It would be great to have ephemeral text in the compose box in fediverse apps, that vanished as soon as we tap on the box to start typing. It's default could be a friendly greeting from the developers, but each could change it to whatever they wanted for their own app. I would put;
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Defaults in software are powerful. Most defaults are never changed, even if there's a control right there in the Settings. Unless there's a very unusual exception to test the rule, whatever is set by default will shape the way people do things.
So I'll say it again, defaults are powerful.
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This is cool graphic by Imke Senst and Mike Kuketz, illustrating the fediverse and 19 of the software packages used in it. With coloured lines showing which ones can federate with each other, over which protocols;
https://opennomad.net/cloud/nomad/Diagrams/fediverse-diagram.png
This is a really well written essay by @trwnh;
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/10590
It proposes reducing the amount of spam injected into the fediverse, by making manual mod approval of new accounts the default in all fediverse server software.
I thoroughly agree. Admins woulds still be free to use open registration, but they'd have to opt-in to the potential consequences. Not stumble into them.
This was written in 2019. Is manual approval of new accounts the default yet?
But regardless, it's worth considering how moderation might look if we applied the same informed consent principle we talk about in regard to search, bridging, and other aspects of the fediverse. In that scenario, the moderation run by the people hosting the service would have to be optional, not compulsory. Not only that, it would have to be opt-in.
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At minimum devs need to make moderation opt-out in their fediverse software. But admins still need to be free to choose not to host certain kinds of posts in their database. How do we do both?
The answer is that if Alice chooses to turn off moderation for her account, posts from accounts or service excluded from the service she's using are loaded like websites, from the service where they were posted.
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As a fediverse power user, I'd really like to have 2 separate feeds populated by my follows;
* Firehose; anything that someone on the service I use, including me, might find interesting.
* Home; stuff I definitely want to read on a regular basis
Is this an experience anyone else can relate to?
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In fact, I don't even know if it always makes sense for Home to be the default. For new accounts, it would be better for Local or Federated to be default, with the follow-all firehose introduced in the interface upon first follow. Progressive disclosure FTW!
#HatTip to @tchambers, whose recent piece on fediverse UX got me thinking along these lines
https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/24/the-seven-deadly-fediverse-ux.html
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@isaacfreeman
> the issue is with client apps not making them easy to use?
I guess so. If the Home feed was a follow-all list, and there was an option to choose a different list as Home, that would do exactly what I need.
Any chance of getting that on the roadmap for @moshidon and other apps?
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In fact, I don't even know if it always makes sense for Home to be the default. For new accounts, it would be better for Local or Federated to be default, with the follow-all firehose introduced in the interface upon first follow. Progressive disclosure FTW!
#HatTip to @tchambers, whose recent piece on fediverse UX got me thinking along these lines
https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/24/the-seven-deadly-fediverse-ux.html
As a fediverse power user, I'd really like to have 2 separate feeds populated by my follows;
* Firehose; anything that someone on the service I use, including me, might find interesting.
* Home; stuff I definitely want to read on a regular basis
Is this an experience anyone else can relate to?
(1/2)
Just over a year ago, I proposed that the same government departments that issue ID documents like birth certificates and passports, could provide a digital equivalent. In the form of a domain using the name on their birth certificate (eg myname.id.nz). Costing only a one-off issuing fee;
https://disintermedia.substack.com/p/a-free-online-birth-certificate
As I acknowledged in the piece, that would only address use cases where people want to attach their online activities to their real world identity. What about pseudonymous ID?
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Maybe my thinking is still too centralised here. Rather than trying to establish a central ID guarantor ("One ring to Rule them all"), we could make use of something like "rel me" to cross-link our identities on different services;
In such a way that searching for an email (or AP or Matrix) address on an unrelated platform, would return any account on that platform with a "rel me" link to the address I searched.
It'd need good UX design though.
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How hard would it be for a fediverse app to give me a daily or weekly notification about each of my saved drafts? So I can start a reply, decide it needs more thought, save it, and get reminded of it.
Bonus points for being able to schedule a reminder notification for each saved post. A day for this one, a week for this one, and so on.
