@
Panos Damelos (Catodon) :catodon: What's even worse is that just about everyone who joined the Fediverse in the last two years did so with the belief that the Fediverse is Mastodon, i.e. the Fediverse is nothing more than micro-blogging with a maximum of 500 characters.
Many more still believe so than you may think. And I'm not talking about total newbies, but even about second-wave Twitter refugees who came here right after Musk had bought the birdsite.
For others, the first encounter with an over-500-character post was not only completely unexpected, catching them entirely off-guard, but utterly
shocking and disturbing.
Now they want their nice, friendly, cosy, fluffy, comfy Fediverse back that's only vanilla Mastodon.
A few actually want a total, absolute, Fediverse-wide ban on posts over 500 characters. Others are looking for technical means that block any and all posts with over 500 characters server-side, and I think they aren't limited to those still stuck on the official phone app that doesn't fold longer posts in because it was built not only against only Mastodon, but against Mastodon being the only Fediverse project.
As long as they don't get that, they complain and mute or out-right block anyone from whom they spot a post with over 500 characters in their federated timeline. And I guess they're so numerous after all that this behaviour cuts deep into the range of everyone who isn't on vanilla Mastodon.
This exactly is why I
always add the hashtags #
Long, #
LongPost, #
CWLong and #
CWLongPost to everything that goes out of here that exceeds 500 characters. Raw count in a text editor, not fancy Mastodon way of counting. And if it's a post as opposed to a comment, I also add a Mastodon-style CW like "CW: long (5,204 characters)" although Hubzilla a) doesn't have Mastodon-style CWs in the summary field as part of its culture and b) has something much better instead.
Still, hardly anyone reads these posts.
It really seems like the only way to get my posts significant exposure on Mastodon is by actually staying below 500. Considering the amount of hashtags I need for my posts to both be discoverable and trigger filters, and considering that I didn't come from 140/280 characters to 500 characters, but I'm used to not having a character limit, it's a struggle. I often end up giving up, exceeding 500 characters and pulling all long post warning stops because that's easier for me.
It doesn't help that everyone who joins Mastodon believes that Eugen Rochko has invented the Fediverse. Bonus points for Rochko having invented both Mastodon and the Fediverse in 2022 as a reaction upon Musk's announcement to buy out Twitter. If they haven't heard of it any earlier, it probably hasn't existed any earlier.
When they're wondering what kind of witchcraft you're pulling off with your impossibly long post, not to mention stuff like bold type or italics or a bullet-point list, and you've managed to get into their heads that you are, in fact,
not on Mastodon, they still think that whatever you're on was bolted onto Mastodon by someone.
Even if you manage to convince them that, no, what you're using is being developed entirely independently from Mastodon, they still think it was made after Mastodon. And they wonder why it deviates so much from Mastodon instead of mimicking it. Or why it exists at all if there's already Mastodon.
However, this also means that they see everything in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon
as an intruder in Mastodon's Fediverse because, of course, Mastodon was here first. And everything that isn't Mastodon has to conform to Mastodon's unwritten rules and adopt Mastodon's culture. In fact, if something isn't Mastodon, it isn't allowed to have its own culture if that culture differs from Mastodon's.
This also means that nothing that isn't Mastodon is allowed to make use of any features that Mastodon itself doesn't have because they disturb some Mastodonians.
Of course, at this point, you could and actually should tell them the truth.
Rochko did, in fact,
not invent the Fediverse. Because when Mastodon was launched, the Fediverse had already existed for about eight years. Without Rochko's doing.
When Mastodon was launched, it immediately connected itself to StatusNet, Friendica, Hubzilla and Pleroma. The last three of these are actually still around, still part of the Fediverse, and Mastodon is still connected to them.
So, you should ask them, why do you think Friendica would accept to throw six years more worth of culture than Mastodon has and 80% of its features out of the window and start behaving like a Mastodon clone?
If they don't block you on the spot for not unconditionally surrendering to the new Mastodon overlords, you could try to compare the pre-Mastodon Fediverse projects to Native Americans and Mastodon to white European colonists.
Oh, and by the way: Before Mastodon, character limits in general were an exception rather than the standard, especially if Diaspora* is taken into account.
#
FediMeta #
FediverseMeta #
CWFediMeta #
CWFediverseMeta #
NotOnlyMastodon #
MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #
FediverseIsNotMastodon #
CharacterCount #
CharacterLimit #
CharacterLimits #
500Characters
NewsletterTF
Jupiter Rowland
Silkester
Cliff
OSTechNix
