If you try Pleroma, do yourself a favor and also install the Soapbox-FE frontend. Much cleaner, customizable and familiar to Twitter users than the default one.
Regarding the backend. It does seem that Mastodon was the first one and has more functionality, but (1) Pleroma is catching up and (2) waaaaay lighter on resources. Mastodon is built on Rails, requires PostgreSQL, Redis, a task server (sidekiq) and optionally Elasticsearch. Pleroma goes by with just PostgreSQL and is built on Elixir.
Regardless of technology, what I'd really like to see in a future version of these AP-systems is the ability to manage multiple-domains with a single database / application server. Right now all implementations assume that the domain of the backend is the domain of every user in the instance. So this means that if I want to host Mastodon for a user with a custom domain, I'll have to spin a instance/database just for this user. If I could have a separate mapping between account / domain, one single instance could manage everyone.
>It does seem that Mastodon was the first one and has more functionality
Pleroma has rich text support, emoji reacts, polls with more than 4 answers... It never struck me as having less features than Mastodon, except maybe when it hadn't gotten polls yet at all some months back.
RSS is still not dead! You are on a website, RIGHT NOW, that publishes fully operational RSS feeds! So do all the popular blog CMSes! So do all the popular static blog generators!
I'm not sure that there's any "peak" to compare it to. I mean, my whole wishlist for the RSS ecosystem is basically:
1) people stop inexplicably calling it "dead"
Being "dead" has its fringe benefits, at least, like no one proposing changes for the sake of change - it gets to be happily frozen and useful with no one trying to e.g. update it from the XML-everything mania of its time (embarassing in hindsight) to the JSON-everything mania of our time (I'm worried there won't even be a hindsight for it to be embarassing in).
Well, except when people propose to replace it with something else because it's "dead" (sorry, I have no interest in following anyone on activitypub - if I want updates from your blog, I will poll the RSS feed you have kindly provided).
2 weeks after you posted these comments, your enthusiasm for RSS got me back into it. I set up a self hosted RSS reader and I've been happily re-engaging with long form content. Getting long form content in my fediverse feed is definitely not the same (though it's nice!). Thanks for the comments!
RSS's (and Atom's) problem is not using XML, it's the woeful ly vague, and overly forgiving specification.
As someone who has written a parser library and a RSS reader program, I can tell you that it is an endless battle of users always reporting yet another feed that is "breaking your RSS reader".
When investigating why the feed does not work well, you always end up finding yet another way how a site can implement RSS/Atom badly while still following the letter of the specification.
I love the idea of RSS/Atom and the possibilities they allow, but hate the actual specs.
I don’t feel it’s fair to say that about Atom. RSS, sure; it’s a total disaster. And that’s kinda why Atom was made, and it seems to me to do a good job.
So given that, any chance you could elucidate on fault you find with Atom?
Yes, you are right, most of my grievances were against RSS - either old RDF, or RSS 2.0, or perhaps against Atom 0.3, which was not all that common before much better Atom 1.0 took over.
Still, I vaguely recall that there was at least one vagueness in the Atom 1.0 spec that I found abused in a real world feed, but can't for the life of me remember it - it's been a while.
I've never really used rss as a power user, but a long time ago subscribed to some feeds and tracked them in an rss app. I did that because it seemed like at one point I saw the rss logo everywhere and it seemed like everyone was promoting it. I didn't use the actual aggregator to look at the combined feeds, but I did have it all set up.
Now I can't remember the last time I saw a site promoting or even clearly mentioning above the fold that they publish an rss feed. I didn't know HN published one until now.
That's why I haven't argued with anyone claiming it's dead. It seems like it disappeared.
I personally use Feedly as my RSS reader and I followed my blog to see how many followers I get. Currently, I have 367 Feedly subscribers and it still continues to grow. Also, looking at my analytics, I can see people coming in from Feedly, so it shows that they are definitely active subs[0].
It's easy to convince a growing number of people of RSS's value: "If you listen to podcasts, you probably already use RSS."
Then you just expand on the options and uses to someone who's already favorable toward RSS because it was so painless to use they didn't even realize they used it to follow some of their favorite people.
What do you mean? To use a Mastodon/Pleroma instead of the blog, or a blog engine that can interoperate with ActivityPub? If the latter, I can only think of https://write.as for the moment.
I manage it at the playbook level. They go into the role as variables.
I’ve never really used Galaxy. You recommend it? I’ve always felt like I can’t depend on other people’s roles, especially since roles don’t have their own variable scopes.
Quality of the roles on Galaxy vary a lot, but there are some that are certainly useful. Usually the variables get namespaced with the name of the role, so you'd only get some kind of conflict if you were using two different code bases for the same role - or if the dev was really sloppy/didn't care about others integrating their code.
I've been using it for some time, and while i'm def. not an expert, i do love how lightweight is is! It really is a pretty nifty platform for the fediverse!
I tried both and it's much better than Mastodon IMO due to how much more lightweight, faster and easier to deploy it is.
Maybe it has less features, but they're fully worth the sacrifice.
Does anyone know if this actually works with Mastodon accounts? I tried to follow mine, but it sent a "follow request" and then did nothing (my account is open for anyone to follow).
I'm in the early stages of implementing my ActivityPub server just using the spec[1] and it seems simple enough to me. (I'm not doing/planning any kind of front-end to it beyond what I may need for interop tests.)
Federation tech is cool from a software-engineering perspective, but almost useless from an average Joe perspective.
Centralized services have much better UX, i.e. due to a universal search mechanism and aren't as confusing. Try explaining to a non-techie that there's that cool thing called Mastodon, but there's also Pleroma that works with mastodon, but there is not one instance but many people hosting many servers, oh, and to use this whole thing, you don't get the Mastodon app, but you have multiple apps for multiple platforms, each with a different name etc. Oh, and the whole thing is also sometimes called Fediverse. Also, each instance has a completely different website and rules, most of those are small and can disappear any day, and your whole account will disappear with them. If they grow large enough, the monetization issue will eventually become evident. There are two solutions, forcing users to pay, making most of them unhappy, or selling their data, and now we are back to square one. Also remember a lot of admins push their political views on all users of the instance, much more aggressively than any mainstream platform. Blocking Gab, an instance often associated with racist content, is very common, nevermind the non-racist users on there. Same for basically blocking off Japan as a whole, just because the japanese sometimes post their anime child porn, which is legal over there. Oh, and what are those weird addresses? Well, they're kind of like email... So if they're like email, why don't we use email instead? And so it goes.
Most non-techies don't really care about privacy in the "now I see more personalized ads" sense. They don't want their future employers / partners / parents to see their messages, that's why Snapchat and sending content that automatically disappears has become so popular. The Fediverse actually sacrifices those "important" kinds of privacy. Basically, As long as you let open source clients in, your recipient can do anything with your messages with little friction, and that's not what users usually want.
For most users, Facebook spying on their stuff won't really have a material impact on their lives. However, if they get into an argument with the admin of the instance (assuming a friend is hosting it for them), the consequences can be severe. Imagine if i.e. your techy friend hosted all your social data and then discovered you had an affair with his wife. He could, as revenge, publish all your embarassing photos and direct messages. This sort of thing just can't happen with Facebook.
Matrix is quite different, the UX is much better, it's great for enterprises/education/govt, so it doesn't matter that much anyway, it's filling a previously unfilled niche (easy, realtime chats between organizations) and lets governments control their data. I think it has a moderate chance of success. Mastodon, however, is, quite frankly, a failure.
There's definitely a need for a free-speech-respecting, censorship-resistant social network, but the fediverse is not the right approach.
Right, the whole federation model is strictly flawed. The whole point of Twitter was it was YOU and the whole world. Having your profile held hostage by some "instance" doesn't make much sense. With email (it kind of) works because your emails aren't public. You don't need to worry about other people on the same server approving of you.
IMO federation took centralized social media's worst problem and made it worse!
Migrating your profile to another (Mastodon) instance is pretty quick and easy. Did it just the other day. So in what sense do you mean "held hostage"?
I'm ignorant as to how that's done right now. So correct me if I'm wrong but:
To "migrate" you basically want to have all your "followers" follow your new account. For obvious reasons you cannot just let people arbitrarily make others follow them. So the process must be mediated by the server(s). If your original server doesn't like you they can cut off your ability to "migrate".
And on top of that any server that doesn't like you can just cease interacting with you regardless of whether your "followers" like you or not.
I thought so too. It sounds uncomfortably close to "pleurome" which is a French word for pleural cancer. I'm not sure if there is a similar English word. I looked up pleroma, and apparently it is a word of Greek origins which means the fullness of divine excellencies and powers. Quite an ambitious name.
I don't know about French but "oma" is the medical suffix for swelling/growth, whether benign or malignant. E.g. sarcoma/carcinoma/lymphoma/melanoma/hematoma.
It really depends on whether you are a native English speaker from the other side of the Ocean and never heard of other languages, you come from the Old Continent and etymology for you means "Greek and Latin only" or you are from everywhere else and just don't care.
Pleroma means
> (Koinē Greek: πλήρωμα) generally refers to the totality of divine powers
It is also used in the new testament with different meanings, such as
- to fill up an empty thing (e.g. Matthew 13:48), or
- to complete an incomplete thing (e.g. Matthew 5:17);
It sounds good to me as branding.
TBH it also sounds similar to plèura s. f. [Greek πλευρά «side of the body, rib»]. which is the membrane that covers the lungs
I'm not a native English speaker, I speak several languages, I am from Europe, I am interested in etymology, I studied Latin and a tiny bit of Ancient Greek and still didn't know what Pleroma was before I read your comment.
Making it sound like ponker is an illiterate idiot (and playing on the "uneducated American" trope to boot) for not knowing the meaning of Pleroma is frankly arrogant IMO.
Maybe "pleroma" is in more common use in your language but it definitely isn't in many others, and not just for those silly English monolinguals.
> (and playing on the "uneducated American" trope to boot
That wasn't my intention
I literally meant "never heard of"
If you never heard of something, you're not used to how it sounds.
The original poster criticized the branding before knowing the meaning, I explained the meaning and why it is not as bad as it may sounds to someone used to associate "oma" with cancer - which appears a lot in US pop culture, it's a cultural thing, I never implied ignorance -
It's the same thing of Gimp, but on the opposite side, I still pronounce it the Italian way with the soft G as in "jim" and it doesn't bother me, while it reminds pulp fiction's gimp to native speakers (also: I've watched the movie in original language years later it came out)
Finally, to be completely honest, being from Rome I am biased and everything that ends in "Roma" sounds nice to me, I see the name of my city, not the suffix "oma".
You have a good point -- I've never heard of other languages, so that's why it sounded like sarcoma or carcinoma or lymphoma or melanoma or those kinds of words to me.
There are a lot of words that ends in oma, not all of them are cancer names.
Just a few from an Italian dictionary
- perizoma (thong)
- policroma (multi-coloured)
- genoma (genome)
- diploma (I think it's diploma as well in English)
I guess the confusion comes from the suffix -òma [Greek -ωμα] + ώματος
which reads as matos (ò-matos -> oma) and means different things in scientific terminology
- in medical terms indicates a swelling like ematoma (bruise) or a type of cancer (you know that)
- in biology it means a functional unit (condrioma the set of all the mitochondrion)
Pleroma, instead, comes from the verb πληρόω (it reads plero)
I'd rather say that the rest of the world needs to pay more attention to Ovid, as evidenced by this thread. If open source branding helps with that, more power to it.
If that is the strategy — evangelizing the Classics by naming products that sound vaguely like diseases that encourage further research — I’d have to agree and say more power to them.
self-hosted software generally is, that's why some people take of hosting so that the general public can migrate off Facebook and Twitter without having to worry about technical stuff.
Soapbox is developed by a massive TERF, boyfriend/husband to the founder, and co-founder of the transphobic, radical "feminist" hate-platform spinster.xyz. This is where all the TERFs migrated after the reddit ban of /r/gendercritical, /r/LGBdroptheT, ...
I think in this case, it's really hard to separate the product from the person, since it's all over the place; he's at the core of organized transphobia, harassment and hate.
In the age of J.K. Rowling being called TERF could probably majority of population be called TERFs, I see such labels no longer useful. And unless you subscribe to notions such as guilt by association, ancestral sin and similar I don't know how is conduct of developer's spouse relevant.
I feel like the case you're trying to make that JK is a "normal" person and therefore her views are common. This isn't an instance where someone who happens to hold an unorthodox opinion is caught by people trying to apply labels to her. She isn't getting caught up in the fight between feminists and the broader cultural push for trans acceptance. She's been on the front lines of this fight for years and years. It just happens that one, people are starting to actually care about trans people and two, JK decided to start venting more publicly on the largest outrage machine on the internet.
Very few people are TERFs. It's a relatively uncommon set of beliefs which are separate from the kinds of views that might get you called transphobic.
Unlike J.K. Rowling (I only know about a few dramas, maybe there were some that I missed) this person is an actual TERF. He basically says that because a trans person once molested a girl then all transgender people are bad, along with all the other usual TERF arguments. See https://blog.alexgleason.me/trans/ for his opinions.
Although I personally do not think that the authors personality/opinions/etc should be considered when selecting software so I denounce 488643689's post. I would understand boycotting a paid product if the company producing it was engaged in unethical behaviour (such as abusing their employees, etc) but this is not close to what is happening here.
I actually checked out r/GenderCritical just before it got banned -- and it's nothing like what you describe it as. I only found mature, good faith discussions regarding the trans issue.
Let's share some more information, then. Alex is also an atheist and the kind of annoying vegan advocate. I am a Christian Orthodox and I roll my eyes every time I see him talking about any of his soybean-dirt-based meals or the typical shallow sophomore religion-bashing post. Should I just interact with those that are exactly like me?
> Is this the cancel culture apocalypse the right is talking about?
Asking people to not separate the product from the person, and think that the guy does not deserve any praise for his work because of some association with people that disagree with you? Yes, that's cancel culture that (not just) the right is talking about.
Trying to label everyone that holds an opposing view as "hateful" without absolutely no room for dialog? Yes, that's cancel culture that (not just) the right is talking about.
> it's not ethics anymore?
Does Soapbox come with some kind of clause that says you need to share their views to use their code? Is the product itself exclusionary in any way? Then no, ethics have nothing to do with it.
> Asking people to not separate the product from the person
Sorry, but why should i separate the product from the person?
I'm not boycotting lactalys because their product are bad, they are quite good in fact, but he way the brand owner used to treat his employees, and the way they still treat milk producers irks me. I don't want to contribute to a person fortune if i don't like him or his way of treating people.
Should i buy some Nestlé product for convenience when i know that people gaining the most of the deal are not even apologetic about the contaminated water scandals? When they knew about African water and still sold mothers powder milk?
I quite like some of their other product, i just don't want to give them my money.
It is the same for this soapbox product, no?
I don't care if it is cancelled tbh, i just don't want the people behind the product to get my money, is this bad? Also there is room for dialog, i've talk quite extensively with a sodastream ambassador. Still won't ever buy their products, but we did talk.
I’m going to be downvoted to oblivion, but I couldn’t care less.
From my point of view (Western Europe) this whole “cancel culture” thing is demented and stupid, and I’m probably as liberal as they come.
Why? Well, let me provide an illustration: what was Carl Benz’s opinion on, oh I don’t know... homosexuality or transexuality? I’m guessing blindly that it was probably very restrictive and ‘unenlightened’ by our own “modern standards”. He’s the inventor of the internal combustion engine... how many people are willing to give up their cars because their inventor’s views were ideologically impure? Louis Pasteur was probably also a bigot by modern standards too: are we going to wipe the slate of hygiene theory clean because of this?
People are imperfect. In the eyes of those who will come later we too will be imperfect. Let’s be charitable towards those who despite different political views and values nonetheless collaborate in this great technological and cultural enterprise that is the sum total of human knowledge and capabilities.
None of us have are the golden standard. Koan-like, those who might think they are the final word in morality aren’t, because they lack humility and also empathy with the circumstances that inform others’ views.
This really have nothing to do with this. My father is boycotting products since the 80s (being born in jerusalem in 68 and having links with orphanage sisters living the Israeli/palestine war from the "poor" side probably have something to do with it).
In his case not about cancelling israel, its about not engaging with them economically.
But this is not only that. This is a generation thing. You (and i say "you" as in: older generations) told us that if we don't agree, we have to vote with our wallet.
Not happy about climate change? Vote with your wallet then, are you still using cars and planes hypocrites?
You're not happy about how we treat pigs and cows? How about you stop eating meat and vote with your wallet? (this one was delightful. Never heard this again since 2010).
Younger people probably had it harder than i did, and i did start to boycott things early in my life when the inconvenience was not to high. Just to piss you off. I did never coordinate though or ask people to boycott something with me. I'm not the social kind of guy. But i understand why people my generation would do that. You told us to vote with our wallet, that this is the only power we have. Don't be astonished when we use it.
OK, I’ll happily grant you that you’ve made a compelling case. I still think there’s a significant difference between “cancel culture” (which I deplore) and boycotting/“voting with your wallet” (which I support), but I can’t quite put my finger on it so it’s entirely possible that I’m holding an untenable position. Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.
Absolutely not the same. His work was not achieved due to exploitation of anyone. His personal views do not change the usage of the product and do not mandate any kind of compliance or agreement to any of his values. You want to put someone who simply expresses a contrarian view on the same stand as someone who actively exploits their employees?
> I don't care if it is cancelled tbh, i just don't want the people behind the product to get my money, is this bad?
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist...
Yes, pretty bad. This is the seed of totalitarianism that is planted in most progressives minds and speeches. You just don't think is bad because you are not in the out-group yet.
An open source project is different then like a chair or something. Part of the value of open source is the community around it. You can contribute to the code and ask around for support, but that requires associating or at least potentially associating with the creator.
If that creator is someone you don't want to associate with then why not just find a different project to use?
(This is already getting tiring, so forgive me for the flippant answer)
I don't want to associate with Richard Stallman (even before his stupid comments regarding pedophilia), yet I use Emacs every single day of my life. If you tell me that Emacs itself only came to existence due to any of Stallman's ridiculous statements or if you tell me that my usage of Emacs enables Stallman in any way to be the asswipe that he is, then I would seriously consider dropping it.
> but it's not something that anyone takes seriously
I do, and so do a lot of other people. His arguments were tolerant and made perfectly fine sense.
> Stallman's views on people who use platforms like Facebook or tools like Photoshop, namely that they deserve whatever abuse they receive for being too stupid or lazy to become programmers and sysadmins so they can use FSF products instead
More importantly, I agree with parent that expressing views is something else than actively exploiting someone or using violence. Words != violence. Tolerance is being able to co-exist, work with and even be friends with people we disagree with. And, yes, that include people we think are intolerant (or that will be the excuse not to do the hard thing and engage in debate).
Open debate is a good thing, and it was hard won. Let's not throw it away so quickly.
Spinster.xyz is build on Soapbox and _run by Alex Gleason. It's hosting a community, which was banned from reddit for actively harassing and willfully hurting trans people. That's actions not words. Maybe people underestimate how organized and funded these hate groups are, how coordinated and planned the gaslighting of the public is. It's also not just "feminism" but more and more intersection with ultra right and "christian" conservative thinktanks.
Just because you are not directly affected doesn't mean it's all just opinions and words, and nobody gets hurt.
Are you saying they're beating people up? Or stalking them? Because, if not, it absolutely is "just" words! And if they do, that's illegal. I'm not in the US, but it seems to me like your laws, for the most part, strike good balance in these types of scenarios. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing you would disagree?
I'm not saying it's nice, or good, or that they're moral. I'm saying that the "fix" many people (maybe not you) are advocating usually leads to much darker things than people having their feelings hurt by words[1]. We know this because many societies have gone down that path before us.
1: OK, that sounds flippant, I know. But I think many people underestimate the horribly things people have done, and still do, to each other..
Open debate is certainly nice but sadly both Alex and the spinster.xyz administration and users prefer offer troll responses and insult people behind their backs rather than engage in discussion.
> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist...
Thank you for this. I understand your view better like this.
This is my point of view:
I use my money and my time however i want. No one should feel entitled enough tell me if i am allowed to boycott a product.
This is why i don't think it is cancelling and that you are doing the term a disservice:
Neither i nor 488643689 did say "don't use and/or participate with this product, he is transphobe". 488643689 just informed me, and others, of the product owner views on trans people, and that he cofounded spinster.xyz (which is a TERF platform).
Our society and economy is build on the myth of homo economicus. That people will take the best decision for them with the right informations. Having this information without haviong to dig in makes everyone stronger and able to make better decision.
Preventing someone to do business with perfectly informed economic actor is totalitarism. But informing people about the personnal deed of a product owner, not shaming them if they still engage with him, is something you should absolutely do if you believe in liberal capitalism.
Invoking the ghost of Martin Niemoller to complain about people not wanting to do business with somebody who publicly espouses views they find abhorrent is a hell of a swerve.
An annoying diet is a bit different from "hey this segment of people should just not exist", isn't it?
(If that's what TERFs ~actually~ want I don't have the time or nerve to debate, but wherever you draw the line, it's still a very different category of belief)
> An annoying diet is a bit different from "hey this segment of people should just not exist", isn't it?
It is this constant mis-representation of opposing views that make these kind of discussions so unbearable. I've wasted already, what?, an hour and a half arguing about something that has nothing to do with the original topic. No wonder things are so polarized. Instead of trying to reach for common ground, the default behavior is to distort the argument, dehumanize the other and to try to "beat" the opponent into submission.
> wherever you draw the line, it's still a very different category of belief
You only mentioned the part about being Vegan, but I trust that you are smart enough to look at the part where I mentioned religious differences and figure out where I would draw the line? Hint: atheists can deny my beliefs all they want; what they think of me or my religion makes absolutely zero difference in my life.
Regarding the backend. It does seem that Mastodon was the first one and has more functionality, but (1) Pleroma is catching up and (2) waaaaay lighter on resources. Mastodon is built on Rails, requires PostgreSQL, Redis, a task server (sidekiq) and optionally Elasticsearch. Pleroma goes by with just PostgreSQL and is built on Elixir.
Regardless of technology, what I'd really like to see in a future version of these AP-systems is the ability to manage multiple-domains with a single database / application server. Right now all implementations assume that the domain of the backend is the domain of every user in the instance. So this means that if I want to host Mastodon for a user with a custom domain, I'll have to spin a instance/database just for this user. If I could have a separate mapping between account / domain, one single instance could manage everyone.