@silverpill Another case of people who don't know the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Or, at most, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube and maybe Threads.

Since none of these have groups, these people firmly believe that the Fediverse itself doesn't have any.

I have a GitHub account for bug-reporting purposes. Shall I barge in and tell them?

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # FediGroups # FediverseGroups

@ Arnan "The platform" is the Fediverse and not Mastodon. It was not created as a microblogging platform.

The Fediverse has had server software that can post over 16.7 million characters at once since almost six years before Mastodon appeared. Deal with it.

This comment was sent from such software: Hubzilla (2015; https://hubzilla.org, https://joinfediverse-wiki/Hubzilla).

CC: @ René Seindal

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # Hubzilla

You want me to describe my images? Properly? So that you will never have to ask me about details?

You want me to explain them? So that you understand them, no matter how super-obscure it is that they show?

Do you? Yes?

Then don't complain when I post tens of thousands of characters.

(Intentionally not CW'd.)

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # AltText # AltTextMeta # CWAltTextMeta # ImageDescription # ImageDescriptions # ImageDescriptionMeta # CWImageDescriptionMeta

@ Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Well, we're kind of in the aftermath of the recent Hubzilla 11 release. And I think the devs still have fresh plans.

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Hubzilla

@ Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Technically speaking, Hubzilla has had encryption for years already, probably for longer than Mastodon has even been around. It comes on top of Hubzilla's permissions system which already makes Hubzilla inherently more private and secure than Mastodon.

Downside: Hubzilla's encryption only works within Hubzilla where it is an official, optional add-on. I'm not even sure if it works beyond the Zot6 protocol. But still, one can't say that the Fediverse doesn't have any encryption anywhere.

CC: @ Ben Ramsey @ Emanuele Panz

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # Hubzilla # Encryption

@ fedi (ツ) Some more suggestions:


CherryPick:

Kirschwasser, sake, melon soda, Pocari Sweat, matcha powder. Stirred with a fork for obvious reasons.


Hubzilla:

Yes. As in everything your bar has to offer.


Micro.blog:

Sorry, this cocktail is closed-source.


Lemmy:

Jack Daniel's, Coca-Cola. Surprised?

...okay: Russian Standard vodka, Havana Club rum, baijiu, tomato juice.

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # CherryPick # Hubzilla # MicroBlog # Lemmy # Cocktail # Cocktails

@ FenTiger I think it does. And even then, it doesn't have a full, server-side and client-side implementation, only a client-side implementation like Friendica and Tootik.

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # OpenWebAuth # Mitra # Friendica # Tootik

@silverpill In a hilarious twist of fate, this gives (streams) and Forte an unfair advantage. They're nearly identical, they have the same maintainer, but they're two separate implementations, also seeing as Forte uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity, and (streams) doesn't and still uses its own Nomad protocol for it.

Since Mitra appears to implement (streams)/Forte features one by one and cast them into FEPs, that's three implementations already. Two if nomadic identity via ActivityPub is involved. And if Hubzilla happens to have it, too, we've got up to four implementations.

Yes, ActivityPub is only an optional add-on on Hubzilla and (streams), but an implementation is an implementation. And whatever they do on Nomad that federates has to get out through ActivityPub one way or another.

It'd be even more hilariously skewed, hadn't Mike discontinued the five apps between Hubzilla and (streams) on New Year's Eve 2022.

CC: @ slyborg @ Evan Prodromou @ Connected Places @ ArneBab @ Alex Chapman

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # ActivityPub # Hubzilla # Streams # (streams) # Forte # Mitra

@ Giaco I know that Mitra is approaching Forte by and by. Slowly because silverpill is trying to cast everything newly implemented into FEPs.

But I'm trying to remember what Hubzilla and Mitra have in common, other than client-side OpenWebAuth support and Conversation Containers. Mitra has Portable Objects which might cause disturbances, as do (streams) and Forte, but Hubzilla doesn't.

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta

@ Elena Brescacin The point is that if someone wants to connect to you from Hubzilla, they might have a very detailed profile, maybe even several profiles (this is possible on Hubzilla), but they only give permission to access their profile to their contacts or to certain contacts and not to the general public. So while there is a profile, you are not allowed to access it. Unlike Friendica, Hubzilla's Web UI doesn't even tell you up-front that you aren't allowed to access the profile. And, of course, neither does Mastodon's Web UI, and neither do any Mastodon apps.

At the same time, they could actually be very active posters. But for privacy and security reasons, they don't post in public. All their posts have restricted permissions. Alternatively, they do post in public, but they only grant permission to see their stream of posts on their channel to their contacts or even only to certain contacts. Either way, you as a non-contact are not allowed to access their posts.

Imagine you, on Mastodon, could allow only your followers and followed to read your profile. And you could allow only your followers and followed to access the timeline on your profile page. Both is absolutely possible on Hubzilla. Or you only ever post to "followers only" and never in public, so your posts don't show up in your timeline.

Either way, there's a profile, and there are posts, but you are not allowed to access them. So to you, it appears like a blank and inactive account.

Still, Hubzilla does little to nothing in terms of accessibility. In its software family that spans a decade and a half, it's the only server application that requires coding to add alt-texts.

Friendica may have introduced a Mastodon-like entry field. (streams) and Forte allow for alt-texts to be stored with images in the built-in filespace so they're automatically added when an image is embedded into a post or a comment. On Hubzilla, the alt-text must still be manually grafted into the image-embedding BBcode. Even that information was only spread via hearsay until it was added to the official documentation last year or so.

So the reason why there's hardly ever any alt-text coming from Hubzilla is not because Hubzilla staunchly refuses to replace its own culture with Mastodon's (which it does, by the way, and for very good reasons). It's partly because adding alt-texts is so tedious and requires what amounts to "programming". And it's partly because since Hubzilla's post and comment editors have no UI elements for alt-texts, and neither do the file and image uploaders, hardly anyone on Hubzilla even knows about alt-texts and that it's possible to add them on Hubzilla in the first place.

Hubzilla's entire UI/UX is mostly stuck in 2012 with parts of it dating back to 2010. That was when accessibility didn't matter for hobbyist projects. And it was developed by someone who's much more of a protocol developer than a UI expert. There hasn't changed that much about it since back then except for new features having their UI elements glued on in sometimes seemingly random places.

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta

@ Rob Ricci @ caterpillar @ Stefan Bohacek @ Ericka Simone This is exactly the problem.

I'm on both Hubzilla and (streams) with multiple channels, and I've been on Hubzilla under various guises for longer than the vast majority of Mastodon users have been on Mastodon. I guess you can say that I know both very well.

I can tell you that the possibilities of Hubzilla's permissions system are staggering. It works on up to three levels: for the entire channel (that's "account" in Mastospeak), for individual connections (that's "followers and followed" in Mastospeak), for individual content (posts and and entire conversations, but also images and other uploaded files and documents).

For example, you can grant or deny permission to

• see your public profile (this requires OpenWebAuth magic sign-on which Mastodon has rejected)
• see your connections (this requires OpenWebAuth magic sign-on which Mastodon has rejected)
• see your public posts in your stream (this requires OpenWebAuth magic sign-on which Mastodon has rejected)
• send you their posts (this means public posts that aren't replies because replies are not posts on Hubzilla)
• like (that's "fave" in Mastospeak; you know, the star), dislike and comment on your posts
• send you DMs
• see your uploaded files (this requires OpenWebAuth magic sign-on which Mastodon has rejected, but this also extends to images and other media embedded into posts, comments and DMs)

All in all, Hubzilla has 18 such permissions, but these are the ones that matter from a Mastodon point of view. They can be granted or denied for your entire channel at seven or eight levels, and if they're denied at channel level, they can be granted for individual connections. Imagine that, on Mastodon, you could allow only certain followers to see your profile and your toots. Or you could only allow certain followed accounts to send you their toots. All of this is reality on Hubzilla right now.

Better yet: You know that you can send toots only to mentioned accounts on Mastodon. Hubzilla exceeds and improves upon this in three ways. First of all, you can send posts to individual connections. Or to a certain privacy group (from a Mastodon POV, that's a list on steroids). Or to a custom selection of individual connections and privacy groups while even being able to exclude certain other connections or privacy groups. This goes way beyond Mastodon's "mentioned = allowed to see".

But this doesn't only define who will receive your post. It also defines who is permitted to see your post.

And: The permissions of a post are inherited by the entire conversation. Comments always have the same permissions as the top post. There's no restricting the permissions in a comment, and there's no relaxing the limitations of a comment. It's impossible to pull other Fediverse users into a private conversation by mentioning them if the top post wasn't targetted at them.

Even better yet: You can allow or disallow comments on individual posts (remember that a post on Hubzilla is only a post if it starts a conversation, not if it's a reply).

On top of all this, Hubzilla's filters are both vastly more powerful than Mastodon's filters and easier to use. Mastodon requires you to set up one new filter for each word that you want filtered. It's always blocklisting. And it's always account-wide.

Hubzilla covers Mastodon's entire filter functionality with one or two text fields. You have one blocklist for the whole channel. And you have an optional extra feature named "NSFW" with its own filter list that generated individual, reader-side content warnings for you. The equivalent of defining a new filter on Mastodon is to add a new line to one of these filter lists. Want to back them up? Just copy-paste them into a text file.

But wait, there's more: Hubzilla also has a channel-wide allowlist. If you only want to see certain content in your stream, you can allowlist certain keywords.

Hubzilla even optionally has one blocklist and one allowlist per connection. Imagine you could filter individual followed accounts on Mastodon.

Hubzilla's filter lists support regular expressions. There is also a "filter syntax" that lets you filter by whether a message is a top post or not, whether a message is public or private, whether it's a repeat (that's "boost" in Mastospeak or "retoot" for those of you who still have Twitter on the brain). The filter syntax even lets you use Boolean operators.

(streams) and Forte are similar. Their permissions are somewhat different (you don't need permissions for wikis and websites if you don't have wikis and websites). The permissions system is vastly easier to use because it's no longer template-based. You can simply switch permissions on and off for your channel as well as for connections. And you can choose to have even more options for reply control.

Again, all this exists in the Fediverse right now. And most of it has existed for longer than Mastodon. Some of this dates back to the earliest days of Friendica in May, 2010.

Unfortunately, next to nobody knows.

For most Mastodon features, the features that Mastodon has are the features that the Fediverse has. If Mastodon doesn't have it, the Fediverse doesn't. Not only is Mastodon the default, but there's nothing that strays from this default. That's why Mastodon users keep wishing for "the Fediverse" to introduce features which Friendica has had for almost 16 years already. Or which Hubzilla has had for over a decade.

In addition, probably not even 10% of all Mastodon users have ever heard of Hubzilla. Probably not even 1% of all Mastodon users know what Hubzilla can do. And even only the existence of (streams) and Forte is almost entirely unknown outside of (streams) and Forte themselves and Hubzilla.

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # CW # CWs # CWMeta # ContentWarning # ContentWarnings # ContentWarningMeta # Hubzilla # Streams # (streams) # Forte # Permission # Permissions # ReplyControl # ReplyControls # Filter # Filters # MastodonCentricism # MastodonNormativity

@ Sascha Pallenberg 🇹🇼 ♻️ ⚡ Aus dem Fediverse wird an vorderster Front überall nur Mastodon empfohlen. Sonst nichts. Man wird sich sehr weit durchklicken müssen, um auch nur Pleroma als Zweitalternative für 𝕏 zu finden.

Für Nicht-Mastodon-Nutzer, denen die allgegenwärtige Mastodon-Zentrizität und Mastodon-Normativität und das völlige Ignorieren odar gar absichtliche Totschweigen des übrigen Fediverse schon länger gegen den Strich geht, sieht es so aus, als würde genau das hier wieder passieren. Dabei sind die meisten Microblogging-Serveranwendungen im Fediverse Mastodon haushoch überlegen.

Natürlich kann man jetzt sagen, daß es beim Digital Independence Day darum geht, europäische Alternativen zu finden und die meisten anderen Fediverse-Serveranwendungen eben nicht in Europa entwickelt werden.

Aber: Nicht nur Mastodon wird in Europa entwickelt. Auch nicht nur Mastodon und Pleroma.

Friendica wurde zwar von einer Privatperson in Australien erfunden, ist aber seit 2011 in deutscher Hand. Einzig die Tatsache, daß Friendica weiterhin beharrlich den Code bei GitHub in den USA hostet, könnte zur Disqualifikation reichen. Aber auch Mastodons Code liegt bei GitHub.

Hubzilla stammt ursprünglich vom selben Australier und aus derselben Softwarefamilie. Aber seit 2018 ist es in den Händen eines deutschen Chefentwicklers, der als Vize einen Norweger hat. Außerdem liegt der Code bei Framagit in Frankreich.

Beide sind also sehr wohl europäische Projekte. Noch dazu sind beide älter als Mastodon und trotzdem mit Mastodon verbunden. Aber kurioserweise werden sie im Rahmen des Digital Independence Day nirgendwo erwähnt. Direkte Alternativen zu Facebook werden gar überhaupt nicht genannt.

All dies paßt wunderbar zusammen mit der allgemeinen medialen Darstellung und befeuert sie sogar noch weiter: Entweder ist das Fediverse gleich Mastodon. Oder es gibt kein Fediverse, nur Mastodon. So oder so wird Mastodon fälschlicherweise dargestellt als a) das einzige seiner Art und b) in sich geschlossenes Netzwerk.

Ich kenne genügend Leute, die sich genau daran sehr stören und das auch zum Ausdruck bringen.

Nur daran stören sich dann wiederum diejenigen, die selbst praktisch oder tatsächlich nur Mastodon kennen und Mastodon ansehen als Standard, Goldstandard oder tatsächlich das ganze Fediverse, die auf jeden Fall aber so Sachen wie Misskey, Pleroma, Friendica und deren jeweilige Nachfahren ansehen als böse, rücksichtslose, kulturlose, unerwünschte Eindringlinge in ihrem kuscheligen Mastodon-Fediverse.

Übrigens dient ein Großteil meiner Hashtags dazu, Filter auszulösen inklusive dem automatischen Erzeugen individueller leserseitiger CWs. Gerade letztere sind da, wo ich bin, schon länger technisch möglich und Teil der Kultur, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Und obwohl Mastodon sie auch hat, sind sie da nie Teil der Kultur geworden, weil 𝕏 sie nicht hat und auch Mastodon sie erst im Oktober 2022 eingeführt hat.

CC: @ Kim Mi @ crossgolf_rebel - kostenlose Kwalitätsposts

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # LangerPost # CWLangerPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # CW # CWs # CWMeta # ContentWarning # ContentWarnings # ContentWarningMeta # Fediverse # NichtNurMastodon # Friendica # Hubzilla # MastodonKultur # MastodonZentrizität # MastodonNormativität # DIDay # DigitalIndependenceDay

@ Kim Mi @ Sascha Pallenberg 🇹🇼 ♻️ ⚡ Wo liegt das Problem? Stören sich wieder Leute daran, daß in der Ankündigung das Fediverse mit Mastodon gleichgesetzt wurde?

Mich würde das übrigens auch stören. Ich bin selbst nämlich auch nicht auf Mastodon.

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # NichtNurMastodon # DIDay

@ unattributed 𓂃✍︎ @ Ben Pate 🤘🏻 @ Social Web Foundation @ Sovereign Tech Agency @ Bonfire Ideally, one day, the highly advanced permissions system available on Hubzilla (based on Zot, ActivityPub optional), (streams) (based on Nomad, ActivityPub optional) and Forte (based on ActivityPub) would be cast into one or multiple FEPs.

This would solve this issue by not only controlling who receives a DM, but also who is permitted to see the DM. In combination with FEP-171b Conversation Containers (which was invented on (streams), inherited by Forte and backported to Hubzilla), the permissions of the DM would be inherited by all comments and replies to the DM with no way of ever changing these permissions anywhere in the conversation.

See, if I send a DM to Alice and Bob, then only Alice, Bob and I are permitted to see the DM. Also, only Alice, Bob and I are permitted to participate in the conversation, and Alice, Bob and I can see each comment and reply, but only the three of us are permitted to see them. The entire conversation has the exact same permissions all over, inherited from the initial DM.

Anyone of us can mention Carol all we want. But that does not give her permission to see anything in the conversation, not even the comment/reply that mentions her. Once the initial DM is out, its permissions are set in stone, and it's also set in stone that any and all follow-ups in the same conversation have the same permissions as the initial DM.

This does not even require encryption. That said, at least Hubzilla does offer encryption on top of the permissions system; however, it's only compatible within Hubzilla AFAIK.

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Hubzilla # Streams # (streams) # Forte # FEP_171b # ConversationContainers # Permission # Permissions # DM # DMs # DirectMessage # DirectMessages # PrivateMessage # PrivateMessages

@ Arnan "The platform" is the Fediverse and not Mastodon. It was not created as a microblogging platform.

The Fediverse has had server software that can post over 16.7 million characters at once since almost six years before Mastodon appeared. Deal with it.

This comment was sent from such software: Hubzilla (2015; https://hubzilla.org, https://joinfediverse-wiki/Hubzilla).

CC: @ René Seindal

# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # Hubzilla

@ Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: @ Dgar That's why I'm working on an entire wiki on how to describe images and write proper alt-texts in the Fediverse. Right now, it's planned to have over 40 pages, even though not even half of them are written yet. The topic is actually that complex, and there's so much that nobody on Mastodon knows when it comes to alt-text.

Besides, there isn't any image description guide otherwise that takes the non-Mastodon Fediverse in account. I'm going to cover that as well, although I won't add step-by-step guides on how to add an alt-text with this Web frontend or that mobile app. But I'm going to take into consideration that the non-Mastodon Fediverse is never limited to only 500 characters.

In case you're curious: Here is the link.

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # CharacterLimit # CharacterLimits # CharacterLimitMeta # CWCharacterLimitMeta # AltText # AltTextMeta # CWAltTextMeta # ImageDescription # ImageDescriptions # ImageDescriptionMeta # CWImageDescriptionMeta # Wiki

@ Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Well, I'm used to having not only full native data portability, but even live, hot, bidirectional, real-time updates of entire Fediverse identities that contain stuff which 99% of the Fediverse doesn't support. Natively without an external application. Available for longer than Mastodon itself. Between any number of independent servers. So I'm not easily impressed.

I would be kind of impressed if LOLA managed to move a Mastodon account into a brand-new, virgin Hubzilla channel

• automatically activating all necessary apps from PubCrawl to Privacy Groups to Superblock to NSFW if the Mastodon account has at least one hiding filter
• activating all features that are either hard-coded or switched on on the Mastodon source account, but off by default on new Hubzilla channels
• (optionally) setting the channel role to Custom and configuring it in such a way that Hubzilla behaves as closely to Mastodon as possible, permissions-wise
• translating all followers and followed into Hubzilla's system of Facebook-style mutual-by-default contacts
• reconnecting all followers and followed on their end
• translating each Mastodon list into a Hubzilla privacy group, all members included while keeping the default "Friends" privacy group and adding all contacts to it
• converting followed hashtags into FediBuzz contacts (Hubzilla cannot follow hashtags, but we want the Hubzilla destination channel to be as close to the Mastodon source account as possible)
• translating not only the entire timeline of the Mastodon source account into a Hubzilla stream, but also importing entire threads behind and around each post in the timeline (this is absolutely necessary for the Mastodon user to keep their replies to other people's posts because a Hubzilla comment cannot exist without the start post and the entire branch of the conversation that led to it; also, it's a Hubzilla killer feature over Mastodon that you always see entire conversations instead of single-message piecemeal)
• transferring all posts, replies and DMs with all media in them
• converting Mastodon's loosely-tied threads, no matter who has started them, into Hubzilla-style enclosed conversations as per FEP-171b Conversation Containers with unified permissions for all messages within a conversation
• translating mentions and links into Hubzilla-specific markup
• translating faves into thumbs up
• translating Mastodon 4.6-style quotes into Hubzilla-style shares, automatically recognising which Hubzilla version the destination channel is running on and deciding which Hubzilla share format to use
• translating CWs in comments into [summary][/summary] tags (this would require Hubzilla to actually fully support summaries in comments which it currently doesn't because that doesn't make sense from a Facebook/blogging POV)
• translating Mastodon's post visibility settings into Hubzilla's permission system as far as that's possible (only for start posts, that is, because comments always inherit their permissions from the start post; also, this will have to be done after taking care of all contacts because "followers only" Mastodon toots will have to be converted into non-public posts which grant permission to see them only to the "Friends" privacy group, and likewise, DMs will have to have the contact(s) to whom they were originally sent assigned as those who are permitted to see them)
• importing all images, videos and other attached files into the Hubzilla channel's file space, including appropriate permission settings and, ideally, sorting them into Hubzilla-style "year-month" folders
• converting all media attachments into embedded links to the locations of the respective media files in the file space, including adding alt-texts to the embedding code
• importing the block list on the Mastodon source account into Superblock (that is, Hubzilla cannot block entire servers, but maybe this could automatically be translated into filter lines)
• converting blocking filters into channel-wide filter lines, converting bare keywords into regular expressions if the whole word option is set for these keywords on Mastodon
• adding the keywords of hiding filters to NSFW, converting bare keywords into regular expressions if the whole word option is set for these keywords on Mastodon
• translating the selected languages on the Mastodon source account into channel-wide filters on Hubzilla (even though this probably won't work exactly identical because Hubzilla neither sets nor knows per-message language settings)
• recognising the contents of Mastodon's free-text profile fields and moving them into the appropriate ones of Hubzilla's several dozen purpose-bound profile fields
• populating Hubzilla's keyword field with all hashtags found in the profile text of the Mastodon source account
• setting your channel language according to the language that most of your posts are in
• bonus points for entering Mastodon's colours into the Redbasic colour settings and changing the PDL layout settings so that the look of the Hubzilla destination channel is closer to that of the Mastodon source account than by default

Even that wouldn't give you a 100% identical copy of your Mastodon account. Hubzilla doesn't support quote-post control; the only way to make your posts non-quote-postable is by making them non-public (something that Mastodon can only understand as a DM), and you have no control whatsoever over the permissions of your comments on other people's posts anyway. Also, as I've already mentioned, Hubzilla currently doesn't support summaries (= Mastodon CWs) in comments.

However, vice versa, it'd be even harder to shoehorn Hubzilla's wealth of features into a new Mastodon account.

# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Mastodon # Hubzilla # NomadicIdentity # LOLA