@Truth & Answers Let me be honest: Mastodon isn't the right thing to rely on for this.

There are two common misconceptions on Mastodon about Mastodon. The first one is that Mastodon is the only free, non-commercial, non-corporate, decentralised social anything. Once Mastodon users are over this, they still think Mastodon is the best free, non-commercial, non-corporate, decentralised social anything.

I've seen Mastodon being advertised by users as a Fediverse alternative to literally everything, including Reddit (because, like, you can communicate, right?) and even YouTube (because, like, you can upload videos, right?).

But again, let me be honest: The only thing that Mastodon can hope to be an alternative to is 𝕏. Because it's a Twitter clone. A purist Twitter clone whose developers intentionally reject feature requests because the requested features don't fit into their image of purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta microblogging. They want to keep Mastodon a slightly more glorified SMS than 𝕏.

Mastodon isn't even the only microblogging server application in the Fediverse. It isn't even the best at that. 80-90% of Mastodon's users don't and probably will never realise that Mastodon is an intentionally crippled resource hog. Many believe that Mastodon is the fully-featured be-all, end-all of social networking.

By the way, even the Mastodon developers claim that Mastodon is fully featured. I've had a Mastodon dev try hard to convince me that Mastodon is fully featured although I've told him that I'm on Hubzilla. He essentially tried to tell me that Mastodon has every last feature that Hubzilla has plus even more on top.

In reality, Mastodon isn't the fully-featured be-all, end-all of social networking. It isn't even a social network. It's social media, just like 𝕏 is social media. It's designed for pumping out content and being followed because it's designed as a Twitter-like microblogging application. And it isn't even the best at microblogging.

Almost everyone on Mastodon is fully convinced that Mastodon has to be the best. After all, it's the biggest. It's what everyone chose.

No.

Mastodon is the biggest because everyone who wants to leave 𝕏 or Threads or Bluesky is railroaded to Mastodon. It's the biggest because all the newbies are only told about Mastodon. It's the biggest because none of the newbies even learn upon on-boarding that other 𝕏 alternatives exist in the Fediverse, that anything else exists in the Fediverse other than Mastodon. It's the biggest because mainstream media, tech media and even Fediverse activists only ever talk about Mastodon, Mastodon, Mastodon. (Granted, it's also the biggest because it's the only one with an official phone app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Even though that app sucks.)

All these Mastodon users who claim that Mastodon is the best choice don't realise that they themselves did, in fact, not choose Mastodon. They didn't know they had a choice. All they were told about was Mastodon. Seriously, if they'd had a choice, they'd probably be on Sharkey now and not on Mastodon.

I've read what people had to say who moved from Friendica to Misskey. Or to now defunct Calckey/Firefish. Or to Sharkey. Or to Akkoma. All these are microblogging server applications in the Fediverse. But none of them are intentionally crippled to stay close to Twitter, at least not to such a degree as Mastodon.

It was nothing short of eye-opening to them. Only by daily-driving something else than Mastodon did they realise what the non-Mastodon Fediverse can be like. And how crippled Mastodon actually is. That Mastodon is far from being the absolute pinnacle in decentralised social media.

They no longer had only 500 characters. They had thousands of characters. They would have had thousands of characters on every server running that software without having to ask around which one has more than 500 characters. It felt like a restraint being removed which they had never considered a restraint, at least not that much of it.

They saw text formatting which they considered technologically absolutely impossible in the Fediverse when they were on Mastodon. In fact, they had considered text formatting entirely impossible while on Mastodon until they had come across the first message from outside with text formatting. Actual text formatting, not Unicode trickery. Now they suddenly saw a lot of the stuff that Mastodon's HTML sanitiser removes. And they themselves could use it!

If they were on one of the *keys, they no longer had a timeline of single-message piecemeal. For the first time ever, they experienced what it's like to have something else than single-message piecemeal. Namely entire conversations right in front of them, right away. Without having to dig for them first.

They had features which they had always wished the Fediverse may introduce. They never knew that the Fediverse does have these features, only Mastodon doesn't. They had features that were completely unimagiable to them in the Fediverse.

There are users who have moved from Mastodon to something "minimalist" and lightweight like snac or GoToSocial, often on self-hosted, single-user, private servers. Even they suddenly had features they didn't have on Mastodon. Mind you, while not missing a single Mastodon feature (except maybe for a built-in Web UI).

And that's just the microblogging side of the Fediverse. None of this is actual social networking. You know, what Facebook does.

First of all, if it's about following and being followed, it's social media. A social network doesn't have followers. In case you don't know, Facebook doesn't have followers. It has "friends". Bidirectional connections. Not 𝕏/Mastodon-like mutuals which are two connections, one in each direction, but one connection that goes both ways.

Besides, there are even more important social networking features missing from the microblogging side of the Fediverse.

Where are the contact suggestions? Where does Mastodon suggest new contacts based on how many contacts you have in common with them? Where does Mastodon suggest new contacts based on what profile information you have in common with them?

Oh, right, the latter is impossible because Mastodon doesn't have profile fields with defined purposes. In fact, where are these? Every good social network has them! But Mastodon only gives you four all-purpose profile fields (just like Mastodon only gives you four of everything, four file attachments, four options in polls...).

Where is the list of unread posts, unread comments and other unnoticed actions? How are you to make sure you really catch everything your friends do? Because you can't do that if all you have is a timeline to scroll through until you no longer see new stuff. If you manage to scroll down that far. And only absolute newbies can do that on Mastodon because they hardly follow anyone.

Where are groups? Seriously, I've lost count of how many times Mastodon users said "the Fediverse" must introduce something like Facebook Groups. The huge majority of Mastodon users is fully convinced that the Fediverse does not have groups in any shape or form because Mastodon doesn't have them.

Where are all these things? In the Fediverse, no less? Where are they?

I'll tell you where they are.

Friendica. Hubzilla. (streams). Forte.

The actual social networking side of the Fediverse (although Hubzilla is more like a social CMS or a "social Swiss army knife" that you can also use as a Facebook-like social networking application). I mean, I've already explained that Friendica was created in 2010 as a Facebook alternative. Not a faithful Facebook clone, though, but better than Facebook.

Mike Macgirvin took over from Facebook what social networks really need. And Farmville isn't that, and spying on your users and passing that data on to the NSA and selling it to the highest bidder isn't that, so he didn't take over that. He didn't want to build a clone that also adopts the bad sides just to be as close to the original as possible.

He took over the detailed profiles with profile fields with dedicated purposes. He took over profile privacy settings. In general, he took over a lot of privacy features. He took over advanced user discovery and connection suggestions. He took over bidirectional connections, only without that silly name "friends". He took over groups with moderation, only that a group on Friendica is just another account with a special automated reposter. He took over enclosed threaded conversations with one post at the top and otherwise only comments. He took over a "timeline" of full conversations as the default. He took over the event calendar. And so forth.

Instead, he added useful stuff on top. He gave Friendica all the posting features to make it fully capable of long-form blogging with all bells and whistles. No character limit (except for in the database, but I think that was over 65,000 back in the day already). All HTML text formatting features (only that Friendica only used BBcode back then; now it can optionally also use Markdown). A post/thread title. Summaries. Embedded images and other media with no limit in number. He even added a spoiler tag like in forums that can hide parts of a message.

He took care of privacy beyond what Facebook had to offer. He introduced a permissions system. Friendica got multiple profile per account, only one of which is public, so that you can show different sides of yourself to different connections.

Now, if you want to embed images or other media in your messages, you have to store them somewhere. And not everyone could be expected to set up a little file space somewhere. So he built a file space into Friendica, one that can even be used as a Dropbox alternative, all the way to restricted access to certain directories.

Mike also added a content warning system that automatically generates content warnings on the reader's side, based on a keyword list. If you need something behind content warnings, add the keywords to the list, and you'll have the respective content warnings, but the next user receiving the self-same post or comment does not have these content warnings if they don't need them.

One important part of what makes Friendica Friendica is being able to connect to a whole lot of stuff. For example, Friendica could federate with StatusNet via the OStatus protocol from the get-go; this is also how it immediately federated with Mastodon when the latter was launched. Mastodon generates an RSS feed, something that many users don't know. Friendica not only generates an Atom feed, but it can subscribe to feeds. Friendica can "federate" with e-mail. Over time, more and more connection features were added, including Tumblr, Twitter (!), Facebook (only for a few years before Facebook crippled it) and a WordPress cross-poster.

Lastly, he made it possible for third parties to add extra features by implementing an add-on system.

I dare those who are fully convinced that Mastodon is the best Facebook alternative possible to use Friendica for a year. Not only dip one toe in to the water, but use it as their one and only daily driver for everything they've used Mastodon for. Not scratching the surface and using it like Twitter while ignoring any and all features the Twitter they remember didn't have, but going all in. In fact, I dare those who are fully convinced that Mastodon is perfect and fully-featured to do the same.

And then there's Hubzilla. It came to exist by Mike forking Friendica in 2011, then forking that fork the same year, then rewriting that fork of a fork in 2012, then repurposing, rebranding, repositioning and greatly expanding it in 2015. Long story.

Hubzilla adds even more stuff on top. Most importantly, it introduced nomadic identity (joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic_ide…) in 2012.

Hubzilla, or its 2012 prototype form named Red, became the first decentralised social software that uncoupled the identity from the login. This was necessary for nomadic identity, but it also introduced the option to have multiple independent identities, basically what's an account elsewhere, on the same account, the same login. This makes sense, given the many different roles and purposes a Hubzilla channel can have. The big advantage over having multiple separate accounts is that you can switch between the channels on your account without logging out and back in.

Hubzilla, or its 2012 prototype form named Red, got an even more advanced and fine-grained permissions system. Hubzilla has 17 individual permissions on three levels, channel level, contact level, content level. At channel level, each one has seven or eight permission options to choose from, depending on whether or not it makes sense to give a permission to everyone on the Internet.

Mike added optional features to Hubzilla that were previously unseen on social anything, features that you'd rather expect from a CMS and maybe not even from that. Non-federating long-form articles. Planning cards that are based on these articles. Wikis that can be formatted with BBcode or Markdown. Webpages that can be formatted with BBcode, Markdown or HTML, that can include dynamic content from elsewhere on the channel, and that can add extra content to the channel pages.

Hubzilla can even act as groupware. It has a CalDAV calendar server; the event calendar can double as a crude UI for the CalDAV calendars. It has an optional CardDAV addressbook server. Its built-in file storage can be accessed via WebDAV, so you theoretically even have some cloud file space you can mount as a network drive. Rather recently, there was even a way found to tie Collabora Office into Hubzilla.

If you should ever read about Bonfire: Bonfire is Hubzilla ordered from Wish.com. Whatever Bonfire promises to have or to introduce has been available as a rock-solid stable feature on Hubzilla for over a decade. Bonfire only gets away with what it's trying to do because nobody knows Hubzilla.

I think it's safe to say that those who "chose" Mastodon didn't choose it over the rest of the Fediverse because it's better. They "chose" it because they didn't even know they have a choice.

As for your post, the technology for redeveloping socialising is there. And it certainly isn't Mastodon, and it never will be Mastodon. Mastodon can't be that due to its design philosophy, due to it being a Twitter clone, due to its own developers intentionally crippling it.

If you want to move on from 1-way interaction, you have to move on from 1-way connections. Move on from Twitter followers to Facebook friends.

You have to offer better options for the users than shouting into the void, attaching a bunch of hashtags and hoping that some of their followers or someone who is following one of the hashtags happens to be bothered to scroll down their timeline far enough.

You have to make sure that people don't miss content due to basic design and philosophy decisions. You have to make sure that people don't miss content because they simply never know that this content is there in the first place, because they can't scroll down far enough their timelines until they reach that content. You need something else than a timeline of single messages to scroll down with the user not having an idea just how far down that timeline goes. You have to tell the user how much unread content there is, what it is, where it is, and take the user directly to that unread content.

You have to stop presenting content to users as a long list of single posts and more single posts with only tiny details telling them that these posts are, in fact, part of a longer conversation which they don't see. Where they have to click or tap themselves through various UI pages to see that post in its context. Users must see the whole conversation Right. Off. The bat.

You need groups. Not kluged onto something that had no group support whatsoever two seconds earlier, not intentionally crippled, not crippled by the technology they're built upon, not intentionally re-invented to be incompatible with whatever already exists (and this is how Mastodon would do them). But fully functional, on an appropriate base, interoperable, user-moderated, optionally private, optionally hiding from directories.

If you want to go "social", you really have to go social. You have to go Facebook, not Twitter.

Users must find other users based on common interests. Or users living close to them. Or users with lots of contacts in common with them. Not by being on the same local/regional server of the same server about a certain topic. Not by searching for hashtags in the main profile text. But by examining specialised profile fields and the contacts.

Users must have such users suggested to them as new connections. Users must have such users at the top of their directory. This is how Facebook does it. And this is one thing that Facebook has always done right.

Again, Mastodon will never offer any of this. But that doesn't mean that you'll have to compromise and lower your expectations. Because you don't have to. There are server applications in the Fediverse, fully federated with Mastodon, that offer literally all of that. They exist right now. And some of them have existed for longer than Mastodon.

If you need something better than today's Mastodon, stop wishing for a better Mastodon. Instead, use something that's better and more appropriate for the job than Mastodon right now. For it exists right now.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Privacy #Permission #Permissions #Groups #FediverseGroups #FediGroups #NomadicIdentity #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Truth & Answers I've just come across a toot from a Mastodon user who demanded that everyone who posts, quote, "on Mastodon," end quote, limit their posts to 500 characters.

This was far from being the first time I've read this very demand or similar demands. It just was the most recent time.

Where this comes from? Well, it has two sides.

The Mastodon side

One side are Mastodon users. Not all of them, but most of them. Literally all of them were on-boarded onto Mastodon with the notion that Mastodon is its own enclosed network with nothing else in it. Those who pull them on board either think it's easier for them to understand if they aren't told about the non-Mastodon Fediverse, or they don't know about the non-Mastodon Fediverse themselves.

Some of these newbies think Mastodon is the network because they've never heard of the Fediverse. Others think the Fediverse is Mastodon and nothing else.

My estimation, and not only mine, is that more than 50% of all Mastodon users think the Fediverse consists of nothing else than Mastodon. A great deal of the rest thinks the Fediverse doesn't extend beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube. Not much anyway.

It doesn't help that Mastodon, unlike other Fediverse server applications such as Misskey, the Forkeys, Friendica, (streams) or Forte, does not tell its users which server app a message came from. It doesn't help either that Mastodon "sanitises" away quite a few things that'd make non-Mastodon messages a dead giveaway. So the huge majority of Mastodon users believe that if they see it on Mastodon, it came from Mastodon.

So these people are dropped into a network which they think is nothing but a purist, minimalist microblogging service with no more than 500 characters, and whose only differences from Twitter are the name, that it isn't just one website, that it isn't owned by Elon Musk, and that it isn't overrun by fascists.

They get used to it. They get used to only having a maximum of 500 characters. They get used to the CW field being the CW field. They get used to Mastodon's entire culture which they see as the be-all, end-all of online culture.

And then they come across a message with a whole lot over 500 characters for the first time. Something which, to their best knowledge, shouldn't exist in the Mastodon Fediverse. Something which mustn't exist in the Mastodon Fediverse.

Some don't have any idea how it could be possible to "toot" more than 500 characters "on Mastodon", and they ask how one can do that. Others believe that all these "long toots" come from hacked Mastodon servers. Either way, they often demand that these Mastodon users adhere to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules and act like all good Mastodon users shall act. Including not "tooting" more than 500 characters "on Mastodon".

Both are being told that these "toots" aren't "toots" because they don't come from Mastodon. That the Fediverse is, in fact, not only Mastodon. That there's other server software in the Fediverse that has always been able to post way more than 500 characters.

That changes nothing for them. They still demand everyone in the Fediverse adhere to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules and only to these, and that everyone in the Fediverse use whatever they use exactly like vanilla, unmodified Mastodon.

And they feel absolutely justified. According to their gospel, Gargron invented the Fediverse when he created Mastodon. And everything in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon (once they discover that there is such stuff) has either been designed as an add-on glued onto Mastodon (Pixelfed, PeerTube), or it's an evil, savage intruder (everything that's capable of largely doing the same thing as Mastodon without being Mastodon).

The Fediverse is to Mastodon users what the ancient world was to the Romans. Mastodon is the Roman Empire. Literally the only place that has got something like culture. A few places have voluntarily joined the Roman Mastodon Empire. All the rest consists of primitive, savage, culture-less barbarians whose lands need to be conquered by force to bring them culture.

The non-Mastodon side

The other side are the non-Mastodon users. This sounds harsh, but while Mastodon users act by faith and belief, non-Mastodon users act by knowledge. It's them who know what the Fediverse really is. That there has never been a point in history at which the Fediverse has only been Mastodon. And that culture does exist outside of Mastodon. Only that these cultures are different from Mastodon's culture, largely because they're geared towards the technical capabilities of the underlying software.

To non-Mastodon users, the Fediverse feels like the New World when the European conquerors and settlers arrived. They demanded the natives adopt European culture and convert to Catholic Christianty or face death. The natives actually already had cultures. Cultures that suited them and their surroundings much more than the culture lived in European cities. But the Europeans didn't acknowledge the natives' cultures as such, nor did they care.

From non-Mastodon users' point of view, Mastodon users act to them like the Europeans acted to the natives in their colonies-to-be.

A very good example, also because it's such an extreme example, has to be Friendica. In case you don't know, Friendica (friendi.ca; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendic…; joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica) is a free, open-source, decentralised, federated Facebook alternative that first came out as early as May, 2010. Friendica developed a wholly different culture from Mastodon's because it's vastly different from Mastodon.

Mastodon's culture was mostly coined in mid-2022 by those who escaped from Elon Musk's announcement to buy out Twitter in February/March, 2022.
Friendica's culture was coined by its early users in 2010 already.

Mastodon users are mostly used to living in a Mastodon-only network with no connection to anything that isn't Mastodon. They believe that Mastodon and the Fediverse were designed as such, and that Friendica is an illegitimate intruder.
Friendica users are used to being able to connect to everything that moves, including Mastodon, including the whole Fediverse, no matter which iteration of the Fediverse, including diaspora*, and the some. That's because Friendica was designed from the ground up to be able to connect to a whole lot of stuff. It's part of its concept.

Mastodon users believe that Mastodon was there before anything.
Friendica users know that Friendica was there long before Mastodon, even before diaspora*, and that Friendica still wasn't the first.

Mastodon users are used to only having 500 characters. They still consider that a lot in comparison with Twitter's 280 characters.
Friendica users are used to not having any character limit whatsoever. Friendica's actual technical character limit is imposed by the maximum size of the message text database field, and that's over 16.7 million characters.

Mastodon users are used to chopping long posts into threads. It's what they expect. Actual long posts irritate them.
Friendica users are used to posting long post in one piece. It's what they expect. One and the same post being chopped up into itty-bitty bits irritate them.

Mastodon users are used to putting CWs in a dedicated CW field.
Friendica users are used to the self-same text field actually being a summary field (Friendica calls it "abstract"). While Mastodon got that field in 2017 as a pull request from a user, Friendica had it from the get-go, i.e. since 2010. And Friendica actually adopted it from Evan Prodromou's decentralised Twitter alternative StatusNet from 2008 with which Friendica was able to federate with from the get-go as well.

Mastodon users "know" that Gargron invented the CW field.
Friendica users actually do know for a fact that they've had the same field as a summary field since long before Mastodon was even made. There are still enough Friendica veterans around from before 2016.

This also means that Mastodon users are used to poster-side CWs which all readers get just the same.
Friendica users are used to CWs being automatically generated on the reader's side, individually for each reader, by an optional text filter.
In fact, Mastodon can do the same. But nobody knows, it came way too late to become part of Mastodon's culture (Mastodon 4.0 in October, 2022), it's too tedious to use, it probably isn't supported by that many phone apps, and next to nobody uses Mastodon's Web interface. In the meantime, Friendica has had this feature for some twelve years longer, and it's only an on-off switch and one editable keyword list.

Mastodon users are used to only having up to four images and to images always only being file attachments dangling below a post.
Friendica users are used to being able to embed a virtually unlimited number of images to a post. And to actually embed them, as in, with text above the image and text below the image and another image below that text and more text below that image. Theoretically, they could insert tiny images into lines of text. By the way, Mastodon refuses to display embedded images. It also rejects any file attachments beyond the first four. And up to version 4.0 from October, 2022, it didn't support any kind of text formatting and "sanitised" all message texts down to plain text.

This also means that Mastodon users are used to only having plain text or mucking around with Unicode characters for bold type and italics.
Friendica users are used to being able to not only see, but also post all sorts of text formatting that HTML is capable of.

Mastodon users are often deadly afraid of quote-posts because they only know quote-posts as a means of harassment and dogpiling on Twitter.
Friendica users, their entire culture being entirely unfazed by whatever has ever happened on Twitter, are absolutely used to always having had quote-posts at hand and to using quote-posts as a means of forwarding content. They had what Mastodon calls "quotes" years before they had what Mastodon calls "boosts" (and what many Mastodon users refer to as "retoots").

Mastodon users are used to conversations being loosely tied together from toots and to having to visibly mention all those whom they want to receive a reply.
Friendica users are used to having enclosed threaded conversations with only one post and otherwise only comments. They're also used to everyone in the conversation, i.e. everyone who has received the original post, automatically receiving every single last comment. They're used to always seeing the entire thread immediately as opposed to single-message piecemeal.

Mastodon users are used to shouting into the void with hashtags attached if they want to talk about a certain topic. It's the only way for them to do so.
Friendica users are used to having groups. Oh, and full-text search.

The conflict

It should be obvious that these two types have a very high chance of not getting along, especially if the Mastodon user is fairly new and not used to there being stuff in the Fediverse that's nothing like Mastodon.

Mastodon users keep demanding that everyone else in the Fediverse live by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules and only by these.

Mastodon users who have joined in 2026 keep ordering Friendica veterans who have joined in the early 2010s (before there was any Mastodon) to act like they're on Mastodon.

They demand these Friendica veterans fully adopt Mastodon's culture (which isn't even geared towards Friendica's set of features).

They indirectly demand these Friendica veterans give up their own culture (because they cannot comprehend that there can be any other culture in the Fediverse than Mastodon's, as in, that what Friendica has is a culture, even though it's different from Mastodon's).

They directly demand these Friendica veterans give up some 40% of the features they've been using for a decade and a half and indirectly demand they give up another 40% of these features.

They demand these Friendica veterans stop posting more than 500 characters at once.

They demand these Friendica veterans put CWs into their abstract field. (Again, they think that Gargron has invented this field from scratch as a CW field,)

They demand these Friendica veterans use their abstract field only for CWs.

They demand these Friendica veterans stop "spamming" hashtags that clearly aren't there for content discovery. (They cannot comprehend that these hashtags are there to trigger automatic reader-side CWs because the entire concept is completely alien to them.)

And so forth.

These Friendica veterans have been in the Fediverse for about a decade and a half. And suddently, these Mastodon newbies appear and tell them how to use Friendica.

Of course, these Mastodon newbies don't know a thing about Friendica. They think the Friendica veterans are Mastodon users, and they're telling them how to use Mastodon.

So the Friendica users tell them, no, they aren't on Mastodon. They're on Friendica which has got absolutely nothing to do with Mastodon.

Then the Mastodon newbies will believe that someone has created this weird Friendica thing after Mastodon was made (it can't possibly be any other way, right?9 and illegally hacked this Friendica thing into the Mastodon Fediverse. And whoever made Friendica omitted to make Friendica just like Mastodon.

Okay, now the Friendica users tell them that Friendica was launched in 2010, how long before Mastodon that was, and that they themselves have been around for much longer than Mastodon, too.

Now, either the Mastodon newbies will fail to comprehend that there can be anything in the Fediverse made before Mastodon if Gargron has invented the very technology. Or they think that the Fediverse was still created with Mastodon, and that Friendica still illegally intruded into the Mastodon Fediverse.

Either way, the Friendica veterans will have to adapt and act entirely by Mastodon's standards. This is the Mastodon Fediverse, Mastodon is the biggest software (if only by monthly active users, by the way), Mastodon has defined "the Fediverse culture", and thus it's the Mastodon users and only the Mastodon users who get to say how people have to act and behave in the Fediverse.

And then the Mastodon users wonder how there's so much Mastodon hatred on Friendica (and there actually is). How Friendica users complain about Mastodon users trying to force them to use Friendica like Mastodon. How Friendica users complain about Mastodon users chopping long posts into small bits. As if they had a choice. How Friendica users complain about CWs in whatever that abstract field is supposed to be. And so forth.

How dare the Friendica users complain? The Mastodon users are the good guys! It's them and only them who have a culture, who have rules, who know how to use the Fediverse!

By the way: It gets even worse between Mastodon and Lemmy.

Mastodon's culture is an idealised version of pre-Musk Twitter's culture with bits of Tumblr's SFW culture mixed in. That's because just about everyone on Mastodon originally came from Twitter, and most of them escaped from Elon Musk. They want Mastodon (and the Fediverse) be a better Twitter. It helps that Mastodon is still trying hard to be a Twitter clone.

Lemmy's culture, on the other hand, is a carbon copy of Reddit's culture. Lemmy is a Reddit clone that shares next to no features at all with Mastodon except for ActivityPub support. Next to all Lemmy users are former Redditors who left Reddit when Reddit started charging $20,000,000 for its client API, effectively killing off all third-party Reddit apps. They saw no reason in changing their culture because it wasn't the culture that drove them away. Hardly any of them were on Twitter, and almost none of them have ever been on Mastodon. Many think the Fediverse is Lemmy. Of the rest, many think the Fediverse is Lemmy with a side of PieFed.

Mastodon lives on hashtags even more than Twitter. Lemmy has zero support for hashtags because Reddit doesn't have any either, and neither does Hacker News.

Mastodon requires mentions to get replies to their recipients. One visible mention per recipient. Lemmy doesn't need mentions for this at all. Mentions on Lemmy only serve to, well, mention someone. Just like on Reddit.

And so forth.

It's actually easy to spot threads on Lemmy that were started by Mastodon users: The title is in the post text, or there's no title at all because the Mastodon users did as they always do: mention in the first line, then a new line because that looks prettier. Of course, there's a mention in the post text. And there's a bunch of hashtags strewn across the post text even though they don't even work. If you're very lucky, the hashtags are at the bottom, but most Mastodon users don't waste any of their 500 characters on that.

I hope you get a rough idea how much headbutting there is between Mastodon users who think that the Mastodon users rule supreme over the whole Fediverse and Lemmy community owners who do rule over the Lemmy communities which these Mastodon users have just posted into.

Countermeasures

Both sides are actually taking countermeasures. The non-Mastodon side is more effective at it, though.

On Mastodon's side, there are very few single users who block every single non-Mastodon server they come across.

Countermeasures on the non-Mastodon side vary. They start with single users who block each Mastodon user who doesn't behave like they want them to behave, e.g. they block everyone who chops a long post into a thread at first trike.

Then there's Hubzilla, reworked from a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's own creator. Hubzilla has always been based on its own protocol, Zot6 (Friendica's creator calls it an older version of Nomad). ActivityPub support is optional, on by default on new servers and off by default on new channels. The current devs won't change anything about that. Not only doesn't Hubzilla's technology allow for moving it to ActivityPub as its base protocol, but ActivityPub being optional is seen as a last-resort "drawbridge" for those to whom Mastodon has become unbearable.

Nowadays, Friendica's creator is working on two other applications in the same family. (streams) is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla, and Forte is a fork of (streams). Both have an admin-side user agent filter. It can block entire Fediverse applications without having to hassle around with a URL list. It was mainly created and advertised as a means to permanently lock Threads out, even if Threads should change URLs. But it's also being advertised as being capable of blocking all of Mastodon, all present and future servers. Mastodon being intentially made barely compatible with the rest of the Fediverse is only one reason for this.

(streams) and Forte also have another admin-side filter which, when turned on, locks everything out that doesn't support enclosed threaded conversations. That's because server applications like Mastodon mess with the way that (streams), Forte and their ancestors handle conversations. Granted, when this is activated only to get rid of Mastodon, it causes quite a bit of collateral damage.

Generally, (streams) and Forte are very similar. The main difference is that Forte is entirely based on ActivityPub whereas (streams) is based on the current version of Nomad with ActivityPub still being optional. The reason why (streams) is kept around is for there to still be one of these applications with the same protocol-level "drawbridge" as Hubzilla. And in fact, the most important (streams) group used to have ActivityPub off with the intention to keep Mastodon out.

I guess there are still Mastodon users who absolutely defend and support Mastodon's way being forced upon the non-Mastodon Fediverse, and who are irritated or upset about non-Mastodon users being very defensive of their own non-Mastodon ways and refusing to adopt Mastodon's (allegedly much superior) culture instead of embracing it.

And I guess there are Mastodon users who feel absolutely entitled to get to every last Hubzilla and (streams) and Forte user unhindered and force them to use Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte exactly like Mastodon in every way possible.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Lemmy #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

Yeah, I get it.

Mastodon and its users rule supreme over the Fediverse. After all, the Fediverse was invented by Gargron. It started when Mastodon started, and everything that isn't Mastodon just latched onto Mastodon and its Fediverse.

Mastodon users are the only civilised users in the Fediverse, the only ones with something like a culture. The Fediverse culture is Mastodon's culture as defined in the spring of 2022. All those who don't live by Mastodon's culture are uncivilised, uneducated, savage barbarians. And it isn't just the Mastodon users' right and privilege to educate them and shape them into good Mastodon users, it's their duty.

Even when it turns out that these barbarians aren't even on Mastodon, that they're on something that's very much not Mastodon, they can't possibly have a culture of their own. After all, they don't live by Mastodon's culture, and if it isn't Mastodon's culture, it isn't culture at all. Not even if it predates Mastodon's current culture by over a decade like Friendica's culture does.

Of course, this also means that when non-Mastodon users come and give Mastodon users unsolicited "advice" or recommend them to use Mastodon in a certain way that goes against Mastodon's culture, the Mastodon users are fully justified to silence them by any means available.

What this means:

When a Mastodon user uses "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" mutually synonymously, it's the right thing to do because that's part of Mastodon's culture. And it makes things easier to understand.

When a non-Mastodon user explains that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, and that "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" do not mean the same, it's evil and intrusive and deeply disturbing.

When a Mastodon user refers to any message in the Fediverse as a "toot", it's the right thing to do because that's part of Mastodon's culture.

When a Misskey or Forkey user talks about "notes", it's irritating. When a Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte user distinguishes between "posts" and "comments", it has even less of a place in the Mastodon Fediverse.

Features that only Mastodon has are actually mandatory for the whole Fediverse. Any Fediverse server software that hasn't got these features implemented in exactly the same way as Mastodon is broken.

Features in non-Mastodon Fediverse server software that Mastodon doesn't have are wrong and evil and not allowed to be used.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to limit their posts to no more than 500 characters. It especially disturbs those who refuse to move away from the official Mastodon phone app.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to not cut their long posts into threads.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to put content warnings into their summary/abstract field.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to only use their summary/abstract field for content warnings. After all, that's what Gargron invented that field for.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to tell non-Mastodon users that it was Evan Prodromou who invented that field as early as 2008. That he invented it as a summary field. That it was actually a Mastodon user who repurposed that field for CWs in 2017, the year after Mastodon was launched. Gargron only let it pass.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to use that field for anything else than CWs.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to add hashtags instead of CWs so that reader-side CWs can automatically be generated by filters. Even though Mastodon itself has literally introduced this very feature with version 4.0 in October, 2022.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to not only write alt-texts for all the images they post, but to write them nicely long and detailed. After all, they've got 1,500 characters for alt-texts.

Misskey and Forkey users are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to limit their alt-texts to no more than 512 characters because that's the maximum that Misskey and the Forkeys accept, and on top of that, due to a bug, they delete all alt-texts longer than that. From a Misskey/Forkey point of view, writing long alt-texts is like not writing any alt-texts at all. But the Misskey/Forkey point of view is invalid in Mastodon's culture.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to toot to Lemmy any way they want, and that's the Mastodon way. If it doesn't work properly on Lemmy, then Lemmy is broken.

Lemmy users, even Lemmy moderators, and other users of Fediverse software that supports groups are not allowed to tell Mastodon users how to post to Lemmy in a way that Lemmy understands.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to even tell Lemmy users to limit their "toots" to no more than 500 characters and use hashtags, but not too many of them.

Lemmy users and even Lemmy moderators are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to stop spamming Lemmy with mentions and with hashtags that don't work on Lemmy anyway, also because both highly irritate the Lemmy users. Almost all of them came straight from Reddit after their third-party apps were killed, and almost none of them have ever been on Twitter or Mastodon.

Mastodon users and Mastodon admins are allowed and justified to block any and all non-Mastodon servers because they misbehave by Mastodon's standards.

(streams) and Forte admins are not allowed to block the entirety of Mastodon, all present and future servers, by user agent (which, by the way, they're totally capable of) because it misbehaves by their standards. Mastodon doesn't misbehave, and the Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte standards are all wrong if they differ from Mastodon's standards.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Lemmy #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.

Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.

You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".

Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.

You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.

Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.

And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.

You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.

Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.

You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.

Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.

You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.

Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.

All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.

Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):

• The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
• Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
• If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.

There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.

There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.

And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.

And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.

The "it" that you're supposed to see is:

• The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
  There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
  Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
  The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be.
• The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
  (Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.)
• The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
• The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
• The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
• The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.

And if you've really paid attention:

• The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
  The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters.
• The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
  The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline, code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.

Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@SK Yeah, that's a classic: Mastodon users who don't know much about the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, and who think that if Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't. Some of them have been around since October/November 2022 or even since February/March 2022.

"The Fediverse must introduce $FEATURE."

"Um, the Fediverse already has $FEATURE. Hubzilla has had it since 2015/since 2012 when it still was the Red Matrix/Friendica has had it since 2010. This feature is literally older than Mastodon itself. Just because Mastodon doesn't have it, doesn't mean the Fediverse doesn't have it."

"Actually, everything except Mastodon has $FEATURE."

My experience is that the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, and what features it has to offer, is completely incomprehensible to those who haven't used non-Mastodon Fediverse server software for at least six months as their daily driver. Incomprehensible like a four-dimensional hypercube.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #MastodonCentricity

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 around

Eugen 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 (friendi.ca, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendic…). 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 now

Here are a few (but not even all) Fediverse server applications that already have quote-posts:

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Iceshrimp
• Sharkey
• CherryPick
• Catodon
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

And 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-posted

So 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 impossible

And 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 Fediverse

This 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 else

Lastly, 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

One of the worst aspects of Mastodon's plans to introduce quote-posts with a switch:

You keep having to tell Mastodon users that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon. That (insert a long list of Fediverse server applications here¹) have had quote-posts from the beginning. That they're all in the Fediverse. That they're all fully federated with Mastodon. That they can all quote-post any Mastodon toot they can possibly receive or import. And that they will be able to quote-post any Mastodon toot they can in the future, regardless of Mastodon account settings.

Up until this point, they were fully, firmly convinced that they're 100% safe from quote-posts on Mastodon. Either because they could not for the lives of them imagine that anything in the Fediverse has them. Or simply because they "knew" up until this point that the Fediverse is Mastodon. And if Mastodon introduces an opt-out or opt-in switch, this switch will mean absolute, 100% water-tight safety from quote-posts.

But for the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, the quote-post switch will be completely useless. Again: These lots of Fediverse server apps have had quote-posts before Mastodon introduced them. They had quote-posts before Mastodon invented the opt-in or opt-out switch. I mean, at least two of them have had quote-posts since before Mastodon even existed! So how are they supposed to support a proprietary, non-standard, Mastodon-specific switch which probably won't be documented anywhere before Mastodon rolls out quote-posts?

I'll tell you what'll happen.

Mastodon users will deactivate quote-posts for their accounts or not activate them in the first place. Non-Mastodon users, not knowing about the status of that switch, will quote-post them regardless with zero resistance. Upon which these Mastodon users will shit brix. And they'll call for either blocking that obviously rogue Mastodon user instance-wide, or blocking that user's instance, or Fediblocking that user's instance.

At this point, someone else who is not on Mastodon either will chime in and tell them: That particular user is, in fact, not on Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. That user is on Friendica. No, Friendica is not a rogue Mastodon instance. Friendica is not Mastodon at all. No, Friendica isn't a Mastodon fork either. Friendica has nothing to do with Mastodon. In fact, Friendica is older than Mastodon. On Friendica, quote-posts are perfectly normal. Friendica has had quote-posts for longer than Mastodon has even existed. And so forth.

Cue the Mastodon user shitting brix again, foaming with anger and calling for a Fediblock of all of Friendica.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that if Mastodon's quote-post feature and the rest of the Fediverse disregarding it leads to more awareness of the non-Mastodon Fediverse and its non-Mastodon features on Mastodon, it will also lead to demands for being able to completely block everything that isn't Mastodon, either on an account level (and then on by default, of course) or on an instance level or both.

Oh, by the way: The ability to completely lock out entire Fediverse projects already exists in the Fediverse right now, too. It's exclusive to two other Fediverse server apps that aren't Mastodon, both of which introduced this feature in September.

¹Here's a probably incomplete list of still-active Fediverse server apps with quote-posts which, yes, can quote-post Mastodon toots right now and will be able to quote-post Mastodon toots regardless of opt-in or opt-out:

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Sharkey
• Iceshrimp
• Iceshrimp.NET
• CherryPick
• Neko
• Catodon
• Meisskey
• Tanukey
• Metaskey
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

And both Threads and the Bridgy Fed Bluesky bridge support quote-posts, too.

(Inb4 both Oliphant and The Bad Space trying hard to catch all instances of the server apps mentioned above to blocklist them all.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Calckey #Firefish #Sharkey #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp.NET #CherryPick #Neko #Catodon #Meisskey #Tanukey #Metaskey #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Threads #BridgyFed #Bluesky #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #FediblockMeta #Oliphant #TheBadSpace