Reddit's strategy of antagonizing app writters, moderators, and millions of redditors is good news for reddit alternatives like KBin and Lemmy. And not just them! The fediverse has always grown in waves and we're at the start of one.
Previous waves have led to innovation but also major challenges and limited growth. It's worth looking at what tactics worked well in the past, to use them again or adapt them and build on them. It's also valuable to look at what went wrong or didn't work out as well in the past, to see if there are ways to do better.
Here's the current table of contents:
I'm flashing!!!!!
But first, some background
Don't tell people "it's easy"
Improve the "getting-started experience"
Keep scalability and sustainability in mind
Prioritize accessibility
Get ready for trolls, hate speech, harassment, spam, porn, and disinformation
Invest in moderation tools
Values matter
This is a great opportunity – and it won't be the last great opportunity
If you're on a centralised platform like Reddit, this is what they can do. Centralised platforms have all-powerful leaders who can do whatever they want, and you have no alternatives if you disagree.
The point of the Fediverse being on lots of servers is that each server's power is limited. If you disagree with one server's actions, you can move.
Alright, it was a long night for me. But I'm going to bed fully satisfied. It seems like I've uncovered most of the issues that were only visible at this scale. I temporarily fixed critical things, and in two days, a update will be released that will preevnt such troubles for some time.
Blahaj zone (the Calckey instance) has been running for around 6 months now. We've had a slow but constant growth of new members, with a big spike when Calckey drew a lot of attention. And as a result, even though we're not a huge instance, we are one of the larger Calckey derived instances around.
lemmy.blahaj.zone on the other hand has seen crazy growth! In the last week, our lemmy instance has gone from almost no members, to nearly as many users as our Calckey instance. The mind blowing part though, is that the lemmy instance isn't even close to being one of the largest lemmy instances. We don't even appear on the first page of Fediverse Observer! And the sheer number of lemmy instances online now is huge compared to where it was a couple of weeks ago.
And that's before we even talk about kbin and the threadiverse as a whole, of which Lemmy is only a part
I can honestly say that this whole thing has shifted my view of just what the future of the fediverse might be. I assumed it would always be microblogging centric, but now, I question that...
There's lots of talk right now about how #Reddit alternatives such as #Lemmy, #kbin and #Lotide fit into the overall picture of the #Fediverse, with some calling these link-aggregation sites collectively the "Threadiverse". But how does #Pinetta fit into the mix?
Much like a link aggregator, Pinetta allows users to collect and comment on various things like links, text, images, video, and so on. In that sense, it will interact almost seamlessly with federated link aggregators. The main difference, of course, is in the user interface. Pinetta will have a number of modes that users can choose to display content:
As a "feed" chronologically or ranked based on most engaging posts (based on favourites and boosts);
As a "grid" similar to how #Pixelfed displays images in profiles;
As a "masonry" layout - much like how #Pinterest displays pins by default;
As a "mood board", which will allow users to arrange pins visually to their liking in a freeform 2D layout.
Like what you're reading? So do we. Give us a follow and star our repos on Codeberg to keep up with development!
So, is it time now for "spread mastodon/fediverse" to adapt somewhat and spread the "#Threadiverse" (my moniker, fediverse for reddit-like platforms, eg #Lemmy and #kbin)
Welcome to another edition of The Roundup! I’ve mentioned this blog post by Signal a few times before, and will do so again. One of the reasons why I think it is so relevant, is that it shows how the same communication platform is used it wildly different ways in different geographical regions, with people often not even realising that this happens. This already happens when everyone uses the same app, Signal. I’ve pointed out before that this effect must therefore be even stronger on the fediverse, where people are not even using the same app.
This differentiation in the fediverse is starting to play out in more and more pronounced ways. For most fediverse users in the Western world, the fediverse is tightly linked with Mastodon. But the Japanese fediverse community is growing extremely rapidly, mainly using Misskey. It has grown in less than half a year from 75k accounts to 325k accounts. Not only that, people on misskey.io love to post. Compared to Mastodon’s biggest server, mastodon.social, people on misskey.io post 12 times as much!
The language barrier between English and Japanese contributes that these groups do not overlap much, with people often not really knowing what happens at the other side. Still, if you want to understand the fediverse, its getting harder and harder to ignore Misskey. We used to have a moment where people referred to Misskey and Calckey as *key, but with Calckey getting a rebranding and name change soon, the field of fediverse microblogging clients keep expanding.
Discussion platforms
Beyond the expanding scene of microblogging services is the field of forums and link aggregators. Reddit’s changes to their API pricing, effectively killing 3rd party apps, has a lot of people upset, and some are looking for new places to go.
Lemmy is one of the main recipients of the new inflow of people. As an illustration, Beehaw.org is a small Lemmy community that is focusing on being a safe and diverse place. They have had to restrict signups after their user base doubled in the last few days. Lemmy has an Android client, and an iOS client that entered TestFlight beta a few weeks ago. Another project to work on a read-only client for Lemmy is underway as well. Lemmy is not without controversy though; the large account FediTips voiced their concern about the politics of the developers, regarding the denial of human rights abuses. As one of the largest Lemmy server explicitly states that they like Stalin, and some developers of Lemmy associate with this server, it is understandable that people are hesitant to recommend Lemmy. For a more in-depth article regarding this, as well as the context where this happens regarding Reddit’s changes, as well as the potential for Kbin in this, I recommend this article by @jayeless.
Forum software Discourse has been working on a plugin to enable federation, and the first version of this is available. As of now, it only publishes a note to the rest of the fediverse when a new topic is created, and does not allow for the federation of comments yet. The ActivityPub Social Hub is one of the first forums to make use of this functionality, so you can now easily see on your fediverse account when new topics are created.
The links
Mastodon is featured on the Apple App Store. It describes Mastodon in fairly good detail, and links to popular client apps such as Ivory and Mona.
Trunks is a Mastodon app for iOS, Android and web client, and after 5 months in beta has now officially been released.
An excellent article that goes into the details of making an app for the fediverse, and the practical complications with interoperability. While in theory all apps should talk with each other via ActivityPub, getting the details correct for the implementation turns out to be quite a bit more complicated.
Web browser Vivaldi has been running their own Mastodon server for a while now. In a new interview, the CEO talks more about federation and running their own server.
An overview of the top 30 most popular servers that relate to the fediverse in some way. This list takes the widest possible interpretation of fediverse. Quite a few people will disagree with including Truth Social on the list for example, as it does not federate. I personally see this list as a good overview of what is out there, even though I hold a narrower definition of fediverse.
Bonfire is a microblogging client that is still in alpha testing, that focuses on circles and boundaries. A new blog post explains their thinking in more detail.
Calckey has the feature to add plugins. This is barely used, as their is little documentation on how to make plugins. Jeff Sikes has been building plugins, and documenting the process on how to make them.
Owncast celebrates its 3 year anniversary with a major update.
PixelFed has updated their onboarding process for new users. One notable thing is that they use the word ‘communities’ to describe servers/instances. Personally I think that is a great term that makes it easier for new users to understand what is going on with federation.
John Gruber might have some mixed feelings on Mastodon (stating last month that Mastodon is doomed to relative obscurity, compared to Bluesky), but still implemented federation for his blog Daring Fireball.
Beyond the fediverse
Quite a lot of news this week that is not directly about the fediverse, but still relates to it in some way.
On Bluesky: This article by The Intercept answers some basic questions about Bluesky in an detailed manner, such as who exactly owns Bluesky. It also reiterates Bluesky’s goal to federate with other servers that run ATproto. If/when that happens, bridging to the ActivityPub fediverse is all but guaranteed. This will complicate the question about what the fediverse entails even further.
Bluesky, continued: Bluesky has a roadmap update. They give a shout out to an extension Skylink, that shows you if a domain that you visit while browsing is used as a domain on Bluesky. This is pretty much the exact thing as the StreetPass extension for Mastodon.
One of the servers in the far-right server cluster that include places like Kiwifarms suffered a databreach, which includes leaked DMs. The Daily Dot reports that the DMs show that Alex Gleason is working closely with Trump’s Truth Social as well. This in itself is not surprising news, as both platforms use the Soapbox front-end, of which Alex Gleason is the creator. Gleason claims that this information was public all along. The story by Daily Dot did bring this connection into the spotlight, with outlets like Yahoo also reporting on it.
WordPress.com has launched paid newsletters in a challenge to Substack. This is not fediverse news, for now, but the impact might be visible in the fediverse later on. WordPress is actively working on further integration into the fediverse with their ActivityPub plugin. Substack has so far not focused on interoperability with other platforms. Their new microblogging platform, Notes, does not interoperate, for example. How this will play out is uncertain, but worth watching.
I just had a bit of a look at kbin.social and I have to say, kbin looks really impressive!
If you've never heard of kbin, it's a fediverse platform specifically focusing on groups. Broadly speaking, similar to lemmy, the goal is to create a fediverse take on the reddit experience. However, kbin also integrates fediverse groups like gup.pe, chirp and friendica groups, and that is a killer feature as far as I'm concerned!
We've been running a lemmy instance for a few months now, but it might be time to look at spinning up our own kbin instance too!
The more I use different #fediverse apps, the more I feel that we are on the edge of a different future, in the early stages of something that we haven't seen before.
In the last few months, I've used #Mastodon, #Misskey, #Calckey, #Funkwhale, #lemmy, #Peertube, #Bookwyrm and #Pixelfed. Soon, I'm going to try an install of #kbin. In the not too distant future, we will see #GreatApe bringing more options for video chat to the Fediverse. There are countless more platforms that I haven't had a chance to try.
The network formed by the interconnections between those apps is the Fediverse; a Federated Universe. Federated, because everything out there is connected with everything else, in one giant network. What I am truly beginning to appreciate is just how real that vision is, and just how disruptive to our future it's going to be. More than a truism, these the fediverse platforms really will allow us to see and interact with nearly anything else out there.
The platform we use no longer determines the information we can access; it doesn't build walls around us. Instead, what out choice of platform determines, is how we interact with information, rather than determining what information we are able interact with in the first place. The walls in the walled garden haven't so much been torn down, as simply never built.
I can write a blog post, and someone on Mastodon can reply to it. I can make a group post on lemmy, and someone from Calckey can reply to it. I can see an awesome photo on Pixelfed, bring it in to #Akkoma and boost it for everyone else to see. And then anyone who sees it can interact with it.
The cross platform interactions are still imperfect. Standards are still being developed, code is still being written and features are still being defined, but the future is right here, we are on the cusp of something new and amazing.
Of course, this is all old news to someone who has been part of the fediverse for years now, but it feels different now. The momentum is here, we are seeing a shift and I think once we cross that precipice, once we have normalised the cross channel interactions we are starting to develop, it's going to be very hard to go back.