Dumb question that I was always too afraid to ask:
I know how the #Fediverse and its federation works. It's intuitive and familiar to me; I mean, I even host my own instance.
But I never understood how interaction cross-software is supposed to work. In theory, I can use whatever #ActivityPub software I want and still interact with everyone else. But in practice that just... isn't the case, right?
I mean, for text it's quite simple: I write a short post on #Mastodon and people on #GoToSocial or #Misskey or whatever can see and read that same post and interact with it. They can see my profile and it appears on their instance in their style and with their features.
Even outside of microblogging I still get it. A super-long post on #Friendica or #Diaspora appears on my timeline, too. Their profiles might have more fields than I can see here, but that's fine.
But what's up beyond that?
I can see #Pixelfed posts here, converted into image galleries. But what about the other way 'round? If someone on Pixelfed follows my Mastodon account, they can't see any of my non-image posts, right?
What about #PeerTube and such niche software? I guess I could follow a PeerTube account as a microblogger and see their videos and descriptions in my timeline. Video comments are replies.
But the other way 'round? How are they supposed to interact with Friendica or Pixelfed users? PeerTube doesn't even have a "timeline".
Doesn't that feature disparity undermine the whole idea of the #Fediverse or am I missing something?
marqle
in reply to lianna • • •the best way I saw #ActivityPub explained was as being like email protocols.
On the most basic level, text works, but the more complexity you add the more inconsistency you see.
For example, if you attach large files, some email providers will not deliver it. If you use some css some email services won't format it the same way.
And recently - well about a year ago - some yahoo accounts weren't able to receive some exchange emails.
We're all so used to this we don't even think about, but from what I've read it;'s the same issue at work with the #fediverse.
Because servers get so much freedom in how to operate, it breaks things for some users.
The social media we're used to is more homogeneous, but it wasn't always that way.
We used to have these issues with #nntp servers, where for example some servers refused to encapsulate #yenc messages correctly
It's not that #mastodon is the new way; it's just that we've forgotten the old way :)
lianna
in reply to marqle • • •I mean, I know. I host my own Fedi-enabled server and all.
It's just that even in the context of the e-mail analogy, people can still interact on the common basis: a plain-text e-mail message.
But I don't see the same on, say, PeerTube. I can only ever post videos or comments. I can't post a text post from my channel. Even if my PeerTube account "follows" you on Mastodon, there is no way for me to see any of your posts at all, lest you post a video or comment under one of mine.
Effectively, I still need an account on a more traditional micro- or macroblogging software instance like Mastodon or Friendica if I want to participate in anything but PeerTube itself.
And that defeats the purpose of the interoperability doesn't it? I don't want everything to turn into a Mastodon microblogging clone, but I'd like at least the most basic of social interactions to be possible from my PeerTube account if it's a full and complete ActivityPub-compatible account.
abeorch
Unknown parent • •Ive developed a sodt spot for Friendica. It feels like a good middle of the road solution that missed out on all the fame and investment that Mastodon got.
I can see with a slow steady effort its approacb of being more than just microblogging and its privaty by default approach being the one that will work for most people.
There is stuff that it would be great of it could do.. e.g building lemmy communities into its global directory, more integration with Osm and I sort of feel that will come with adons.
My thing with Pixelfed and Peertube is I cant see them as more than an authoring style or mode - rather than a full user identity in a Federated, anything could come from anywhere , network - otherwise it wouldnt make sense for them to consume posts from non-video/image sources - I guess Meta figured that out with FB/Instagram.
Grow Fediverse
in reply to lianna • • •@lianna It's been a while since i used it but ... I could have sworn that Pixelfed had a config option, that is off by default, to allow posts without images to also appear in its timeline.
Peertube seemed more tricky to me. In addition to not having any kind of all-available-content timeline that i could find ... how would it work vs their peering functionality? My understanding is they share bandwidth for videos. The load of a video going viral gets distributed. So how would it then behave if it was pulling in video and images in its timeline where the media is hosted from a Friendica instance rather than a Peertube instance? Would the Peertube end user experience a timeline where some media delivered promptly and other media fails out if the host instance gets knocked over by virality?
abeorch
in reply to Grow Fediverse • •