I had no idea of the size and variety of the Fediverse! It has me feeling a bit overwhelmed. I’m enjoying BookWyrm very much; it’s the GoodReads/LibraryThing replacement I’ve been looking for for years.

I love the simplicity of Paper.wf for blogging. It’s truly elegant; I just click the link and start typing. But as far as I can tell there’s no way for others to find my blog or for me to find other blogs on the site. There’s no browse or follow feature. Nor can anyone comment on my posts! Those seem to me to be HUGE omissions.

Have you used any Fediverse blogging options? What are they like? And what other Fediverse services would you recommend? Other than Mastodon, I’ve already tried that (it didn’t excite me).

45 points

I never thought about this indirect upside of using fediverse apps. There is absolutely no incentive to publicity, who the heck is gonna pay me for promoting their book over my BookWyrm? They will make two cents from that.

So when someone publishes something over these underdog app it’s because they are genuinely interested. It’s really refreshing to be able to read sincere opinions from people tbh.

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25 points

I personally really enjoy Matrix but it’s not really a “fediverse” thing but it is a federated end to end encrypted messaging platform

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7 points

I personally set it up to use as a messaging aggregator. The ability to scroll past Whatsapp, Telegram, and Discord chats in the same app is hilariously cursed. There are bridges for basically everything. Though some are more complete than others.

Bridging ha also been very effective for showing people the merits of matrix. Opening schildi and scrolling for a bit has made people go “GIVE ME THAT”. Everyone is tired of having half a dozen chat apps just be able to talk to everyone they know.

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2 points

I’ve been seeing things about matrix more and more and it’s seeming like something interesting. I checked out their website and, like a lot of this stuff, it’s a bit unclear for me.

So you do as you do here and set up an account on an instance and then port everything through it? Does smashing all the different chats into one list have a way to differentiate them from one another? I’m just looking for more about it to help me understand it.

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2 points

I run a private personal instance. It is federated, meaning I can message anyone else on any other federated matrix node, and they can message me. But no-one can make an account on my instance without a single-use token from me, which I create using admin privileges.

The bridging is done using extensions to the matrix server, in the form of bridge bots. They will create puppet accounts for each bridged user, which they will then puppet to mirror that user for you. You also give this bot access to your external account, allowing them to “puppet” your account to the users you’re talking to. I run these on my own hardware, same as the actual matrix server, which they talk to.

You can set it up in a variety of ways, but in my case, I made it so that bridged users have their platform appended to their display names. A user from discord appears to me as “Username (Discord)”. That way, even if I have the same person on both Discord and Telegram, I can find and differentiate them in matrix.

If you want matrix for bridging, your own instance is likely the best bet. If for example, you create a user on matrix.org, I have no idea how I’d go about actually bridging any other accounts to that user, as I would not have access to managing the extensions available on the matrix.org instance.

Its possible to use the extensions of another matrix server, from another server, but this is not ideal (it comes with some access permission limitations). And finding a server with these extensions set up, and with an admin willing to let you access them, can be tricky.

That said, setting up your own matrix instance is not a complex as setting one up for the fediverse (ActivityPub). If you don’t care about federating, it’s even easier, and you can always enable federation later. You do need a domain, a permanent one. There is no way migrate the domain to another, once a matrix server is set up, at this time. The only way to do that is to literally delete everything and start over. A lesson I learned the hard way…

Feel free to dm me if you wanna know more :D

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23 points

Calckey has the superior feature set to Mastodon by far. When the project matures, it’ll be a force to reckon with.

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17 points
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10 points
*

The good news is that they announced that they’re changing the name soon; they have not said what it will be though.

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15 points

They’ve just announced it! The new name is Microsoft Excel 365.

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5 points
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0 points
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8 points

YES! It’s the most imposing name imaginable. And not at all intuitive.

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2 points

For the record, there’s nothing ominous about it. The lead developer goes by the nickname Calc. And it is forked from Misskey. As to why Misskey is called that, that’s because the lead developer liked a song with that name or something. It’s funny to me how these things can be so personal.

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13 points

How is the first I’ve heard of Clackey? Their website is the most inviting one I’ve seen with the Fediverse so far.

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4 points

The project is only like a month or two old, though it is a fork of a more well-established Fediverse platform (MissKey), so it’s still building up awareness of its existence.

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1 point

I really liked the misskey that it has custom emojis and a lot of Japanese users sadly i couldn’t figure out a good way to search tags or topics.

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5 points

Calckey certainly looks cool and feature rich, but every Calckey instance’s main page alone slows my computer down a lot and overwhelms my eyeballs lol. Don’t know what to do to make that better.

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5 points

Well, it is a new project, so it probably needs some optimization. As far as visual clutter goes though, I think Mastodon’s quad column layout is much worse about that.

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1 point

Yeah, I remember when it was first launched and it’s come a long way already.

AFAIK, the quad column layout in Mastodon is based on Tweetdeck. I don’t like it either, but some ex-Twitter users do, so that’s neither here nor there.

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4 points

so I signed up for a Calckey account (on calckey.world) but content is extremely limited compared to what I see on Mastodon?

for example: if I search for the hashtag #F1 on calckey the most recent post it finds is from a week ago

this whole federation thing is still a bit confusing at times about what gets federated and where, #F1 is pretty popular on Mastodon.social when I search

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4 points

The server list says that instance has 71 users, so that would probably be why. Posts only show up on an instance if something requests them (users following an account, searching a permalink, subscribing to a community, etc). There are solutions to this problem, such as relays in which servers agree to funnel a bunch of posts to each other periodically to share content. You should ask your instance admin if they have one set up, or if they’d be willing to if not. Otherwise, you should make an account on a larger instance, as those tend to be better federated.

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3 points

hmm, I guess the responsibility is partially on me to manually find/follow people from other instances to increase the cross-instance federation?

right now I am creating new accounts on all the different fediverse platforms so I can see which UI/UX I prefer, but I would like to eventually use only 1 or 2 accounts if possible

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2 points

do you happen to have a invitation key to the main server?

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1 point

I don’t have an account on the flagship instance.

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3 points

i ended up going with calckey.world, thanks though. it looks really good too

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2 points

How heavy is it to run? I am waiting for GoToSocial to mature slightly before jumping on to host my own instance, but the only reason I’m choosing it really is because of its lightweight-ness.

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2 points

I need to check it out again. I ended up making an account and never using it. Was just something about it I didn’t like, but at this point, I can’t remember what. Lol.

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2 points

I’ve always felt there are just a lot of features I’m not interested in, crammed into Calckey. I wonder if I can disable those as an admin.

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1 point

So the app that’s available is only for one instance? I’m a bit confused. Other than that though, I like the UI layout.

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23 points

I use GoToSocial with Sempahore for my microblogging (alternative to Mastodon).

Also Owncast as an alternative to Twitch.

And then I watch tilvids.com and other Peertube instances for videos.

And of course Lemmy. :-D

Oh and then there’s Funkwhale for audio.

It’s all in different states of usability, depending on the communities involved.

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13 points

I’m still waiting for a really good Peertube instance.

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13 points

Understandable. But it’s the chicken and egg problem. Creators don’t want to create content, because there’s no consumers. Consumers don’t want to sign up, because there’s no creators.

So are you the chicken or the egg? :-D

If you’re on one you don’t like anymore you could always change instances and watch videos there. If you’re worried about losing comments, well you can comment from other Fediverse servers such as Mastodon or GoToSocial and they show up on the page for the video. :-)

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7 points

You know what, Peertube needs the equivalent of an acquisition and the perfect candidates would be, and I’m on record saying this before, DailyMotion and Vimeo. They’ve already got content and by implementing activitiypub integration, they can grow their audiences and compete with YouTube for once and for all.

But yeah, for me. I haven’t even found a video to watch let alone comment. That said, my YouTube is generally me watching album reactions, music videos, Hot Ones, Adam Something and Beard Meats Food.

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5 points

I never understood this ‘chicken and egg’ analogy. Dinosaurs were laying eggs millions of years before they became chickens.

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3 points

What happens when instances die off, would their comments be deleted and you’d have threads with half conversations everywhere?

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0 points

Re PeerTube, as a creator, is it worth it to try an find an instance that suits my content right now?

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1 point

Do you have an app recommendation for Peertube on android or ios?

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1 point

fedilab and newpipe on android

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3 points

I would start using Owncast however, a) my current lease at my apartment prohibits me running a server (because internet is included in the rent), and b) I don’t have any kind of computer to run a server on for Owncast.

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5 points

Hetzner is $5 a month for a VPS that would run it. And what constitutes a “server”? A server is just another name for a computer.

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2 points

As someone who is already in debt because of a bad month with work, I’m not sure if I’m able to put out for a VPS. And as for the “server” thing, what I meant was I don’t have a computer I can dedicate to near 100% uptime for running the instances I’d want to.

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2 points

Do I need to create separate accounts on each of those or can I use this one? Can I log in to Funkwhale with this account or get Funkwhale posts here on kbin, or am I better creating a separate account on each “thing”? I’m still very new to this whole fediverse thing…

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7 points

One of the eventual goals of kbin is to be compatible with the rest of the fediverse and to “just work” with the rest of it. By way of comparison, Lemmy is basically just a federated Reddit, so, this is actually one of the reasons I chose to go with kbin.

From a practical standpoint, it’ll likely be a while before that becomes a reality, but I like that as a goal.

I’d say see if you can search for the instance in the search (once we’re 100% federated) and if it doesn’t work and it’s something you want to participate in, unfortunately, you’ll need to go there directly.

Also - Your kbin.social account can only log into kbin.social, you can’t use it to log into any other sites (this would include other kbin sites, lemmy sites, mastodon sites, etc…), what you can do is see content from those sites by subscribing to them or on the front page (non-subscribed)

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1 point

Ah right, I understand i think, and if I do that’s very cool! I will go searching for Funkwhale and see what happens…

So nothing from Funkwhale seems to be showing up, whether I search for funkwhale, funkwhale.audio, or a randsom instance by URL (music.ppom.me) or name (spotifox). But it is early days and federation has only just been turned on, so I’ll give it a while and try again. If it doesn;t work I’ll create a funkwhale account and enjoy things there for the time being at least

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22 points

Just a side note, ActivityPub protocol - the core engine that lets all of fediverse to talk to the rest of the fediverse is… 5 years old. Every feature imaginable is still to be implemented.

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7 points

its kinda like MQTT for humans rather than machines.

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1 point

Like what?

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2 points

MQTT, a protocol so machines can talk between each other. Mainly for IoT devices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQTT

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1 point

Thanks, that’s good to know! I’ve been wondering where I can make recommendations for features to be added. Although I’m sure the devs are working themselves to death right now.

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5 points

Some, but it’s open source and a lot of people have day jobs. I’ve wanted to contribute to some things that are annoying me, but after work, exercise, taking the dog out, and making dinner, I have like 2 hours of my time…. so it’s hard to rally.

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A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

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