12 ms·

What Is the Fediverse?

172 points by booteille 4y ago

dumpsterlid 4y ago
One of the things I love most about the fediverse/mastodon is that most of the tech people who I think are jerks think it is a failure and don't bother to join. The resulting tech community is way more progressive and kind than most tech communities.
- lokedhs 4y ago
  People will probably downvote you for that statement (and me, for replying to you) but there is something to what you're saying. The people who consider it a failure are the same people who are looking for a platform to broadcast their opinions from, rather than having an interesting conversation. Of course they're not going to find what they are looking for on the Fediverse, and that's fine. Most of people on the Fediverse are notified looking for that anyway.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    Yah exactly, the amount of positive interaction I have with people on the fediverse absolutely blows every other online social media platform out of the water. People start conversations with me all the time about really interesting stuff and most of my posts get far more interaction than they ever would on another social media platform.
enriquto 4y ago
I cannot see the video, but it seems that it's the same thing as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse If the author of the video is around here: please, put textual transcripts for video-impaired users! (or simply, for people who do not want to launch a video and prefer to read).
- btdmaster 4y ago
  They are there! Settings (Cog icon) -> Subtitles/CC -> Language
  - enriquto 4y ago
    curl https://framatube.org/w/4294a720-f263-4ea4-9392-cf9cea4d5277 | less I don't see them there
    - mminer237 4y ago
      ...That's because they're loaded by JavaScript upon selecting the option. You're not going to be able to find them with curl. The direct URL would be: https://framatube.org/lazy-static/video-captions/2f199e59-5cf8-4529-a033-9d6dd4a858ca-en.vtt https://framatube.org/lazy-static/video-captions/2f199e59-5c...
      - enriquto 4y ago
        Thanks! This URL should be easily accessible from the main site. URLs linking to textual information are the backbone of the internet and one of the best international standards that mankind has created.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    Subtitles are not transcripts, they still require wasting time following the video.
mcv 4y ago
After the death of Google+, I joined a Diaspora pod that was created specifically for Google+ refugees. Now that pod is about the die (it still exist, but the owner died, so we're not sure how long it will last), so everybody is joining other federated social networks. Many moved to another Diaspora pod, some moved to Mastodon. I moved to Friendica, which has the advantage of being able to follow people on both Diaspora and Mastodon. I haven't found a good Android app for it yet, unfortunately.
- jdporter 4y ago
  I was also a #gplusrefugee on pluspora :-) Very sad to see it go. Once a nomad, always a nomad, I guess? I joined Nerdica not long after joining pluspora, but wasn't active there because the (web) UX is pretty poor. But still, it's my main sn now... besides Fosstodon, which is pretty cool.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Nerdica is also the pod I moved to when the death of Pluspora was announced. Though I think most of the people I'm following are still on Diapora. The Web ui is fine enough (it's a bit slow and has a few warts), but I haven't found a good mobile app yet.
Dzugaru 4y ago
A couple of ELI5 followup questions for this cool ELI5 video: 1) Why would you create a new provider, why not just use [insert biggest provider name here]? In other words, whats' stopping this thing from centralization? It's not like you need to build a rocket to move to the other planet, right? 2) How do you so easily move videos from one provider to another? The amount of data is enormous, you can't just copy it everywhere?
- mcv 4y ago
  You might not agree with the existing provider. Don't like the way Facebook mangles your feed and feeds you crap? Join another server instead, but keep following all your friends on Facebook! (This would work if Facebook supported federation, which it does not.)
  - KSPAtlas 4y ago
    I for example don't agree with how mastodon.social is handling things
- wallacoloo 4y ago
  1) although federation enables any user to _contact_ any other user that's distinct from saying every user's _experience_ is the same everywhere. the ELI5 thing to point to is the "local timeline". although your "home timeline" will remain the same wherever you home your account, the "local timeline" is a way to see everything happening on your server without following each user individually. it's really akin to a "group" on more familiar social media, with the condition that you can only be in one of these groups at a time. for the instances below Dunbar's number, or maybe those above it which have a well-defined theme, the local timeline can be a really cozy place. it could be the primary way you interact with the system. a longer explanation would mention the different _software_ each instance might run. you might interact with very different front-ends (how they present UI themes, render threads, notifications, etc). and backends have different support too (emoji-based post reactions; quote-replies/boosts; chat features/integrations). although there's _some_ tendency for the backend features to converge, they often converge only to the level of compatibility (a :100: emoji reaction from one server will show up as a flair-less 'like' on an server that doesn't want the full feature) and sometimes one region of the space _really doesn't want a specific feature_ (Mastodon.social famously is dead-set against quote boosts). your preferences will directly shape which feature set you desire, and it'll tend to land you in an area of peers that share these preferences (shaping your local timeline and also drawing a circle around some peers where you can be reasonably confident that "this area of the fediverse will grow in a way that keeps our instances well-connected"). it's a really organic thing. your original question could just as well be framed "if the thing works regardless of provider, why isn't everyone just _their own_ provider" instead of "why doesn't everyone use _the same single_ provider". right now the forces oppose both ends, and you get a decentralized (not distributed) fediverse.
nicoburns 4y ago
I like the idea of a fediverse, but I can't help but feel like the solution to an open social network will look less like Mastodon and more like RSS.
- NoraCodes 4y ago
  Why not both? Mastodon works well for many, but I definitely agree that there's space for another blogging-focused AP implementation or even a new protocol!
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  In case it's interesting...add .rss or .atom to the end of any user profile address to get their feed. Example: https://oldbytes.space/@marcolas.rss https://oldbytes.space/@marcolas.rss
- mxuribe 4y ago
  > ...feel like the solution to an open social network will look... May i ask respectfully, have you even seen and/or used any applications within the fediverse? Forgive me, but i interpret your statement as if you have not actively seen, used apps on the fedi...If that is accurate, may i invite you to at least test things out by joining any number of instances, and try one of the many, many apps - mobile and web - which allow you to richly interact with others across the fediverse...and i think you'll see that the experience "looks" like many things, but certainly not restricted to RSS or mastodon, etc. To pick any of the myriad apps and test things out, check out this collection of apps: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ To learn a bit more behind the fediverse's history, feel free to review entries on the following page: https://fediverse.party/en/chronicles/ https://fediverse.party/en/chronicles/ I certainly hope that your test run is an enjoyable one, or at least interesting and informative. While i'm a fan of the fediverse, it is not lost on me that much like other sorts of human behavior - like conventional social media silos - there is no *real* escape from trolls, jerks, awful people. Cheers!
- zdunn 4y ago
  That's the basis for https://indieweb.org https://indieweb.org which i think is a much better solution than ActivityPub. See micro.blog if you want an example of a productized form of those ideas
remram 4y ago
My main issue with the current Fediverse (i.e. ActivityPub universe) is that no one actually use the client-to-server protocol. Only applications federate with each other, exchanging a basic level of their internal representation over the server-to-server protocol, and you need accounts in each of them to go past the basic functions (text comment & retweet). I feel like it would be much better if I could use a single identity and a single "ActivityPub server" for all my applications. In the current situation, being able to retweet my PeerTube video from my Mastodon account has little advantage about just tweeting a link to it. Likewise, commenting on a Lemmy thread from my Mastodon account is ok but I can't really see the thread as a thread without logging into Lemmy. Watching a PeerTube video, I can post a comment using my Mastodon account but that requires 5+ click and a change of application. I am not sure why the ecosystem went this way. The client-to-server protocol was readily available when the Fediverse was kickstarted.
- mcv 4y ago
  Not sure what you mean. I'm on Friendica, and I can follow, reshare and comment on posts from people on other platforms with no problem. I don't need accounts on other servers for this, though I'm sure my interaction with them is limited to whatever Friendica supports. I don't doubt you can do more if you actually get accounts on different systems, but that's a choice you have. I don't think you need to do it if you don't want to.
  - remram 4y ago
    Follow and comment are the only things that are supported across platforms. That is what I mean by "exchanging at a basic level". To use any of the various features that makes the various applications worthwhile, you have to go create an account in that application and subscribe to people's accounts from there. When Gitea implements federated merge requests and tickets, you will be able to follow repositories from Mastodon and comment on issues from there. That's great! But to do anything else (create/assign/close issues, open/review merge requests, ...) you will have to create a separate Gitea account and use it to interact with Gitea users. This is a serious limit to "interacting with a whole diverse universe".
  - 4y ago
themodelplumber 4y ago
I'm on oldbytes.space and find it pretty fun to get to know Mastodon's corner of the Fediverse so far. Hashtags are really important for discovery right now, but it looks like other discovery features are in the works. I also gave SL and OpenSim a look, and OpenSim has been pretty fun to explore, even from the outside. One example community: https://coopersville.mystrikingly.com/ https://coopersville.mystrikingly.com/ - @marcolas@oldbytes.space
- lokedhs 4y ago
  I didn't realise just how long I've been on the Fediverse. It's been incredibly rewarding for me so far. Sure, I could have had more followers on a different platform, but I'm not there to have a megaphone that I force others to listen to. This is why I doubt we'll see any major celebrities going there, since they are not on social media to have a conversation. They are there so people can see them. I can be found here @loke@functional.cafe
jancsika 4y ago
Fediverse: a bunch of software waiting idle in the hope that a hero will arrive to make significant and lasting changes to copyright and fair use in order for any of it to be useful. Ooh, this decentralized beebob could be a great place to discover and distribute Scihub content. Ooh, I can sure imagine myself watching a sci-fi movie that's old enough to vote and buy alcohol on "Framatube." Ooh, a filesystem suitable for multiple planets, IFF planet #2 is filled only with Pirate Party members with their force shields turned on and on constant watch for slow blades. Ooh, a user-writable international encyclopedia that isn't... oh yeah, that actually exists because you can't copyright fucking facts. At least there's that, twenty-first century! Edit: clarification to make exclamation even sadder
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I think when people hear "*-verse" there are two common hot takes: (1) this is something that doesn't include me, and (2) move on folks, nothing more to see here.
- msla 4y ago
  Federated protocols have been used for email and message boards. Multiple times, in fact, counting FIDO and Usenet and Bitnet as separate developments. So it isn't like this is a new idea, or like it's impossible to do with current copyright law.
  - jefurii 4y ago
    Also the phone system, per the video. That's run by large corporations, often with monopolies, but at least they interoperate.
    - riffic 4y ago
      it's amazing the international telephone system even worked at all. ma bell was quite centralized but there were many attempts to get them to interoperate both domestically and internationally, even to the point of having a very rigorous regulation regime (nationalization too.)
DrewADesign 4y ago
For social media to be social it needs people. While I have hope for the future, current fediverse offerings don’t meet people’s basic social media usability needs. People use social media because it’s fun, it fosters connection with people they know, delivers information about news/hobbies etc., helps people find communities with shared interests and experiences, and most importantly, does it all in one easy-to-use place. Everybody knows there are better sources for everyday news than Twitter but if they’re already there interacting with people about the game last night… More importantly, it’s all conceptually easy for users to understand. You’re on Facebook, your friend is on Facebook, you find your friend on Facebook and you can interact on Facebook. If there was a bunch of Facebooks and your friends are in a different Facebook that doesn’t talk to your Facebook and the Recipe Facebook your friend likes is kinda janky and doesn’t always show up when you search for it… your average user would stop using social media altogether if that was their only option. It can be hard for developers to imagine that, but what if it was a different realm of expertise? Imagine you had to have a rudimentary understanding of mail routing to know which post office you needed to use to mail each package and it was only conceptually documented for people who worked in the postal industry and each paragraph required background knowledge you didn’t have? You’d probably just suck it up and use UPS, especially if it was the same price. If someone wants a recipe for French onion soup, they want a recipe — not a culinary school text book chapter on soup. How much documentation or theoretical background knowledge does your average netizen need to use Facebook? Zero. None. That doesn’t even get into the whole branding aspect. Like it or not, appeal is a prerequisite and not a bolt-on feature for a social media network. People like feeling competent and hip and hate uncertainty. They don’t want to wonder if their friends on the other mastodon and the other friend on the other other mastodon can smell, er, see their toot. We can’t sell non-technical people on technical capability. While there are technical components to this problem, the solution will not be entirely technical. We need to give them a compelling experience first, and make that work on the tech side. Unless you really only want people in your fediverse who get satisfaction out of wrangling clunky software, that’s just the way it is.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  I don't think the branding issue is too hard to overcome. The Mastodon and Mastodon-clone interfaces are often very similar to Twitter so just minor verbiage changes should be sufficient to improve the UX. On the other points though, I agree. Fundamentally a social network has _everyone_ on it. The Fediverse as it is now is a collection of small and medium communities. On top of this there's lots of drama in the Fediverse. The relationship that Fediverse instances have with each other is constantly changing and many of the smaller instance owners aren't exactly the most consistent mods/admins (kind of like IRC mods back in its heyday.) There's a certain kind of person that enjoys this kind of fluid, unprofessional (e.g. run by amateur staff, not a knock on the community at large) community, but it's not the experience most people who like social media are looking for. If you're interested in trying the Fediverse I highly recommend peeking inside at the fun and chaos but if you're looking to replace traditional social media, I'd say look elsewhere.
jarbus 4y ago
With the fediverse, I think people need to drop the notion that they expect people they already know to be on the platform. Specifically Mastodon: If you log on expecting to find the people you follow on twitter, you are in for a bad time. But, if you log on looking to find and follow a bunch of unique new people, there is no shortage of accounts/instances to follow, and the # of users relative to centralized services doesn't matter.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
  >With the fediverse, I think people need to drop the notion that they expect people they already know to be on the platform. It's the same at the beginning of every social network. When I joined Twitter or Facebook early, I did not expect to find people I knew either. People are probably joining instances where their friends are already registered, unless you're the first among your circles. Also, you can be logged into multiple instances at the same time – just like you're probably connected to a personal and a work mailbox.
- remram 4y ago
  That's good because the tool Mastodon developed to connect to your Twitter friends has been down for years: https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Perhaps the new ownership at Twitter will encourage interop?
    - riffic 4y ago
      hilarious. substantive reply: history begs to differ.
      - spacemanmatt 4y ago
        e's too busy freezing his precious peaches to worry about interop
msravi 4y ago
A couple of years ago, there used to be a mastodon instance called "Inditoot" that started to gain traction with an Indian userbase. The instance moderator's approach to moderating content was basically that as long as a post doesn't go against the law, it was ok to keep. With twitter being seen as biased to the left, the instance attracted a significant crowd that was seen as right-leaning. At some point, users of the mastodon.social instance where most of the left-leaning crowd gathered, got their admin to preemptively silence the inditoot instance on mastodon.social[1]. This meant that all toots from the inditoot instance were effectively blocked on mastodon.social, and the two sides were operating in separate bubbles. A few months later, the Indian userbase on both mastodon.social and inditoot was dead, and everyone was back on twitter, fighting and clawing and tearing at each other. Moral: If you remove the communication links between those nice round planets shown in the animation, they become drab and dreary, and not worth having at all, and you're back to twitter. If you keep the links, then there's no difference between federated instances and twitter, and you're back to being twitter anyway. 1. https://twitter.com/Memeghnad/status/1194237305294221315 https://twitter.com/Memeghnad/status/1194237305294221315
- remram 4y ago
  And you assume they went back because of the block based on...? Surely it couldn't be that they disliked the UX, that their other friends failed to move over, or that those indie-operated websites lacked in performance. No, of course we must assume it's the lack of fighting.
  - i5heu 4y ago
    I switched to Mastodon because it is much much easier to build a walled garden in which I want to experience. Twitter ist just a toxic hole with groups of people that seems to have nothing more to do than to annoy and harm you.
    - josephg 4y ago
      I left Twitter after the algorithmic news feed came in. “How bad could it be?” I wondered. Really bad. Despite carefully curating my Twitter feed to be almost all creators doing interesting stuff, Twitter decided what I really wanted to see was awful racist politics. I had a think about it and deleted the app the next day. You can blame twitter’s users if you want. I blame twitter’s algorithm for actively finding the most vile stuff and shoving it in everyone’s faces.
matsemann 4y ago
One big hurdle to get going is to find which instance to subscribe to. When joining twitter, you just join twitter. Now there are multiple, and I don't know the ramifications of which one to choose. Will I suddenly be blocked by half the instances if I choose a lesser known one? A second hurdle is that I think most people don't want to start from scratch. I want to keep my followers and those I'm following.
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  And considering that socialization isn’t as productive without fellow socializers, we should consider the non-technical user path. For my, say, brother— the first hurdle would be processing my explanation of the distinctions between an instance, a server, and a service, plus the basics of federation. The second hurdle would be figuring out how he’ll break it to me when he gives up and re-activates his Twitter account.
- gs17 4y ago
  That first hurdle has kept me from bothering with the Fediverse entirely. And instances' rules make me feel at the mercy of either the moderation or the userbase, depending on which end of the permissiveness spectrum they fall on.
shadowgovt 4y ago
What is the easiest way to get started as a user on a federated social network? I glanced at Mastodon when information started flowing about it but I was (and am) supremely disinterested in running / moderating my own node. But I'd be interested in joining someone else's node. What does that look like these days?
- btdmaster 4y ago
  Pick a server: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
  - peterhadlaw 4y ago
    https://joinmastodon.org/covenant https://joinmastodon.org/covenant :/ (read between the lines)
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      I'm afraid I don't see what you're seeing. What is the issue?
    - Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago
      How do they ensure that server passes these requirements, especially 2 and 3?
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  Its pretty easy, just pick an instance of mastodon to make an account on and off you go
- zdunn 4y ago
  You could also check out Pleroma; Mastodon isnt the only microblogging software on the fediverse https://pleroma.social/#featured-instances https://pleroma.social/#featured-instances https://fediverse.party/en/pleroma/ https://fediverse.party/en/pleroma/
ParsnipsOfSnail 4y ago
I feel a bit disheartened that this site took 30 seconds to load, then got as far as "What is the fediverse" then buffered until erroring out a minute later. Either the video has gained no traction and thus no peers (bad) or adding more people to the site crashed it (even worse). Can we not do better?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  It's on the frontpage of HN, give 'em a break.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
sfblah 4y ago
They use email as an example of federation. Actually, it's an example of the reverse. For example, I run a website with a reasonably large subscriber base (100k+ emails). Of those, something like 90% are gmail.com, outlook.com or yahoo.com. The majority are actually gmail.com. So, while email is federated under the covers, users use it like it's a walled garden. In fact, if you go to a store where they ask for an email address, employees often have a hard time understanding what you're saying if you give them an address that isn't one of the three above. Bottom line is consumers don't want or understand federated services. They don't care. That's why monopolies win. To get people using federated services would require a massive, ongoing education effort. And, even that is likely to fail, because it just doesn't matter enough to people. Alternate solution: governments could use antitrust to force federation.
- mklauber1 4y ago
  I would argue that is the point of federation. Despite the fact that most of the users are on gmail, they can still email anyone anywhere else, without issues. And I've never heard of one of the big name providers blocking emails from another large provider, with the possible exception of spam heavy domains. It's a lot better than social media. I feel like the analogous situation would be being able to follow someone's twitter feed in your FB feed, or send a twitter DM to someone's facebook messenger account, and how likely is any major social media platform to allow that to happen? Despite the concentration of power, email's federation makes it much easier to choose which provider you want to use, avoiding the network effects that come from walled garden services.
  - noizejoy 4y ago
    > And I've never heard of one of the big name providers blocking emails from another large provider, with the possible exception of spam heavy domains. I’ve experienced Microsoft routinely blocking email from smaller domains, even when hosted at a large email provider. I’ve seen this first hand for small hobby communities and small businesses.
gpsx 4y ago
Is the fediverse a new social network or a concept? I think there is hope for it as a general concept if, for example, the US government gets mad at someone like Facebook and requires them and other social networks/messaging platforms to make their content available through standard interfaces. It could be something like RSS for posts and other appropriate standards for chat, audio calls, video calls, etc. Then someone on [insert fledgling social network here] could "follow" someone on Facebook and someone on What's App could text someone on WeChat.
- lokedhs 4y ago
  It's both. At its core is a set of protocols that allows different software to interoperate in the way you envisioned. These protocols allows pretty much everything you mentioned with the possible exception of video/audio calls. I don't think activitypub has support for realtime protocols. There are many implementations that uses these protocols and that can interoperate today. The most well known of these is Mastodon.

172 points by booteille 4y ago

One of the things I love most about the fediverse/mastodon is that most of the tech people who I think are jerks think it is a failure and don't bother to join. The resulting tech community is way more progressive and kind than most tech communities.

lokedhs 4y ago
People will probably downvote you for that statement (and me, for replying to you) but there is something to what you're saying. The people who consider it a failure are the same people who are looking for a platform to broadcast their opinions from, rather than having an interesting conversation. Of course they're not going to find what they are looking for on the Fediverse, and that's fine. Most of people on the Fediverse are notified looking for that anyway.
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  Yah exactly, the amount of positive interaction I have with people on the fediverse absolutely blows every other online social media platform out of the water. People start conversations with me all the time about really interesting stuff and most of my posts get far more interaction than they ever would on another social media platform.

enriquto 4y ago

I cannot see the video, but it seems that it's the same thing as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse If the author of the video is around here: please, put textual transcripts for video-impaired users! (or simply, for people who do not want to launch a video and prefer to read).

btdmaster 4y ago
They are there! Settings (Cog icon) -> Subtitles/CC -> Language
- enriquto 4y ago
  curl https://framatube.org/w/4294a720-f263-4ea4-9392-cf9cea4d5277 | less I don't see them there
  - mminer237 4y ago
    ...That's because they're loaded by JavaScript upon selecting the option. You're not going to be able to find them with curl. The direct URL would be: https://framatube.org/lazy-static/video-captions/2f199e59-5cf8-4529-a033-9d6dd4a858ca-en.vtt https://framatube.org/lazy-static/video-captions/2f199e59-5c...
    - enriquto 4y ago
      Thanks! This URL should be easily accessible from the main site. URLs linking to textual information are the backbone of the internet and one of the best international standards that mankind has created.
- nottorp 4y ago
  Subtitles are not transcripts, they still require wasting time following the video.

mcv 4y ago

After the death of Google+, I joined a Diaspora pod that was created specifically for Google+ refugees. Now that pod is about the die (it still exist, but the owner died, so we're not sure how long it will last), so everybody is joining other federated social networks. Many moved to another Diaspora pod, some moved to Mastodon. I moved to Friendica, which has the advantage of being able to follow people on both Diaspora and Mastodon. I haven't found a good Android app for it yet, unfortunately.

jdporter 4y ago
I was also a #gplusrefugee on pluspora :-) Very sad to see it go. Once a nomad, always a nomad, I guess? I joined Nerdica not long after joining pluspora, but wasn't active there because the (web) UX is pretty poor. But still, it's my main sn now... besides Fosstodon, which is pretty cool.
- mcv 4y ago
  Nerdica is also the pod I moved to when the death of Pluspora was announced. Though I think most of the people I'm following are still on Diapora. The Web ui is fine enough (it's a bit slow and has a few warts), but I haven't found a good mobile app yet.

Dzugaru 4y ago

A couple of ELI5 followup questions for this cool ELI5 video: 1) Why would you create a new provider, why not just use [insert biggest provider name here]? In other words, whats' stopping this thing from centralization? It's not like you need to build a rocket to move to the other planet, right? 2) How do you so easily move videos from one provider to another? The amount of data is enormous, you can't just copy it everywhere?

mcv 4y ago
You might not agree with the existing provider. Don't like the way Facebook mangles your feed and feeds you crap? Join another server instead, but keep following all your friends on Facebook! (This would work if Facebook supported federation, which it does not.)
- KSPAtlas 4y ago
  I for example don't agree with how mastodon.social is handling things
wallacoloo 4y ago
1) although federation enables any user to _contact_ any other user that's distinct from saying every user's _experience_ is the same everywhere. the ELI5 thing to point to is the "local timeline". although your "home timeline" will remain the same wherever you home your account, the "local timeline" is a way to see everything happening on your server without following each user individually. it's really akin to a "group" on more familiar social media, with the condition that you can only be in one of these groups at a time. for the instances below Dunbar's number, or maybe those above it which have a well-defined theme, the local timeline can be a really cozy place. it could be the primary way you interact with the system. a longer explanation would mention the different _software_ each instance might run. you might interact with very different front-ends (how they present UI themes, render threads, notifications, etc). and backends have different support too (emoji-based post reactions; quote-replies/boosts; chat features/integrations). although there's _some_ tendency for the backend features to converge, they often converge only to the level of compatibility (a :100: emoji reaction from one server will show up as a flair-less 'like' on an server that doesn't want the full feature) and sometimes one region of the space _really doesn't want a specific feature_ (Mastodon.social famously is dead-set against quote boosts). your preferences will directly shape which feature set you desire, and it'll tend to land you in an area of peers that share these preferences (shaping your local timeline and also drawing a circle around some peers where you can be reasonably confident that "this area of the fediverse will grow in a way that keeps our instances well-connected"). it's a really organic thing. your original question could just as well be framed "if the thing works regardless of provider, why isn't everyone just _their own_ provider" instead of "why doesn't everyone use _the same single_ provider". right now the forces oppose both ends, and you get a decentralized (not distributed) fediverse.

nicoburns 4y ago

I like the idea of a fediverse, but I can't help but feel like the solution to an open social network will look less like Mastodon and more like RSS.

NoraCodes 4y ago
Why not both? Mastodon works well for many, but I definitely agree that there's space for another blogging-focused AP implementation or even a new protocol!
themodelplumber 4y ago
In case it's interesting...add .rss or .atom to the end of any user profile address to get their feed. Example: https://oldbytes.space/@marcolas.rss https://oldbytes.space/@marcolas.rss
mxuribe 4y ago
> ...feel like the solution to an open social network will look... May i ask respectfully, have you even seen and/or used any applications within the fediverse? Forgive me, but i interpret your statement as if you have not actively seen, used apps on the fedi...If that is accurate, may i invite you to at least test things out by joining any number of instances, and try one of the many, many apps - mobile and web - which allow you to richly interact with others across the fediverse...and i think you'll see that the experience "looks" like many things, but certainly not restricted to RSS or mastodon, etc. To pick any of the myriad apps and test things out, check out this collection of apps: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ To learn a bit more behind the fediverse's history, feel free to review entries on the following page: https://fediverse.party/en/chronicles/ https://fediverse.party/en/chronicles/ I certainly hope that your test run is an enjoyable one, or at least interesting and informative. While i'm a fan of the fediverse, it is not lost on me that much like other sorts of human behavior - like conventional social media silos - there is no *real* escape from trolls, jerks, awful people. Cheers!
zdunn 4y ago
That's the basis for https://indieweb.org https://indieweb.org which i think is a much better solution than ActivityPub. See micro.blog if you want an example of a productized form of those ideas

remram 4y ago

My main issue with the current Fediverse (i.e. ActivityPub universe) is that no one actually use the client-to-server protocol. Only applications federate with each other, exchanging a basic level of their internal representation over the server-to-server protocol, and you need accounts in each of them to go past the basic functions (text comment & retweet). I feel like it would be much better if I could use a single identity and a single "ActivityPub server" for all my applications. In the current situation, being able to retweet my PeerTube video from my Mastodon account has little advantage about just tweeting a link to it. Likewise, commenting on a Lemmy thread from my Mastodon account is ok but I can't really see the thread as a thread without logging into Lemmy. Watching a PeerTube video, I can post a comment using my Mastodon account but that requires 5+ click and a change of application. I am not sure why the ecosystem went this way. The client-to-server protocol was readily available when the Fediverse was kickstarted.

mcv 4y ago
Not sure what you mean. I'm on Friendica, and I can follow, reshare and comment on posts from people on other platforms with no problem. I don't need accounts on other servers for this, though I'm sure my interaction with them is limited to whatever Friendica supports. I don't doubt you can do more if you actually get accounts on different systems, but that's a choice you have. I don't think you need to do it if you don't want to.
- remram 4y ago
  Follow and comment are the only things that are supported across platforms. That is what I mean by "exchanging at a basic level". To use any of the various features that makes the various applications worthwhile, you have to go create an account in that application and subscribe to people's accounts from there. When Gitea implements federated merge requests and tickets, you will be able to follow repositories from Mastodon and comment on issues from there. That's great! But to do anything else (create/assign/close issues, open/review merge requests, ...) you will have to create a separate Gitea account and use it to interact with Gitea users. This is a serious limit to "interacting with a whole diverse universe".
- 4y ago

themodelplumber 4y ago

I'm on oldbytes.space and find it pretty fun to get to know Mastodon's corner of the Fediverse so far. Hashtags are really important for discovery right now, but it looks like other discovery features are in the works. I also gave SL and OpenSim a look, and OpenSim has been pretty fun to explore, even from the outside. One example community: https://coopersville.mystrikingly.com/ https://coopersville.mystrikingly.com/ - @marcolas@oldbytes.space

lokedhs 4y ago
I didn't realise just how long I've been on the Fediverse. It's been incredibly rewarding for me so far. Sure, I could have had more followers on a different platform, but I'm not there to have a megaphone that I force others to listen to. This is why I doubt we'll see any major celebrities going there, since they are not on social media to have a conversation. They are there so people can see them. I can be found here @loke@functional.cafe

jancsika 4y ago

Fediverse: a bunch of software waiting idle in the hope that a hero will arrive to make significant and lasting changes to copyright and fair use in order for any of it to be useful. Ooh, this decentralized beebob could be a great place to discover and distribute Scihub content. Ooh, I can sure imagine myself watching a sci-fi movie that's old enough to vote and buy alcohol on "Framatube." Ooh, a filesystem suitable for multiple planets, IFF planet #2 is filled only with Pirate Party members with their force shields turned on and on constant watch for slow blades. Ooh, a user-writable international encyclopedia that isn't... oh yeah, that actually exists because you can't copyright fucking facts. At least there's that, twenty-first century! Edit: clarification to make exclamation even sadder

PaulHoule 4y ago
I think when people hear "*-verse" there are two common hot takes: (1) this is something that doesn't include me, and (2) move on folks, nothing more to see here.
msla 4y ago
Federated protocols have been used for email and message boards. Multiple times, in fact, counting FIDO and Usenet and Bitnet as separate developments. So it isn't like this is a new idea, or like it's impossible to do with current copyright law.
- jefurii 4y ago
  Also the phone system, per the video. That's run by large corporations, often with monopolies, but at least they interoperate.
  - riffic 4y ago
    it's amazing the international telephone system even worked at all. ma bell was quite centralized but there were many attempts to get them to interoperate both domestically and internationally, even to the point of having a very rigorous regulation regime (nationalization too.)

DrewADesign 4y ago

For social media to be social it needs people. While I have hope for the future, current fediverse offerings don’t meet people’s basic social media usability needs. People use social media because it’s fun, it fosters connection with people they know, delivers information about news/hobbies etc., helps people find communities with shared interests and experiences, and most importantly, does it all in one easy-to-use place. Everybody knows there are better sources for everyday news than Twitter but if they’re already there interacting with people about the game last night… More importantly, it’s all conceptually easy for users to understand. You’re on Facebook, your friend is on Facebook, you find your friend on Facebook and you can interact on Facebook. If there was a bunch of Facebooks and your friends are in a different Facebook that doesn’t talk to your Facebook and the Recipe Facebook your friend likes is kinda janky and doesn’t always show up when you search for it… your average user would stop using social media altogether if that was their only option. It can be hard for developers to imagine that, but what if it was a different realm of expertise? Imagine you had to have a rudimentary understanding of mail routing to know which post office you needed to use to mail each package and it was only conceptually documented for people who worked in the postal industry and each paragraph required background knowledge you didn’t have? You’d probably just suck it up and use UPS, especially if it was the same price. If someone wants a recipe for French onion soup, they want a recipe — not a culinary school text book chapter on soup. How much documentation or theoretical background knowledge does your average netizen need to use Facebook? Zero. None. That doesn’t even get into the whole branding aspect. Like it or not, appeal is a prerequisite and not a bolt-on feature for a social media network. People like feeling competent and hip and hate uncertainty. They don’t want to wonder if their friends on the other mastodon and the other friend on the other other mastodon can smell, er, see their toot. We can’t sell non-technical people on technical capability. While there are technical components to this problem, the solution will not be entirely technical. We need to give them a compelling experience first, and make that work on the tech side. Unless you really only want people in your fediverse who get satisfaction out of wrangling clunky software, that’s just the way it is.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
I don't think the branding issue is too hard to overcome. The Mastodon and Mastodon-clone interfaces are often very similar to Twitter so just minor verbiage changes should be sufficient to improve the UX. On the other points though, I agree. Fundamentally a social network has _everyone_ on it. The Fediverse as it is now is a collection of small and medium communities. On top of this there's lots of drama in the Fediverse. The relationship that Fediverse instances have with each other is constantly changing and many of the smaller instance owners aren't exactly the most consistent mods/admins (kind of like IRC mods back in its heyday.) There's a certain kind of person that enjoys this kind of fluid, unprofessional (e.g. run by amateur staff, not a knock on the community at large) community, but it's not the experience most people who like social media are looking for. If you're interested in trying the Fediverse I highly recommend peeking inside at the fun and chaos but if you're looking to replace traditional social media, I'd say look elsewhere.

jarbus 4y ago

With the fediverse, I think people need to drop the notion that they expect people they already know to be on the platform. Specifically Mastodon: If you log on expecting to find the people you follow on twitter, you are in for a bad time. But, if you log on looking to find and follow a bunch of unique new people, there is no shortage of accounts/instances to follow, and the # of users relative to centralized services doesn't matter.

rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
>With the fediverse, I think people need to drop the notion that they expect people they already know to be on the platform. It's the same at the beginning of every social network. When I joined Twitter or Facebook early, I did not expect to find people I knew either. People are probably joining instances where their friends are already registered, unless you're the first among your circles. Also, you can be logged into multiple instances at the same time – just like you're probably connected to a personal and a work mailbox.
remram 4y ago
That's good because the tool Mastodon developed to connect to your Twitter friends has been down for years: https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/
- tomrod 4y ago
  Perhaps the new ownership at Twitter will encourage interop?
  - riffic 4y ago
    hilarious. substantive reply: history begs to differ.
    - spacemanmatt 4y ago
      e's too busy freezing his precious peaches to worry about interop

msravi 4y ago

A couple of years ago, there used to be a mastodon instance called "Inditoot" that started to gain traction with an Indian userbase. The instance moderator's approach to moderating content was basically that as long as a post doesn't go against the law, it was ok to keep. With twitter being seen as biased to the left, the instance attracted a significant crowd that was seen as right-leaning. At some point, users of the mastodon.social instance where most of the left-leaning crowd gathered, got their admin to preemptively silence the inditoot instance on mastodon.social[1]. This meant that all toots from the inditoot instance were effectively blocked on mastodon.social, and the two sides were operating in separate bubbles. A few months later, the Indian userbase on both mastodon.social and inditoot was dead, and everyone was back on twitter, fighting and clawing and tearing at each other. Moral: If you remove the communication links between those nice round planets shown in the animation, they become drab and dreary, and not worth having at all, and you're back to twitter. If you keep the links, then there's no difference between federated instances and twitter, and you're back to being twitter anyway. 1. https://twitter.com/Memeghnad/status/1194237305294221315 https://twitter.com/Memeghnad/status/1194237305294221315

remram 4y ago
And you assume they went back because of the block based on...? Surely it couldn't be that they disliked the UX, that their other friends failed to move over, or that those indie-operated websites lacked in performance. No, of course we must assume it's the lack of fighting.
- i5heu 4y ago
  I switched to Mastodon because it is much much easier to build a walled garden in which I want to experience. Twitter ist just a toxic hole with groups of people that seems to have nothing more to do than to annoy and harm you.
  - josephg 4y ago
    I left Twitter after the algorithmic news feed came in. “How bad could it be?” I wondered. Really bad. Despite carefully curating my Twitter feed to be almost all creators doing interesting stuff, Twitter decided what I really wanted to see was awful racist politics. I had a think about it and deleted the app the next day. You can blame twitter’s users if you want. I blame twitter’s algorithm for actively finding the most vile stuff and shoving it in everyone’s faces.

matsemann 4y ago

One big hurdle to get going is to find which instance to subscribe to. When joining twitter, you just join twitter. Now there are multiple, and I don't know the ramifications of which one to choose. Will I suddenly be blocked by half the instances if I choose a lesser known one? A second hurdle is that I think most people don't want to start from scratch. I want to keep my followers and those I'm following.

DrewADesign 4y ago
And considering that socialization isn’t as productive without fellow socializers, we should consider the non-technical user path. For my, say, brother— the first hurdle would be processing my explanation of the distinctions between an instance, a server, and a service, plus the basics of federation. The second hurdle would be figuring out how he’ll break it to me when he gives up and re-activates his Twitter account.
gs17 4y ago
That first hurdle has kept me from bothering with the Fediverse entirely. And instances' rules make me feel at the mercy of either the moderation or the userbase, depending on which end of the permissiveness spectrum they fall on.

shadowgovt 4y ago

What is the easiest way to get started as a user on a federated social network? I glanced at Mastodon when information started flowing about it but I was (and am) supremely disinterested in running / moderating my own node. But I'd be interested in joining someone else's node. What does that look like these days?

btdmaster 4y ago
Pick a server: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
- peterhadlaw 4y ago
  https://joinmastodon.org/covenant https://joinmastodon.org/covenant :/ (read between the lines)
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    I'm afraid I don't see what you're seeing. What is the issue?
  - Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago
    How do they ensure that server passes these requirements, especially 2 and 3?
dumpsterlid 4y ago
Its pretty easy, just pick an instance of mastodon to make an account on and off you go
zdunn 4y ago
You could also check out Pleroma; Mastodon isnt the only microblogging software on the fediverse https://pleroma.social/#featured-instances https://pleroma.social/#featured-instances https://fediverse.party/en/pleroma/ https://fediverse.party/en/pleroma/

ParsnipsOfSnail 4y ago

I feel a bit disheartened that this site took 30 seconds to load, then got as far as "What is the fediverse" then buffered until erroring out a minute later. Either the video has gained no traction and thus no peers (bad) or adding more people to the site crashed it (even worse). Can we not do better?

smoldesu 4y ago
It's on the frontpage of HN, give 'em a break.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

sfblah 4y ago

They use email as an example of federation. Actually, it's an example of the reverse. For example, I run a website with a reasonably large subscriber base (100k+ emails). Of those, something like 90% are gmail.com, outlook.com or yahoo.com. The majority are actually gmail.com. So, while email is federated under the covers, users use it like it's a walled garden. In fact, if you go to a store where they ask for an email address, employees often have a hard time understanding what you're saying if you give them an address that isn't one of the three above. Bottom line is consumers don't want or understand federated services. They don't care. That's why monopolies win. To get people using federated services would require a massive, ongoing education effort. And, even that is likely to fail, because it just doesn't matter enough to people. Alternate solution: governments could use antitrust to force federation.

mklauber1 4y ago
I would argue that is the point of federation. Despite the fact that most of the users are on gmail, they can still email anyone anywhere else, without issues. And I've never heard of one of the big name providers blocking emails from another large provider, with the possible exception of spam heavy domains. It's a lot better than social media. I feel like the analogous situation would be being able to follow someone's twitter feed in your FB feed, or send a twitter DM to someone's facebook messenger account, and how likely is any major social media platform to allow that to happen? Despite the concentration of power, email's federation makes it much easier to choose which provider you want to use, avoiding the network effects that come from walled garden services.
- noizejoy 4y ago
  > And I've never heard of one of the big name providers blocking emails from another large provider, with the possible exception of spam heavy domains. I’ve experienced Microsoft routinely blocking email from smaller domains, even when hosted at a large email provider. I’ve seen this first hand for small hobby communities and small businesses.

gpsx 4y ago

Is the fediverse a new social network or a concept? I think there is hope for it as a general concept if, for example, the US government gets mad at someone like Facebook and requires them and other social networks/messaging platforms to make their content available through standard interfaces. It could be something like RSS for posts and other appropriate standards for chat, audio calls, video calls, etc. Then someone on [insert fledgling social network here] could "follow" someone on Facebook and someone on What's App could text someone on WeChat.

lokedhs 4y ago
It's both. At its core is a set of protocols that allows different software to interoperate in the way you envisioned. These protocols allows pretty much everything you mentioned with the possible exception of video/audio calls. I don't think activitypub has support for realtime protocols. There are many implementations that uses these protocols and that can interoperate today. The most well known of these is Mastodon.