The Meta exodus, a new flood of newbies and the omnipresent search for a Facebook alternative; CW: long (almost 8,000 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, Facebook mentioned
The Fediverse seems to be going crazy now. Or it's just me and the hashtag search RSS feeds on mastodon.social that I've recently subscribed to.
The blissfully uninformed for whom "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" mean the same have apparently been pushed into the background, just like the fundamentalists who
want the Fediverse to be only Mastodon. Even those who have been dragged from Facebook to Mastodon by either of the two groups, and who try to apply what they're used to from Facebook to a wannabe Twitter clone, are few and far between.
No, there are many more for whom the Fediverse is Mastodon, Pixelfed, Loops and Friendica. For many of these, these four are fully separate networks, and they cannot for the lives of them imagine that you can be on one and directly connect to someone on another. I mean, you can't follow Instagram users from 𝕏 either, right? So why should this be possible in the Fediverse? Isn't the Fediverse an umbrella term for everything free, open-source and decentralised anyway? (Spoiler: No, it isn't. Yes, all that stuff is connected.)
Curiously, not only total Fediverse newbies believe this, but even people who have joined Mastodon in 2022. There are Mastodon users for whom the idea is totally alien that Mastodon users can follow non-Mastodon accounts. Mind you, sometimes while following users all over the Fediverse already.
And so there are Mastodon users who join Pixelfed, not because they want to post pictures, but because they want to follow someone on Pixelfed. And they cannot imagine that they can do that from Mastodon.
Likewise, there are Mastodon users who join Friendica, not to shake off Mastodon's tight constraints and get a taste of
the good stuff, but because some of their Facebook friends want to join Friendica, too. And they cannot imagine that they can follow Friendica accounts from Mastodon. Even though they may actually already do that.
Speaking of Friendica: This is where things got even crazier.
There are people looking for a Facebook alternative in the Fediverse. Some say someone should totally make one. Because the Facebook alternatives that already exist in the Fediverse, some of which have actually been around for longer than Mastodon, are still too obscure.
And then there are those who
do know Facebook alternatives in the Fediverse.
That is, for one, there's the faction for whom "the" Facebook alternative in the Fediverse is Friendica. Not because they think Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and Socialhome are unfit as Facebook alternatives. But because they've never heard of Hubzilla, (streams), Forte or Socialhome. And they themselves are on Mastodon, they don't know a single Friendica user, they've never (knowingly anyway) come into contact with a Facebook user, and so they only know Facebook from hearsay and by name.
And then there's the faction that suggests Friendica and diaspora*. Clearly, they only know both from hearsay and by name, too. For it's obvious that they don't know two important things about diaspora*.
One, diaspora* does not use ActivityPub. It is not federated with Mastodon (which, for many, defines "Fediverse"). The only projects that can communicate both via ActivityPub and with diaspora* are Friendica, Hubzilla and Socialhome. Granted, if you regard the various server applications in the Fediverse as "decentralised walled gardens", and if following a Friendica account from Mastodon goes beyond your comprehension, this doesn't matter.
Two, diaspora* is withering away. A few days before New Year's Eve 2024, several of the bigger diaspora* pods shut down for good. According to at least one statistics site, diaspora* lost more than half of its users within three days. And on Saturday, January, 25th, diasp.org will be the next, one of the biggest and most important pods.
Well, and then there are those on Mastodon who think about joining Friendica, but who need some information first. They shout their request for help into the void. And almost never does even a single actual Friendica user reply. Not even a former Friendica user. Instead, either all replies come from other Mastodon users who only know Friendica from hearsay, or nobody replies at all.
All this is where I keep having to step in.
Just like the last three years when I kept having to tell people that, no, the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, now I often have to tell them that, no, Friendica is not the only existing alternative to Facebook in the Fediverse. I've lost count of how many times I've told people about Hubzilla and especially (streams). I've even made
comparison tables that cover Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) and additionally Mastodon so that Mastodon users have something they can relate to, just so that I don't have to explain the same stuff over and over again.
It's especially when a replacement for Facebook groups, private groups in particular, is requested that I suggest (streams) instead of Friendica. Yes, Friendica has private groups, too. But why not try and go all the way with fine-grained permission control, with four different types of groups to choose from and with the possibility to use the permission system to appoint additional admins, not to mention instance shutdown resilience by means of nomadic identity?
I may actually have successfully gotten a few people to join (streams). The lack of public, open-registration instances (there are only two) doesn't even seem to matter because many are looking for something to host themselves. (streams) is nice for self-hosting because it has a rather small footprint, especially considering how powerful it is, and all it needs is a LAMP stack. Granted, self-hosting (streams) kind of defeats the need for nomadic identity, at least mostly. And I'm still not sold about the idea of setting up a server of something before you really know what it is and how it works and handles. Oh well.
In fact, I'm recommending (streams) more often than Hubzilla now, also because it's
easier less difficult to set your channel up and get going. I mean, (streams) can really need some more users. Still, it kind of feels like backstabbing the Hubzilla community that's looking for new users itself. And it'd feel like going into direct competition with the Friendica community, weren't it for the fact that the Friendica veterans whom I'm directly or indirectly connected to don't even notice most of those help requests, much less what I'm doing.
That is, if someone really explicitly needs help with Friendica specifically, I do something else: I import the post itself into my stream, and then I repeat (= boost) it. I'm connected to enough Friendica users to increase the likeliness of help from the right people by magnitudes.
But often enough, the biggest obstacle is another: The help-seeker is on an iPhone, probably exclusively, and they couldn't possibly use
any Fediverse server software without a native iOS app. In this case, it barely matters whether they join Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams): There's nothing for Friendica in the Apple App Store.
Yeah, sure, you can connect Friendica to at least some Mastodon apps, much unlike Hubzilla and (streams). But using Friendica with a Mastodon app that doesn't cover several of Friendica's core features can only be a stopgap, and what people are looking for is a full-blown, permanent replacement for the Web interface which they never ever want to lay their eyes and hands on. Ever. And getting into the beta test for Relatica is too much of a hassle for almost everyone.
But seriously, why do I, a Hubzilla and (streams) user, have to give more Friendica support than actual Friendica users?
Well, at least I've yet to be attacked for alleged reply-guying and Fedisplaining.
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