What are the best non-Mastodon Activity Pub platforms, and why?
(boosts welcome)
I'm especially interested in hearing arguments for #ActivityPub 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.
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.
Honestly, WriteFreely's philosophy writeup (paired with a platform that actually aligns with it) is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.
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.
That's kinda what I was alluding to, yes.
@dynamic have you tried Firefish or Misskey?
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:
What do you like about Hubzilla?
@dynamic
Have you looked into Bonfire?
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.
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.
I have tried the one they link to from their official site. It doesn't seem much better.
@dynamic how about fork version of misskey Cherrypick?
https://github.com/kokonect-link/cherrypick
or I really liked this client, Areionskey
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.
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.
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 https://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
https://tomcasavant.glitch.me) to host it then you have a free single user activitypub instance
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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
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.
@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.