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dynamic

What are the best non-Mastodon Activity Pub platforms, and why?

(boosts welcome)

I'm especially interested in hearing arguments for platforms that are specifically designed to cultivate particular behavior and interaction patterns in users.

Not a lot of responses to my question about the best non-Mastodon ActivityPub platforms.

To elaborate a bit, I'm specifically interested in information about the best-designed alternatives to Mastodon.

Mastodon, being Twitter-like, was always rather clunky, but I'm not getting good vibes from the newest features, and I'm wondering if there are better ActivityPub platforms that are developed with a coherent design philosophy.

I'm not even particularly concerned with *what* the design philosophy is, as much as that there be one. That is, I'd like to be able to read a set of philosophical guiding principles and have a reasonable level of confidence that the developers will try to stick with those, and not (say) start making changes just because they happened to be on the wish list of some of the users.

@dynamic

WriteFreely has a straight forward design philosophy, but I don't know that there's anything particularly interesting about the social dynamics of a blog.

writefreely.org/

WriteFreelyWriteFreelyMinimalist, federated, self-hosted blogging platform.

@buermann

Honestly, WriteFreely's philosophy writeup (paired with a platform that actually aligns with it) is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.

@buermann

WriteFreely doesn't happen to be what I'd look for in a blog platform --- I'd prefer something more like Livejournal / Dreamwidth where the blogger has the option to invite comments or not and then total control over moderation --- but the idea of philosophical alignment with interface design is a spot-on example of coherent design philosophy that I'm talking about.

@dynamic@social.coop fairly confident that no current fediverse microblogging platforms have published a design philosophy document

@dynamic This is exactly what happened to Mastodon, alas.

@downey

That's kinda what I was alluding to, yes.

@dynamic have you tried Firefish or Misskey?

@alx

I haven't. What can you tell me about them?

@dynamic I can't tell you more than they are alternative software to Mastodon, I think the best is to look at their websites:

joinfirefish.org/

misskey-hub.net/en/

FirefishFirefishA fun, new, open way to experience social media
There is a ton with broader features, but design isn't one of them. I'm using #Hubzilla AP is an addon here. Good enough for me, and i can touch CSS to design my own page.
hub.kliklak.net96kps biochips

@jrp

What do you like about Hubzilla?

@dynamic Nomadic identity, and most of everything else. I do miss some of Mastodon, but you can't have it all.

@katanova

I have. Have you tried it? What do you think of it?

@dynamic
I really like how it's built from the ground-up for effective moderation and enabling members and admins of instances to better control how posts get distributed.

@katanova

I appreciate that about Bonfire as well. I'm a little concerned that they might have gotten too feature-happy, though, especially given that their current test sites are extremely sluggish, even when not federated with other sites.

It is good that they are doing a feature freeze to work on performance, but we'll just have to wait and see whether they've overextended themselves by adding features to try to please everyone.

@dynamic The way they're implementing features is as plugins.

From what I understand, the feature freeze was to refocus on refining the core functionality, and then build functions like groups as plugins on top of the core functionality.

This kind of modular development is something that I really like in software, to be able to have just the features that are desired.

@dynamic The version that we tried out was a version behind, and I believe they've made progress on how responsive it is, although I haven't tried out the bonfire official test instance yet.

@katanova

I have tried the one they link to from their official site. It doesn't seem much better.

@alternative

What do you like about them?

@dynamic firstable i heard that cherrypick is more easy to manage than original misskey

@dynamic Arieonskey is my just personal pick lol

It's ui/ux design is so coool!

Actually Akkoma could be another good client

@dynamic Your comments regarding Mastodon seem to assume that there is only one Mastodon experience, when there are many different mobile, desktop, and web apps.

@dynamic I would say @bonfire is the most interesting one in this regard.

Their website does a good job of explaining the what and why.
They also have a blog and FAQ page which highlights their philosophy pretty well.

bonfirenetworks.org/

bonfirenetworks.orgBonfireA federated social network for individuals and communities to design, operate and control their own digital lives.

@bonfire @zabbeer

Has bonfire improved the slow loading issues yet? I tried it a couple months ago and the lag was really bad : \

@dynamic @bonfire @zabbeer
I know they have worked on the problem and it seems quicker to me now. Try again and let us know if you see improvements.

@dynamic I've tried Firefish and have been unconvinced but it will probably appeal to many people as it provides quote posts and reactions, as well as rich text markup.

On my side, I'm eagerly waiting for @bonfire to develop, though I did not try it yet.

@tfardet

If you have more to say about Firefish and your reasons for being unconvinced, I'd love to hear about it!

@dynamic there are great things about Firefish: they make migrating more complete and useful, with posts and cross-platform migration, which is amazing.
But the interface feels very in-your-face and messy to me (though I'm sure other people will like it a lot), with in-browser windows, etc.
Plus, it feelt like a very gamified experience, with reactions and boosts being very prominently displayed.
I'm glad a project beside Mastodon is getting traction, it's just not what I'm looking for.

@tfardet

Thanks. These kinds of specifics are exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for in this thread.

@dynamic i don't know about best, but I've been enjoying github.com/ckolderup/postmarks, which is a lightweight link bookmarking activitypub site. It's very easy to setup.

If you use glitch.com (or similar service, like I do here
tomcasavant.glitch.me) to host it then you have a free single user activitypub instance

a single-user bookmarking website designed to live on the Fediverse - ckolderup/postmarks
GitHubGitHub - ckolderup/postmarks: a single-user bookmarking website designed to live on the Fediversea single-user bookmarking website designed to live on the Fediverse - ckolderup/postmarks
@dynamic Pleroma: better performance and more features! :blobcatthumbsup:

As for encouraging better behaviour... not sure there's good technical solutions to social problems.

My biggest problem with fedi is the block culture. Perhaps nostr offers a solution to that...

@taylan

Thanks.

I think I should clarify that when I say I'm interested in "platforms that are specifically designed to cultivate particular behavior and interaction patterns in users," I don't necessarily mean "better" behavior.

@taylan

There are a number of different social media where the interface really does shape styles of engagement. For example, StackExchange's upvoting system and tiered permissions structure, combined with clearly laid out posting guidelines, produces a specific type of engagement between users. Opinions may differ in how good or bad it is, but the interface design does shape user behavior, and this is framework was intentionally created to promote certain forms of technical support.

@taylan

Reddit has an entirely different design philosophy, and is designed for a different purpose. Facebook has evolved into a framework to encourage users to engage interpersonally, whereas Twitter's interface encourages people to engage with content instead.

These are the kinds of differences I'm trying to probe, and I want to know about any cases of ActivityPub platforms that have put active thought into what kind of behavior their design choices will promote.

@taylan @dynamic

push a new norm. the often blocked servers should stop tolerating asshole users who tag people with shit they probably or definitely don't want, and the other servers should not block servers just for hosting accounts that post stuff they don't like as long as they don't bother others with it.

@wjmaggos @dynamic

The problem goes deeper than that IMO. It's what some people consider to be "intolerably offensive" in the first place. I'm on a single-user instance, and am on some supposedly "minimal" block-lists because I support feminists and gay rights activists whom your average white male liberal fedi admin finds intolerably offensive for not agreeing with his worldviews.

Apparently, a basic feminist idea like "a woman is any human being with a female reproductive system, no stereotypes attached; a man is any human being with a male reproductive system, no stereotypes attached" makes me as bad as neo-nazis and racist 4chan trolls, because it contradicts the religious slogan "transwomen are women, transmen are men, non-binary people are valid."

@taylan @dynamic

right. I'm asking that this changes. That we compromise.

@dynamic Firefish. Longer posts, post reactions beyond just stars, quotes, features that allow people to create emoji art (search MFM or MFMArt). Lots more. Feels quite different.

Akkoma feels somewhere between Firefish and Mastodon.

Pixelfed photo-based, more like Instagram. Great way to publish your photos.

Peertube for videos - can follow video creators.

Bookwyrm for book reviews and discovery.

Lemmy / Kbin for reddit-type replacement.

All allow one to follow / comment from Mastodon etc

@picard

Ooh... thanks! Do you know whether Firefish or Akkoma have indicated specific design philosophies?

@dynamic Firefish is quite different from Mastodon. Very flexible interface, lots of customisation, quotes. Local-only features (can make posts that do not federate beyond the instance, local groups) to help build a feeling of community on an instance. Keyword timelines called antennas - set up a search filter for multiple keywords, it will display in its own timeline (eg a timeline for all the games you're into or whatever). And text formatting support. Much less minimal UI than Mastodon.

@dynamic Akkoma I'm not hugely familiar with, only used a little, but shares some macro-blogging features with Firefish (longer posts, quotes, emoji reactions), but less 'busy' in UI - hence I described it as somewhere between the two.

@picard @dynamic

When I tried I couldn't log into Lemmy from my Mastodon account, how does it work?

@selzero @picard @dynamic you can not log in with a different account. You can follow accounts, but to login, you need a separate account on each site

@stefanie @selzero @dynamic Mastodon sees Lemmy communities (like subreddits) as accounts. You can follow a community, posts appear in your timeline. Can reply from Mastodon. For example, 'stop_russia at lemmy.blahaj.zone' or 'linux_gaming at lemmy.ml' .

Can create an account on a Lemmy server too, join communities that way. You do not need an account to participate on federated instances; from server A can join communities on server B, reply etc. All just appear in your subscribed communities.

@picard @stefanie @dynamic

Ok so, if you have a second help me out? If there is a retro game Lemmy page, how would I go about actually doing that, what do I click?

@selzero @picard @dynamic I don't know Lemmy, but it should work like with PeerTube. You take the channel or account URL you want to follow. Then you put it in the search field on mastodon. It will show up as an account with a follow button.