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Replied in thread
@Justin Derrick The question, however, is: What is "high-quality"? How is it defined?

Would the bot go by the definition valid for commercial/scientific/technological websites and blogs, i.e. ideally no more than 125 characters, and only a short and concise visual description with no further information?

Or would the bot go by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's standards, i.e. the longer and more detailed, the better, any and all extra information is welcome in alt-text (because it doesn't fit into the toot), and the limit is 1,500 characters?

That is, if it were for me, the bot would go look both for alt-texts and for image descriptions in the post text body and judge both. Because I do both at the same time for my original images. An extremely detailed long image description in the post itself (character limit for post and alt-texts combined here: over 16 million) that also comes with all necessary explanations and transcripts of all text in the image, plus an alt-text that's as detailed as 1,500 characters (minus notification about the long description in the post) allow, but with no explanations, and I usually have to leave out text transcripts as well because they're too many.

You may say the alt-text is superfluous if it's just a much shorter version of the long description. But as long as the Mastodon HOA demands there be an alt-text to every image, no matter what (especially seeing as I always hide my image posts behind summaries/content warnings, so you can't see right of the bat that there's a long image description in the post), I add alt-texts to my original images.

I'm actually curious about how the bot would judge my descriptions. Maybe it'd flag them "inadequate" because it notices that the bits of text in the image are not transcribed in the alt-text. Maybe it'd be irritated because I have headlines in my long image descriptions, because they're so long that they need two levels of headlines. Maybe it'd flag them "inadequate" because it goes strictly by WCAG, and a) the alt-texts exceed 200 characters, b) long image descriptions do not belong into the text body by any known official accessibility standards, and c) neither my alt-texts nor my long descriptions are limited to what's supposed to be important within the context of the post.

Anyway, in the meantime, you can follow the account @Alt Text Hall of Fame and the hashtag #AltTextHallOfFame.

CC: @Simon Brooke

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #MastodonHOA #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@BotKit by Fedify :botkit: Be aware that quotes and quote-posts are two different things, and both exist in the Fediverse. At least Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can generate both.

This is a quote, like in every bulletin-board forum out there:

Coming soon in #BotKit 0.2.0: Native #quote post support!


Or this, but it has to be coded manually into the comment's source code:

BotKit by Fedify :botkit: wrote:
Coming soon in #BotKit 0.2.0: Native #quote post support!


This is a quote-post a.k.a. shared post a.k.a. quoted share:

BotKit by Fedify :botkit: wrote the following post Mon, 21 Apr 2025 05:51:28 +0200 Coming soon in #BotKit 0.2.0: Native #quote post support!

We're excited to share a preview of the upcoming quoting features in BotKit 0.2.0. This update will make it easier for your bots to engage with quoted content across the fediverse.

The quoting feature set includes:Here's a quick example of how you can use the quote detection:
bot.onQuote = async (session, quote) => {
  // The quote parameter is a Message object representing the post that quoted your bot
  await quote.reply(text`Thanks for quoting my post, ${quote.actor}!`);
  
  // You can access the original quoted message
  const originalPost = quote.quoteTarget;
  console.log(`Original message: ${originalPost?.text}`);
};

And creating quote posts is just as simple:
// Quote in a new post
await session.publish(
  text`I'm quoting this interesting message!`,
  { quoteTarget: someMessage }
);

// Or quote in a reply
await message.reply(
  text`Interesting point! I'm quoting another relevant post here.`,
  { quoteTarget: anotherMessage }
);

Remember that quoting behavior may vary across different #ActivityPub implementations—some platforms like Misskey display quotes prominently, while others like Mastodon might implement them differently.

Want to try these features right now? You can install the development version from JSR:
deno add jsr:@fedify/botkit@0.2.0-dev.90+d6ab4bdc
We're looking forward to seeing how you use these quoting capabilities in your bots!

#fedidev

Also, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte handle quote-posts a lot differently from Misskey and the Forkeys.

Misskey and the Forkeys do quote-posts like so:

RE: https://hollo.social/@botkit/01965678-eb56-7003-9c91-07e4418bf63a

At least on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, a quote-post starts out like this:

[share⁠=74153074][/share]

Upon sending the post, this piece of BBcode is changed into a full, dumb copy of the original post, led in by a line that says who posted this first, complete with a link to the profile, and that also links to the original. The original poster is being notified about this (unless they chose not to), but if the original post is edited, the edit is not forwarded to quote-posted copies.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Quotes #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@-0--1- @David G. Smith Still, first of all, if I posted an image without an alt-text (which I'd never do), AltBot would have to assume full admin rights over the Hubzilla channel that I'm currently commenting from because that's the only way for another Fediverse actor to alter the source code of my posts.

Altering the source code of the post is necessary because Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte neither have a dedicated alt-text field, nor are images file attachments there. Rather, images are embedded directly into the post, in-line, just the same way blogs handle images. And alt-text has to be woven into the image-embedding code in the post. Thus, the post itself has to be altered.

So, assuming AltBot actually manages to circumvent the two most advanced permissions systems in the Fediverse, it would have to trace back an image that it perceives as a file attachment to where exactly the embedding code for that particular image is in the post.

It would have to be able to both understand and write the specific flavour of BBcode used by Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte.

It would have to, for example, take this piece of code...
[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295][zmg=800x533]https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photo/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295-2.jpg[/zmg][/zrl]
...and edit it into this.
[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295][zmg=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photo/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295-2.jpg]Digital shaded rendering of the main building of the Universal Campus, a downloadable island location for 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. The camera position is about three metres or ten feet above the ground. The camera is tilted slightly upward and rotated slightly to the left from the building's longitudinal axis. The futuristic building is over 200 metres long, stretching far into the distance, and its front is about 50 metres wide. Its structure is mostly textured to resemble brushed stainless steel, and almost everything in-between is grey tinted glass. The main entrance of the building in the middle of the front has two pairs of glass doors. They are surrounded by a massive complex geometrical structure, very roughly reminiscent of a vintage video game spacecraft with the front facing upward. Four huge cylindrical pillars carry the roof end, the outer two of which extend beyond it. All are tilted away from the landing area in front of the building and at the same time outward to the sides. The sides of the building are slightly tilted themselves. In the distance, a large geodesic dome rises from the building. There is a large circular area in front of the main entrance as well as several wide paths. They have light concrete textures, and they are lined with low walls with almost white concrete textures. Furthermore, various shrubs and trees decorate the scenery.[/zmg][/zrl]

Not to mention that AltBot would require extensive detail niche knowledge about the topic covered by the image to be able to whip up the above alt-text in the first place. (By the way: The alt-text example is genuine. I've actually used it. And it's an extremely whittled-down version of the long image description of the same image in the post itself, a description which has to be the longest in the entire Fediverse.)

Ideally, AltBot would do so without flagging the post as edited.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
Replied in thread
@AJ Sadauskas
I mean, the Fediverse already has Lemmy, KBin, and MBin.

So there's already an ecosystem of pre-built communities out there.

/kbin is dead. Has been since last year. The last instances that haven't moved to Mbin are withering away.

However, in the "Lemmy clone" category, there's also PieFed, and Sublinks is still in development.

Also, the Facebook alternative Friendica ("Facebook alternative" not as in "Facebook clone", but as in "better than Facebook") has had groups since its launch in, 2010, five and a half years before Mastodon. Hubzilla has had groups since 2012 when it still was a Friendica fork named Red. (streams) (2021) and Forte (2024) have groups, too. All four are part of the same software family, created by the same developer. And interacting with their groups from Mastodon is somewhat smoother than interacting with a Lemmy community.

On Friendica, a group is simply another user account, but with different settings: In "Mastodon speak", it automatically boosts any DM sent to it to all its followers. In reality, it's a little more complicated because, unlike Mastodon, Friendica has a concept of threaded conversations. (No, seriously, Mastodon doesn't have it. If you think Mastodon has it, use Friendica for a year or two as your only daily driver, and then think again.)

Likewise, on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, it's another channel with similar settings.

CC: @myrmepropagandist @Jasper Bienvenido @sebastian büttrich @Asbestos

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #FediverseGroups #Groups #PieFed #Sublinks #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte
joinfediverse.wikiFriendica - Join the Fediverse
Replied in thread
@Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Not everyone will want to offer their music on Bandwagon for money. Some may want to give it away for free for various reasons (non-commercial license, German hobbyist artists not wanting to hassle with the German tax system and GEMA etc.), and Funkwhale may not be a viable option for them. At the same time, they may not want to or even be able to pay the same prices for anything beyond basic functionality as musicians or bands who intend to actually make money with their music.

Some features should remain free for music that's offered for free. For example, it shouldn't be lossless downloads that a musician or a band has to pay for as a feature, but charging money for lossless downloads. Having everyone pay for e.g. offering FLAC downloads favours commercial artists, and the anti-capitalist parts of the Fediverse will criticise you for that.

Alternatively, you could make the license choosable from a pull-down list per song or per album or for an entire account. And when a commercial license (or any license that isn't decidedly non-commercial) is selected, certain features are greyed-out or removed unless they're paid for. At the same time, when a non-commercial license is selected, the UI elements for charging money are greyed out or removed.

Also, if you ever plan to open-source and decentralise Bandwagon, you can't expect all instances to charge the same for the same. Even if you hard-code in what must be paid for, the moment Bandwagon is open-source, there will be at least one fork where certain or all payments are not hard-coded anymore. Not only will some musicians or bands prefer that fork for their own instances, but it's even likely that public instances of such a fork will be launched.

At that point, your pricing calculation will become moot.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Bandwagon
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
@Joseph Meyer
When you read exceptional alt text, do you ever compliment its author? What is the epitome of alt text, either in general terms or using a specific example?

I'd really like to know that myself, also to up my own game further and always stay way ahead of image description quality requirements.

I mean, I've learned a lot about describing images in and for the Fediverse over the last two years. But I guess I can still learn something new, even if I think I already take care of everything, even if the technical possibilities I have here on Hubzilla for describing images surpass those on Mastodon by magnitudes.

Maybe, if I learn something new from those who reply, I can weave it into the image descriptions for a series of images that I've been working on since late last year (the descriptions, not the images which are ready to go).

Alt text sometimes merely explains what I am viewing; other times it draws my attention to special details in a photo that I would have otherwise missed.

I never explain in alt-text. I do always explain a whole lot because I always have to explain a whole lot. For my original images, it takes me over 1,000 characters alone to explain where an image was made.

But I only ever give explanations in the long, detailed image descriptions that go into the post text body (in addition to shorter and purely visual descriptions in the alt-texts).

Or if there's no additional long image description in the post itself which is the case for my meme posts, I still supply enough explanation in the post text body (still not in the alt-text) for just about everyone in the Fediverse to understand them without having to look anything up themselves. If I can link to external information, e.g. KnowYourMeme for the template I've used, I do so. If I can't, I write the missing explanations right into the post myself.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euImage descriptions in the FediverseI have learned a lot about describing images according to Mastodon's standards, and I want to share my knowledge, but I haven't learned enough
Replied in thread
@Martin Holland Ditch Mastodon.

Move to Friendica.

Refollow everyone on Friendica whom you follow on Mastodon.

Integrate your Bluesky account directly into Friendica. Your Bluesky contacts will become Friendica contacts. No Bridgy Fed bridge needed.

Then you have one unified timeline stream with Friendica and Mastodon and the whole rest of the Fediverse and Bluesky. And diaspora*. And Tumblr (yes, right now already). And Libertree. Etc.

Better yet: You can send one and the same post to the Fediverse and to Bluesky and to diaspora* etc. all at once and receive comments from all these places under the same post.

Even better yet: A Friendica post can be as long as 400 Mastodon toots. And it can contain just about every kind of text formatting that's possible with HTML, up to and including a virtually unlimited number of images embedded in-line (instead of a maximum of four images always only dangling under the post as file attachments). And it can have a title.

Only two caveats: You'll probably need an account on a Friendica node in the USA to be able to federate with Threads. Even then you're at Meta's mercy because it's up to them whether that node is allowed to connect to Threads or not, and Friendica nodes are very likely to not be allowed to connect because Friendica's culture may collide with Threads' federation requirements.

Also, Friendica can't do polls.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #Mastodon #Bluesky #Threads #diaspora* #Tumblr #Friendica
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla

#longpost #ebike

Back in 2021 I bought an e-bike for my urban mobility from #Tenways. It was an #indiegogo campaign that really got me for bike weight (15kg battery included) and mostly free of maintenance (it has no gears and uses a belt instead of a chain).

The bike is really clever and has a sleek design. It is not designed to take on steep uphills, and probably a shock absorber would increase the comfort, but if you are no stranger to muscular bicycles you can enjoy riding it without any assistance at all in flat roads.

It happened that the handle mounted computer broke (mechanically, it actually works like a charm). So I contacted the support and asked for replacement (the model is out of production nowadays).

Before allowing me to purchase it, they demanded to see a proof of legitimate ownership. Of course I had kept my invoice, as I do for expensive things I buy.

A bit annoying, in the very first place, but later I realized that this made me feel somehow protected, and I really appreciated the message that if you steal it, you'll not be able to purchase any replacement, being it the computer, the battery or the front light.

They also thanked me to be their very first customer, as I purchased their first bike on Indiegogo.

Replied in thread
@Mitex Leo Short answer: no.

To my best knowledge, Hubzilla cannot import anything from Mastodon. No posts, no followed, especially no followers.

(streams) can import CSV-formatted follow lists; I don't know if Mastodon can export them, or if Mastodon has its own proprietary follow list format. But (streams) cannot make your followers on Mastodon your followers on (streams) because it cannot make people follow you. Also, (streams) cannot import posts from Mastodon.

Mass-importing 5,000+ connections from Mastodon to Hubzilla or (streams) would be a stupid idea anyway. You'd have to go through all of them and configure them. Yes, whereas Mastodon only has "I follow you" and "I don't follow you", Hubzilla and (streams) have extensive configuration options for connection. And you will need them.

You'd have to edit 5,000+ connections, one by one, and
  • assign them the appropriate contact role (Hubzilla)/permission role ((streams)) so that they have the right permissions (on Hubzilla and (streams), everything is permissions, and permissions are everything)
  • add them to one or multiple privacy groups (Hubzilla)/access lists ((streams)) (think Mastodon lists, but on lots of coke and 'roids; optional on Hubzilla, but highly recommended)
  • maybe also adjust the (optional) affinity (Hubzilla)/friend zoom ((streams)) slider
  • maybe even add lines to the (optional, but recommended) per-contact filter lists (you'll need to do this on Hubzilla to keep contacts from spamming you with boosts)

Neither Hubzilla nor (streams) is something that you can join and use away on 100% bone-stock default settings just like that.

And truth be told: If you give 5,000+ Fediverse actors full permissions to send you all their stuff, your unread activities counter (this exists, yes) will be up to "99+" every few minutes. I myself don't even have 100 active connections that are allowed to send me anything. On some of them, I filter boosts out. And yet, I get well over 100 unread activities per day that I have to catch up with.

In fact, Hubzilla and (streams) will suck even more content onto your stream than Mastodon. That's because they support threaded conversations. They don't show you single posts. They show you whole threads, including comments by people whom you don't follow and who didn't mention you.

I don't know if you follow Eugen Rochko. But if you do, imagine he posts something. 200 people reply. On Mastodon, you get Rochko's post. On Hubzilla and (streams), you get Rochko's post and 200 replies flooding onto your stream by and by.

Seriously, if you really want to move to Hubzilla (or (streams)), start over from scratch. And go slowly instead of following shit-tons of people right off the bat to have your stream abuzz like on Twitter or Facebook.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams)
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@sunflowerinrain @Tarnport From what I've read, a digital photograph is considered the default. So for brevity reasons, it must not be mentioned.

Any other media must be mentioned, whether it's a painting, a screenshot from a social media app, a scanned analogue photograph, a flowchart, a CAD blueprint, a 3-D rendering or whatever.

But an alt-text must never start with "Image of", "Picture of" or "Photo of". That's considered bad style and a waste of characters and screen-reading time. If the medium is not mentioned, digital photograph falls into its place as a default.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@Alison Wilder Because if you want full-blown user rights and all the same features as a local user on all over 30,000 Fediverse instances, you need a local user account on each one of them.

This means two things:
  • If you come over to the Fediverse for the first time, and you register your first account on Mastodon, you automatically also register an account on 30,000+ more instances.
  • If you decide to host your own instance of whatever, and you spin it up for the first time, your instance immediately creates tens of millions of user accounts. One for everyone who has ever joined the Fediverse. Because anyone may decide to come over to your instance and use it, just like so.

For one, this is utter overkill.

Besides, this is technologically impossible. This would require all Fediverse instances to know all other Fediverse instances. With no exceptions. Like, if I start up my own (streams) instance for the first time, and half a second later, someone on the other side of the globe starts up a Gancio instance, they would immediately have to know each other. And all the other instances in the Fediverse.

And, of course, it would require a newly-launched instance to know all Fediverse users. Again, with no exception.

How and from which source are they supposed to know?

That said, there is a single sign-on system for the Fediverse. It's called OpenWebAuth. It was created by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ (creator of Friendica and all its descendants) in the late 2010s already for now-defunct Zap, a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla which, in turn, is a fork of the currently hyped Facebook alternative Friendica. It was backported to Hubzilla in 2020. Everything that came after Zap, including the still existing streams repository, got it, too.

However, first of all, OpenWebAuth is only fully implemented on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. Plus, it has client-side support on Friendica. This means that Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte recognise logins on all four, but Friendica doesn't recognise logins from anywhere.

As for Mastodon, OpenWebAuth implementation was actually developed to the point of an official merge request in Mastodon's GitHub repository. As far as I know, it was rejected. Mastodon won't implement OpenWebAuth, full stop.

Besides, it doesn't give you all the same power as a local user. You can't log into Friendica, go to a Hubzilla hub and create a wiki or a webpage or a CalDAV calendar, just like so.

OpenWebAuth is only for guest permissions. Because on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, permissions are everything.

For example, let's assume you have an account and a channel on (streams). Let's also assume that your (streams) channel and this Hubzilla channel of mine here are connected. Furthermore, let's assume that I've decided to only allow my own full connections to see my profile.

If you're logged out, and you go to my profile page, you see nothing.

But then you log in. And you come back to my profile page (provided your browser is configured so that the Hubzilla hub that I call home is allowed to create cookies). My home hub recognises your login on (streams). It identifies you as you, as one of my contacts. Thus, it identifies you as someone who is permitted to see my profile.

And all of a sudden, you see my profile.

That, for example, is what OpenWebAuth is for.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Zap #Streams #(streams) #Forte #SingleSignOn #OpenWebAuth
magicsignon.orgMagic Signon \ OpenWebAuth (OWA)
Replied in thread
@Stefan Bohacek
And yes, I hope better reply/interaction controls are coming soon, I know some of that is planned right after quote posts are finished. Really can't wait to see that!

And that, too, will only work within Mastodon.

Also, that, too, won't be a "Mastodon first" feature. At least Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have reply and interaction controls included in their permissions systems which, in a way, work Fediverse-wide.

Within themselves and each other, they actually make impossible what isn't allowed. For example, if you aren't allowed to repeat (= boost) or share (= quote-post) a post or a comment, you don't even have the button. These permissions aren't understood anywhere outside these three yet, but I've got higher hopes that this permissions system will be cast into FEPs than that Mastodon's hacks will be.

In fact, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have reply control on three levels:
  • channel-wide (who is generally allowed to reply; Hubzilla has eight levels, (streams) and Forte have three)
  • for individual connections
  • per post (on Hubzilla, commenting on a post can be disallowed altogether; on (streams) and Forte, additionally, commenting can be limited to your full connections, and a time can be defined from which commenting will no longer be allowed)

Again, within these three, if commenting is not allowed, the UI elements for commenting will be missing. Outsiders may be able to comment, but all three block disallowed comments on a server level, i.e. they aren't deleted from the inbox, they are kept from entering the inbox in the first place. And so they don't appear in the thread for all those who support threaded conversations.

It'd really be nice if this permissions system became one or a set of FEPs for others to pick up.

CC: @PaulaToThePeople

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ReplyControls
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@:neuro: Pixy's Journey :v_bi: First of all, I apologise if you already know this, but there are so many who have been on Mastodon for much longer than you, and who don't know: If you want to follow Friendica users, you can do so from Mastodon. Even though Friendica and Mastodon are fundamentally different. You don't need a Friendica account just for that. You'd only need a Friendica account if you personally need Friendica's extra features.

First of all, why are they so different? Why are they so much different that it may cause friction with Mastodon? Why didn't they make Friendica more like Mastodon?

Because "they" (actually originally one man in Australia, now two guys in Germany) made it before Mastodon. Friendica first came out in July, 2010. Mastodon first came out in January, 2016. Five and a half years later. And immediately when Mastodon was first released, it was federated with Friendica. And it has continuously been ever since then.

Also, Friendica has never aimed to be a full-on, all-out Facebook clone. Its goal has always been to be "like Facebook, but better than Facebook". So it is different from Facebook. It doesn't look like Facebook, it doesn't feel like Facebook. It just does what Facebook does with extra stuff on top.

As Friendica is so much older than Mastodon and developed entirely independently from Mastodon, don't expect it to be anything like Mastodon either. Half of what you know about Mastodon you can toss out of the window when you join Friendica and re-learn it.

Now, the first difference between Mastodon and Friendica is: Mastodon being like Twitter means that it's social media. It's about following accounts and consuming their content, it's about others following your account and consuming your content.

Friendica is like Facebook. It's true social networking. It's about people connecting with people. Even though Friendica has adopted the "follower" and "followed" wording from Mastodon, its default is still the bidirectional connection. Maybe you still remember that you didn't follow people on Facebook, and they didn't follow you back, thus creating two unidirectional connections. You didn't have followers, you didn't follow, you had "friends" which always went into both directions.

"Social networking" also means that on Friendica, much unlike on Mastodon, you don't follow people because of their content first and foremost. Friendica is more geared towards connecting with people because of their profiles. A Mastodon profile has not even half a dozen text fields. A Friendica profile has well over a dozen. Including a dedicated text field for keywords.

This contributes to the directory being much, much more useful on Friendica than on Mastodon. You can search the Friendica directory for names. You can search it for keywords. It comes with a keyword cloud. And it has a "suggestion" mode in which Friendica matches other profiles with yours.

So you're into dogs. You add "dogs" to your keyword field. Someone else has "dogs" in their keyword field. And what do you know, they slide up your list of suggestions! Also, I guess (I've been out of Friendica for many years, using two of its surviving descendants instead; this comment comes from Hubzilla) that connections of your connections move to the top of the suggestions, too. Just like on Facebook. Key feature on everything that's truly social networking.

There's even a central Friendica directory.

Discussions on Friendica are better than on Mastodon. That's because Friendica, just like Facebook, like Tumblr, like a blog, like a forum, like almost everything that isn't Twitter or Mastodon, has threaded conversations. It's fully aware of entire threads. A conversation is not loosely tied together from posts and more posts like on Mastodon. Instead, it's an enclosed object with exactly one post. The start post. And otherwise any number of comments. Which are totally not posts.

Now, what does that mean in practice? Let's play through a conversation that entirely happens on Friendica.

Imagine you're connected with Alice. Alice posts something. You receive Alice's post on your stream (= timeline).

Bob comments. You are not connected with Bob. Bob doesn't mention you. In fact, Bob doesn't mention anyone. But still, Alice knows about Bob's comment because it's listed as an unread activity. And you know about Bob's comment, too, because it's listed as an unread activity for you as well.

By the way: Unread activities. Another thing that doesn't exist on Mastodon. On Mastodon, you read your unread stuff by scrolling and scrolling and scrolling through your timeline and scrolling some more until either you hit the stuff that you've already read, or until you've got no more time and/ore spoons to read any more. If the latter, there'll inevitably be a whole lot of toots that you'll never know about. On Friendica, you have a counter and a list of posts and comments that you have not read yet. And you can go through it by and by, until there's nothing anymore that's unread. Luckily, Friendica doesn't show you posts and comments one by one, but it always shows you entire threads.

Okay, back to the conversation: Carol comments on Bob's comment on Alice's post. Carol only mentions Bob to make sure that she's replying to Bob rather than directly to Alice. Again, the mention is not needed for Bob to see her comment. She doesn't mention Alice either, she doesn't mention you, and you aren't connected with Carol.

But yet again, Carol's comment is listed as an unread activity.

Now you want to check Alice's post, Bob's comment and Carol's comment. Again, you don't have to check them one by one. If you click either, Friendica will show you the whole conversation at once. Like a post on Facebook with comments below. Like a blog post with comments below. And it will mark Alice's post, Bob's comment and Carol's comment as flagged.

This is how conversations should be. Always. You have a post on your stream, you get all the comments on it. At least all that come in after you've received the post.

But Friendica goes even further: It has groups. Discussion groups. Like forums. It has always had them. I mean, Facebook has always had groups, too, right? Basically, after you've joined a group, you receive all posts from that group plus all comments under these posts. And if you post to a group, everyone in the group receives your post. All without fumbling around with hashtags and hoping people on other instances happen upon your post by searching for that hashtag.

Now you may say that Mastodon has Guppe groups. Yeah, but they're a glued-on hack made by someone who probably thought the Fediverse is only Mastodon. They can't be searched for whereas the Friendica directory also lists public groups. Speaking of public groups, they can be private. As in, outsiders can't see the profile, outsiders can't see the posts in the group, and they aren't listed in any directory. Also, Friendica groups can be moderated. Guppe groups can't.

What else? Posts. You can do more in a post on Friendica than you can see on Mastodon.

Vanilla Mastodon is limited to 500 characters. It can be raised, but not by configuration. Raising the limit requires hacking into the source code and usually having to do so after each Mastodon upgrade.

Friendica, as far as I know, is "limited" to 200,000 characters. At the same time, as far as I know, Mastodon rejects posts from outside if they're longer than 100,000 characters. Friendica lets you write posts that are so long that Mastodon refuses to even import them.

Friendica supports all kinds of text formatting. Mastodon can display bold type, italics, maybe underline, also bullet-point lists, quotes (it still can't display quote-posts which Friendica has had from the get-go as well), well, and that's about it. Friendica can create all this and more. Much more. If you can do it in a blog post, you can do it on Friendica. Maybe even more than that.

A very good example is how Friendica handles images. Mastodon can only handle images as file attachments and only four of these. If you only know Mastodon, you perceive this as the one and only Fediverse standard, and you can barely imagine that it could possibly be any different. That's because Mastodon can only handle images with these limitations in content from outside as well.

Friendica, on the other hand, is not limited in how many pictures you can have in a post. And it can actually have pictures in a post. Embedded within the post. With text above the picture and more text below the picture and another picture below that text and so forth. Just like a blog.

Since Mastodon refuses to render embedded in-line images, Friendica actually has to additionally convert all imported images into file attachments which Mastodon understands. But even then, Mastodon will throw all of them away except four if you have more than four.

How does Friendica do that? Well, part of the secret is because Friendica has its own cloud file space built into each account. If you upload an image to Mastodon, it ends up somewhere where you can't access it. If you upload an image to Friendica, it ends up in your cloud file space. With its own little file manager. Which even supports folders and subfolders.

In fact, Friendica even has image gallery functionality!

That said, as Friendica is so much different from Mastodon, and particularly, since it's so much older than Mastodon, it has its own culture which is rooted in a) its vast set of features and b) the early 2010s. Friendica has never adopted Mastodon culture, and it never will. That's because Mastodon culture clashes so much with Friendica's native culture and with Friendica's features.

For example, Friendica users happily churn out posts and comments which at least some Mastodon users perceive as so long that they're disturbing. Namely over 500 characters long. Ask a Friendica user to chop their long posts into threads with never over 500 characters, and you will not receive.

Friendica users do stuff in their posts that Mastodon won't render. This includes embedding images and more than four. If Mastodon won't render them, then from a Friendica point of view, it doesn't mean that Friendica is using some non-standard freak feature that should be avoided. It rather means that Mastodon is broken. And if the Mastodon devs refuse to fix it, then Mastodon is broken by design.

This may come as a surprise to you, but: Mastodon's CW field was not invented from scratch as a CW field. Originally, it's a summary field. It's a summary field on Laconi.ca/StatusNet/GNU social. It's a summary field on Friendica (where it's called "abstract"). It's a summary field on everything that came after Friendica. But in 2017, someone proposed to make it a CW field on Mastodon. Ever since then, everyone on Mastodon "knows" that this field is purpose-made for CWs and for CWs only.

Again, on Friendica, it's for summaries. Friendica users either use it for a summary (and even then, this involves a pair of BBcode tags), or they don't use it at all.

At the same time, Friendica historically, and to this day, handles CWs differently: It generates them on the reader's side. Automatically and only if you want to. For this, it has an optional, very basic filter-like feature named "NSFW" that comes with not much more than a keyword list. If a keyword from that list is in a post or a comment or a PM, the whole thing will be automatically hidden behind a button. Much like a Mastodon CW, but unlike a Mastodon CW, it's only rendered for you (and everyone else who has that keyword on the list) and not forced upon everyone all the same.

(By the way: Mastodon has introduced the self-same functionality to its filters with the release of Mastodon 4.0 in October, 2022. But even though this was right before the biggest Twitter-to-Mastodon migration wave ever, nobody knows about this.)

This leads to culture clash:
  • Mastodon users are disturbed because Friendica users don't add CWs to sensitive content.
  • Mastodon users are extra disturbed because Friendica users "spam" their posts with hashtags. These hashtags are used to trigger the generation of reader-side CWs which are not part of Mastodon's culture because nobody knows they exist, and because they didn't exist in mid-2022 when Mastodon's culture was (re-)defined.
  • Mastodon users are extra special disturbed because Friendica users "misuse" the CW fields for "like, titles or summaries or whatever that stuff is".
  • Friendica users are disturbed because Mastodon users misuse the abstract field for CWs without even adding an actual abstract.
  • Friendica users are extra disturbed because Mastodon users don't add keywords or hashtags to trigger their NSFW.

Also, Mastodon users mute or block Friendica users because they post over 500 characters at once. In turn, I know at least one Friendica user who blocks everyone upon first strike who chops a longer post into a thread with never more than 500 characters in one message. Friendica users are perfectly used to posts with 10,000 characters, but they find the same posts cut into threads with over two dozen tiny posts cumbersome and tiring.

Before mid-January, 2025, accessibility didn't play any role on Friendica. The old Friendica guard saw alt-text as another dumb fad from Mastodon's stupid and ignorant culture that perceives the Fediverse as only Mastodon. Not to mention that adding alt-text to images on Friendica is still kind of cumbersome because next to nobody has ever actually considered using that feature until very recently.

Interestingly, Zuckerberg's further enshittification of Facebook which triggered a slow but steady migration wave from Facebook to Friendica also coincided with the very first time ever that a Friendica veteran (the same guy who blocks thread posters) was asked to add alt-text to an image. Which must have been a rather disturbing experience for him.

Another cultural difference concerns connections with other software and platforms. Still today, over half of all Mastodon users think the Fediverse is only Mastodon. And truth be told, many many Mastodon users would love the Fediverse to actually be only Mastodon. Anything that connects with Mastodon and sends content to Mastodon is seen as rogue, culture-less intruders.

On Friendica, in a stark contrast, connection with anything and everything has been an integral part of the concept, of the philosophy and thus of the culture from the very beginning on.

Friendica doesn't only communicate through ActivityPub which it didn't even support until 2019 (it also has its own protocol, DFRN). Even then, it has a much more complete and standard-compliant ActivityPub implementation than Mastodon.

It can also connect do diaspora*, another much less feature-rich "Facebook killer" from later in 2010 which refuses to support any protocol other than its own, and which actually doesn't aim to federate with anything else (all the cross-project federation work was entirely done on Friendica's side). If you've been intensively using Friendica for at least a year or two, it's absolutely normal to have contacts on diaspora*.

It's also one of the very last Fediverse projects that still support OStatus, the old protocol used by GNU social, formerly StatusNet.

It can integrate Bluesky accounts so you can connect to Bluesky without the Bridgy Fed bridge and without Bridgy Fed's limitations. It can integrate Tumblr accounts. It could theoretically still integrate 𝕏 accounts if the node admin had the millions for an API license. In the early 2010s, it was even able to integrate Facebook accounts. It can natively crosspost to WordPress and Libertree.

It can subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds while generating Atom feeds itself. It can communicate via e-mail. And its chat has at least basic XMPP compatibility.

Friendica's credo is something like, "If it exists, we federate." Mastodon's credo rather seems to be something like, "There's Mastodon, there's evil, there's broken, and there's both broken and evil. If it isn't Mastodon, it'd better not disturb us."

In fact, most Mastodon users barely notice the Fediverse outside Mastodon, also because they barely identify content from outside of Mastodon as such. Another reason why they try to force Mastodon's culture upon non-Mastodon users: They don't even notice that these aren't Mastodon users at all.

Friendica users are fully aware of how colourful the Fediverse is, also because Friendica's Web UI actually tells you where a post or a comment came from. They still find the behaviour of many Mastodon users disturbing and tiring. But they're more aware that Mastodon has its own culture, and they don't try to force Friendica's culture upon users of something that isn't even technologically fit to adopt Friendica's culture.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonCulture #Friendica
joinfediverse.wikiHubzilla - Join the Fediverse
Replied in thread
@Droid Boy :coolified: Eine Option ist ein WordPress-Blog mit der ActivityPub-Erweiterung von @Matthias Pfefferle. Offenkundigster Nachteil: Du wirst höchstwahrscheinlich zumindest aktuell dein Blog tutto kompletto selber hosten müssen. Ich weiß nicht, ob es irgendwo fix und fertig gehostete WordPress-Blogs mit ActivityPub gibt.

Option 2: WriteFreely. Einfache, cleane, ablenkungslose Oberfläche in der Art wie Medium. Nachteile: Kommentare gibt's nicht (also gar nicht), du kannst von WriteFreely aus nichts und niemandem folgen (sondern nur selber bloggen), und Bilder wirst du selber nochmal woanders hosten müssen, von wo aus du sie in deine Posts hotlinken mußt.

Option 3: Plume. Auch sehr aufgeräumt, kann Kommentare, hat eingebauten Filespace für Bilder. Die Entwicklung ist aber komplett eingeschlafen, weil die Entwickler keine Zeit haben, und sie selbst empfehlen aktuell sogar WriteFreely.

Optionen 4, 5 und 6: Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams). Alle vom selben Schöpfer, @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️: Friendica ist vom 2010, Hubzilla ist ein Friendica-Fork von 2012 und 2015 zu Hubzilla geworden, (streams) ist noch einen Haufen Forks später von 2021. Hier habe ich mal Vergleichstabellen gemacht, die auch Mastodon einschließen für die, die nur Mastodon kennen und Mastodon als Maßstab nehmen.

Friendica und (streams) können alles, Hubzilla noch mehr. Du kannst sie als Facebook-Ersatz nutzen, du kannst sie, wenn du willst, als Twitter-Ersatz nutzen, du kannst sie gleichzeitig als vollwertige Blogging-Plattform mit allem Schickimicki nutzen. Titel, Zusammenfassung (auf Friendica und (streams) als Tagpaar, auf Hubzilla als eigenständiges Feld), sehr viele Zeichen (Friendica: 200.000, (streams): über 24 Millionen), beliebig viele Bilder in Posts einbetten, alles Mögliche an Textformatierung und -gestaltung, Hashtag-Cloud, separate Kategorien, die teilweise auch als Cloud gehen, usw. usf.

Hubzilla hat sogar noch eine separate, optionale Artikel-"App", mit der du sowas wie Blogposts veröffentlichen kannst, die dann aber nicht über ActivityPub rausgehen und Mastodon-Nutzer nicht nerven. (Dafür gehen sie aber auch nicht als Atom-Feed raus.)

Dazu hast du eingebauten Filespace, den du auf Hubzilla und (streams) sogar per WebDAV einbinden kannst. Auf Friendica und (streams) kannst du im Filespace für jedes Bild einen Alt-Text eingeben, der dann automatisch mit dem Bild in den Post eingebettet wird. Du hast auch Berechtigungssteuerungen, die auf Hubzilla und (streams) noch leistungsfähiger sind als auf Friendica. Zumindest auf Hubzilla und (streams) hast du Kommentarkontrolle auf drei Ebenen, die auf (streams) auf Per-Post-Ebene sogar noch etwas ausgefuchster sein kann.

Hubzilla und (streams) haben sogar die sonst fast überall im Fediverse übliche bombenfeste Verbindung zwischen Konto und Identität aufgelöst. Du kannst beliebig viele, völlig separate Identitäten ("Kanäle") auf demselben Konto haben und lustig dazwischen hin- und herschalten, ohne dich aus- und wieder einloggen zu müssen. Persönlicher Social-Networking-Kanal + vier davon (und voneinander) separate Blogs + ein, zwei Gruppen/Foren, alles auf einem Login? Kein Problem.

Falls du selbst hosten willst: Alle drei kommen mit einem LAMP-Stack klar. Kein exotisches Zeugs nötig.

Falls du nicht selbst hosten willst: Hubzilla und (streams) bieten nomadische Identität. Du kannst also einzelne Kanäle über mehrere Serverinstanzen klonen, und die werden wie bidirektionale Live-Backups immer gegeneinander synchronisiert. Wenn ein Server ausfällt, hast du immer noch mindestens eine Reserve.

Okay, jetzt kommen die Nachteile: Alle drei sind mächtig. Friendica ist sehr mächtig, (streams) sehr sehr mächtig, Hubzilla sehr sehr sehr mächtig. Entsprechend sind auch die Lernkurven, zumal keins von den dreien eine UI hat, die aussieht, als wäre sie erst gestern von einem Startup für ein paar Millionen an Risikokapital von Profis designt worden.

Außerdem sind es keine puristischen, spezialisierten Blogginganwendungen. Sie haben also auch für den Leser nicht unbedingt die aufgeräumte Oberfläche eines WordPress-Blog, geschweige denn von Medium.

Für Friendica gibt's keine iOS-App, und Mastodon-Apps gehen eher so lala, wenn überhaupt. Für Hubzilla und (streams) gibt's gar keine Apps, und Mastodon-Apps gehen gar nicht und werden das auch nie.

Noch dazu hat (streams) aktuell nur zwei öffentliche Instanzen mit offener Registrierung, die obendrein fast unmöglich zu finden sind, davon nur eine in Europa. Beide haben allerdings sehr kompetente Admins.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #WordPress #WordPress_ActivityPub_Plugin #WriteFreely #Plume #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Blog #Blogs #Blogging
MastodonMatthias Pfefferle (@pfefferle@mastodon.social)3.86K Posts, 878 Following, 3.96K Followers · web worker, blogger, podcaster, #openweb advocate and citizen of the #indieweb and the #fediverse. Open Web Wrangler @ #Automattic I am currently working on the #ActivityPub plugin and several #IndieWeb (mainly #Webmentions) plugins for #WordPress! Besides of that, I maintain some other small Open Web plugins and try to help out on the #pluginkollektiv. Follow my blog on the fediverse: "@pfefferle@notiz.blog" #fedi22
Replied in thread
@Stefan Bohacek Abandoned 3D worlds?

I'm not sure if OpenSim has anything that'd fall into this category. Sometimes the line between rarely visited and actually abandoned is blurred, seeing as how low OpenSim's population density is. Also, if a place in OpenSim is abandoned by its own owner, it's most likely shut down entirely. So if land exists with something on it, there's always someone behind it who pays to keep it online or at least keeps a standalone or grid server running at home.

That is, I do have a few ideas, for example, projects that have spent years in the same clearly unfinished state. Or what I think maybe OSgrid's old landing sim for new avatars.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@Georgiana Brummell First of all, I've just noticed that you seem to not have joined the Friendica support forum yet. As far as I know, you can't post to a Friendica group/forum without fully connecting to it first.

As for the accessibility issues: To most people, it appears like Friendica has only just been made since they haven't heard of it before mid-January. But actually, Friendica is from 2010. And its frontend is largely stuck in the early 2010s, including technologically.

Friendica has always been a spare-time hobbyist project. It was mostly developed by one single man for almost two years. That guy is a protocol designer and not a frontend developer. Also, I think Friendica never had more than two regular developers, and it definitely never had any developer who really knows how to make a modern and appealing user interface. I mean, you've obviously never seen Friendica's user interface, but let me tell you that it's quite old-fashioned. It's just meant to do its job.

Hobbyist, spare-time developers of such an extremely niche piece of software who are not trained in Web UI design normally don't know a thing about accessibility. And truly, they don't care. If the UI covers all features, and the users don't have to SSH or telnet onto the Web server to use it, it's often good enough.

Friendica's regularly active user community has never been more than maybe a few thousand at a time, maybe even only a few hundred, as opposed to the over two million at which Mastodon has topped out. Thus, Friendica has never encountered blind or visually-impaired users yet.

You can see it all over the place. Alt-text is not part of Friendica's culture. Some Friendica veterans staunchly refuse to describe their media because they think alt-text is another Mastodon fad that Mastodon fundamentalists want to force upon the whole rest of the Fediverse with Mastodon's entire culture. Alt-text, to them, is like limiting your posts to 500 characters.

All this is why nobody has noticed yet that Friendica is not accessible at all.

I've got a suspicion that Friendica can only be made fully accessible by throwing the entire Web frontend away, developing an entirely new one from scratch and then also making all-new themes for it.

Also, it's only natural that TweeseCake doesn't support many of Friendica's features. As it looks to me, TweeseCake's Fediverse side is built against Mastodon and only Mastodon. If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, TweeseCake doesn't cover it either. Thus, TweeseCake probably only covers about 20% of Friendica's features because Mastodon doesn't have the other 80%.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #TweeseCake #A11y #Accessibility
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@AJ Sadauskas Here's something that you may want to take a look at, something that's being developed in Australia right now, something that next to nobody in the Fediverse has heard of: (streams) (code repository).

It has very good native groups support. This includes four preset levels of public vs private as well as the possibility of appointing other Hubzilla and (streams) users as co-admins via the permissions system.

(streams) recognises all kinds of Fediverse group actors as such and lists them in its directory as such: Lemmy communities, /kbin and Mbin magazines, PieFed communities, Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, Guppe groups etc. However, while I've managed to (probably) join a Lemmy community with one of my (streams) channels, I've yet to see new posts from that community. It could be a settings issue on my side, it could be because my community membership has never been approved by the community mods, I don't know.

(streams) does not have Hubzilla's full-blown Gallery app, but it does have the Photo app which also allows outsiders to take a look into your various photo albums. Also, it allows you to embed any number of images anywhere in a post with virtually no limits.

Killer feature: You can add alt-text to images upon uploading or after uploading in the Photo app. This means that you can post an image a gajillion times, always automatically with the same alt-text.

As for videos, you can embed remote videos from various sources in (streams) posts. You can also upload video files to the file space built into your channel and probably embed them into your posts, but (streams) can't do peer-to-peer load balancing like PeerTube. I don't make videos, and even if I did, the effort of probably describing them would be beyond my capabilities, so I can't test the latter.

Mastodon support is as good as it ever comes. The "obstacles" are the same as on Friendica. Both generate potentially weird hashtags and even weirder mentions from a Mastodon POV. Mastodon CWs are done with [abstract][/abstract] or [abstract=apub][/abstract] on Friendica and [summary][/summary] or <details><summary></summary></details> on (streams).

That said, you can't use (streams) with a dedicated native app. Like, at all. There's no (streams) app, and it doesn't work with Mastodon apps, in part because the dev doesn't want to have Mastodon code in his work, in part because it wouldn't even make sense. The closest you can get is by installing (streams) as a progressive Web app.

But if you stick with Friendica, don't use it with a Mastodon app. Tusky is built for Mastodon and only supports Mastodon features. If Friendica has a feature, but Mastodon doesn't have it, you can't use that feature through a Mastodon app. No text formatting, no groups, no titles, no conversations, no embedded images etc.

For an Android phone, look at RaccoonForFriendica. On the desktop, there's no replacement for the Web interface in a browser in both cases.

Still, if (streams) looks interesting, and you want to try it before installing it, don't go looking for public instances. You won't find them. Ask me instead. And when you set up your own instance, you can use nomadic identity to move or even clone your channel over to your own instance.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Streams #(streams)
joinfediverse.wiki(streams) - Join the Fediverse

"Garbage In Garbage Out" applies to a lot of things.

🥧 Pie.
🐕 Puppies.
🏛️ Politicians.

But this post is about generative AI.

We've already reached the point where the internet is more bot than human, and AI slop trained on human creativity is growing exponentially (along with its power requirements).

You see, generative AI has two main features that make it particularly effective at producing garbage: It has a high output volume and it doesn't give a fuck if it's factually wrong (sounds like most politicians and marketers actually 🤔).

So, to put this in lay-terms...

AI is like your new puppy. You feed it a nice diet of curated posts, it does cute-stupid things that are fun to post pictures of. One day you decide Mr. Sprinkles is ready to be out of the kennel when you're not home. You leave for several hours and return home to find that Mr. Sprinkles has been hoovering down everything in the bathroom waste bin. Not only that, but at some point the lil' rascal ran into the bedroom to hork up half-digested tampons and tissues on your duvet.

You look on in horror as you realize that the waste bin must've been emptied the moment you left the house, and grotesque puppy hork is littered around *everywhere*.

But it doesn't stop there. You hear slurping noises and turn around just in time to see Mr. Sprinkles happily recycling one of the previous piles of puppy puke. You stifle a gasp as you cover your mouth. How long has this cycle been going on? How many times has that tissue gone through the puppy—two, three, a hundred? At this point it's long-since been rendered into homogeneous slop (though you think you recognize a kibble or two and the edge of a Tampax wrapper).

Alright, now imagine it's not just one puppy—it's an exponentially replicating litter of dalmatian puppies with IBS. And it's not just one waste bin—it's the known universe.

Eventually *everything* will be amorphous puppy hork.

#ELI5#AI#GIGO
Replied in thread
@Kevin Karhan :verified: To quote Arthur C. Clarke:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And for your average Musk escapees, Mastodon alone is more than sufficiently advanced. These people believe that there's some magic going on that makes their fully public posts private and secure regardless. They want perfect security, but with zero inconvenience, and they think Mastodon provides them with exactly this.

In fact, they expect Mastodon to be an absolutely perfectly safe haven, simply because it isn't a corporate silo. Little do they know how close to being a corporate silo Mastodon is, what with having a US-based company and a lighthouse instance that accounts for 22% of the whole Fediverse in terms of MAUs.

On top of that, more than half of all Mastodon users think the Fediverse is only Mastodon, and most of the rest can't imagine that anything in the Fediverse could possibly have features that Mastodon doesn't have. Not unless you slap them right into their faces like character limits over 500.

They cling hard to and rely on an imagination of the Fediverse that has never even been close to reality and never will.

As for The Bad Space, its blocklist looks like it's curated not by evidence, but by emotional triggers. Generally, some blocklists go so wild that you have to ask yourself whether the reason why nobody has tried to block out everything that isn't vanilla Mastodon is because that'd be too big an effort (two out of three Fediverse instances aren't Mastodon), or whether such people simply don't know how far the Fediverse extends beyond Mastodon, so they don't know what to block. I mean, there should be reasons enough to block everything that isn't Mastodon.

Blocklist import from other instances doesn't make things any better. Just like on all networks where everyone can run a server, the Fediverse, especially Mastodon, has got admins who really shouldn't run a server. It looks very tempting to pick blocklists by length rather than content, the longer, the more "secure", import a bunch of them, but not curate them because that'd be extra effort.

In this light, it's a good thing that Oliphant put the tier-1 to tier-3 blocklists onto the chopping block when switching from manual list curation to automated list aggregation a while ago. Especially tier 3 would have been easy to exploit with little to no curation, and there certainly were enough sufficiently paranoid Mastodon admins who'd subscribe to tier 3 without ever taking a single peek at the list.

Sometimes I feel like going to Mastodon's GitHub repository and submitting blocking or allowing entire Fediverse server applications by user agent, both for admins and for users, as a feature request, just to see what'll happen. Maybe dumbed down on the user side to a switch that blocks everything that isn't Mastodon. But maybe I should also mention that (streams) already has this feature on the admin side so that the Mastodon devs have to think up a way to sell this as invented by Mastodon.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Blocklist #Blocklists #BlocklistMeta #CWBlocklistMeta
NodeBB Community · With the advent of FediCheck, there will be big changes to the Oliphant blocklists in the future.I've always said the list project I'm doing is an "interim step on the road to something better."FediCheck is the "something better", at least so far as wh...With the advent of FediCheck, there will be big changes to the Oliphant blocklists in the future.I've always said the list project I'm doing is an "interim s...