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For those scared of all the links, here's a simple summary from someone who runs a server with an instance of one of these applications. * ActivityPub is just

For those scared of all the links, here's a simple summary from someone who runs a server with an instance of one of these applications. * ActivityPub is just an open, flexible protocol for sharing content * The fediverse is a nice, human friendly way to describe all the various services using activitypub to talk back and forth to each other. The value in this is that these projects are diverse, it's not all twitter clones. You have video hosting services like peertube, the twitter-esque sites like mastodon and pleroma, open source managed file stores like nextcloud, and all of them can chat if they want to * these services are hosted by whoever wants to host an instance, and they choose who they wish to federate with and who they don't, this optional interoperability is really the key feature for the entire network and protocol Mastodon, as a twitter replacement is good from a user perspective (except in 300+ comment threads) , but I'd strongly recommend Pleroma at this point if you intend to run your own instance. The software of the two is similar, but Mastodon is in a constant state of chasing new, usually niche or controversial features which have led to a lot of bloat in terms of both management tooling, setup, and hardware required to run it.

biztos 4y ago
I had not heard of Pleroma before, it looks nicely lightweight: https://pleroma.social https://pleroma.social
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Checked out a random 'featured instance', first post is an image with "DOES IT FEEL LIKE THE ENTIRE WORLD FELL APART WHEN TRUMP LEFT?" in gigantic letters. Why do I get the feeling this is where everyone who got banned from twitter goes to hang out... It's like leaving Reddit for Voat, you'll just end up in the midst of the worst fringe groups because they can't exist on the main platform where normal people are.
  - viridian 4y ago
    For some cultural context: If I had to sum up Pleroma's core audiences, it's right wing anime posters, Japanese instances that are 2ch-esque and don't really leave their language bubble, privacy and selfhosting folks, terfs, people who like sharing Ukraine war footage and discussing war in general, and pornposters If I had to sum up Mastodon's core audiences, it's twitter-hating antifascists, European techies, post tumblr fetish sites, lgbt folks, Japanese instances that are 2ch-esque and don't really leave their language bubble, and pornposters There's a lot of more random folks sprinkled throughout both, but these are definitely the most prevalent communities you'll run into just scrolling the network feeds.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    > Why do I get the feeling this is where everyone who got banned from twitter goes to hang out... we need to let go of this mindset that there are undesirables in this world. there will always be a 'stable diffusion' seeking equilibrium between the places that censor and the places that dont, and the people impacted by those rule parameters will move to the places that dont censor, which will bring non mainstream ideals. Non mainstream ideals are the essence of what solves hard problems.
    - manholio 4y ago
      > there are undesirables in this world. Sure there are undesirables in the world wide web: neo-nazies, Q-anon, pedos & NAMBLA, Russian propaganda, spammers and carders etc. Any platform that protects the freedom of speech for fringe groups will become a haven for them and will be eventually abandoned by mainstream users.
      - Supermancho 4y ago
        There's a big difference between: > I believe there really are undesirables -- people who have demonstrated an inability to participate in civil society and who eventually drive away or drown out all other perspectives in a community. and > Sure there are undesirables in the world wide web: neo-nazies, Q-anon, pedos & NAMBLA, Russian propaganda, spammers and carders etc. Where pre listing categories and ideas that are explicitly wrongthink, versus people able to participate in a community following guidelines and an etiquette. It's not at all funny or surprising, that each community that adopts the latter, find the list growing until it's a niche community by exclusion. The idea that any meeting place that says it's for "free thinking" or "all ideas" is a mistake. Most communities want to stick to some niche topic and use the "open" phrasing to try to grow any participation at all.
        manholio 4y ago
        You won't get to the point where neo-nazis demonstrate inability to participate in a civil community following guidelines and etiquette. The mere tolerance of them will drive legitimate users away, people by large DO NOT practice freedom of speech. Ignoring that reality is an ideological fantasy, you either blacklist or will be blacklisted.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
  - kornhole 4y ago
    Some communities are more right wing, and others are very left. You just need to look further. Most of the people on the fediverse chose to be there for many good reasons.
PontifexMinimus 4y ago
> Mastodon is in a constant state of chasing new, usually niche or controversial features which have led to a lot of bloat For those of us who haven't been following Mastodon closely, can you list some of these features? (My own point of view is that in communication products, like in programming languages, creeping featuritis can be a symptom of poor overall design.)
- viridian 4y ago
  The newest features I know of are a built in language auto translator, more fine tuned administrative controls geared towards specific members of other instances (something that's already fairly robust for both platforms), default instance wide progressive scrolling of large threads, support for editing posts. None of these are earth shattering, but all of them are very contentious aside from maybe the admin features. In general, Mastodon aims to maintain twitter feature parity, which is why things like the translator and are added. The ActivityPub protocol also doesn't really support the idea of an edit directly, and many see it as the latest in a long list of steps of mastodon trying to own the protocol. The progressive scroll / pagination vs load the whole thread thing is a constant front end argument within various mastodon/pleroma frontends and has been for years now. The problem is that unless you use one of the real minimal, 1337, hackerish frontends, threads with 300+ comments will send your RAM straight to frown town unless you have like 12gb to spare just for what is mostly static text.

biztos 4y ago

I had not heard of Pleroma before, it looks nicely lightweight: https://pleroma.social https://pleroma.social

moffkalast 4y ago
Checked out a random 'featured instance', first post is an image with "DOES IT FEEL LIKE THE ENTIRE WORLD FELL APART WHEN TRUMP LEFT?" in gigantic letters. Why do I get the feeling this is where everyone who got banned from twitter goes to hang out... It's like leaving Reddit for Voat, you'll just end up in the midst of the worst fringe groups because they can't exist on the main platform where normal people are.
- viridian 4y ago
  For some cultural context: If I had to sum up Pleroma's core audiences, it's right wing anime posters, Japanese instances that are 2ch-esque and don't really leave their language bubble, privacy and selfhosting folks, terfs, people who like sharing Ukraine war footage and discussing war in general, and pornposters If I had to sum up Mastodon's core audiences, it's twitter-hating antifascists, European techies, post tumblr fetish sites, lgbt folks, Japanese instances that are 2ch-esque and don't really leave their language bubble, and pornposters There's a lot of more random folks sprinkled throughout both, but these are definitely the most prevalent communities you'll run into just scrolling the network feeds.
- aliqot 4y ago
  > Why do I get the feeling this is where everyone who got banned from twitter goes to hang out... we need to let go of this mindset that there are undesirables in this world. there will always be a 'stable diffusion' seeking equilibrium between the places that censor and the places that dont, and the people impacted by those rule parameters will move to the places that dont censor, which will bring non mainstream ideals. Non mainstream ideals are the essence of what solves hard problems.
  - manholio 4y ago
    > there are undesirables in this world. Sure there are undesirables in the world wide web: neo-nazies, Q-anon, pedos & NAMBLA, Russian propaganda, spammers and carders etc. Any platform that protects the freedom of speech for fringe groups will become a haven for them and will be eventually abandoned by mainstream users.
    - Supermancho 4y ago
      There's a big difference between: > I believe there really are undesirables -- people who have demonstrated an inability to participate in civil society and who eventually drive away or drown out all other perspectives in a community. and > Sure there are undesirables in the world wide web: neo-nazies, Q-anon, pedos & NAMBLA, Russian propaganda, spammers and carders etc. Where pre listing categories and ideas that are explicitly wrongthink, versus people able to participate in a community following guidelines and an etiquette. It's not at all funny or surprising, that each community that adopts the latter, find the list growing until it's a niche community by exclusion. The idea that any meeting place that says it's for "free thinking" or "all ideas" is a mistake. Most communities want to stick to some niche topic and use the "open" phrasing to try to grow any participation at all.
      - manholio 4y ago
        You won't get to the point where neo-nazis demonstrate inability to participate in a civil community following guidelines and etiquette. The mere tolerance of them will drive legitimate users away, people by large DO NOT practice freedom of speech. Ignoring that reality is an ideological fantasy, you either blacklist or will be blacklisted.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
- kornhole 4y ago
  Some communities are more right wing, and others are very left. You just need to look further. Most of the people on the fediverse chose to be there for many good reasons.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago

> Mastodon is in a constant state of chasing new, usually niche or controversial features which have led to a lot of bloat For those of us who haven't been following Mastodon closely, can you list some of these features? (My own point of view is that in communication products, like in programming languages, creeping featuritis can be a symptom of poor overall design.)

viridian 4y ago
The newest features I know of are a built in language auto translator, more fine tuned administrative controls geared towards specific members of other instances (something that's already fairly robust for both platforms), default instance wide progressive scrolling of large threads, support for editing posts. None of these are earth shattering, but all of them are very contentious aside from maybe the admin features. In general, Mastodon aims to maintain twitter feature parity, which is why things like the translator and are added. The ActivityPub protocol also doesn't really support the idea of an edit directly, and many see it as the latest in a long list of steps of mastodon trying to own the protocol. The progressive scroll / pagination vs load the whole thread thing is a constant front end argument within various mastodon/pleroma frontends and has been for years now. The problem is that unless you use one of the real minimal, 1337, hackerish frontends, threads with 300+ comments will send your RAM straight to frown town unless you have like 12gb to spare just for what is mostly static text.