Bigue Nique @biguenique@masse.québec.tk

🟣🔵🔴⚪🔵🟡🔵🟣⚪

This is your friendly reminder that contrary to the hype and marketing hullabaloo going around right now but #Mastodon is not the #fediverse! The “Mastodon Network” that Eugen Rochko claims to have created is the very same #federation that has existed for well over 10 years. The #fediverse is a huge tapestry of thousands of servers and volunteers, and dozens if not hundreds of developers and even more volunteers, who have made this space what you see today.

There is no “Mastodon Network”. It’s simply the #fediverse. That’s like Facebook saying they are the Internet. We all know what an absurd claim that would be. Facebook is an application accessible over the Internet that provides a walled-garden to its users. Well, Mastodon is just one of many applications accessible over the Internet that provides access to the #fediverse (which is not a walled-garden).

So what is the fediverse? Here’s my definition. The “Fediverse” can be thought of as a giant park that is not owned by any one person, company, group, government, or organization. A park where people gather to meet, explore, collaborate, discuss, watch videos, listen to music, chat, and do a whole lot more. A park that you can only get to by using a piece of software that lets you inside. Mastodon is just one (and currently the most popular) type of that software.

Mastodon is a door-way into the park for anybody that uses it. Same for Pleroma, Friendica, Misskey, PeerTube, Pixelfed, BookWyrm, and others.

Since journalists aren’t writing any articles about the real #fediverse, and since it (and the wonderful projects that are at its center) aren’t getting the recognition they so very much deserve, allow me to introduce you to them instead.

Because when you either accidentally or intentionally or through ignorance or apathy spread the misinformation that Mastodon=Fediverse, you erode the very foundation of what has drawn you (and the rest of us) here in the first place.

You are marginalizing and gaslighting great projects and their users.

Note: The following is not intended to be a history of the fediverse. The following is my opinion, understanding, and interpretation. If I’ve gotten something wrong, let me know. But take the following as opinion and interpretation, not fact.

👉 Akkoma — #Akkoma is a hard fork of Pleroma that is heavily centered on user expression.

👉 BookWyrm — #BookWyrm is a federated version of GoodReads. A federated instance by book lovers and for book lovers.

👉 Castopod — Next generation podcasting software #Castopod allows podcasters of all sizes to interact with audiences in the fediverse. Your podcast becomes a social network: your episodes can be shared, liked and commented on without depending on anyone. Podcasts can be monetized or not, you have rich audience metrics and analytics, and series can be deployed to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and other podcast services.

👉 Diaspora — One of the oldest federated instance software. Pioneered the concept of “circles” and “aspects” where users could sort their followers into logical groups and control who sees what.

👉 Friendica — The one app that lets anyone or any organization literally create their own private #facebook on the fediverse and make it accessible and federated with the rest of the World. It also has very modest hosting requirements making it accessible to more people to host without requiring a VPS or complex server setups.

👉 Funkwhale — #Funkwhale is a federated version of Soundcloud or Bandcamp for sharing your music library with other Funkwhale users and the Federation.

👉 GnuSocial — One of the original fediverse implementations of a Twitter-like service. One of the oldest projects around (ca. 2008). Far more simpler hosting requirements than other fediverse software. (PHP+MySQL)

👉 Hubzilla — The successor to Friendica, #Hubzilla took what was great about Friendica and made it all the better.

👉 Lemmy — #Lemmy is a federated version of Reddit (or Digg or HackerNews). It’s a federated link-aggregator. Individuals can stand up their own servers or communities of topics.

👉 Mastodon — #Mastodon came on the scene in 2016 and promised a more user-friendly experience. Coupled with some fortunate timing and early publicity it quickly became the darling of the fediverse. It’s certainly the software with the most amount of users. Marketing tends to do that to brands.

👉 Misskey — Several years before Mastodon there was #Misskey. A microblogging platform what provided features not seen in other projects and allows users to customize many aspects of their feed and timeline. Misskey still has a very passionate userbase and is still being developed.

👉 Mobilizon — A federated alternative to Facebook Events. #Mobilizon allows activist groups and organizations of all sizes to stand up a service for organizing events and meetups right here on the Federation.

👉 Peertube — Calling #PeerTube a “YouTube competitor” doesn’t do it justice. PeerTube is so much more than a competitor to YouTube. In a very real sense it’s a YouTube killer, if only more people knew about it and more people used it. PeerTube lets anybody stand up a service and then instantenously their published videos become accessible to the entire Federation (and vice versa).

👉 Pixelfed — #Pixelfed is the federation’s answer to Instagram. By standing up a public or private Pixelfed server you enable yourself (or the public) to post rich multimedia content (photos and videos), “stories”, and more that instantly are accessible to the rest of the federation.

👉 Pleroma — #Pleroma is a lightweight alternative to Mastodon that at the time ironically offered a more user-friendly experience than Mastodon itself and pioneered features years ago that are just now being implemented by Mastodon and other projects. Pleroma’s big claim to fame was that you could stand up a robust instance on a single RasperryPi with little trouble.

👉 WriteFreely — A blogging platform that is built to federate. #WriteFreely federates your words and your content as your write them, and your readers can follow and comment on your posts without having to leave their local timeline.

In closing let me be clear, I have nothing against Mastodon or Eugen. I think it’s a fantastic project and it is an amazing piece of software. I am thankful for the level of awareness and exposure it has given the Fediverse as a whole.

But to continue to perpetuate the misinformation that Mastodon somehow created the fediverse or that the Federation is Mastodon is something that I can’t let stand without challenge.

It’s gaslighting.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍 Updated 2022-11-10

bofh.social, which is the instance I operate, runs Pleroma using the SoapboxFE. (CC-BY-SA)

@antdesros @amicalmant @bpruneau J'ai inscrit Jasette FACiLe manuellement sur https://www.chatons.org/search/by-service il y a un bout et je découvre (là) qu'il y a de nouveaux services pour référencer les serveurs. (Je connaissais https://the-federation.info, apparemment rendu inutilisable car trop lent et quelques autres). Avant d'aller inscrire notre instance (notamment sur joinmastodon.org), je pense prudent d'attendre d'avoir une équipe de modérateurs/trices (peut-être élu.e.s en AGA ?) et de confirmer ...

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

En migrant d'une instance à l'autre, j'ai remarqué que mon fil global est complètement différent. Si j'ai bien compris, le fil global ne montre que les pouets provenant des instances où il y a des gens suivis par ceux de mon instance... :-S #TwitterMigration

The Fediverse has its own video platform called @peertube.

You can follow PeerTube accounts from Mastodon, for example try following craftykat@diode.zone

You can watch and interact with the videos entirely within Mastodon, or on PeerTube itself.

Here's an example of a PeerTube server:

➡️ https://fedi.video

If you see an account you like, you can copy and paste its account address into Mastodon to follow it there. When new videos are published, they will appear in your Mastodon timeline.

Une liste (à jour) des #chatons gérant une #instance est disponible sur https://www.chatons.org/search/by-service?service_type_target_id=All&field_alternatives_aux_services_target_id=All&field_software_target_id=266&field_is_shared_value=All&title=

Actuellement, les #inscriptions sont ouvertes sur:
- https://toot.portes-imaginaire.org
- https://mastodon.ethibox.fr
- https://jasette.facil.services
- https://m.g3l.org
- https://mastodon.roflcopter.fr
- https://mastodon.underworld.fr
- https://mastodon.zaclys.com

100 Mastodon myths:

1. Mastodon is hard.

FALSE. It’s a "soft"ware. Not hardware.

2. You have to use Linux to post on Mastodon.

FALSE. FreeBSD and OpenBSD are also supported.

3. You need to learn to use the Vim editor before posting on Mastodon.

FALSE. There’s also an emacs plugin.

4. Mastodon is only for computer nerds.

FALSE. As you can see, we sometimes try to make jokes that everyone could understand.

"Mastodon Is 'Antiviral' Design"

My essay on this: https://clivethompson.medium.com/mastodon-is-antiviral-design-42f090ab8d51

Twitter (and most big social media) is laser-focused on creating virality -- i.e. training the joint attention of millions of people on one hot post/meme/story/event happening *right this instant* ... and doing it over and over and over again

Mastodon really isn't -- for lots of rich and interesting reasons

It's why some emigres from Twitter find Mastodon so baffling

This place embraces slowness and useful friction

Note: IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR JOURNALISTS / MEDIA to follow here on Mastodon, @tchambers is maintaining a spreadsheet of journalists who have shared their info: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13No4yxY-oFrN8PigC2jBWXreFCHWwVRTftwP6HcREtA/edit?resourcekey=undefined#gid=1320898902

Currently over 770.

It's a good list of people!

"CBC starting a Mastodon server could be the start of the news organization seeing itself as not just creating content online, but building better infrastructure for Canadians to create online." #canada #journalism https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/11/10/CBC-Should-Start-Own-Mastodon-Server/

Let’s try this again. Where you at #fediverse? Boosts welcome so we can get the best sample size.

@martinb @biguenique @zxo
On a eu des nouvelles de Manu à propos de FédiQuébec. Il a l'intention de relancer le projet en 2023
https://forumsdulibre.quebec/t/fedi-quebec-parti/1622/3

Parler de @Mastodon sur #mastodon et dans La Presse! https://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/f345916a-4585-4392-a745-d43331707bed%7C_0.html

@Nelliebriere Et si suffisamment de journalistes et de recherchistes de Radio-Canada aime Mastodon, la SRC pourrait même lancer sa propre instance.

@Nelliebriere Contrairement à la France, Mastodon est encore embryonnaire au Québec. Il semble n'y en avoir aucune qui réponde aux critères de https://joinmastodon.org/fr/servers
J'ai essayé de savoir combien il y avait d'instances au Québec. Sur https://instances.social/, je n'ai trouvé que mas.atmx.ca avec 13 membres. (D'ailleurs je m'apprêtais à écrire à notre admin pour lui demander pourquoi la nôtre ne s'y retrouvait pas). Il semble donc que Jasette FACiL soit la plus grosse instance généraliste au Qc