AJ Sadauskas
Australian urban planning, public transport, politics, retrocomputing, and tech nerd. Recovering journo. Cat parent. Part-time miserable grump.
Cities for people, not cars! Tech for people, not investors!
- 9 Posts
- 31 Comments
17·6 months ago@lemmyreader Here’s a starting point for a fediverse StackExchange: Make sure it’s interoperable with Lemmy.
Now, you may not get the full feature set on Lemmy, but you should be able to interact with it from Lemmy as if it’s a group on there.
@thegiddystitcher @helenslunch I think hashtag feeds being overrun with vertical videos is an excellent point. (One I hope @dansup considers!)
But beyond that, I think vertical videos through Loops on the Fedi are likely to be far less obtrusive than they have been on other platforms.
What’s so annoying about them on Instagram and YouTube is that the algorithm automatically drops vertical videos into my feed.
And there’s *lots* of them in my feed, often on topics I’m not interested in.
They’re not there because I’m interested, but because they serve the commercial interests of the social media app’s owners.
Hashtags aside, on the Fedi, they’ll only appear in your feed if you follow a Loops account you’re interested in, or someone you follow finds one interesting enough to share.
And if people on your Mastodon server all find them really annoying, there’s always the option to just block the Loops servers and be done with it.
@deadsuperhero @nutomic I think the concept of a TikTok on the Fediverse is solid. And if short form videos help to get more people on the Fedi, and engaging with the Fedi, that’s a good thing in my book.
@AMillionNames @nutomic In which case the ibis, a species of bird that’s also known as the bin chicken, might be a fitting name for the platform?
@nutomic That last question was me trying to get my head around how this works.
Will each page have a username, in the same way each Lemmy group has a username, which can be followed from Mastodon?
If you follow that username from Mastodon, will you see a series of posts? If so, will they contain page edits or something else?
What happens if you tag that account in a post from Mastodon? Or reply to one of those posts?
@nutomic Looks like an interesting project!
Will there be a mobile-friendly version of the front end?
And will you be able to follow Ibis pages (or perhaps edit them?) from Mastodon? Or potentially even Lemmy?
@ada @haui_lemmy This is where it’s a bad thing that Tumblr hasn’t federated with the Fedi yet.
Having the “original” Fedi apps (including Mastodon) plus Tumblr would better balance the size of Threads.
@Meowoem @kd637_mi Better yet…
Many Lemmy instances have communities on the same topic. For example, there’s @[email protected] and @[email protected] and @[email protected] .
It’s unnecessary duplication.
Having a Fediverse-wide !Technology community would avoid a lot of duplication.
Each Lemmy instance would then responsible for the posts of its users, and if an instance fails to moderate appropriately, it gets defederated.
@donut4ever @igalmarino Last I heard, @dansup and the @pixelfed crew were working to get the Pixelfed app into the Android and iOS app stores. There’s currently a version of the app that you can sideload if you so desire…
@vhstape @lmorchard What it means is that every interesting conversation also adds an interesting conversation to Mastodon.
People can interact with those discussions on the platform that suits them best.
So if you’re an ex-Twitter user on Mastodon, it appears as a post. If you’re an ex-Redditor on Lemmy, it appears as a thread.
And the magic of the Fediverse is that those ex-Redditors can engage with ex-Twitter users in conversations that wouldn’t take place had they remained on Twitter or Reddit.
@dragnucs @fediverse A strong recommendation from me is https://urbanists.video. Basically, it’s a PeerTube instance dedicated to Urbanism, urban planning, cycling, public transport, walkable neighbourhoods, and similar topics.
If sustainability in the built environment is your thing, it’s definitely worth checking out.
@anji @cyclohexane I agree that it would be better to have one or two instances hosting a retro games community and all other instances encouraging their users to post on those instances.
Ideally, popular communities on other instances should appear on the main communities page/list of each instance.
@ch0ccyra1n @fediverse Great topic.
A big thing that’s lacking at the moment is not so much new platforms, but dedicated instances using the existing Fediverse platforms.
A great example of what I mean is something like Urbanists.video. It’s a PeerTube instance dedicated to videos about urban planning, cycling, and transport.
We need more dedicated instances like that for more special interest communities.
Just imagine a PeerTube and LemmyBB instance dedicated to baking. Or Buddhism. Or the global Armenian diaspora. Or folk music. Or quilt makers. Or charity fundraisers. Or particular social issues. Or high school principals. Or a particular university. Or independent short films. Or netball. Or watercolour artists.
The more dedicated communities like that exist, the stronger the Fediverse ecosystem is as a whole.
@rysiek @KelsonV I’m all for the growing hype around ActivityPub.
From The Verge:
"The hottest new thing in social isn’t vertical video, and it’s not AI-driven algorithmic feeds. Instead, it’s a little-known, years-old protocol called ActivityPub that could help rewire the entire social fabric of the internet.
“In recent months, a number of tech companies have thrown their resources into ActivityPub and what’s now known as “the Fediverse.” Tumblr is working with ActivityPub, as are Flipboard, Medium, Mozilla, and even Meta. There’s now an official WordPress plug-in for ActivityPub, which will enable the protocol for something like half the internet all at once. Developers are using ActivityPub to build new and different takes on YouTube, Instagram, and much more. ActivityPub is everywhere! ActivityPub!”
https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/20/23689570/activitypub-protocol-standard-social-network
@comfy Because of Elon’s API pricing decision, a lot of the tools that businesses use to manage their social media accounts are likely to drop Twitter support.
Obviously, the marketing, sales, and customer support staff at companies and organisations that use Twitter aren’t engaging with it through the consumer UI. They’re using something like Buffer, or Microsoft’s ad management tool.
In turn, a lot of brands will find that their tools no longer let them update Twitter, and will stop updating Twitter.
As I mentioned in a post elsewhere (https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/110228344896093467 ), at the same time, many of these same tools (such as Buffer) are (or have) added Mastodon support.
That support doesn’t guarantee that those organisations will set up Mastodon accounts. But it definitely makes it easier to post to the Fediverse.
@luciedigitalni @fediverse @technology Great question.
It looks like Buffer already supports Mastodon: https://buffer.com/resources/mastodon-scheduling/
SocialBU also supports Mastodon: https://socialbu.com/mastodon
Hootsuite doesn’t appear to yet, but they do have a blog up about why everyone is going to Mastodon, so I’d imagine they’re working on it: https://blog.hootsuite.com/what-is-mastodon/
Seenly says: “The ability to schedule Mastodon posts is under development and will arrive early in 2023 to the platform!”
https://seenly.io/scheduling-tools-for-mastodon/
Any tools that integrate with Buffer, such as CoSchedule, potentially support posting to Mastodon: https://coschedule.com/announcements/buffer-integration-updates-seamlessly-sync-social-messages-from-buffer-to-coschedule
And the biggie is WordPress, which has an official plugin: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/wordpress-com-owner-automattic-acquires-an-activitypub-plugin-so-blogs-can-join-the-fediverse/
I’m guessing a lot more platforms and tools are likely to add Mastodon support over the next six months.
@RFPatterson @karlmorant @fediverse @technology And it’s already happening:
"Numerous public service Twitter accounts have lost their ability to automatically post breaking news and events. Twitter has been removing API access, which allows many of these accounts to post in an authorized way by the platform, as it switches to Musk’s new high-priced paid API system.
"Many of these affected Twitter accounts have automated updates, but aren’t the type of hands-off bot accounts that some may think of when they hear the term ‘bot.’
“For example, numerous National Weather Service accounts that provide consistent updates, both automated and manually posted by humans, shared that they could no longer provide their up-to-the-minute, potentially life-saving updates.”
So less automated information updates on Twitter from things like weather services, and more posts by state-sponsored troll farms and spammers with blue ticks.
https://mashable.com/article/twitter-api-removal-public-safety-twitter-accounts
@maegul @lemmyreader
I definitely agree with this suggestion:“Improved identity management across the Fediverse
* Easy-to-use single-sign-on across servers. Use case: I use several apps for different content types (like micro blog and video). Bonus: they all post from the same identifier
* Easy-to-use persona management. Use case: I have a personal and a work account, bonus if they can be on the same server Identifiers not tied to the domain name system”https://reb00ted.org/tech/20230425-w3c-activitypub-wishlist/
I currently have a Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemy, and PeerTube account. A single ID across all of them would be amazing.
Not just that, but it would really help accelerate the uptake of other Fediverse services if users could simply login with their Mastodon account.
Pixelfed is a better UX for photos, so why not let Mastodon users use it for that?
@sabreW4K3 Plume doesn’t appear to be active, unfortunately 🥺
There’s a notice on the official Join Plume website saying the former developers don’t have the time to maintain it anymore. Most of the former public instances now throw up errors of various kinds.
WriteFreely ( @writefreely ) is alive and well. I was seriously toying with the idea of setting up a blog through its main instance, which is called Write.as Professional. The sticking point for me was that the official on-platform monetisation tool (Coil) appears to be dead, and doesn’t support members-only posts (like Ghost).
Ghost, when federation goes live, looks like it will be the best option for my blog.
WordPress plus @pfefferle 's plugins is another great option, depending on what you want to use it for. (There’s no shortage of WP plugins!)
As for Lemmy, I could see a blogging-focussed front end being created for it, in the same way FediBB put a traditional message board front end on it, but one doesn’t appear to exist at present.