ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝 @ Emperor @feddit.uk

A geologist and archaeologist by training, a nerd by inclination - books, f

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My first Loops video! And it's just a download from TikTok. 😕

It's compatible with the Mastodon API, so some of the apps work for it. I was talking to the developer of an iOS Mastodon the other day and they are off checking compatibility at the moment.

edit: I also started a thread on people's experience with apps on !friendica@lemmy.ca.

Life?

So sit your kids, and their grandparents, down. Tell them not to believe anything they see on Facebook, Twitter, Threads or Amazon TV without checking it somewhere reliable. Make your family into a little Lindisfarne for this era of lies, somewhere we can wait out the information dark age, like monks poring over illuminated manuscripts as the black dragon sails of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos flutter on the horizon, until the future fascists either tear themselves apart, or slaughter objective truth wholesale.

So keep our heads down and hope it will all blow over? Classic British response but I'm not sure it's good enough. A boycott is wise as it looks like all the large social media sites are bending the knee to Trump but that also doesn't bode well for the future as they can distort the political landscape because a lot of people only get their news from them. Unfortunately, abandoning all social media means they can get organised while everyone else bunkers down. Does that make us the resistance? Now there's a responsibility and a half!

Perhaps not all, but there are a number that do work.

That's her description of her ideal social network, "found" is probably a bit misleading here where "I came up with the features I'd like to see in my ideal social network".

do we have to make it ?

Kinda. However, from her description what is really needed is a big push to improve the UX/UI of Friendica (probably work on not overwhelming the new user with so many options too) and get it a lot more stable (although in her Friendica piece, she suggests it might be the instance she was on). Better that than reinvent the wheel.

The good thing is that it feels like Friendica's time has come - Meta is enshittifying, Bluesky is popular but people are wary of where it is going and Xitter is a dumpster fire. With more people using it, there will be more focus on improving it and it could be ready to blow up like Pixelfed just has.

It's compatible with the Mastodon API, so you can use those apps.

That's what I was thinking. I know one I complaint about Friendica is the interface is a bit clunky, so that might help address the issue.

Thanks for that. As a front end I'm not sure it meets my criteria but it is interesting. The look wasn't necessarily a big deal but I wonder if you could bolt that onto Friendica...

Is it? I know it’s been moved to Wordpress, but I haven’t heard about this.

Good point. Last updates were they were still working on it in December 2023 but the move to WP seems to have either derailed the efforts or forced it to switch tracks.

Ghost can apparently be used to manage multiple blogs under different subdomains. Might be worth looking into when their ActivityPub supports goes out of early access.

I'm seeing Ghost as a Substack killer, as that is a toxic swamp we need sensible folk off. Nearly everyone who had a newsletter migrated there. Only one listened to their fans and backed straight out again.

Well done!

Ouch!

The Channels in Friendica are similar to the “antennas” / “newspickers” in Misskey / Sharkey. Both are very good ways to receive content sorted by self-defined topics.

That's good to hear. I have a test account on a *key fork and the Antennas are a great feature.

The naming of things is so tricky when comparing different services. I stumbled across one Friendica request to rename "forums" to "groups" and "groups" to "circles".

If you are looking for a way to *send *to different topics, Friendica’s (connected) “accounts” would be suitable for this, But Hubzilla offers more options for this

Yeah, that was my understanding - Hubzilla has that feature working as I'd like it but there's a way to make it work in Friendica.

Friendica offers a connector for Tumblr as well as for Bluesky. Ad hoc I can only find a German-language manual for it: https://friendica-hilfe.gitbook.io/friendica-hilfe/basics/bluesky-tumblr-und-weitere-social-media-dienste

Thanks for digging that out, it being in German might explain why I didn't find it.

That all sounds ideal and working through Bluesky's API. I now wonder why we need bridges if that works so well.

I have an account on a Sharkey instance (that was previously Calckey), I definitely like the features more than Mastodon but I am missing the ability to have various blogs/channels on different topics. I'd also prefer no character limit for when I really want to get some wordage down.

Damn, and people say that the Fediverse concept of instances is confusing 😄

It's a good point. At the moment there us one relay so you don't have a choice, add more in and the issue with which instance to sign up on (a stick used to beat AP) also applies to AT. In fact, the wealth of Fediverse instances might make it easier as there will, eventually, be a range of topic-specific instances.

Building an ActivityPub application (APlication?) that uses AT protocol’s PDSs would be pretty interesting. Compatibility would be a nightmare, but I don’t see a reason you couldn’t have the sign up and data management work like it does on Bluesky (did:plc issues aside) and the server side/relay work with APub.

If it is all defined by a standard, you could always have a script that can read the relevant information from a PDS (with you logged in) and import it to a Fediverse account. With bridges you could even keep your following list (followers might be trickier).

Quick aside: Aren't PDSs similar to ActivityPods or Hubzilla's nomadic identities?

It’s more like the idea of adversarial interoperability he’s talked about in the past, focusing on making the transition to a new platform easier by forcing compatibility between nominally incompatible platforms.

And that makes sense to a degree. If we can't get everyone to the Fediverse, we can at least move them to a half-way house where it is much easier to get at the data and so the final move to the Fediverse can be a lot simpler.

The article does imply he thinks that Bluesky will enshittify, so our focus as activists of the good internet should be on tools to make the inevitable migration easier.

Indeed, that's why I like the idea of escape pods, not just fire exits, so people can just flick a switch and get out. Fire exits can get dangerous if everyone rushes for the door when the place burns down.

I am unsure if it is feasible but I'd like a bridge that I suppose is more like a bot. You post on the Fediverse and it updates your posts there, passes over new posts by followers, etc. and vice versa if you are commited to BS. Then if the main end of your pipe is BS and it enshittifies, you change the direction of flow and are now seamlessly on the Fediverse. As both sides work to protocols it feels like you just need a translator between. I know Friendica integrates with BS to some degree, so it may already be doing that.

Bluesky also buys us more time to establish topic specific instances. I feel these would make people's deciding on an instance much easier.

I just don’t think “Free Our Feeds” is that.

No, I am not convinced because to make it truly decentralised you'd need a number of relays and it just seems too expensive, at the moment (if BS enshittifies and everyone leaves for the new place then it may only be a stop-gap measure). It feels like a waste of time, effort and money but then the history of the Internet is filled with dead ends but we learned something new each time - I've been on FriendsReunited, MySpace, Google+, etc and it's a pain to start afresh each time, why I'd largely checked out before the Fediverse. I suppose I learned to not do that again and try for a "forever home".

I've seen people on BS already nervously promoting their mailing lists as they are concerned about enshittification. I think if we are at that stage it needs a better plan.

It's still millionaires saving us from billionaires, which shows how difficult it is to run a relay. If the main Bluesky relay enshittifies and everyone jumps ship Bluesky 2 then that is still a single point of failure, what if the funding dries up or the millionaires get bored? The users would struggle to cover the costs themselves.

It feels like that amount of money could be better spent on adding features (like independent IDs) as well as building better bridges, even the ability to import a Bluesky profile to Mastodon or the *key forks. Forget adding a fire exit and build some escape pods.

The whole piece comes across as... apologetic:

If I had my way, all those people enjoying themselves on Bluesky would come and enjoy themselves in the Fediverse.

And you get the feeling this isn't the solution he'd have wanted but it at least looks like some.kind of solution so he's prepared to support it, albeit grudgingly.

They can't. At some point you have to wonder if this is a feature not a bug. You'll always be beholden to the largesse of millionaires. Whether that's a charity or not.

Hubzilla allows for a "nomadic identity" and some services allow you to log in using other services - !neodb@lemmy.zip has a long list of logins it allows (not Lemmy... yet).

That sounds "fun".