I’ll go first…
My favorite Fediverse platforms as of 2024
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Mastodon - my main social feed platform that first introduced me to the Fediverse in general.
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Lemmy - my second main social feed platform that originally substituted Reddit from years ago.
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Matrix protocol - communication platform I use to connect with users on the Lemmy instance I’m on
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Peertube - would love to get an account going and use it more often but still don’t know how but there’s FediVideo.
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Bookwyrm - Goodreads alternative that I signed up for that could use more work for a genuine reading tracker.
BONUS: my least favorite Fediverse platform lately
WordPress - because I used to run art blogs on there before I heard word about drama about the CEO of the corporation so I basically had to put out my last existing art blog…RIP.
Lemmy, shortly followed by Piefed.
Will probably switch once Piefed gets mobile apps support and comments view
What’s so good about PieFed?
Much more advanced moderation tools: https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/
Actual instance blocking compared to the incomplete “mute communities” instance blocking on Lemmy
Development seems fasters than Lemmy, they are almost at feature parity while being much younger
On the other hand, it has some weirdly opinionated features:
- Hiding downvoted comments (mob rule)
- Marking people with many downvotes as “low reputation”. I get it, getting many downvotes is a bad sign but I don’t think the software should try to make a ruling here, I think human moderators should look at the whole picture. It doesn’t make you a bad person that people disagree with you.
- Communities organized into “topics” - I’m not certain if these groupings are decided by the dev or the admin? Either way I find it a bit problematic.
- Marking certain communities as “low effort” and not counting “reputation” for those. I don’t feel like the software should be making this kind of value judgement.
If it helps:
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this is controlled by a user setting. I left the one that automatically “collapses” comments below a threshold at the default, but I disabled the one that “hides” comments by setting the threshold to -10000. So, far from taking away user power, it strictly enhances choices by providing new options, only at the user’s behest.
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it does have such a “reputation” feature, as too does life. Someone who constantly trolls others gets rather “known” for such. But crucially, it’s a label - it doesn’t hide anything, only enhances what is already there. And yeah it’s a bit of an experiment, perhaps it won’t work. Or perhaps it will be improved further? Based on the above and the responsiveness of the devs, I would expect complete control if features were ever added to actually do anything wrt this score.
Btw apps already have something similar, as too does PieFed, when adding a label for new accounts - bc people have asked for it, and it can be helpful to know when talking with someone that they are a new account (perhaps they are an alt, but it’s something, and again it’s just a label).
Yeah, I constantly get downvoted - and some of my posts are among the most heavily downvoted content existing in certain communities (but I also note that such things as Innuendo Studios The Alt Right Playbook got heavily downvoted by the same community as well so… I feel vindicated:-). So I mean it when I say that believe me I KNOW what you mean when expressing those concerns. Perhaps the experiment won’t work out, or perhaps it merely needs tuning - e.g. so that any one post or comment doesn’t weigh so heavily but rather only their aggregate (median rather than mean perhaps? or maybe only the binary choice of positive or negative total score, and even then perhaps not centered at zero but something more highly negative like -10?).
Also PieFed.social has defederated from hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, so those sources of downvoting are entirely removed. It also preferentially weights scores more highly feedback from those with high reputation already - which state I achieved in roughly a week and with only two posts, one a cross-post of the other even. So it’s not like seniors are locking out the noobs.
Anyway yes there’s enormous potential for misuse there, but it’s also something that people have been clamoring for - so it’s something that they are being responsive enough to try it out?
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I’m not sure about the categories - but again the devs are very responsive so surely easy to change things? Also I’ve definitely joined communities that aren’t in those, and while there are large federation issues with any non-Lemmy.World instance right now (I see the same from many instances including my 2 alt accounts elsewhere - so it has little to nothing to do with PieFed; especially after the enormous surge in content surrounding the USA election), I believe that they show up in the main feed.
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I have never heard that before but I would support it - more “experimental” communities should be allowed, to try things out, a “safe space” if you will:-).
All of these are valid concerns - and seem like they are being worked on.
It doesn’t really help for me, but the beauty of the fediverse is that it doesn’t have to. You can like PieFed, I can prefer Lemmy and we can both still talk :)
💯
Absolutely 💯!
And truth be told, we don’t know what the future holds as well. As moderation tools improve on Lemmy.World, as communities evolve, and new concepts rise to the foreground e.g. PieFed, and also Sublinks, both on top of Mbin too.
A year ago I thought one way about e.g. communities located on Lemmy.ml, then time passed and I changed my mind. Then technology changed and I switched instances to follow.
What I am saying is: it is so fantastic to have choices! ☺️ THAT is the real win in this situation, IMHO, whether I end up liking PieFed’s approach or not. 🏆
Yea it’s cool. Although, regarding sublinks, it really looks like the project has stalled.
Honestly assigning a label to users that everyone can see based on other users’ opinions seems like a bad idea anyway you put it. Independent of it’s intention, it can stifle constructive arguments, encourage mass alt accounts, cause classism and mobbing. There is a Black Mirror episode with this exact premise where it impacts your real life reputation, people’s perceptions of you & what you’re allowed to do.
I will concede that it could be problematic, but as for “bad”, I think that depends heavily on the implementation?
A positive example: “new” accounts could be labeled, to help identify someone who e.g. could use some pointers as for how to do formatting, like how to embed rather than simply link to an image. I have zero issues with this kind of factually-based, simple labels, and from looking at the user requests in various places (Ask Lemmy, Shower Thoughts, etc.), people very much want this.
Now, complex labels on the other hand, or those that are not straightforward but rather deceivingly simplistic such as “this person is GOOD, this other person is BAD” are a whole other matter altogether. I’m with you there.
So what about the in-between: is it worth it to use spam filters at all, even though it might throw out something good along the way? The answer to that seems to me to be how well it is tuned, and also ofc up to the user to decide if worth it to them or not. On that note, the account admin https://piefed.social/u/rimu has an “attitude” score that I’ve seen hovering around the 75-82% range, so I doubt we would see a filter such as “must never downvote or receive downvotes”, or 90%, or even 50%. On the other hand, if let’s say ~>90% of someone’s every single post and comment were downvoted heavily, on an account older than let’s say a month, that seems like a different story? That speaks to a repeated pattern of someone not taking a hint as to how their content affects others around them. A horrible implementation could be too simple minded and count e.g. every post or comment as “bad” even if it received 1000+ upvotes but got one downvote, but a smart implementation could do MUCH better than such?
Ofc people could misuse those in any case - but how is that different from anything else? e.g. I could see a “he/him”, and decide that I don’t want to talk with “a man” or “a person who uses pronouns”. And frankly, someone uses such quick judgement calls is perhaps best to avoid talking with their hated audience anyway, if they are e.g. misogynistic or whatever.
Gaming the system is a better counterargument - but that too is like spam filtering: not a reason to not do it at all (and thereby allow all spam through?), but rather realizing that no system is perfect. Which is why I like how these are LABELS, not filters. (There are filters too, but those are per-comment/post, not per-user.)
So, as long as it is optional, and not heavy-handed, I am excited to see how this may develop. Definitely there are concerns, as there would be for any software project or social media endeavor. Remember that there are significant concerns with Lemmy as well:-) - e.g. a good fraction of people on Reddit refuse to check us out due to the known political leanings of the devs. However, it’s a strong counterargument that the model is federated, so someone doesn’t have to join lemmy.ml, yet can still make use of the software from them. Btw the same applies to PieFed as well - it is open source and anyone can spin up their own instance.
So: we’ll see how it develops. I think that an extremely limited amount of labelling could be helpful, if applied with care and consideration.
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I looked thru this blog hopeful that there would be protection against mod abuse. Instead you can get banned for downvoting? I don’t want to be looking over my back because some dipshit mod had a bad take. This is generating way too much analytical data on users. Communities don’t need empowered super mods treating users like numbers on a spreadsheet. Lemmy for sure has problems (ml) but this isn’t the answer.
It doesn’t need to be the answer. It just needs to be an answer for certain use cases. Both platforms can easily coexist. That’s the beauty of federation.
Lemmy admins can already see who downvotes what, I’m sure they already ban accounts who systematically downvote their communities content
It’s a tool. If some admins power trip, well report them on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Mods can also see votes in communities they moderate, lemmy-ui just doesn’t show the option (and no other client, to my knowledge, has the feature).
But wont you lose like 99% of the user base? Or is it cross compatible?
PieFed communicates with Lemmy. Same content, different platform. That’s one awesome thing about federation.
There is also mbin (fork of kbin), and Sublinks, which is API compatible with Lemmy so should be able to use Lemmy apps with it (from memory, this is what Beehaw are hoping to move to).
Hello from PieFed - yes it works.:-)
Piefed just needs an api, then we can add supoort as app developers.
Unfortunately, Lemmy is the only one with content that appeals to me so far (at least to my knowledge, given the near-unsearchable nature of the fediverseso far). The platforms just aren’t large enough.
Iirc Mastodon is about to add a global search function. I’ve never used it, nor even Twitter (back before it was cancelled into X), just passing on what I heard.
And PieFed and Mbin are also sort of “Lemmy” (though neither in that graphic that I saw:-).
And PieFed and Mbin are also sort of “Lemmy” (though neither in that graphic that I saw:-).
It is quite an old graphic.
It’s nice that our choices improve so much by new tools being built so rapidly!:-)
Pretty sure Kbin is dead and gone, might want to update your tree.
FYI there is Mbin, the fork of Kbin
For me it’s definitely Lemmy. I don’t like the microblogging format and never have. I’ve always used forums and then reddit.
The fediverse just works so well with Lemmy I think. It’s so fun seeing new communities from instances I’ve never heard of. I think this format is perfect for the fediverse
I like it too. :)
- Lemmy
- Mastodon
- Pixelfed
- Various Misskey forks that are all about the same
- Peertube
Lemmy has eaten up just about all the time I used to spend on Mastodon. Pixelfed would be in the running for #1 if it hadn’t become so vaporware-y in the last few months.
mbin!
Yeah, that chart needs to be updated. AFAIK no instance is still on kbin, everything has gone to mbin. It’s also missing pyfedi/piefed
yep, fedidb has it at a single instance;
https://fedidb.org/software/kbin
i wish i could get a hold of kbin.social if no one is going to do anything with it… maybe forward it to fedia.io
What’s interesting is that currently, the site is broken, but in the footer you can see the last set of magazines that were new.
Which means the database is still intact, and if not a full resurrection, we could get our data back at least (I lost a lot of content when kbin.social went down). Just gotta figure out who to contact - which company is actually maintaining or hosting the servers that kbin.social run on…
Nextcloud is federated? First time I hear about that.
For me it’s Lemmy, without a doubt. Never used Twitter, tried mastodon to see what it’s all about, didn’t like it.
Matrix seems decent, but nobody I know uses it, and finding useful groups is painful, especially on other instances (servers, whatever they call them).
Also, I am confused at why nextcloud is at the intersection of networking, music, and multimedia.
Yes it technically has a video viewer and music player, but I would be very surprised if any person in the world right now is genuinely using it to post that content to the fediverse social-network style.
Nextcloud is federated?
https://nextcloud.com/blog/federation-a-foundational-concept-for-digital-sovereignty/
I only use Lemmy, so… Lemmy.
I understand that.
Lemmy is a handy platform.
Mine is……
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Wafrn (endless customisations unlike Misskey and Sharkey) and has react buttons too with extra features such as anonymous questions etc. Basically Tumblr but way better and FOSS too.
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Mastodon, very stable, great way to find out current events with minimal reactive posts etc. It just works.
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Mbin, a very much more stable and regularly updated fork of kbin, and getting the best of both worlds without having to use Lemmy, due to the problematic nature of Lemmy creators.
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BookWyrm, ethical version of GoodReads (and gives you control to add books that are not on the system, enhancing your experience and overall much better than GoodReads imo.
I wasn’t aware of the issues with the Lemmy devs. Some of the original posts about them don’t seem accessible. Is the issue because they are pretty pro-Chinese government?
Yes but also they’re tankies as well and have been caught previously praising hardcore dictators. Also I think the developers have also said some anti semitic stuff as well but I can’t really remember tbh so I could be wrong.
At least you are off the tankie Lemmy instances. One more point for using MBin, which is better. There are other Lemmy instances that aren’t managed by them, e.g. lemmy.world; still that doesn’t prevent you from moving to MBin.
Thanks for the info. These sort of things are always difficult. A bit like finding out a favourite musician breaks a boycott or has dodgy ideas but makes great music.
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Mastodon has successfully replaced Twitter for me, so it’s by far my favorite. It does still need better tools for dealing with large-scale posts and users, but overall it feels like it’s actually doing the job I want done.
I want to like Piefed/Lemmy more than I actually do. The Fediverse answer to Reddit just doesn’t feel ready for prime time yet. It’s hard to find/connect with communities and the user base doesn’t have that “can address basically any question” magic.
Right now the tools wouldn’t support mainstream users anyway. They will only come after those are ready, and even then it will be a struggle.
But for now, e.g. a good fraction of the time on PieFed.social a notification won’t take me to where it is intending to send me, bc of some prior comment being collapsed, hidden, buried in a thread, etc. - and this is the kind of stuff that will quickly send mainstream people packing.
I’ve tried mastodon and followed a couple people. But I never did Twitter either. Could you recommend how I could best use mastodon? Who to follow, or for to sort/search out whatever what’s popular? I couldn’t figure it out
Following hashtags is really powerful and useful on Mastodon. You can click any hashtag on a post to see other posts that use it, and if you like it there’s a button you can click to start following that hashtag. You can also search for hashtags in the Explore section. Since there’s no algorithm, hashtags are the primary way to get things that interest you into your feed.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services posts tips on how to use Mastodon, so it’s really helpful to follow as a newbie.
@FediFollows@social.growyourown.services posts lists of interesting accounts on Mastodon, usually by topic. It’s a good way to grow your follow list!
https://nathanlesage.github.io/academics-on-mastodon/ Here’s some lists in case you’re into any niche topics.
A Roblox alternative in the fediverse.
Because I want to get off Roblox.
Brickplanet exists, but its not a fediverse project.
Closed source and aimed for kids, sorry
Already read its ToS
It will suffer the same fate as Roblox
Oh
Lemmy. I love to read the posts and play the media.
There is Matrix but no XMPP :(
I am finding I like Mastodon the best. Lemmy has potential, but I think the political extremism and lack of hobbyist culture here currently, mixed with the incredibly confusing on-boarding process beginners have to navigate, along with the name, all contribute to making it DOA.
Out of curiosity rather than necessity, are there any activitypub based messaging apps (i.e matrix/discord-like)?
One not listed is Ibis (https://ibis.wiki/) which hasn’t had much traction. Honestly unsure of how useful it is as a direct wikipedia replacement but i can see it as a cool idea for a bunch of related communities that would otherwise be on separate wikis.
Ibis is really early days. I hosted it for a bit and had things like federation issues and softlocks. Will be really interesting when it’s a bit more mature though.
