[HN Gopher] The Many Branches of the Fediverse ___________________________________________________________________ The Many Branches of the Fediverse Author : nafnlj Score : 68 points Date : 2022-11-04 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (axbom.com) (TXT) w3m dump (axbom.com) | skybrian wrote: | I wonder which of these are also RSS readers? That might be a | good combination. | remram wrote: | I would rather have my microblogging system look more like a | feed reader than the opposite. E.g. folders, search, notes, re- | export multiple curated feeds... | nafnlj wrote: | Hubzilla allows you to subscribe to feeds as "channels," but it | doesn't provide a great feed reader experience from my limited | use. I have only made accounts with Mastodon, Pixelfed, and | Hubzilla, so entirely possible that some of the others do | interesting things with feed subscriptions/reading. | aliqot wrote: | feed reader on Vivaldi is also pretty bad. Right off the top | of my head: | | - no right click to adjust poll interval, default is every 5 | minutes(!) | | - no ability to re-poll a single feed | | - no right click to edit interval, must use main app settings | | - subscribe button doesn't allow interval settings | | - no feed categories | | - no feed ordering | | There's more but I feel like a jerk just going off about | something free that nobody asked me to try. I want to | investigate submitting a PR, but I am in limbo as I'm | precluding from consorting with G. | friend_and_foe wrote: | Most servers implementing ActivityPub also allow RSS/Atom | subscriptions. | serverholic wrote: | Honestly, after using mastodon I'm a bit more bearish on the | fediverse. It's too complex for your average user and there are | still significant centralization risks. | | Sure anyone can host a server but obviously that's pretty | technical. | | If you don't host your own server then you place a lot of trust | on whoever owns it. They own your data and they decide which | external servers to share data with. Want to add a video game | centric mastodon server to your feed? Well you better hope your | server decides to partner with that server. | | Not to mention that servers cost money, so you have to be sure | that whoever is hosting it can continue to pay for it. Mastodon | the organization is a non profit. Do they have the funds to host | millions of people? Probably not. Which means people have to find | a smaller server and hope that it stays funded. | | This makes choosing your mastodon server a pretty important | choice. Most people seem to be going for mastodon official | servers which is causing them to be overloaded. | feet wrote: | Most of us carry internet connected computers in our pockets | now. How difficult would it be to automate setting up a server | on android or iOS? Could someone just install an app and have a | server available? | csande17 wrote: | The main problem with this idea is battery life. Mobile | devices are designed to go to sleep really often to conserve | battery, and you can't do that if you're running a server. | iOS in particular heavily restricts when and how apps can do | stuff while the screen is locked. | caycep wrote: | How "fediverse-ey" was say, USENET, Napster or Bittorent back in | the day? | [deleted] | haunter wrote: | >Bittorent back in the day | | What do you mean by this? Torrent never went away, there are | countless high quality private trackers and even some really | good public ones | | But considering piracy + fediverse then DC++ was the most | fediverse-y one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC%2B%2B You | could connect to any given X server where you could share your | local drive + chat with other users too. It's still really good | to find some extremely niche stuff but torrent basically "won" | because of the hash based seeding system (as in multiple user | can share and peer the same stuff). DC was just seeing others' | HDD and find whatever you can and directly download from there. | But you didn't know that Joe's "Movie2012x264.mp4" and Jim's | "Movie2012.mkv" are the same thing or different. | hauxir wrote: | it was like that in the beginning of dc++ but they later | introduced hashing which did infact figure out the | commonality between the two. | bombcar wrote: | IRC was not even fediversed, it was independent fiefdoms, but | it was fun. | remram wrote: | For a little while it was an open federation of sort. The | problem is that it had a single namespace of user and channel | names, so misbehaving servers would cause chaos. | | Wikipedia has a summary: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat#EFnet | nemo44x wrote: | Much of the pre-2k internet worked this way. Anyone remember | Hotline or Carracho and dyndns.org for redirecting your dynamic | IP to a hostname? | | The reason that approach ultimately lost was because it was | federated and therefore Balkanized more or less. However, it | was probably a better UX in many ways than putting everyone | together in 1 room. | | But it was limited and cells would divide and divide further | with no great way of interacting on common grounds topics. | | Maybe this is the way forward but I doubt it. I think we'll see | better approaches at centralization because that's where the | money is. We just need a way to digitize the norms you'd see | from the same peoples interactions at a bar, church, DMV, | sports venue, work, with friends, etc. | friend_and_foe wrote: | Hubzilla notably is building the Zot protocol, IMO the coolest | and most underrated federating protocol put there. | csande17 wrote: | I was expecting this to be about the various Mastodon groups that | have all instance-banned each other, so you can't communicate | with everyone in the fediverse without making multiple accounts. | (IIRC there are at least 3: the American alt-right, the American | left/progressives/etc, and the Japanese instances where people | draw pictures that are illegal to possess in most other | countries.) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-04 23:00 UTC)