Emergency account of a not-so-average OpenSim avatar. Mostly active on Hubzilla.
Has been possible on Friendica for 16 years now. Even more possible on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. And all still part of the Fediverse (unless you count a Hubzilla or (streams) channel with ActivityPub off that only runs on its native protocol as not part of the Fediverse).
Is Hubzilla too overkill? Or haven't you heard of it yet, or don't you know what it's capable of? Or do you absolutely need something that looks and feels like Mastodon?
Like, you can use Hubzilla for Twitter/Mastodon-style microblogging. And/or full-blown, fully-featured, Wordpress-level macroblogging with all bells and whistles and practically unlimited characters and unlimited images and unlimited poll options, literally within the same feed/timeline/stream. And add one or several webpages. And even tie the dynamic contents from your channel into your webpages.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Want a federated, optionally private, moderated group? Make a channel for one on your existing account. Want a CalDAV server? You have one built into any of your channels. Want a CardDAV server? You can have that, too. And so on.
nodeBB literally is forum software in the Fediverse. I don't know if it can do strictly linear like phpBB, though.
Or you create a channel on Hubzilla. You can configure it for your stream to be strictly linear as opposed to be tree-style. And then you can join Lemmy communities, /kbin or Mbin magazines, PieFed communities, nodeBB subforums, Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups, Forte groups, you name them, and they're all strictly linear from your POV. It's just that you, on Hubzilla, will always only directly reply to the start post (as opposed to the most recent comment) when the thread itself at its source is actually tree-style.
This is technologically impossible to implement. And believe me, I've discussed this very same topic often enough.
Thing is, if you want to use a Fediverse server, any Fediverse server running any Fediverse software, if you want to use it like a local user with a local account, then you will inevitably require an account on that server, full stop.
Whatever you do on that server, it will inevitably have to store it in its local database. It can't store that in the database of another server. So it will have to create database cells that are attributed to your Fediverse identity. But it can only attribute them to an identity on itself, not to an identity on another server.
You can't log onto discuss.aethelgard.space, go over to hub.hubzilla.hu to try Hubzilla as a user, be automatically logged in as a user, do all kinds of stuff there, and then hub.hubzilla.hu stores all your content, all your settings etc. etc. in the remote database of discuss.aethelgard.space. Servers don't work that way. Especially if they're so incompatible.
Like, where in its database is a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space supposed to store the contents of your Hubzilla profile, considering Hubzilla has dozens of dedicated profile text fields, and Lemmy has literally none?
Where does a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space have the appropriate database fields for other Hubzilla-specific content and settings?
Where does a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space have the appropriate database fields for the various configuration options that Hubzilla offers for each contact, seeing as Lemmy doesn't even know the concept of contacts in the first place, save for which communities you're a member of?
If you want to do stuff as a local user on hub.hubzilla.hu, hub.hubzilla.hu must store your stuff locally. And attribute it to a local identity, like, on the same server. No, it can't attribute your stuff to your discuss.aethelgard.space account.
Trust me, I know a thing or two about running Fediverse servers. I used to self-host a few private servers on a machine at home long before even Mastodon became so hugely popular, long before Reddit was so enshittified that people escaped to Lemmy. No Docker, no YunoHost, straight on the Debian GNU/Linux system, all the way to manually setting up and configuring SQL databases.
If you want to be able to use any Fediverse server running any Fediverse software, you've got the following options:
One central login server for the whole Fediverse.
Like, go to fediverse.com, log in on fediverse.com and have full access to thousands upon thousands of Fediverse servers running 100++ different server applications.
Yeah. And then that server shuts down because whichever hobbyist runs it has no time for it anymore. Or Elon Musk or Sam Altman or Larry Ellison or whoever comes and buys it out. Or it's running in the USA, and the FBI seizes it. With the one and only login server gone, the Fediverse as a whole is dead.
Mike Macgirvin, the most creative Fediverse developer ever (this guy created three Fediverse protocols and over a dozen Fediverse applications in over 16 years, four of which still exist, two of which he still maintains), hasn't invented nomadic identity in 2011 without a reason. That reason is servers shutting down with no warning, and people losing everything, because their home server was a single point of failure. Reducing the Fediverse to exactly one login server gives the whole Fediverse a single point of failure and goes into the exact opposite direction of nomadic identity.
You create one account, you create it literally everywhere.
Go anywhere in the Fediverse, and your login credentials work all the same everywhere, regardless of where you are.
Yeah. That's like 30,000+ individual servers. Maybe minus servers with closed login if you don't want to be able to use these. Also, any Fediverse server that's being spun up for the first time is public with open registration by default. Which means that anyone in the Fediverse must be able to use it. Which means that when it spins up, it'll have to create one account for each of the 10,000,000++ Fediverse users. Like, I set up my own little Forte server, I start it for the first time, and a few freaking days of automatic account creation later, that thing has over four times more registered users than mastodon.social. Just in case one of them may come over to try Forte. Because you never know.
But now you'll say, "I don't want to use 30,000 servers! I only want to use a few!" Believe me, I do have heard that before.
Yeah. And how, pray tell, are these servers supposed to know in advance that you want to use them so they can create an account for you?
Each server can look into the future and knows whether and when you'll want to use it. Only those servers that you'll want to use will have an account for you.
Unrealistic for hopefully blatantly obvious reasons. If they aren't obvious: How is a Web server supposed to see the future, all the way to your own spontaneous decisions?
When you arrive on a Fediverse server while logged in on discuss.aethelgard.space, there's automatically an account created for you with the same login credentials as on discuss.aethelgard.space, and you're automatically logged in.
I call it "drive-by account creation".
Not only isn't that realistically possible (if anything, the other server will only be able to pull the password hash from discuss.aethelgard.space and not the password itself), but it'd open its own can of worms. For example, admins who have configured their servers so that new accounts must be manually approved and activated by the admin are probably happy whenever someone creates a new account just by coming by while logged in elsewhere, and it's activated immediately, and they've got no control over it.
Now I'm wondering. Let's assume a Hubzilla forum channel that's configured like this:
- Default profile is kept away from directories and follow lists
- Custom channel role for fine-grained permission control
- Opt-out of search indexing is activated
- Can see my channel stream and my posts set to Accepted connections
- Can send me the posts from their channel set to Accepted connections
- Can see my default profile set to Accepted connections
- Can see my connections set to Accepted connections
- Can see my file and image folders set to Accepted connections
- Can upload/modify my file and image folders
- Can see the web pages of my channel set to Accepted connections
- Can see my wiki pages set to Accepted connections
- Can create/edit web pages in my channel set to Only those who you explicitly allow (so the admin doesn't necessarily have to do it all themselves)
- Can edit my wiki pages set to Only those who you explicitly allow (so the admin doesn't necessarily have to do it all themselves)
- Can publish posts on my channel page (‘wall’) set to Accepted connections
- Can send me direct messages set to Everyone on Hubzilla
- Can like/dislike profiles and profile stuff set to Only me
- Can chat with me doesn't matter because the Chat app isn't installed
- Can quote/mirror my public posts in other channels set to Only me
- Can administer my channel set to Only those who you explicitly allow (to be able to have more than one admin)
- "Member" contact role adds nothing to what's inherited from the channel role
- "Moderator" contact role adds Can administer my channel
- "Editor" contact role is the "Member" contact role plus Can create/edit web pages in my channel and Can edit my wiki pages
- "Moderator/Editor" contact role is the "Moderator" contact role plus Can create/edit web pages in my channel and Can edit my wiki pages
- ActivityPub and Diaspora apps are left uninstalled, no other connectivity than via Zot6 available
- Superblock is installed for much more effective moderation
- Privacy groups (essentially Mastodon lists on Tony Montana amounts of coke) are installed so that the admin can directly address to a subgroup of forum users instead of only always all of them
- There's one privacy group on the forum channel that contains all forum members; the forum channel admin(s) post(s) to that privacy group by default and never in public
- Additional encryption is activated for those who want to send really private DMs, and who don't even trust the hub admin who has direct access to the SQL database
Consequence:
- With no additional protocols activated, only Hubzilla and (streams) users can join the forum; users on Mastodon, Lemmy, PieFed, Pleroma etc. can't find it or interact with it in any way
- ActivityPub-based Fediverse server apps with their total lack of understanding of Hubzilla's permission can't meddle with them
- The forum channel is neither listed in any directory nor on anyone's list of connections, and search engines like Google don't crawl and index it either; the only way to know about it is from advertising or hearsay
- Those who do find the forum channel can't see or do jack on it unless they're members; all they can do is send DMs to the forum channel unless they've been Superblocked
- The forum channel may have its own webpage(s) and/or its own wiki(s), but only an inner circle of a select few forum members is allowed to edit them
- Nobody can use the forum channel as a channel source, i.e. automatically repost any content from the forum channel (yes, this is a thing on Hubzilla and its descendants)
- Direct messages are actually private messages; they're made private not only by whom they're sent to, but also by who is permitted to see them; with ActivityPub disabled, they can only go to servers that know, understand and heed this permission; in addition, there's encryption available
- Even messages from the channel admin(s) are restricted and not public; only forum members get to see them and are permitted to see them; they don't show up on the pubstream of someone's private single-user hub; they can't be shared/quoted; they can't be repeated/boosted
Would you still insist that with all these efforts taken, this forum channel is no more private than a Lemmy community?
Also, with ActivityPub off, would you consider this forum channel as being in the Fediverse, what with the typical Fediverse definition being "it can connect to Mastodon"?
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
Friendica federates with everything and then some.
Friendica federates with everything that uses the ActivityPub protocol. It also federates with everything that uses or can use the diaspora* protocol (diaspora* itself, Hubzilla with ActivityPub turned off, theoretically also Socialhome although ActivityPub takes precedence there). Friendica is the only Fediverse software that can directly connect to a Bluesky account and therefore connect to Bluesky without needing a bridge. Friendica can connect to some commercial, centralised silos such as Tumblr; it technically still has the capability to connect to Twitter. Friendica can natively cross-post to a WordPress or WordPress-compatible blog. Friendica can "federate" via e-mail. Friendica can subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds.
But what Friendica is not is an add-on for Mastodon. It is not built against Mastodon. One reason for that is also a reason why its UI looks so dated: Friendica was launched in 2010. It's over five years older than Mastodon. In terms of federation, this means that Friendica is not optimised for federation with Mastodon while sacrificing features in federation with other applications or sacrificing features of its own if they stand in Mastodon's way.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
It isn't even only that.
It's people being told that the Fediverse equals Mastodon for simplicity reasons. Because that's easier to understand than the Fediverse being a network of over 100 different apps with hundreds or thousands of servers each.
And it's people being told that the Fediverse equals Mastodon because whoever tells them that believes it themself.
Most Mastodon onboarding is done by people who think that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. At least half of them will spontaneously shit brix once they come across a message from e.g. Friendica or Hubzilla for the first time.
- one of the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse
- private forums that are actually private, protected by the permissions system
- any channel, including forum channels, can hide from directories
- Hubzilla forum channels can be moderated/administered by members anywhere on Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte
- based on the Zot6 protocol; ActivityPub is optional, i.e. you have to activate it for the forum channel manually, and you can "raise the drawbridge" by turning it off again
The only downsides are a somewhat steep learning curve and that Hubzilla can only be used through its Web interface and not through a native phone app.
It's just that hardly anyone knows that PWAs exist, much less how to "install" them.
That, and most phone users prefer native mobile app UIs to Web UIs that don't look like native apps.
Then again, I guess it's theoretically possible to build a Hubzilla theme that does look like an iOS app.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
People who have only ever seen Mastodon tend to believe that Mastodon is the be-all, end-all in terms of Fediverse features. They think that Mastodon has a perfect, bee's knees implementation of threaded conversations.
They should daily-drive Friendica or even Hubzilla instead of Mastodon for at least half a year and use it for everything they're using Mastodon for right now. It'll be eye-opening.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
On the one hand, Mastodon will kill the Fediverse.
On the other hand, for the majority of Mastodon users, Mastodon is the Fediverse. (Like, they literally don't know that Mastodon is connected to something, anything, that isn't Mastodon. They think that Mastodon is its own enclosed network.)
The irony.
PeerTube is YouTube. It's a general-purpose video streaming application.
Loops is TikTok. It's for short vertical videos and for people with the attention span of a squirrel who don't know that you can rotate phones sideways, and who are constantly looking for the next dopamine kick. Also, in terms of software maturity in general and Fediverse software maturity in particular, Loops is nowhere near PeerTube.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
No, that's because next to nobody in Germany is on 𝕏. Unless they're celebrities, politicians, influencers or fame whores.
Germany's 𝕏 is TikTok for Zoomers, Instagram for Millennials and Facebook for everyone who's older.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
I want Mastodon threads in Lemmy.
Won't come.
Mastodon has no support for enclosed threaded conversations whatsoever. At all. Why not? Because Twitter has never had any either. That's not how microblogging works. And Mastodon tries hard to be minimalist, purist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-like microblogging, just with a few more characters.
Mastodon barely manages to tie its threads together with mentions. But it neither has nor supports nor even only understands the one-post-multiple-comments conversation model.
You even have to jump through hoops both on Mastodon's Web UI and in every single last Mastodon app to see a whole thread. Like, actually the whole thread and not just the branch with the "toot" that you were just looking at.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
The fediverse is not even a teenager
The Fediverse is literally 18 years old this year.
Invented by
Eugen RochkoEvan Prodromou. By launchingMastodonStatusNet. In202220162008.Interconnectivity between different software is 16 years old as of last month. Established when Mistpark, now known as Friendica, came out in May, 2010, with support for StatusNet's OStatus protocol already built-in.
Oh, and the term "Fediverse" is from
202220162012. Of course, if you're hosting your own hub, you aren't bound to the vanilla features and the one standard theme or whatever some hub admin has installed. Hubzilla is not only modular, it's also extensible by simply adding a third-party git repository with apps and/or themes to your hub installation.
I think the currently best third-party theme bundle is the Utsukta Themes.
If you want Instagram users to move, there's no real alternative to Pixelfed. You can literally move an entire account full of images and posts over from Instagram to Pixelfed.
If, however, you're seriously eyeing Bonfire, check Hubzilla. Bonfire promises lots of stuff. Hubzilla offers more than what Bonfire even only promises and then some. Also, while Bonfire is still in fairly early development, Hubzilla is tried-and-true, stable software that has been in development since 2012, for even longer than Mastodon. And Hubzilla only needs a LAMP stack. Basically, Bonfire is Hubzilla from Wish.com at best. And AFAIK, Hubzilla even needs fewer server resources per user than Friendica.
Downsides: There's no phone app (but then, there's none for Bonfire either). You've got no other choice but to use the Web interface; at least Hubzilla can be installed on phones as a Progressive Web App. On top of that, especially the default theme is not really user-friendly and kind of stuck in the early 2010s, and for alternative themes, you need to include third-party repositories into your installation. Posting images isn't as straight-forward as on typical social media; it's more like a blog in the sense of having to upload image files before you can use them. And if you want alt-texts, you have to learn to get your hands dirty on BBcode.
Any reason why "Fediverse" means "Mastodon with some extras bolted on, but still largely only a Twitter clone" here?
Any reason why someone whom I remember as a Hubzilla veteran completely denies the existence of Hubzilla and its descendants and mostly even disregards Friendica?
At least on Hubzilla (which I know from personal experience because it's my primary daily driver, believe it or not), these UX sins are partially an integral part of their concept and partly solved by their concept.
Sin #2: I, for one, do not want any algorithm of sorts to flush stuff onto my stream that I did not explicitly subscribe to. I only want to read what I want to read. I'm already busy curating, filtering and blocking stuff from those who decided to follow me, and whom I have to follow back. Also, getting rid of uninteresting cruft outside the scope of my channel coming from those whom I do give permission to send me their posts. I don't also want to go and filter the stuff that others on my hub post or have subscribed to, especially because I can't filter it by account/channel.
Besides, I only have one feed anyway. Public Hubzilla hubs do not have a pubstream at all, full stop.
That is, I don't use my stream anyway. I vastly prefer the unread messages counter.
(Then again, Hubzilla doesn't count non-technical folks who just came from the Twitter iPhone app as part of its target audience.)
Sin #4: On Hubzilla, private messages are private. Hubzilla has a thing called permissions.
Say, I send Alice a DM. I, as the starter of the conversation, only grant Alice and myself permission to view my start post as well as any comment.
Alice mentions Bob to pull him into the conversation. But Bob won't see shit because Bob isn't permitted to see shit.
I mention Bob to pull him into the conversation. But Bob won't see shit because Bob still isn't permitted to see shit. And even I, as the conversation starter and as the owner of the whole conversation, cannot change the permissions of anything in it after the fact.
Solved since 2012.
Sin #5: Hubzilla has full support for conversations as enclosed objects.
Like, I can use Hubzilla's search to manually import some Mastodon toot from somewhere in the middle of a thread. Then Hubzilla will go and reel in the whole branch of the thread all the way back to the actual start post. And the replies to that toot. And eventually the other branches as well.
Someone replies anywhere in the conversation, and I will receive that reply.
The only things that could meddle with this are filters on my side, Superblock on my side or someone else having blocked me. Then I won't get their messages, and I won't get any follow-ups either.
This also means that, taking the same toot as an example, if someone up that branch in the conversation has fully blocked me, I can't pull in their message. I can't pull in any follow-ups either, nor can I pull in any follow-ups of these follow-ups, so I can't pull in that particular toot either.
If something has a parent, and Hubzilla can't get the parent, then Hubzilla refuses to get that something as well.
AFAIK, even Friendica has always been behaving like this. Only that Friendica is the only one in the family that hasn't adopted FEP-171b "Conversation Containers" yet. It was invented on (streams), backported to Hubzilla and inherited by Forte.
Anyway, solved since at least 2012, if not 2010.
Sin #6: The whole family has very powerful search, including full-text search, since Mistpark's inception 16 years ago. It's part of their philosophy and culture.
Also part of the philosophy and culture on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: You don't want your stuff to be discoverable? Then don't make it public in the first place. Likewise with quote-posts: You don't want anyone to quote-post your stuff? Then don't make it public. Public equals fair game. Deal with it, or restrict the permissions on it.
This, again, is where permissions come into play.
Solved since at least 2012.
Sin #7: This, again, implies that everyone in the Fediverse wants content to be sent to them on a silver platter while, at the same time, not having access to groups in some way or another.
I can understand that Mastodon users want that because the concept of curating their timeline is alien to them. After all, they barely have the means to do so. And in fact, many Mastodon users randomly follow thousands of Fediverse actors to get the same deluge of uninteresting stuff in their timeline that they're used to from Twitter, hoping that something interesting pops up in-between. At the same time, the uninteresting stuff drowns the interesting stuff because nobody on Mastodon will ever scroll through all their unread content.
Also, sadly, this shows that the lack of groups is the default in the Fediverse because Mastodon neither has groups of its own nor really supports groups in any way.
I dare say that (streams) could be the champion of content discovery, all without shoving unwanted content down users' throats. Not only does it have full support for groups, but it has a Facebook-style directory that lists actors from all across the Fediverse as far as it's aware of them. And I myself am surprised about just how many of them a fairly young (streams) server with about a dozen channels can know.
You can even filter for groups, and then you get them all: Lemmy communities, /kbin and Mbin magazines, PieFed communities, Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums with and without ActivityPub, (streams) groups with and without ActivityPub, Forte groups if there were any, nodeBB subforums, Flipboard magazines, you name it, it's all there. Join with 1 click, adjust the contact settings if you wish, there you go.
Essentially, what Friendica needs a centralised website for, (streams) has built into each server, reachable from each channel. On 'roids.
If that's too difficult for you, then Facebook is too difficult for you.
Solved, too, unless the declared goal is for literally everything in the Fediverse to become a better Twitter. Including the stuff that's already better than Twitter because its concept and philosophy is to not be like Twitter at all.
If it doesn't look and smell and feel like a tweet, it's considered "most certainly AI slop" nowadays.
Welcome to 2026.
Trouble is, first came Mastodon, then came Mastodon's culture, then came Lemmy.
Mastodon is 60+% of the Fediverse, mastodon.social alone is 20+% of the Fediverse.
Except for Redditors who have escaped to Lemmy and those Japanese and Koreans who discovered Misskey first, literally every single last Fediverse newbie thinks that the Fediverse equals Mastodon. More than half of them still believe that. As in, they don't even understand that their content may end up someplace that isn't Mastodon or that isn't a Twitter clone.