gargron presented a "solution": Mastodon now "renders" Article-type objects by showing the title and, right below, a link to the original. That is, basically not at all anymore. Of course, this meant that the vast majority of Mastodon users no longer read what came from Friendica and Hubzilla because they couldn't be bothered to open that link.Mike saw this as a direct assault against Friendica and Hubzilla and an attempt at excluding both from "the Fediverse" which was almost entirely Mastodon at that point already. So he himself had to break the spec and make Hubzilla send Note-type objects instead so that Mastodon renders them at all. It still defaces them to this day.(Friendica's solution was to send an Article-type object when a post has a title and a Note-type object when it doesn't have a title. Optionally, it can always send Note-type objects.)By the way: This very same head-butting has returned. Not between Gargron and Mike, though, but between Gargron and much bigger players. Platforms like Flipboard and Ghost have introduced ActivityPub, and they send Article-type objects just as the ActivityPub spec demands. The same goes for WordPress. And, of course, they don't send plain-text "long tweets". They send fully formatted news articles and blog posts.And now they demand Mastodon, as the biggest player in the Fediverse by user count, make their Article-type objects look just like they look at the source. They demand Mastodon not only render bold type, italics, headlines and the rest of the subset of text formatting that was introduced with Mastodon 4 in October, 2022. They also demand Mastodon show the titles and, most importantly, leave the images embedded within the articles in place, no matter how many they are.This is no longer Gargron and his devs vs a guy in the Australian outback. This is Gargron and his devs who try hard to bend the Fediverse to their will and assume supreme control over it vs the Ghost Foundation, Flipboard, Inc. and Automattic, Inc. that play strictly by the ActivityPub rules. And I dare say that Automattic, Inc. alone has more money and more market power than Mastodon gGmbH and Mastodon, Inc. combined.Mastodon has always gotten away with ignoring and breaking standards, re-inventing wheels and implying towards its religious followers that the whole Fediverse was built upon Mastodon and around Mastodon, and that everything that does things differently from Mastodon is inherently a broken add-on to Mastodon or an evil intruder. This time, they won't. And I guess they've actually taken it into consideration.CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #WordPress #Ghost #Flipboard
(DIR) Post #AvcnEZgjHKFDkq1YTw by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-06-29T07:20:56Z
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@Tim Chambers I guess the main obstacle in development right now is that there are no clients to pair the server applications with and test them against.Then again, it would take a whole lot of clients. One unified client that covers e.g. Pleroma just as neatly as (streams) is impossible, seeing as how extremely different the two are.CC: @Strypey @just small circles 🕊 @Ben Pate 🤘🏻 @rakoo#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ActivityPub #Pleroma #Streams #(streams)
(DIR) Post #AvdZRQ07P0WbH4Hcu0 by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-06-29T17:16:54Z
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@Strypey So Pleroma and Akkoma (which, for some reason, is missing from the list) actually use the ActivityPub C2S API to connect their frontends? Even though Pleroma predates ActivityPub and started out as an alternative GNU social frontend, much like Mastodon?I mean, they're famous for having separate repositories for the server and the Web frontend (same name with "-FE" attached). And they're equally famous for having servers that forgo the official frontend in favour of third-party stuff, most notably Mangane.So if Mangane actually makes use of that API rather than a homebrew *oma client API, it could be used as or, if need be, modified into a sparrings partner for API-testing purposes, not to mention that it's living proof that the API actually works. As it integrates with Pleroma and Akkoma that well, I've got my doubts that it only uses the Mastodon client API.In the cases of (streams) and Forte which are almost the same software save for protocol support, the Web UI is much closer to the server backend, as flexible and modifyable it is. In their cases, the question would be whether they could be used to test just how far feature support in the ActivityPub C2S API can possibly go, maybe even whether it'd be possible to use the ActivityPub C2S API to build an almost fully-featured (streams)/Forte client app (except, of course, Web UI configuration and (streams)' per-channel ActivityPub switch which might cut the whole app off the server).CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Pleroma #PleromaFE #Akkoma #AkkomaFE #Mangane #Akkomane #Streams #(streams) #Forte #API
(DIR) Post #AvfahQGYflnP055WN6 by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-06-30T09:06:08Z
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@Strypey You say this like it's a bad thing.Not at all.One advantage is, as you've said, that the backend and the Web frontend can have their own developers, development of both can largely be detached, and they can be upgraded separately from one another.Separate Web frontends can be developed by people who actually know a thing or two about frontend development and UI design. I mean, look at the Web UIs of some all-in-one Fediverse server applications. They're often the digital counterpart of random knobs and switches poked through a piece of cardboard and labelled with a ball pen, just so that these knobs and switches are there. Sometimes they're the equivalent of expecting all kinds of end users to operate DIP switches, but hey, they're still better than soldering and unsoldering wires.Another advantage is that server software for which alternative frontends exist does not have to drag its default frontend around. There are Mastodon servers with alternative frontends, but they still have to have the two official Web UIs installed (the default one and the Tweetdeck-style one) because they're firmly welded to the backend. I guess we all know what a heavyweight Mastodon is, and I'm certain that part of the weight is caused by the built-in Web UIs. In stark contrast, you can set up an Akkoma server with Mangane instead of Akkoma-FE, as in without having to also install Akkoma-FE.By the way, Hubzilla is an interesting case here. Not only is its default UI very configurable, but Hubzilla itself is highly themeable, and third-party themes almost amount to entirely new UIs. At the same time, however, practically all official development efforts went only into the backend for most of its existence.Any Hubzilla UI has to wrestle an immense wealth of features, and not exactly new features were added over time. This, however, caused Hubzilla's UI to gradually turn into a jumbled mess because some of the new UI elements were seemingly added in totally random places. Not only was the UI never cleaned up, but the default theme is perpetually stuck in 2012 (the name "Redbasic" says it all, it was made for Hubzilla when Hubzilla was still named Red), it was derived from an early Friendica theme, and even Friendica wasn't pretty back then. Also, the documentation was completely neglected.So the situation last year was that there was only one working Hubzilla theme left, and that was Redbasic. It was the only theme that was even only upgraded to work with newer Hubzilla versions. There used to be other official themes, but they eventually ended up so outdated that they were removed altogether. @Sean Tilley's third-party themes were last touched seven years ago, that must have been around the time when Hubzilla 3 came out. At the same time, the official documentation was not only highly incomplete, but it was so outdated that parts of it were simply false. It partly referred to features that had been axed many years ago (tech levels) and features that simply were never there (four different mention styles), and parts of it even still spoke of Red. Thus, nobody even knew how to develop new themes for current Hubzilla.That was when the community stepped in. @Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝ sat down and rewrote the entire help. @Scott M. Stolz not only started working on his NeuHub themes, but in the same process, he reverse-engineered Hubzilla's theming system to write documentation for theming Hubzilla which had never been written before AFAIK. Around that time, @????? was dabbling with specialised themes for certain purposes, e.g. one very clean theme for Hubzilla channels used as long-form blogs. Later on, @Saiwal joined the fray with his now-popular Utsukta themes.Granted, Hubzilla still carries Redbasic around, not only as the default for new channels unless the admin chooses another one, but also as a fallback in case a new Hubzilla version doesn't support existing third-party themes anymore. The latter is becoming less likely as the Utsukta themes are being built against Hubzilla's development versions now. Besides, it's in Hubzilla's nature that everything on a hub is updated at the same time, including third-party repositories.In general, the Hubzilla community is no longer that easily satisfied with a UI that "just works", and the devs have taken notice. Hubzilla 10.4, now a release candidate, will spruce up certain core parts of the UI. It will introduce a tree-style thread view as the new default instead of its current chronological view, something that Friendica, (streams) and Forte have had for significantly longer. That is, this is actually a side-effect of the introduction of "lazy loading" conversations to reduce the server workload. Also, upon user request, it will add a button to add images to comments.If (streams) and Forte grow bigger, the same could happen there. They have two official themes to choose from, fairly new Fresh and an older version of Redbasic. However, they don't have a large enough community for all the same things to happen to them that happened to Hubzilla, although Pepe has said he'd rewrite the (streams) and Forte help as well, seeing as Mike had ripped them out entirely with no replacements as they were too outdated at that point. Maybe someone will even write a guide on how to adapt Hubzilla themes to (streams) and Forte.That is, (streams) and Forte are both already the result of several years of UI and UX advancement and improvements and making them fit for a Mastodon-dominated Fediverse (where Hubzilla is still geared towards a Fediverse which it will dominate itself by the mid-to-late 2010s). This is stuff which can't be taken care of in themes because it concerns the UI engine itself, and it's partly tied deeply into the backend.While Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte won't be able to do without their official themes anytime soon, the official themes don't significantly weigh them down. Still, they require some maintenance work to keep up with the backend.Wouldn't Mastodon would be better if it specialised in developing apps, and outsourced the server side to people who know how to do back-end engineering?This makes me wonder which half Mastodon would be willing to outsource. I think they'd rather hold on to the backend and pass all the frontends on. Of course, this would come with the advantage of the official Mastodon mobile app actually becoming somewhat decent rather than remaining the "we need an official app, no matter how" kluge that it is today.CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Mastodon #Akkoma #AkkomaFE #Mangane #Akkomane #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte
(DIR) Post #AwyN5jTlBWjDgZzl68 by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-08-08T20:31:20Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@silverpill The dataset doesn't include some other popular platforms like Friendica, but I am sure they also display long form content just fine.Friendica and its descendants from the same creator, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, can produce long-form content just fine. With just about all bells and whistles from a title plus six levels of headlines to an unlimited number of images embedded within the text.So yes, they can display it as well. However, outside of their own communities, hardly anyone knows what they're capable of. Thus, Fediverse developers often try to solve problems that aren't even really there because they were solved before they became problems.Mastodon's lack of support for articles, linking to the originals instead, is not really a lack. It's a deliberate design decision from around 2017 or so.See, the first ActivityPub implementation was on Hubzilla. That was in July, 2017. And Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub by the book.Mastodon followed two months later. But Mastodon has always had its own "interpretation" of ActivityPub that was limited by Mastodon's own intentional design limitations in order to remain Twitter-like, purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta microblogging with as few features that Twitter didn't have as possible.This is also why Mastodon has a HTML "sanitiser" built in. Up until the release of Mastodon 4.0 in October, 2022, that "sanitiser" reduced any and all incoming HTML to plain text. And it did so for all object types, including the Article-type objects which Hubzilla sent. After all, Hubzilla can act as a fully-fledged long-form blogging platform.However, the ActivityPub spec defines Article-type objects as formatted long-form content. Still, Mastodon defaced Hubzilla's Article-type objects by reducing them to plain text.So Mike Macgirvin got into contact with Eugen Rochko and told him to adhere to the spec and deactivate Mastodon's "sanitiser" and make it support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects.And Eugen Rochko said that bold type and italics and bullet-point lists and images in the middle of the content have nothing to do with old-school microblogging, so they have no place on Mastodon, so he won't implement them.This head-butting went back and forth. Eventually, Eugen presented a "solution". And that was not to render Article-type objects at all anymore. Instead, Mastodon links to them and adds their title above if they have one.This was only done to shut Mike up so he'd stop complaining about Mastodon defacing Hubzilla posts and breaking the spec by doing so. From Mike's perspective, however, what Eugen did was flip Hubzilla the bird by completely refusing to show actual Hubzilla content and practically lock out a competitor.Mike's reaction was to break the spec himself and switch Hubzilla from sending Article-type objects to sending Note-type objects, regardless of Mastodon still defacing them.With the exception of a very short period after the release of Hubzilla 9.0 when Mario Vavti and Harald Eilertsend learned the hard way that Mastodon still links to Article-type objects, Hubzilla has only sent its posts as Note-type objects ever since.Mike's other creations have different ways of handling object types.Friendica, by default, sends posts with titles as Article-type objects and posts without titles as well as comments as Note-type objects. This can be deactivated so that Friendica only sends Note-type objects.CC: @Laurens Hof#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ArticleType #NoteType #LongFormContent
(DIR) Post #AwzegZiYKidgVM1n3A by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-08-09T12:18:49Z
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@silverpill Who are the longformers anyway?They're those who either are commercial or looking for professional/commercial users or both. Flipboard. Automattic (WordPress). Ghost. These kinds.They know themselves. They know each other. And they know Mastodon. And that's it.None of them has ever heard of Pleroma or Akkoma.None of them has ever heard of Misskey or the Forkeys.None of them has ever heard of Mitra.None of them has ever heard of GoToSocial.None of them has ever heard of Hollo.None of them has ever heard of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte, even though Friendica and Hubzilla are both older than Mastodon. And apparently, neither has @Helge. But then again, Friendica and its nomadic, security-enhanced descendants are being overlooked by almost everyone. That's why there's always on-going work for features to be "introduced to the Fediverse" which Friendica has had for a decade and a half.Granted, the HTML support on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can be summarised with "yes". But elaborate tables that show what either of them supports how would be very useful.Also, granted, everything I've mentioned above (normally) uses something else than HTML for formatting in the frontend. For example, Misskey and all Forkeys use MFM ("Misskey-Flavoured Markdown"). Friendica uses extended BBcode with the option to use Markdown instead. Hubzilla uses even more extended BBcode. (streams) and Forte can use the same even more extended BBcode and Markdown and HTML at the same time within the same post, although not all markup languages support all features.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Mitra #GoToSocial #Hollo #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #LongFormContent #BBcode #Markdown #HTML #TextFormatting
(DIR) Post #AxJuPFx03dBWhgkPke by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-08-19T06:55:22Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ilja :pumpkin_owo: for FEP-ef61, i don't have personal experience with implementing it, so i can't speak for how easy/hard it is, i just know it exists. but there's a section in for compatibility with the rest of the current network, so it's not necessarily a split.It isn't a split. Definitely not. And I know from personal experience as a (streams) user.Upon first glance, FEP-ef61 looks like there's one ActivityPub Fediverse now that consists of (streams) and Forte, for these two have FEP-ef61 implemented, and one fully separate ActivityPub Fediverse that consists of everything else, and they're completely incompatible with one another. (Not to mention the networks based on other protocols like Nomad or the diaspora* protocol.)Now let's look at reality. Remember (streams) is Forte before the Nomad protocol was ripped out. It's identical otherwise. The ActivityPub part works just the same, only that you can turn it off on (streams).I've got two (streams) channels myself, @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet and @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams), both of which are even cloned. Now, look at the connections (you should be permitted to do that). I'm not only connected to Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte channels. I'm just as well connected to Mastodon accounts. Mutually because everything that Mike has created has Facebook "friends" rather than Twitter followers and followed. Black magic? Or does FEP-ef61, in fact, not break compatibility to a degree that makes connections impossible?Oh, and by the way, the accounts with these channels on them were created in summer 2024, i.e. after FEP-ef61 was pushed from dev to release and rolled out to the servers. Everything on my channels that has an ID has a portable FEP-ef61 DID. Still, I can connect to Mastodon accounts, and Mastodono users can follow me.but adding the identity to another server will generally be seen as a new actor by instances who do not support this, so that's definitely not perfect.Exactly. But this is nothing that came up with FEP-ef61 when it was first rolled out to actual stable production servers in July, 2024. This has been the case since the first Red server connected to the rest of the Fediverse as early as 2012 (Red, spanish la red = the network, was renamed into the Red Matrix the same year and completely retooled, massively expanded and renamed into Hubzilla in 2015.) In other words, Hubzilla has it, (streams) has it, Forte has it, and everything in-between had it, too.CC: @Ben Pate 🤘🏻 #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity #FEP_ef61
(DIR) Post #Ay8pzFzQnZpwXcBjE0 by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-09-12T20:23:37Z
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@Rob Ricci I guess if a Fediverse actor uses ActivityPub, regardless of whether or not it's that actor's base protocol, that actor should count.Still, there are various issues and open questions as @Feral Thoughts has already pointed out.Of course, one question is, where does the Fediverse end? Especially if the definition of Fediverse is "Mastodon and whatever connects to it"?Hubzilla is not based on ActivityPub. Its creator (who now maintains (streams) and Forte) says it's based on Nomad whereas its maintainers insist that Hubzilla's base protocol is still named Zot. Anyway, it does support ActivityPub. However, like almost all non-nomadic protocols and connectors, ActivityPub support is an add-on that's optional and off by default on new channels. At hub level, ActivityPub is still optional, but on by default when you set up a new hub.This can mean three things:Either Hubzilla is not part of the Fediverse because its base protocol is not ActivityPub. Even if it does (optionally) speak ActivityPub.Or Hubzilla is part of the Fediverse because it does support ActivityPub.Or Hubzilla is not part of the Fediverse because ActivityPub is not activated by default.Or Hubzilla is not part of the Fediverse because ActivityPub is not part of the core.Or only those hubs that have ActivityPub on are part of the Fediverse. However, I guess almost all hubs have ActivityPub on, except maybe for a few private, single-user hubs.Or Hubzilla is really sitting on the edge, and only those channels that have ActivityPub on are part of the Fediverse. I could literally join and leave the Fediverse by activating or deactivating one add-on.But if Hubzilla is not part of the Fediverse, am I even allowed to communicate with you all?(streams) is a bit different. It's based on Nomad and not on ActivityPub. But ActivityPub is part of the core and no longer an add-on, and it's on by default both at server level and at channel level. ActivityPub can still be deactivated both at channel level and at server level.Forte is identical to (streams), except that it's based on ActivityPub, support for Nomad has been removed, it has a name, it has a brand, it's a project, it's MIT-licensed, and it has nodeinfo (which is intentionally absent from (streams)).But these two have another "nefarious" feature plus one more that has yet to be rolled out to the release branch, both of which may put them on the edge of the Fediverse.One, at server level, is the "Uafilter" which is short for "User Agent Filter". It can filter out entire Fediverse server applications by user agent. Its main purpose is to keep Threads out without having to enter new URLs or IP addresses into a filter all the time. However, it's not only capable of locking out the entirety of Mastodon in one fell swoop with no collateral damage, but that's also explicitly a secondary purpose.The other one, also at server level and currently only available in dev, is "FedUp" which is short for "Federate Upstream". When activated, it only allows federation with servers that provide managed threaded conversations. In other words, it locks out all microblogging servers.If the Fediverse is defined as "Mastodon and whatever connects to it", these two are features that'd lock at least certain (streams) and Forte servers out of the Fediverse because they are disconnected from all of Mastodon in one way or another.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte
(DIR) Post #AyJYVMZkKVsE1qkLMe by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-09-17T20:27:45Z
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@Decenta Lyzed I haven't seen Mitra in action yet, so I can't say anything about it.Hubzilla creator and (streams) and Forte maintainer, that'd be @Mike Macgirvin ?️. By the way, the only one of the three that's actually ActivityPub-based is Forte. It just doesn't have any public, open-sign-up servers right now AFAIK.Did I show you my Mastodon/Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte comparison tables yet? If not, here they are. But lastly, you have to lay your hands on at least one of them to see how the family differs from the microblogging side of the Fediverse.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mitra #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte
(DIR) Post #AyL3uo2gdaXWByr5FI by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-09-18T13:29:15Z
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@Decenta Lyzed @your purple friend AFAIK, Mitra has not rolled out full-blown nomadic identity yet (as in, no, you can't clone your Mitra identity between two Mitra servers). Even the development branch is only in a state in which it understands nomadic identity.As for what nomadic identity is: https://joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic.identityThere are three Fediverse server applications where you're guaranteed to have solid, proven-to-work nomadic identity:HubzillaFork of fork of (non-nomadic) Friendica by Friendica's creator2012/2015https://hubzilla.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/Hubzillahttps://joinfediverse.wiki/HubzillaServer lists:https://hubzilla.fediverse.observer/listhttps://fedidb.com/software/hubzilla?version=latest®istration=openNo iOS appsNo Android appsCan be installed as a Progressive Web App(streams)Fork of fork of three forks of fork (of fork?) of Hubzilla by the same creator2021Intentionally and officially no name, no brand, hence the parentheses around the unofficial name ("(streams)")No official websitehttps://codeberg.org/streams/streamsOpen-registration server in North America (USA):https://rumbly.net/registerOpen-registration server in Europe (Hungary, German admin, speaks German and English):https://nomad.fedi-verse.hu/registerNo iOS appsNo Android appsCan be installed as a Progressive Web AppForteFork of (streams) by the same creator2024No official websitehttps://codeberg.org/fortified/forteNo open-registration serversNo iOS appsNo Android appsCan be installed as a Progressive Web App#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mitra #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity
(DIR) Post #AyTpSmsNjJcTX0Q5yK by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-09-21T19:42:56Z
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Okay, everyone, sit down. I'll tell you a few things about Mastodon's quote-post feature that you know nothing about. Definitely not if all you know is Mastodon. Oh, and by the way, in case you don't know yet in spite of following me: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon.Mastodon has been quote-post-able for as long as it has been aroundEugen Rochko is bringing quote-posts to Mastodon. But he is not bringing quote-posts to the Fediverse. The Fediverse has had quote-posts for 15 years.It was Mike Macgirvin who introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse in July, 2010, when he launched something called Mistpark back then and Friendica today (https://friendi.ca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica). That was five and a half years before Mastodon was launched.In fact, when Mastodon was launched, it immediately federated itself with Friendica and with Hubzilla, a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's own creator which has quote-posts, too. So when Mastodon was launched, it immediately became possible to quote-post Mastodon toots. Not on Mastodon itself, but on Friendica and Hubzilla.Just about everything that isn't Mastodon has already got quote-posts right nowHere are a few (but not even all) Fediverse server applications that already have quote-posts:PleromaAkkomaMisskeyFirefishIceshrimpSharkeyCherryPickCatodonMitraFriendicaHubzilla(streams)ForteAnd they're all part of the Fediverse which means that they're all connected to Mastodon. People on all of these can theoretically read your Mastodon toots. And people on all of these can theoretically quote-post your Mastodon toots.Mastodon's quote-post opt-in is not a water-tight defence against being quote-postedSo you can choose not to be quote-posted. But you can only choose not to be quote-posted by Mastodon users. This opt-in does not work with the rest of the Fediverse.First of all, that's because Mastodon's quote-post feature is not compatible with anything else out there. Mastodon's developers have chosen to re-invent the quote-posting wheel from scratch. They've intentionally chosen to do so in a way that's completely incompatible with everything else out there.Their intention was to reinforce Mastodon's appearance to its own users as the one and only Fediverse and ActivityPub gold standard and to make Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Firefish, Iceshrimp, Sharkey, CherryPick, Catodon, Mitra, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte etc. look broken. It's part of their plan to keep Mastodon users on Mastodon in the wake of Mastodon's market share in the Fediverse shrinking.Also, they did not publish any specifications on their quote-post implementation, so even those non-Mastodon developers who are fast enough didn't have a chance to implement support for Mastodon's opt-in.This means that even if you've set your posts to un-quote-post-able on Mastodon, everything I've listed above can still quote-post you with no resistance.Absolute Fediverse-wide protection against being quote-posted is impossibleAnd don't get your hopes high that the day will come when nobody on the Fediverse will be able to quote-post you, whether they're on Mastodon or not. Such a setting is technologically impossible.Who says that? Mike Macgirvin says that. The guy who launched Friendica and brought quote-posts to the Fediverse 15 years ago, remember? This guy has built the Fediverse's most elaborate, most complex, most fine-grained, most advanced permissions system into (streams) and Forte.These two have reply control, the kind of which you couldn't image in your wildest dreams. I'm serious. They have permissions settings for almost everything on two or three levels, for your whole channel, individually per contact and sometimes even per post or per file or folder in the file storage.But they don't have quote-post permission settings. Because that's impossible to enforce Fediverse-wide. And even if it was possible, it'd be pointless. If they can't quote-post you, they'll copy-paste you. If they can't copy-paste you either because they're on a phone, they'll post screenshots of your toots.Mike also says, there is exactly one way to keep people from quote-posting you, and that's by not posting in public. Unfortunately, unlike what he has created, Mastodon has little between "public" and "DM", if anything.Mastodon cannot quote-post the non-Mastodon FediverseThis may be the big surprise: It has recently been discovered by chance that Mastodon's quote-post feature only works with Mastodon toots.On the one hand, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Sharkey, Friendica, Hubzilla etc. can quote-post just about everything that comes in from Mastodon. But on the other hand, no Mastodon 4.5 user will be able to quote-post anything from either of these. Or from Pixelfed or PeerTube or Loops or Castopod or WriteFreely or whatever.That's because Mastodon is looking for a quote-post opt-in. But nothing else in the Fediverse supports Mastodon's quote-post opt-in, also seeing as it's still officially in development. And it's highly unlikely that everything in the Fediverse will adopt another piece of non-standard, proprietary Mastodon tech."Quote" actually means something elseLastly, Mastodon has the audacity to call this feature "quote".A "quote" is something else. Remember forums? Like, bulletin-board forums with subforums and all? Where posts are quoted in follow-ups, entirely or only partially? That's what a quote is. That has got nothing to do with quote-posts.Why I say that there's a difference? Because I also say that Friendica has had both quotes and quote-posts.It has had them for 15 years, both quotes (which it calls "quotes", go figure) and quote-posts (which it calls "quoted shares", and which include the original author of the quoted post, complete with their profile picture and a clickable link to them, as well as a clickable link to the original post).Hubzilla has both. (streams) has both. Forte has both. And I wouldn't be surprised if other Fediverse server software had both, too.The irony is that Mastodon itself has been able to render actual quotes since version 4.0 from October, 2022. At the same time, it will continue to be unable to render any quote-posts done outside of Mastodon for the foreseeable future.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #CherryPick #Catodon #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares
(DIR) Post #AyTpT39zBdCy2EmNdI by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-09-22T20:08:28Z
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@Julian Fietkau I'm surprised to read that (streams) allegedly has FEP-e232 implemented. As I happen to have two (streams) channels myself, and as (streams) allows me to have a look at the whole source code of any activity (whereas Hubzilla only shows me that of the content), I've checked a fairly recent post of mine that includes a link. And while it does define the hashtags just like Mastodon and Hubzilla, it does not define links in a way that conforms to FEP-e232. Either that, or (streams)' implementation of FEP-e232 is newer than the software was when I sent that post.Next, I wanted to see if (streams) had its way of quote-posting changed in the last seven years or so of development and forking. I expected it to quote-post like Hubzilla, namely by turning a BBcode short code into a dumb copy of the original upon sending, but I wanted to see proof. As (streams) is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla that's still maintained by Hubzilla's own creator, I would have been surprised if he had changed the way (streams) quote-posts at some point on the way.So I quote-posted my own post on (streams) just to see what happens. And (streams) acted exactly like Hubzilla and not at all like described in FEP-044f on the surface. It still inserts a dumb copy.Good thing I have access to the full source code of any message on (streams). So here's what happened, namely what I expected to happen: (streams) quote-posts like Hubzilla.First of all, when I clicked the "Share" button, this short code was inserted into the post editor:[share=1198713][/share]The number, by the way, is the running number of the message to quote-post on the server.Upon sending the post, (streams) automatically "expanded" the short code into the dumb copy I had expected.[share author='Jupiter+Rowland' profile='https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland' portable_id='_moYLN61-o3FbP3jyThygMDf-bjF2cApXgkrwlAE77iKy19xM1_6F06V4b71eTkqqNaTUjGiN0lfw2dyn5nXRw' avatar='https://streams.elsmussols.net/xp/6b50efa4bb804860f6128bba791b74fab4a0a5e09dbcbee8d8ca77cee00f0330-6' link='https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a1cdda5-eb1c-4a33-9574-ddd896977b4f' auth='true' posted='2025-09-21 19:42:56' message_id='https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a1cdda5-eb1c-4a33-9574-ddd896977b4f'] ...(the source code of the original message goes here)... [/share]Both Hubzilla and (streams) render this the same way, namely with a header line above the copy that includes the profile picture of the original author, the name of the original author with a Zot/Nomad-type link to their channel/account and a Zot/Nomad-type link to the original of the post ("Zot/Nomad-type" means that [zrl][/zrl] is used rather than [url][/url] which means that the ID of an observer on Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte is attached to the link for OpenWebAuth identity recognition purposes.)At the same time, curiously, (streams) includes the line "rel": "https://misskey-hub.net/ns#_misskey_quote" and a line that starts with "name": "RE: and continues with the URL of the original message into the code for the link to the original message. The latter is identical to what Misskey and all Forkeys have in quote-posting notes in plain sight, only that (streams) only reveals it in the source code rather than in the content as well.So this part of FEP-044f is implemented, albeit concealed from most people and only happening in the code.Now, looking at the quote policy part, that looks like it could be possible to add to the Fediverse's permission champions Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. After all, they already have comment controls with no FEP backing it (and if GoToSocial's quote policy can be made into an FEP, maybe so can (streams)' and Forte's comment controls so that they actually do blank out reply buttons on the farther ends of the Fediverse if the software on the farther ends implement support for that FEP).This could be done at three levels again. I'll illustrate this with (streams) and Forte because they're quite a bit less complex than older Hubzilla.At channel level, quote-posting (and maybe quoting as well) could be set as usually, namely to semi-public (= everyone in the Fediverse = no quote policy), restricted (= only your contacts) and only yourself. (Seriously, you don't want random passersby with no accounts to quote-post you. Even though you can allow them to comment on your posts if you dare.)"Only yourself" could be overridden at contact level by permitting certain contacts to quote-post (and maybe quote) your messages. This is actually standard behaviour on (streams) and Forte.And then there is the per-post level which would be similar to (streams)' and Forte's comment controls. These allow you to limit who may comment on a post to only your contacts and those who have already participated in the same conversation, and they allow you to turn off comments altogether.Quote authorisation would not be much different in handling from manually moderating comments from those who technically aren't permitted to comment (only that spammers don't quote-post, at least not yet, and they probably never will because that simply makes no sense). So that'd be nothing really new.Of course, this would have some limitations which come from how Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte work and from their conversation architecture.The first limitation is that you could only give certain contacts permission to quote-post your posts if you didn't give it to the whole Fediverse. Channel-wide permissions are always inherited by contact-specific permissions, and this cannot be overridden. So you couldn't generally allow everyone to quote-post your posts except for one certain contact of yours.The second limitation is that you can only control the permissions of contacts, but not of non-contacts. So you can't disallow some stranger whom you aren't connected to to quote-post your posts while everyone else is allowed.Then again, FEP-044f doesn't make either of these two possible either. It can only define who is permitted to quote-post a post, not who isn't.The third limitation is that, on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, comments always have the same permissions as the post that they belong to because comments always have the same owner as the post that they belong to. Basically, if FEP-044f was to be defined for each comment individually, it would have a chance of clashing with conversation containers as per FEP-171b.Here on Hubzilla, as well as from (streams)' point of view, everyone's comments in this thread are owned by me because I've started the thread. And the permissions on all these comments are defined by my post. I've seen my share of permission clashes whenever someone on Mastodon replied to a public post or a public comment with a DM, and Hubzilla overrode this by forcing the permissions of the post on that reply.In practice, this means that the quote policies of all comments would be the same as that of the post. At least that's how Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte would understand them because the concept of comments having different permissions than the post is alien to them. So if you say that I'm not permitted to quote-post your comment, but I say that anyone can quote-post my post, Hubzilla and (streams) override the quote policy that you've given your comment on Mastodon with the quote policy that I've given my post on Hubzilla, and I can quote-post you.So the actually difficult part would be to implement an exception in how Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte handle comment permissions for quote policies and make them individual for each comment rather than making comments inherit them from the post.Well, and lastly, if you permitted all your contacts to quote-post a post of yours, and you had a few more contacts, the "canQuote" section would end up monstrous. (A bit less so if you could cherry-pick those who are allowed to quote-post you on a per-post base, just like you can cherry-pick those who are allowed to see the post in the first place.) Also, I'm wondering just how well policies as per FEP-044f (and their implementations in various server applications) will work with DIDs as per FEP-ef61 which (streams) and Forte use, and I guess, so does Mitra now.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #GoToSocial #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Permission #Permissions #FEP_044f #FEP_171b #FEP_e232 #FEP_ef61
(DIR) Post #B1OGrnTrGbWn9zHSsK by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-12-18T20:05:34Z
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@Strypey Groups are tied permanently to the originating server.Not true for Hubzilla forums as well as (streams) and Forte groups.I could set up a Hubzilla forum channel that simultaneously resides on half a dozen or more fully independent servers. All instances of the channel will incrementally back themselves up to all other instances of the channel in near-real-time, bidirectionally.One server goes down, I still have 100% identical living copies on all the other servers.The miracle of nomadic identity. Established in 2012, daily-driven on production channels for longer than Mastodon itself.Literally the only disadvantage is that the non-nomadic parts of the Fediverse, including Mastodon, will perceive each clone as its own separate Fediverse account.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity
(DIR) Post #B1OxSlfj9MSsLA8zBY by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-12-19T08:49:42Z
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@Strypey That's a pretty major UX fail right there.Any progress on finalising an FEP for using nomadic identity with AP?I think it'll take more than that one FEP (FEP-ef61 Portable Objects) to do that. I expect @silverpill to whip up more FEPs in the on-going process of turning Mitra from something like most Fediverse software (non-nomadic, account equals identity) into something that's every bit as nomadic as Forte.Thing is, Mitra still has a long way to go, also because it aims to have an implementation of nomadic identity that's entirely covered by FEPs. Forte has nomadic identity via ActivityPub, but that's technology adopted from Zot/Nomad that needed to be made to work first and foremost with no regards for FEPs.Besides, the existence of FEPs doesn't matter as long as Mastodon refuses to adopt them. And Mastodon has already silently rejected client-side support for OpenWebAuth magic sign-on by refusing to merge an existing, ready-to-merge pull request that would have implemented it immediately.This means we'll probably never even see Mastodon become capable of recognising nomadic channels. And I'm not talking about Mastodon going nomadic itself (which, by the way, would also give Mastodon the easy account moving that its users have been craving for for so long).#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Mitra #Forte #NomadicIdentity #FEP_ef61
(DIR) Post #B1Q9FJfbLJaqKxOgam by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2025-12-19T11:02:23Z
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@Strypey But this will take a lot of time. A whole lot of time.The situation right now is still that Mastodon has considerably more users than the whole rest of the Fediverse combined. Within Mastodon itself, well over 90% of all messages are from Mastodon.The majority of Mastodon users think the Fediverse equals Mastodon. The majority of the rest think the Fediverse equals Mastodon with PeerTube and Pixelfed and the like glued onto it as add-ons. The majority of those remaining cannot imagine for the lives of them that you can follow Friendica accounts from Mastodon because you can't follow Facebook accounts from 𝕏 either.Apart from Reddit-to-Lemmy refugees, every single last Fediverse newbie enters the Fediverse via Mastodon without being told that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon. In fact, many don't even learn about the Fediverse itself, only that there's a phone app named Mastodon that's allegedly "literally 𝕏 without Musk".Remember the early days of smartphones? When 99% of all commercial apps were only developed for iOS because developing for Android wasn't worth it, because Android was "too small"?You know when this changed? This didn't change when Android had gained a significant market share. This din't even change when Android had a market share of over 50%. This only changed when the Samsung Galaxy S, one specific Android phone model, had been outselling the iPhone for long enough for market analysts to notice.In Fediverse terms, this means it isn't sufficient for the non-Mastodon Fediverse as a whole to outgrow Mastodon in numbers of users or in content. Even if most content seen on Mastodon doesn't originate on Mastodon anymore, that wouldn't be sufficient to break Mastodon's dominance.It's sad to say, but we need one Fediverse server application to outgrow Mastodon in users and activity. Ideally, that'd be a server application that's both standards-compliant and state-of-the-art in technology and blistering with technology that goes beyond Mastodon's wildest imagination.In other words, what we need is to channel a Facebook exodus of several tens of millions of users to Forte. I'd say hundreds of millions to also outgrow Threads, but Threads will block every last Forte server because Forte is incompatible with Forte's federation requirements by its design and its philosophy.Imagine a Fediverse in which, whenever one Mastodon user speaks of Mastodon as either "the Fediverse" or the best Fediverse software ever, two or three Forte users disagree.Trouble is, Forte isn't fit to take a Facebook exodus infrastructure-wise. It doesn't have a single public, open-registration server. It probably has fewer than 20 daily-driving users, all of whom are on single-user servers.This also means that nobody knows whether Forte is fit to take a Facebook exodus technology-wise. Nobody knows how many users a Forte server can handle if none has ever even had half a dozen users. And, in fact, nobody knows how well Forte's implementation of nomadic identity works if only Mike Macgirvin himself has evern cloned a Forte channel and even that only under lab conditions. I mean, why clone your channel when you can just as well back up the whole server because it's yours?(streams) doesn't look much better, unfortunately. It has about two public, open-registration servers. There should be another one in Europe, but it's currently broken. Otherwise, it's like Forte: People try it by first setting up their own server. And hardly anyone is willing to host a public one, much less enough of these for cloning to be viable. So, again, even (streams)' nomadic identity is only ever tested by Mike under lab conditions.It doesn't help that both have only one developer who is officially retired.As much as I personally love (streams) for being sleek and more fitting into today's Fediverse, it's probably Hubzilla that's the most solid candidate for a state-of-the-art Facebook alternative.It's the most well-known of the bunch (except non-nomadic, account-equals-identity Friendica). It has been around for a decade. It has two main devs, none of whom have ever retired from Fediverse development. It has quite a bunch of open-registration hubs. It has enough active users for bugs to be spotted quickly and even a few who occasionally submit pull requests. It has an active community, albeit a small one, but better than having only a few dozen users world-wide. I've even read somewhere that Hubzilla needs fewer server resources than (streams). And yes, it's more versatile. Also, it has a community-maintained help system where (streams) and Forte barely have a public tech spec.On the other hand, however, Hubzilla has the steepest learning curve in the whole Fediverse. It feels like geared towards Friendica converts first and foremost, although Friendica and Hubzilla have been developed away from each other.Its default settings are still adjusted for a Zot-based "Grid" that was envisioned as a successor to the Federation in the first half of the 2010s, but not for today's ActivityPub-based Fediverse. This means that you will have to configure your brand-new channel before you can start using it. And there's nothing on Hubzilla's Web UI that tells you that you have to "install" an "app" to be able to connect to Mastodon. Not to mention that many permission settings are only available in the shape of templates rather than individual switches like on (streams) and Forte.It's hard enough for Mastodon users who are already used to decentralised things to switch to Hubzilla, the difference in philosophy (Twitter clone vs grand-son of a Facebook alternative with a side of WordPress) notwithstanding. But it'd be considerably harder for Facebook users to switch to Hubzilla than it is for 𝕏 users to switch to Mastodon.I can't see Hubzilla dominate the Fediverse for other reasons as well, even in the event of a huge Facebook exodus.First of all, the vast majority of Facebook refugees will be on-boarded by people who barely or not at all know the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, and who therefore think that Mastodon is the Fediverse's only viable alternative to Facebook. And by people who may know that Friendica exists, but who want to stay in contact with their old Facebook friends, and who cannot imagine that you can follow a Friendica account from Mastodon. So these Facebook refugees will end up adding millions upon millions of new users to Mastodon.Besides, the Friendica community will try to reel in as many Facebook refugees as possible. The Friendica community is bigger than the Hubzilla community. Also, they've probably got some considerable foothold on Facebook whereas your typical Hubzilla user is hardly anywhere else except maybe for an experimental (streams) channel. Friendica will use its advantage of being widely considered "the" Facebook alternative in the Fediverse.At the same time, the Hubzilla community won't even know how to tackle this situation, much less profit from it. They'll probably get stuck in discussions that don't lead to anything productive, in this case also being hindered by the notion that "Hubzilla is not a social network" (even though it'd work just fine as one).Lastly, people will join whatever has its own official app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store with the same name as the whole project and the server software. And that's Mastodon.In the meantime, Friendica only has a bunch of third-party Android apps and a few semi-open beta iOS apps, but no official one named "Friendica". The other three have no apps at all, save for a Web-based Hubzilla app that hasn't seen any development activity in over six years. And the Hubzilla community can't even agree upon whether any Hubzilla app would be feasible in the first place, much less which features it has to include, also due to the false assumption that people will use the app only occasionally when they're out and about rather than daily-drive it as their only frontend.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte
(DIR) Post #B2Ng6xYVNzzPlhPKOO by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2026-01-17T01:33:08Z
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@silverpill In a hilarious twist of fate, this gives (streams) and Forte an unfair advantage. They're nearly identical, they have the same maintainer, but they're two separate implementations, also seeing as Forte uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity, and (streams) doesn't and still uses its own Nomad protocol for it.Since Mitra appears to implement (streams)/Forte features one by one and cast them into FEPs, that's three implementations already. Two if nomadic identity via ActivityPub is involved. And if Hubzilla happens to have it, too, we've got up to four implementations.Yes, ActivityPub is only an optional add-on on Hubzilla and (streams), but an implementation is an implementation. And whatever they do on Nomad that federates has to get out through ActivityPub one way or another.It'd be even more hilariously skewed, hadn't Mike discontinued the five apps between Hubzilla and (streams) on New Year's Eve 2022.CC: @slyborg @Evan Prodromou @Connected Places @ArneBab @Alex Chapman#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ActivityPub #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra
(DIR) Post #B2RnPY8HKbI4TCLFQ0 by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2026-01-16T23:35:07Z
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@Giaco I know that Mitra is approaching Forte by and by. Slowly because silverpill is trying to cast everything newly implemented into FEPs.But I'm trying to remember what Hubzilla and Mitra have in common, other than client-side OpenWebAuth support and Conversation Containers. Mitra has Portable Objects which might cause disturbances, as do (streams) and Forte, but Hubzilla doesn't.#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta
(DIR) Post #B2RnPoXgJv7LMcLlEe by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2026-01-19T08:00:49Z
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@FenTiger I think it does. And even then, it doesn't have a full, server-side and client-side implementation, only a client-side implementation like Friendica and Tootik.#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #OpenWebAuth #Mitra #Friendica #Tootik