@Kristian I'm not even talking about technological limitations that can't be avoided. I'm talking about culture and knowledge.

Imagine one of those millions of people who have escaped from that Nazi hellhole formerly known as Twitter. Now they've found a new home on Mastodon. Of course, nobody has told them that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon.

Three months later. They feel right at home on Mastodon. It's so nice and cosy and fluffy and friendly and actually quite simple. They still think the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

Then, all of a sudden, someone boosts a post from outside Mastodon to them. A post that does things which they didn't know was possible on Mastodon. Or, better yet, which they knew was impossible on Mastodon. They have to wade through over 500 characters. And somehow, whoever wrote that post managed to write in italics or in bold type without pulling weird Unicode tricks. Or whoever wrote that post actually managed to quote someone.

This can be very irritating and upsetting to Mastodon users who, up until this point, "knew" that the Fediverse consisted of nothing but vanilla Mastodon.

First they'll wonder how you've managed to pull off all that stuff on Mastodon. After all, it should be impossible.

Then you'll have to explain to them that you aren't on Mastodon. And the Fediverse is not only Mastodon.

It's actually hard for some to understand this. I remember a conversation with someone who simply couldn't wrap their mind around there being something in the Fediverse and connected to their Mastodon instance that isn't Mastodon itself. I had to tell them three times that Hubzilla is not a Mastodon instance, but a wholly separate project that has absolutely nothing to do with Mastodon whatsoever.

Once they've accepted and understood that, they'll start wondering what Friendica, Hubzilla or whatever you may be on even exists. Why was it made? Mastodon is perfectly good!

Yes, they'll assume that everything they discover in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon must have been made after Mastodon and practically bolted onto Mastodon. Just like they assume that Eugen Rochko has invented the Fediverse in 2022. Everything else must have been made after that point.

If you're on Friendica, you'll have to explain to them that Friendica is actually almost six years older than Mastodon. If you're on Hubzilla, you'll have to explain to them that Hubzilla is technically almost four years older than Mastodon. Both had been around and up and running when Mastodon was made.

Well, then they'll still assume that Friendica or Hubzilla has only just recently intruded into the Fediverse. Which is bad because the Fediverse is the Mastodon network. So bad that it should be undone right now. They want their Mastodon-only Fediverse back which they got to know and love over the last three months.

And then you'll have to explain to them that it was Mastodon that federated with Friendica and Hubzilla as early as when its first instance was launched.

And so forth.

That said, there are also those who are aware that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, but who still want everyone outside Mastodon to act like they are on Mastodon. You know, refrain from using text formatting. Refrain from quoting. Split posts of over 500 characters into threads. And so forth.

Why? Because they say so. Because 80% of the Fediverse are Mastodon. Mastodon is the majority. The majority gets to define how everyone shall behave. And Mastodon is the "de-facto standard" of the Fediverse, and everything else must be the same, and everyone who isn't on Mastodon must still pretend they are and not use any features not available on Mastodon so as not to disturb the Mastodon users.

Take some time and look around Mastodon. There are the staunch text formatting opponents. There are those who see quotes as a potential means of harassment and want there to be a Fediverse-wide anti-quote setting. And there are those who block everyone who writes posts over 500 characters upon first strike without even asking because they're so opposed to "long posts". Not even a "CW: long post" will appease them. You don't behave like one usually behaves on Mastodon, you're out.

No wonder the users of Mike's creations prefer to only stay around each other.

@Jupiter Rowland Ah, this is tough... I can't really argue against most of your points, and still it feels ... very very uncomfortable. Some thoughts on that:

First, yes, Mastodon dominating "ActivityPub" Fediverse by numbers is a problem. But ... the last couple of months, I've read way less posts by Mastodon users complaining about long posts coming from other platforms than posts by users of longform platforms complaining about, in example, Mastodon users using threads to compose "longer" posts. So it doesn't seem all a problem of complainers on Mastodon.

Second: Mastodon apparently started out to replace Twitter with something that technically is as close as possible but tries to avoid some things the Mastodon devs considered reason for some toxic behaviours on Twitter. I don't agree with some of these points, but I can very well understand why people cling to these and aren't likely or willing to go for compromises here. But if there are strong gaps between platforms - like one explicitely focussing on long, formatted posts and the other one on short text/plain messages and everyone of them is convinced _their_ idea and approach is the right one, how could interoperability even look like? How to find a common ground in such a situation? I have no idea. I've seen this quite often before, and everyone else who ever used e-mail has, too - when ending up in a fight between mutt advocates and Outlook users, the former claiming that HTML e-mail should be avoided at all costs, the latter complaining why on earth that crappy tool isn't even capable of displaying a part of text in bold red font. E-mail basically failed to bridge these gaps in a meaningful way, most of the "console-based" text/plain mailers still strip formatting (and subsequently throw the information contained in the formatting) away and even claim this is a good thing (which it isn't, in my opinion, but that's another story). The Fediverse, at the moment, feels just like this.

Third, which leaves me a bit angry at times: Reading posts by @Mike Macgirvin or @Dennis Schubert makes me really wonder here - especially this one overengineer.dev/blog/2019/01/… - where Dennis reported from the standardization group and the conscious decision to accept an inconsistent user experience. While I might not be entitled to this opinion as I haven't part of said crowd and only know second-hand information on it, this feels like inconsistency in interoperability isn't a nasty side-effect or an unwanted issue one needs to work around - it rather feels like a conscious decision to throw users under the bus. This is really really bad, and this shines through the ActivityPub Fediverse wherever you look. Basically, the current spec doesn't really feel like something built to foster an open, interoperable ecosystem for people - it rather feels like a foundation for a social network "market" where the strongest (by number) player and its implementation "wins", which now happens to be Mastodon. Every other platform, however, has its very own nasty specialties that work there and only there and are lost when looking at these posts and interactions from elsewhere (just looking at "Misskey Flavoured Markdown", pixelfed stories or the emoji reactions on Firefish that go far beyond "just" a like). While it's easy to understand why these are here, strictly speaking and from an end-user perspective, it's an utter and complete mess. It's a mess that I can send out responses, messages, interactions without having a clue what the "other" side will see or without even knowing they lose information down the line (with e-mail at least, most people knew about the fallacies of using HTML or winmail.dat in there).

Fourth, however, finally: I'm mostly using Friendica these days, for reasons. On Android, I use Friendica through a Mastodon client app and am able to do so only because Friendica implements the Mastodon client API. I've been on identi.ca in 2010 and Diaspora around 2011, 2012 (not sure). Mastodon popped up in 2016 and really took off, as far as I can remember, only in 2018. Safe to say: Other open federated platforms were around 4 .. 8 years, depending on how you count. How on earth can it be that still Mastodon is the most widespread platform? Either Mastodon _did_ something right in here, or every other platform (pessimistically speaking) just totally failed to manage that. I remember rather well discussing the need for a mobile app for Diaspora in 2012 or 2013 - it hasn't fully happened until now. Hate to say but maybe Mastodon has done more than any other of these platforms to make people aware that non-commercial social networks not backed by surveillance and venture capitalists are a thing that is even possible. And I still wonder what it would take for, say, Hubzilla, Friendica, ... to become a "better" alternative to Mastodon not just for tech-savvy people but also for end users only trained and willing to use a smartphone and a mobile app? Are we ready to get there? Who is, if so? (In example, through the Android user glass I see #Firefish + #Kaiteki quite a strong option and more than just a worthy alternative to Mastodon. If we manage to build more of these, if we manage to provide more "working" toolchains like these, more and more stable instances, ... , I am pretty sure the Mastodon "problem" will gradually become smaller over time...)

@Cătă Okay, I have a theory;

Generated object types (Article vs Note):

The blogging projects WriteFreely and Plume publish everything as Article objects.

Friendica publishes posts as Article objects if they have a title and as Note objects if they don't.

Hubzilla publishes everything as Note objects. This might have been decided in case Hubzilla's Articles app, basically its own built-in long-form blogging engine, should ever start federating its contents (it currently doesn't).

Acceptance of Article objects:

Mastodon handles Article objects by creating a link to them with the title written above. It was decided for Mastodon to act like this because Mastodon simply isn't compatible with blog posts. It couldn't handle text formatting before v4.0, it still can't handle picture embedding, nor can it handle more than four pictures. Besides, it'd irritate Mastodon users who aren't used to seeing stuff with over 500 characters in their timelines to find a full-sized blog post with several dozen times that length.

Friendica and Hubzilla can handle Article objects properly. They know all text formatting tricks in the book, they know image embedding, they know what a title is, all their available user interfaces fold long posts, and their users are used to posts of just about any length anyway.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ActivityPub #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #WriteFreely