ElectroVagrant

ElectroVagrant , 6 days ago

But compare with GOG then. They sell games, you download them with no DRM so you own the download essentially.

This is the model digital media should take, frankly. Anything less may as well be misleading marketing, as far as I'm concerned.

ElectroVagrant , 23 days ago

At a glance, Misskey and associated forks may appear to be Twitter-clones, but dig a little more and you'll find they're a lot more, for better and worse.

The interface is highly customizable, not just with some different colored themes nor a multi-column interface, but that you can stack page elements in columns and set up "antennae" or filters to surface posts including specified keywords and/or hashtags while excluding others via keywords/hashtags as well. There's also what they call "channels" which I think are sort of like groups or dedicated topics apart from hashtags to post to and discuss whatever the channel topic is.

Oh, and because it seems *key wants to have a little of everything, there's Pages, which is basically longform blog posting, and some versions include simple games. There's also options for some other widgets I've not mentioned here. It's genuinely pretty wild compared to the other federated microblogging services with how much flexibility it has and all that it has packed in.

I think the only other federated service I've found that's comparable in flexibility may be Hubzilla, albeit I got the impression it's less user friendly, but still, very customizable and a lot you could do with it.

ElectroVagrant OP , 1 month ago

Idea is that eventually others will be able to build atop their protocol and set up different "appviews" as they call them as well as relays and personal data servers. As I understand it, "appviews" may be viewed similar to what Lemmy and Mastodon are to ActivityPub, different ways to view data passed through ActivityPub.

Right now I think Bluesky may be the only such "appview" for their protocol parsing data from their relay, but the idea is you could spin up your own personal data server and maybe also your own appview, or choose from whichever may eventually exist, and that would be like your own "instance" connecting you to others via the appview parsing relay data.

So in other words, sort of yes to your first question, and it's sort of because right now there's only one AuthTransfer relay at the moment and that's Bluesky, but the idea is that others could be spun up, allowing more independence from Bluesky as a company.

ElectroVagrant OP , 1 month ago

Oh! Thanks for the notice! I swear I think the spoiler stuff may have changed at some point, but maybe I've been handling it wrong this whole time.

I've also not really wanted to use horizontal rules because of it turning things into headings, but haven't found a better way to put some spacing between the end of lists and the rest of a post's text. I think I've corrected it properly now to be less jank.

ElectroVagrant OP , 1 month ago

use[r] identities are not tethered to instances

Tbh while this is technically true, given the current circumstances, identities essentially are tethered albeit in a roundabout way. What I mean by that is, there's no real point to them* without some relay and appview to work with, and for now, that's just Bluesky.

That said, I agree that it would be better to go to them than to Twitter (if they're not even considering stuff like Mastodon), but that's a low hurdle to clear.

*-A caveat, supposedly it could be possible for personal data servers to connect to each other directly instead of via relays, but I haven't come across anyone having tried this yet.

ElectroVagrant OP , 27 days ago

That still doesn’t touch upon the negative to tethering users identity to instances.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. What I was trying to point to was that despite the portability of identity, the fact that you may still be highly reliant on the Bluesky relay (or frankly, any large relay), tethers your identity to them as without the relays there's kind of no point to having a personal server at all.

Moreover, given the reference model provided via the Bluesky App, there's a good chance you'll run into similar arrangements on the AuthTransfer protocol where personal servers and appviews are joined together to essentially create instances (or entryway services I think they call them). One of the remaining distinctions from this entryway instance arrangement and ActivityPub then would be which relay or relays your entryway instance connects to.

Lastly I understand what you mean about people bouncing off Mastodon, but at the same time you kinda lose me here. You clearly mention the Fediverse preceding Mastodon yet then conclude with people having a bad experience with Mastodon meaning the rest of the Fediverse isn't for them...? We're using another variation of the Fediverse and ActivityPub here, so we're both aware there's more to it than that, even in the microblogging space, so I'm kind of confused on this point.

Nevertheless, I otherwise agree, it's good that people have more alternatives to get away from the trashfire Twitter's become (arguably even more of).

ElectroVagrant , 1 month ago

Commenting to indicate my shared interest in this (despite the other comments suggesting the unlikelihood of such an option emerging).

ElectroVagrant , 1 month ago

Linkblocks definitely sounds interesting. I've never gotten into social bookmarking (keeping bookmarks on another site/platform...?), but I can see the draw for building knowledge-bases this way.

ElectroVagrant , 1 month ago

For the moment, a lot of the fun on some of the federated platforms is behind several steps of effort that many of the corporate platforms have streamlined people out of being accustomed to taking, which is part of why they've kept their larger audiences. If a single click/tap is too much, that's enough to keep some people away from here.

It's not a matter of laziness either, it's more of, how much effort do I want to put into something that I'm using for casual entertainment? For many people it's minimal, but many federated platforms currently don't really work like that. They've arguably thrown the baby out with the bathwater in an overcorrection away from commercial algorithmic feeds since existing platforms have conditioned people to not have to put effort into finding silly/fun content.

The types of people to post won't be as inclined to post if they find their posts aren't reaching people because people mostly have to actively seek them out to engage with them at all. The types of people to more passively engage won't be able to as easily as those posts they might engage with may never reach them because they mostly have to actively seek them out. The end result of a lack of feedback and content for both types of people, despite there being a possibility and existence of both for them, results in this recurring sense of dissatisfaction.

Note that this is written largely with Mastodon in mind, and to a lesser degree Lemmy. In Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin/PieFed/Sublinks's cases I think they're potentially better off in terms of structure and offering different ways to sort one's feeds, but it's a matter of more people joining to round out communities and discussion more.

ElectroVagrant , 1 month ago

Personally, although the terms have become increasingly blurred over the years, I refer to changing to a new version of software (including an OS, and both ideally with some improvements) as updating it rather than upgrading.

I reserve upgrade more for changes of hardware with some form of improvement over its predecessor. I'd suspect I may not be alone in this, but I dunno how common it may be. When switching to a mix of both, I simply say I'm getting a new [insert specific device depending on which].

Although I'd hesitate to call many new phones an all-around upgrade when they're either removing features (headphone jack/expandable storage) or getting more cumbersome to hold (can you even call some modern phones a handset anymore?).

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

On one hand, I appreciate this a lot as it's been baffling to me that this aspect of Zot wasn't adopted during development of ActivityPub. On the other, I kind of feel like some of this forgets or overlooks the benefits of running fully separate identities.

I recognize that the article points to this easing that process in a way, but it's pointing more to facets of a single identity, which benefits from some degree of interchangeability depending on those facets. This is clearest in the notion of retaining one's connections with minimal disruption should one facet's instance/host go offline for some reason, but also in it being relevant to maintain the same content between facets.

This has sort of also been the issue some see with the idea of federation and the fediverse itself. Some people enjoy the different styles of posting and interaction across different non-federated/linked sites/platforms, yet in some ways federation tends to blur or break those distinctions and try, sometimes clumsily, to blend it all together. For those all in on the idea, that's a major bonus, but for those not sold on it, it's a major pitfall.

In some respects I think this may kind of help those wanting to maintain different identity facets around here, but may also create a potential tripping point for those trying to more easily maintain distinct identities depending on implementation.

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago

How do you stay in the know about this kind of stuff? I’m curious about all the cool stuff out there I wouldn’t even know I’m curious to find.

I was going to mention YaCy as well if nobody else was, so I can chip in to this somewhat. My method is to keep wondering and researching. In this case it was a matter of being interested in alternative search engines and different applications of peer to peer/decentralized technologies that led me to finding this.

So from this you might go: take something you're even passingly interested in, try to find more information about it, and follow whatever tangential trails it leads to. With rare exceptions, there are good chances someone out there on the internet will also have had some interest in whatever it is, asked about it, and written about it.

Also be willing to make throwaway accounts to get into the walled gardens for whatever info might be buried away there and, if you think others may be interested, share it outside of those spaces.

ElectroVagrant OP , 2 months ago

I'm still not sure what I think of this to be honest, but I appreciate some more detail on how this is designed to operate on the frontend and the backend, e.g.

In the AT Protocol network, various services, such as the PDS, Relay, and AppView, have ultimate discretion over what content they carry, though it's not the most straightforward avenue for content moderation. Services that are closer to users, such as the client and labelers, are designed to be more actively involved in community and content moderation.
[...]
Infrastructure providers such as Relays play a different role in the network, and are designed to be a common service provider that serves many kinds of applications. Relays perform simple data aggregation, and as the network grows, may eventually come to serve a wide range of social apps, each with their own unique communities and social norms. Consequently, Relays focus on combating network abuse and mitigating infrastructure-level harms, rather than making granular content moderation decisions.

(Emphasis mine.)

ElectroVagrant OP , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

As I understand it so far:

Broad strokes general pros/cons:

Bsky's pros:

• Some more influential/popular, and creative people have joined.
• Full account migration across instances.
• Initially at least: lower population/exclusivity, meaning less noise and fewer personality clashes, fewer trolls, so "better vibes".
• More focused interfaces providing smoother user experience.

---

Somewhere in-between:

• More social algorithm friendly, i.e. feeds with posts from what your followed accounts are liking or commenting on.
• Quote posting (this one I'm counting as in-between because some Mastodon people really dislike them).
• Full text search by default (see second point as to why I have this here.*)

---

Bsky's negatives (as of writing):

• Fewer people overall, so can seem dead.
• Some report phone number requirement for sign-up.
• No post editing.
• No video/gif posting.
• No audio posts.
• No direct/private/mentioned only messages.

---

*-Note: Mastodon now has a form of full text search but it must enabled by instance admins and one must opt their account's posts into search visibility for them to show up. This is the result of the years of back & forth over the feature and is an interesting compromise approach.

---

Broad strokes technical pro/cons compared to Mastodon:

Bsky/Bluesky's tentative benefits:

• Full account migration across instances (Personal Data Servers).
• Personal Data Servers may have lower resource costs compared to Mastodon instances, enabling more self-hosting.
• The underlying protocol (Authorized Transfer Protocol/ATProto) enables custom feeds to help one find what they want to see and only view that.
• As this post details, it may enable more distributed moderation so that your host/instance isn't necessarily the final say in what you can see.

---

Tentative negatives:

• Relays may have higher resource costs, reducing how decentralized/distributed it is.
• Currently Bsky's federation/decentralization is only with self-hosted Personal Data Servers, while so far as I'm aware, they're still operating the only Relay.
• While the protocol may enable distributed moderation, this may also be viewed as a downside as it increases complexity in regards to which moderation services/moderators to subscribe to, who to report anything to, etc.
• Custom feeds may also create a similar problem as distributed moderation in terms of choice paralysis/confusion, and further entrenching people into echo chambers more than existing social media arguably already enables.

---

Worth noting when compared to Mastodon:

• Mastodon has partial account migration.
• Mastodon allows post editing, video/gif/audio posts, and direct/mentioned only messages.
• Each instance's local feed, and even its federated feed, may be viewed as providing a sort of custom feed produced by those on the instance.
• Probably closer to what Bluesky means: Mastodon also allows one to make lists of others to create a distinct feed, follow hashtags, and one may pin a hashtag in a column then add others to include/exclude to create a custom hashtag feed in the advanced web interface.
• Also although it's clunkier in Mastodon, one may export their lists, block/mute lists, and share these with others to import to their own account.
• Bluesky also talks about different AppViews, which I think may be understood in relation to some of the different web interfaces, or apps one may use with Mastodon (one may understand this on Lemmy in a similar way, e.g. Alexandrite/Voyager~Thunder, etc.).

ElectroVagrant OP , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Kind of hard to say given the structure of it. Going off the approximate data from FediDB's charts, we may be looking at around 2 to 3 million more user accounts (around 8 million to 7.25 million), as compared with data from Stats for Bluesky of 5.24 million.

Although I'm not sure how each is measuring this, a better point of comparison may be active users and daily posters. FediDB uses the former, and shows about 940,000 to 920,000 active users, compared to Bluesky's about 220,000215,000 to 190195,000 daily posters. The latter is honestly being kind of generous, as going off the data there posting has been declining. Interestingly liking has stayed somewhat higher, hovering between 240,000 to occasional peaks of 260,000 recently.

According to their CEO just before they opened registrations they had 1.6 million monthly users, so maybe if you run the numbers differently it looks better...But the raw stats don't paint a great picture, at least as I read them.

Going off Join Mastodon's servers page (under network health), we see a figure of 942,000 monthly active users, which would suggest Bluesky should arguably have slightly more activity going off the monthly active users figure, but... 🤷‍♀️

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago

Blogs are cool.

The whole setting up a website and justifying the cost for a public log/journal...Not so much. It's still clunky and costly enough that it pushes people to platforms handling all the tech backend for them, whether nonprofit or for profit. I think if enough of the technical side were made less cumbersome (and this is from someone that's okay with tech jank), then the financial costs wouldn't be as much of a factor for many since for modest sites they're already rather low.

Although if I'm overestimating site setup stuff, I'd love to read how. All the research I've done has been somewhat discouraging when it comes to handling hosting a site yourself (i.e. security concerns, traffic handling, etc.).

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago

For sure, and I'm kinda hopeful too, for more personal sites of all sorts in general tbh.

It's that technical part though that I think remains the big barrier for many, at least for those that want to more fully hold the reins over their online space.

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Unfortunately I remember during people moving from Reddit to Lemmy, several people on Mastodon trying to warn others away from doing so due to its lacking moderation tools, and some mainly focusing on the developers, both of which have proven to hold true in various ways.

However, at the time, there really weren't all that many federated alternatives developed enough to go to. If memory serves Kbin was kinda scrambled out to meet the moment, and it's been struggling along since then with its own issues. Aside from those, there were a couple centralized options with Tildes and Postmill being open source, but some were understandably wary of moving to yet another site with a centralized structure (and one of those closed source alternatives people did try out didn't last long).

Now it's kind of interesting as we see another open source centralized option developing (Discuit), Sublinks as you mention in your post, and also Piefed. It's unfortunate that first there seems to have needed to be this rough proof of concept stage before more options appeared, but with any luck they may pave the way to better, more robust sites, and maybe give Lemmy some incentive to improve itself.

ElectroVagrant OP , 2 months ago

Fwiw as I understand it data portability is possible without a custom domain, aside from your handle/name. A custom domain only seems necessary if you want to prove and maintain your identity across AuthTransfer services/platforms that permit/enable custom domains in handles. It's basically a more direct form of the website verification one may find on federated platforms like Mastodon.

Without it you'd be jumping between subdomains and top-level domains in your username/handle similar to how you do so on ActivityPub platforms, i.e. @uniquename.bsky.social -> @uniquename.otherATprotoplatform.tld.

ElectroVagrant OP , 2 months ago

Bluesky feels like there is still too much data silo mentality behind the project, and the federation part seems more like a symbolic gesture than something that is meant to actually allow users their data freedoms?

I keep going back & forth on this tbh. I don't think it's merely symbolic, but I think it makes the same kind of mistake many tech-oriented people make in imagining that many people will know how or even want to run their own servers.

This is why towards the end I mention that I foresee the AuthTransfer protocol producing more or less similar platforms to the fediverse despite the differences in architecture. Supposing Bluesky continues apace with the release of their work, we may see something like an atproto.xyz that's basically an independent microblogging service like Bluesky but with whatever custom adjustments they've made. The whole PDS idea will fade into the background as this independent service emulates the Bsky Social model of acting as a PDS entryway service and platform.

Any decentralized benefits many were intended to find via AuthTransfer's PDSs will sort of end up falling to the wayside, which may be okay if you're okay with that. At that point it's just another distributed model though, and should be assessed on those grounds for whatever benefits or downsides it possesses compared to others.

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago

What you note about the crawler appears to be essentially by design:

The federation architecture allows anyone to host a Relay, though it’s a fairly resource-demanding service. In all likelihood, there may be a few large full-network providers, and then a long tail of partial-network providers. Small bespoke Relays could also service tightly or well-defined slices of the network, like a specific new application or a small community.

In their section on so-called "Big World" design:

As a result, we opted to architect the protocol in a “big world with small world fallbacks” way. With the web, individual computers upload content to the network, and then all of that content is then broadcasted back to other computers. Similarly, with the AT Protocol, we’re sending messages to a much smaller number of big aggregators, which then broadcast that data to personal data servers across the network.

Emphasis mine.

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago

Remember if you do:
Don't get caught up in the technical details, those aren't what matter to many people. Obvious exceptions if they express interest in hosting a server.

Don't talk in the jargon of fediverse this, federated that, those mean nothing to outsiders. Unless they ask for further details, but even then, use more familiar terms like saying it's a website connected to other sites or whatever might help bridge understanding.

Do point them to whichever instance you're on, or seems relevant to whatever interests they may have mentioned, to join. One of the big problems people mention is figuring out which site/instance to join and how to navigate around here, take this opportunity to help them cut through that.

Ask them which subreddits/accounts they've joined or like to follow where they are as relates to the platform they're trying to move from (i.e. Reddit/Twitter/etc.), and try to help point them to either their equivalents or similar that may be found around here.

ElectroVagrant , 2 months ago

So, it’s good to keep in mind you will face that, and be prepared with some patience and counter-arguments.

I wouldn't really encourage this, as much as one may be inclined. Some may be willing to change their mind, but many others of a resistant disposition aren't that interested in leaving so much as venting frustrations, and lurkers may get the impression the alternative you're advocating is full of however you may present yourself in your argument.

It's better to look for those genuinely asking where to move to or what alternatives there are, and if they specifically mention Lemmy, then you might help them along there. Otherwise I'd suggest mentioning a variety of alternatives to choose from and mix together, such as setting up a RSS reader (if they're more of a passive reader), Lemmy or Kbin/Mbin, or scaling back Reddit use as they explore these alternatives, rather than pressing them to drop it outright for a single option.

ElectroVagrant , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

This service going down and me recently deciding to try to check in on whether some people I used to follow on Twitter had migrated elsewhere made me realize how much Twitter's basically isolated itself from the open web.

A part of me hopes this serves as a wake-up call for those that were still hovering between using Twitter and weaning off it using services like this, to reach out to those they follow and let them know, "Hey, if you think you're still posting publicly...You're not, only other people here can see this." For many people that may not matter, but for creators/influencers? I dunno, maybe network effect is enough that they feel the large audience there is plenty, but I'd think they might want as broad of a reach as possible, and a popular but limited view platform isn't necessarily that.

Much more importantly though are any government/critical services. They really need to be brought up to date, if they haven't been already, that the platform is no longer as publicly accessible as it may have once been. Also the same applies not just for Twitter but Facebook and the like as well, but that's another topic.

ElectroVagrant , 3 months ago

Something else to chip in here in terms of interesting ideas, specifically regarding "protected/limited (leashed?) boost", there's some angles to this that the Glitch fork of Mastodon seems near in terms of local only posts and hiding boosts from specific people.

On their own these features don't amount to what OP's describing, but I think they may offer some groundwork for ways to work out the "limited boost" idea. Also, the more I think on it, the more I kind of like Leashed/Moored as a description over protected, as I think it more clearly implies controlled reach of posts, but maybe that's just me.

ElectroVagrant , 5 months ago

Ghost Commander may work for this. I’ve not tried sftp myself, but on opening it I do see the option there, so it might be worth a try.

ElectroVagrant , 7 months ago

If it’s not there, one may also try checking the about page or the instance’s Meta/Announcements/Status/etc. magazine(s), as it ultimately depends on where and if the admin has decided to make the info available so far as I can tell after glancing over a few Kbinstances.

As an example: kbin.cafe doesn’t have the admin info/profile on the about or contact page, but they’re the owner of the CafeMeta magazine.

ElectroVagrant , 7 months ago

It’s been awhile since I made a new account on a Mastodon instance, but is search engine indexing enabled by default? If it isn’t, then that would probably be part of why this is being made opt-in for Mastodon search, as there’s been a vocal portion of folks on Mastodon opposed to search across the board.

Even if search engine indexing was enabled by default, y’know those vocal folks probably disable it ASAP and would be making a fuss if this update went & enabled Mastodon search by default. Which, well, why post publicly at all if the concern’s related to privacy or not being bothered by internet randos, but 🤷‍♀️

ElectroVagrant , 7 months ago

I’ve mainly done this with hashtags, so I may be off if it differs somewhat for keywords, but I’m pretty sure it works as a logical OR.

So if I put a bunch of hashtags in a filter for sports like #sports, #football, #hockey, etc. if a post contains any one of those tags, it should filter it for me. The nice part is you can adjust it so that it either completely hides the filtered results so they don’t clutter up your feeds, or hide with warning and the name of the filter on the warning notice, which allows you to click & review the post to see whether you really wanted it caught by your filter or not.

If you’re just starting out you’d probably want to run it with warnings first to get a sense of whether it’s working as desired, and if not adjust as needed.

Thankfully folks tend to be pretty respectful of spoiler concerns and will specifically say spoilers below when writing about them, use content warnings to hide them, and use hashtags like #[GameName]spoilers, which can help when making filters. It’s not ideal, but if I really don’t want to see spoilers for something, I’ll filter by its name and hashtag and set it not to expire (you can set filters to last only a week if you like, so you don’t forget to disable them).

ElectroVagrant , 9 months ago

In case anyone else doesn’t keep track of Android versions by the fun nicknames, here’s a Wikipedia page for the versions with numbers included. KitKat was version 4.4 of Android.

Honestly couldn’t remember which numbered version this was & couldn’t imagine I was alone in that, lol

ElectroVagrant OP , 10 months ago

Is there a community for posting links to topic-focused instances? If not, I may start one.

Do you mean like a more focused version of the fediverse community, but for highlighting/sharing links to topic-focused instances? That may be kind of interesting as another form of the newcommunities/findacommunity type of communities, just for entire instances.

ElectroVagrant , 10 months ago

So if Threads isn’t trying to overwhelm and destroy Mastodon, why have ActivityPub support at all? Two answers. First, “Look, see? We’re open!” is not only perceived as a great talking point these days, it’s perceived as a regulatory relief valve. Look, see? ActivityPub! We’re open!

Second, remember that the business model for Threads is keeping you on Threads. If 95% of your friends are on Threads but 5% are over on that weird Mastodon thing, now you don’t have to use Mastodon to follow them! Just follow them from Threads! Woo! Will Threads be a good Mastodon client? No, but it just has to hit “good enough.”

These are also great points to highlight imo. A throwaway defense against regulation and entrenchment by enabling access to the few friends that outright refuse to use their products both make more sense to me compared to some of the EEE arguments & data collection. I’d be more inclined to see Meta/Facebook doing the bare minimum with ActivityPub and using a strict allow list vs. open federation, but time will tell.

ElectroVagrant , 10 months ago

I understand the sentiment, but as others have noted in similar threads...Threads like this tend to become a part of the mess being criticized.

To counteract this trend, posting just about anything else would go towards addressing the expressed criticism.

ElectroVagrant , 11 months ago

Probably for similar reasons as to why they moved from Reddit. Also configuring their own instance to approximate a traditional forum would honestly kind of undermine the whole point of using Lemmy or the like to begin with (at least imo).

I understand the sentiment of wanting them to to make their stuff easier to follow & post to from here and other places in the Fediverse, but from what they wrote, I get the sense that this format simply isn't what they were ever looking for in terms of fielding discussions/questions. Their move to Reddit was more of a compromise for where they were at with the project at the time, but now that Jellyfin's more developed in terms of the software and community, a forum is a more workable prospect.