@Justin Crozer @Stefan Bohacek @Lentävä Kalakukko @Roni Rolle Laukkarinen Whenever I see Mastodon users talk about "culture" in a Fediverse context, I have to wonder: What exactly do they refer to when they talk about "culture"?

Is it Fediverse culture? As in, overarching, software-independent Fediverse culture?

As in, taking into consideration that Fediverse server applications that aren't Mastodon, e.g. Misskey or Sharkey or Friendica or Hubzilla, have different cultures than Mastodon?

Recognising a post or a comment from one of these applications, acknowledging that it comes from a place with a different history, a different set of features and thus a different culture than Mastodon and refraining from enforcing Mastodon's unwritten rules against it?

Or does "culture" only refer to Mastodon's culture? Does it reject or completely disregard all cultures in the Fediverse that aren't Mastodon's and demand the whole Fediverse adopt Mastodon's culture and only Mastodon's culture?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who post more than 500 characters at once (which, by the way, is perfectly normal everywhere outside of Mastodon)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who reply to people who haven't mentioned them first, and whom they aren't mutually following either (which, by the way, is perfectly normal in large parts of the non-Mastodon Fediverse, too)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who quote-post Mastodon toots that must not be quote-posted (because they've had quote-posts for much longer than Mastodon, but without a no-quote flag so they can't see Mastodon's no-quote flag)?

Do these "bad eggs" incllude users who "misuse" Mastodon's CW field for summaries (because they have literally had the exact same text field as a summary field for seven years longer than Mastodon has had it as a CW field, and because having a summary field makes a whole lot of sense if your character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who use more than four hashtags in one post (because, unlike Mastodon, the places where they are have filtering as well as automatically having messages hidden behind CW buttons deeply engrained into their cultures, but this requires the appropriate keywords to be present)?

If so, then this explains why only Mastodon users can enjoy significant reach on Mastodon: Everyone else is mass-blocked for misbehaving by Mastodon's standards.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Author-ized L.J. That's the problem: Whatever I do, I'll lose either way.

On the one hand, I feel a great pressure to describe and explain everything in advance. That way, nobody would ever have to ask me to describe a detail or explain something. And nobody, not even the most die-hard Mastodon alt-text activists, could say that I'm careless and that I only do the very bare minimum or not even that. There are people out there who are eager to block everyone who doesn't describe their images enough or lecture them or attack them for being lazy.

The last time I've described an image for Hubzilla, I refused to write detailed descriptions for the images within that image. That would have escalated and cost me weeks to describe them all because I'd also have had to describe dozens of images within these images and even more images within these images. Mind you, someone who travels to the place I've described couldn't actually see what I'd have described because the images in my image themselves have a limited resolution. But I genuinely felt bad for not describing these images.

Besides, if I only described my original images once, namely in the alt-text, and then briefly and concisely, and if someone came and asked me to describe certain elements at greater detail, I couldn't always do that. Sometimes I couldn't go back to the place shown in the image and take a closer look and write a more detailed description because that place simply doesn't exist anymore, or it has been modified, and it doesn't look like the image anymore. The details that I'd have to take a closer look at are gone.

On the other hand, my experience is also that posting more than 500 characters at once reduces my reach on Mastodon tremendously. I think I must have over 700 or 800 followers, but my reach on Mastodon is similar to that of someone with not even a dozen followers. And I don't think that's because what I post is so uninteresting or because of my rather controversial thoughts about the Fediverse, accessibility in the Fediverse, image descriptions etc.

Basically, I can't possibly post images without risking being sanctioned by anyone.

I've briefly considered putting my long descriptions into separate HTML documents and linking to them. In theory, that would reduce the length of my image posts greatly. However, this is entirely untested. I don't know if it'd work at all, i.e. open the HTML document in someone's browser rather than downloading it to their device as a file. I don't know either if a plain HTML document with no style sheet would be accessible to screen reader users.

What I do know, though, is that Mastodon hates external links with a flaming passion. That's also because the vast majority of Mastodon users is always on phones, using dedicated Mastodon apps. They hate their browser popping open when they tap a link all the same. Also, they tend to distrust external links because the linked documents or pages may not be sufficiently accessible.

Everything would be a whole lot easier if there were Fediverse-wide standards for image descriptions that take the requirements of blind or visually-impaired people into consideration as well as Mastodon's unique culture. If these standards were known to everyone both on Mastodon and in the non-Mastodon Fediverse. If everyone from blind or visually-impaired users to neurodivergent users to fully sighted alt-text activists agreed upon these standards all the same. And if these standards covered extreme edge-cases like mine as well. If there was a generally agreed-upon consensus on a whole lot of questions like:

• Is it okay to have to ask for detailed descriptions of certain details in an image that don't matter within the context of the post?
  Or do they have to be described right away if there's a chance that someone might be curious about them? What if nothing specific in the image matters more within the context than everything else?
• Is it okay to have to ask for explanations if you don't understand the topic of an image?
  Or do images about very obscure niche topics have to come with enough explanations for everyone to understand them right away (not counting technical or jargon terms which always have to be either avoided or explained)?
• So there's the rule that all text within an image must be transcribed verbatim. How far does this rule go?
  Let's suppose I have a few dozen individual bits of text within an image. Most or all of them are so small that they're unreadable. Some are so tiny that they're actually invisible at the image's resolution. Still, technically speaking, they're there. And: I can read them. Instead of reading them in the image, I can read them at the source. So I can transcribe them all.
  What is the rule then?
  Do I have to transcribe them although they're unreadable because the rule says all text has to be transcribed?
  Do I have to transcribe them although they're unreadable because not doing so and writing that they're unreadable with no transcript is or may be considered lazy?
  Do I have to transcribe them because they're unreadable, and even fully sighted people need a transcript to know what's written there?
  Mustn't I transcribe them because they don't show themselves as text in the image at the image's resolution (if they actually don't)?
  Mustn't I transcribe them because I must only describe what's visible in the image at the image's resolution to the naked eye?
  Do I have to transcribe them in my special edge-case in spite of the two above lines because this might be my last and only chance to transcribe them, for they may be gone tomorrow, and I would no longer be able to transcribe them if someone asked for a transcript? Or must I remember to keep personal transcripts of all the texts I come across in my images, just in case someone asks for a transcript of a bit of text that no longer exists?
• Must all text transcripts always be in the alt-text as opposed to an extra long image description in the post? Even if I have 20+ individual text transcripts to squeeze into Mastodon's limit of 1,500 characters of Misskey's limit of 512 characters?
  Or is it okay to
  
  • transcribe them in a separate long description in the post text
  • not put these transcripts into the alt-text
  • mention in the alt-text that there is a long image description in the post, that all the texts in the image are transcribed there, and how exactly to find that long image description?
• If any of the above requires a separate long image description because the image description won't fit within the alt-text character limits, is it preferred for the long description to be in a linked document that will open in the browser (given one has the means to write and host such a document, and users on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte do have these means)?
  Or must the long description be where the image is at all costs? Must it be in the post itself for the convenience of app users even if it inflates the post to a hyper-massive length to the inconvenience of Mastodon users?

Unfortunately, this would require some very extensive discussions on Mastodon, involving mostly Mastodon users. But Mastodon isn't fit for this kind of discussion or debate at all.

Worse yet: I've recently found out that none of the things above must be discussed on Mastodon. Ever. You must not discuss that stuff. You must do it. But you must do it right off the bat. For whichever individual definition of "right".

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts #A11y #Accessibility

Your own posts aren't any better anyway; CW: long (over 1,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta, hashtag meta View article View summary

@David Mitchell :CApride: On the other hand, when I look at your personal timeline, it's obvious that you've never really arrived on Mastodon. You break all kinds of rules. You break alt-text and image-describing rules, and you break Mastodon's cultural rules.

You write alt-texts in multiple paragraphs. You almost never use CWs, not for posts over 500 characters, not for US or Canadian politics, not for wars, never. You rarely use hashtags, and when you do, you sometimes put them in-line instead of all into the bottom line. In-line hashtags are inconvenient for screen reader users.

You boost image posts without checking whether the images have alt-texts, much less whether the alt-texts are accurate, sufficiently detailed and in line with the existing alt-text and image description rules. You boost posts about potentially disturbing topics that have no CWs.

So don't come lecturing me if your own doings are likely to get you silently muted and blocked by other Mastodon users left and right.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #MastodonCulture

I've described all my images since I've learned about alt-texts, and I put more effort and knowledge into them than anyone on Mastodon; CW: long (almost 8,700 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta Artikel ansehen Zusammenfassung ansehen

@David Mitchell :CApride: Now listen here.

Ever since I've learned about alt-texts and image descriptions, I've described all my images. And unlike most Mastodon users, I've improved my image-describing further and further.

Whenever I learned something new about image descriptions, be it a rule, a guideline, a good practice or a Mastodon preference, I used this new knowledge in new image descriptions and declared all my previous image descriptions obsolete. And I've learned a lot over the years.

I've learned from Mastodon that if explanations are necessary to understand an image, they must be delivered immediately with the image post. Ever since, I've explained everything in my images that needs explaining. And since all my image posts are about extremely obscure niche topics, they need a whole lot of explanations.

I've learned from a physically disabled Mastodon user that not everyone can access alt-texts. She, for example, can't. Thus, explanations in the alt-text are lost to her. I've learned from her that explanations go into the post text. I've put all my explanations into the post text ever since.

I've learned from Mastodon that Mastodon tends to love long, detailed image descriptions. Considering how obscure the contents of my original images are and how nobody knows what anything in them looks like if they don't see it, I came to the conclusion that someone somewhere out there might need full, detailed descriptions. I've given my original images full, detailed descriptions ever since.

I've learned from various sources that alt-text must only describe what's important within the context of a post. But judging from my observations of Mastodon, its culture and its love for long alt-texts override this rule. If someone wants to know about all the small details in your images, the context doesn't matter. Thus, how detailed my image descriptions are depends on whether or not I have to expect someone being curious about the details.

I've learned by experimentation that Mastodon truncates long external alt-texts from outside at the 1,500-character mark. Also, Hubzilla (where I am) can only display so many characters of alt-text, and alt-text cannot be scrolled. Since the audience of my alt-texts is pretty much exclusively on Mastodon, I've put the full, long, detailed image descriptions into the post text.

I've learned from a blog post that alt-texts must never contain line breaks. Line breaks in alt-texts have a nasty side-effect for screen reader users: After each line break, screen readers assume that they're reading a new alt-text for a new image. And they start whatever they consider an individual image alt-text with something like, "Graphic." Thus, I write all my alt-texts as one single paragraph.

I've learned from another blog post, as well as personal experience with various Fediverse server applications, that alt-texts must never contain the double quotes commonly found on keyboards. Different frontends may misbehave in different ways, some fail very ungracefully. Thus, I no longer use these quotes in my alt-texts.

I've learned from Mastodon that even if there is an image description in the post text, there must always be an accurate and sufficiently detailed image description in the alt-text regardless. Otherwise you risk being sanctioned. I have described all my original images twice ever since: with a long and fully detailed description in the post text and a shorter description in the alt-text.

I've learned from blog posts and websites about alt-texts that text in images must be transcribed verbatim. However, nowhere that I've seen this rule written down, I've seen it mention text that's unreadable in the image while the author knows what's written there. My conclusion is that there is no exception for these texts. I tend to have many such texts. Thus, I transcribe all bits and pieces of text within the borders of my images if I have a way to read them. And I usually have.

I've learned from other blog posts about alt-texts that colours must not only be mentioned in image descriptions, but they must also be described. After all, blind people cannot be expected to know what e.g. Burgundy red is. Also, dimensions must be given not simply in absolute measures, but relatively to what else is in the image or to something that everyone is familiar with, namely the human body. Unfortunately, I've learned that so recently that I only have one original image post in which I make use of these techniques; hence, all my older original image posts count as obsolete.

I've learned from yet elsewhere that races must not be mentioned, and genders must not be assumed. I abide by both when describing meme images. My original images, on the other hand, never contain actual human beings. Whenever I show an avatar, it's always one of my avatars whose gender I have personally defined, and these avatars can't really emulate real-life human phenotypes.

Most of the above has never been taken into consideration by anyone on Mastodon. I'm literally the only one in the Fediverse who takes describing images to such levels.

But I go beyond alt-texts and image descriptions.

I've learned from Mastodon that if there's something, anything in a post of yours that might disturb anyone in some way, the post requires a Mastodon-style content warning that mentions in which way the post is disturbing. Here on Hubzilla, that's a summary. It's the same thing, and Hubzilla had summaries before Mastodon had CWs.

From observing both Mastodon and the Web outside the Fediverse, I've compiled a list of potentially triggering topics. Even excluding national/state/provincial/regional politics, I've gathered 111 of these so far. I do my best to include each one whenever necessary. On top of that, I add CWs for many things I post about because I guess I go onto people's nerves when I post about them (the Fediverse, alt-text, image descriptions, hashtags, character limits, quote-posts, actual quote-posting etc.).

However, Hubzilla is not a Twitter wannabe. It's more like Facebook or blogging software. It only offers a summary (Mastodon: CW) field for posts and DMs, but not for comments (it has two different editors for when you reply and when you don't). I could try to add a summary (Mastodon: CW) using a pair of BBcode tags, and I've done so here, but I know from personal experience that the summary tags do not translate to a Mastodon CW in comments. I'd add an individual CW to each one of my comments, but Mastodon users will neither get an actual CW nor understand that I've tried.

So I double almost all my CW'd topics up with an appropriate set of hashtags. This is in line with the culture where I am: Here on Hubzilla and in its whole software family, we don't force poster-side CWs upon each other. Instead, we have them automatically generated for ourselves, reader-side, tailored to our individual needs. But this requires keywords to trigger the automated hiding of content behind CWs.

Also, I know just what may disturb people. The best example is eye contact. You think that eye contact can only be triggering in full-face portraits of a person looking directly at the viewer? Wrong! It's triggering if there's at least one eye in the image. I've been told that some people in the autistic spectrum can detect an eye in an image if it's only a tiny fraction of a pixel. I have to expect this to extend to other potentially triggering things as well.

Thus, if it's potentially triggering and somewhere within the borders of one of my images, even if it's hardly discernible or completely invisible to the neurotypical, I still consider the whole image potentially triggering, and I treat the image and the whole post as such.

In fact, I've stopped posting potentially triggering images here on Hubzilla altogether. That's because Hubzilla has no way of making Mastodon blank an image out. And not long ago, Mastodon's CWs only hid the post text, but not the images belonging to a post. I can't rule out that certain Mastodon apps still behave this way. So I can't even use CWs to hide a triggering image. This is why I only ever post images on (streams) now: (streams) makes Mastodon blank images out when a post contains one or two certain hashtags.

Again, nobody on Mastodon goes even only nearly that far.

Please tell me in which ways exactly this is still insufficient.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta

@afreytes, 👁️‍🗨️of🇵🇷 @Author-ized L.J. I always use a lot of hashtags. I have to. But many of my hashtags are not to increase discoverability. They're to trigger filtering, including filters that hide my content behind CW buttons. Such filters have been available on Mastodon since October, 2022 and here on Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) since its inception before Mastodon was even made.

This, by the way, is why some of my hashtags start with "CW": They're only there as content warning triggers/content warning substitutes, also because I have no means to add Mastodon-style content warnings to replies. Otherwise this comment would show the following CW on Mastodon:

CW: long (over 4,700 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, hashtag meta, content warning meta, character limit meta

However, unless I explicitly talk about certain hashtags, they all always go into the last line. And I think that even 20 hashtags in the last line of one of my posts or comments make people less uncomfortable than the post or comment exceeding 500 characters or myself talking about the Fediverse, especially talking about the Fediverse not only being Mastodon.

This comment, for example, would get the following hashtags (normally in the last line, but this time I'm talking about them):

• Hashtags for content over 500 characters:
  
  • #Long (= this message is over 500 characters long which makes some people uncomfortable)
  • #LongPost (= this message is over 500 characters long which makes some people uncomfortable; two hashtags because I can't know who filters what)
  • #CWLong (= this message is over 500 characters long which makes some people uncomfortable; hashtag version of "CW: long")
  • #CWLongPost (= this message is over 500 characters long which makes some people uncomfortable; hashtag version of "CW: long"; two hashtags because I can't know who filters what)
• Hashtags for when I talk about the Fediverse:
  
  • #FediMeta (= I'm talking about the Fediverse which makes some people uncomfortable)
  • #FediverseMeta (= I'm talking about the Fediverse which makes some people uncomfortable; two hashtags because I can't know who filters what)
  • #CWFediMeta (= I'm talking about the Fediverse which makes some people uncomfortable; hashtag version of "CW: Fediverse meta")
  • #CWFediverseMeta (= I'm talking about the Fediverse which makes some people uncomfortable; hashtag version of "CW: Fediverse meta"; two hashtags because I can't know who filters what)
• Hashtags for when I talk about hashtags:
  
  • #Hashtag (= I'm talking about hashtags; also for discovery)
  • #Hashtags (= I'm talking about hashtags; also for discovery; two hashtags because I can't know who follows/searches for the singular and who follows/searches for the plural)
  • #HashtagMeta (= I'm talking about hashtags and what I think about them which makes some people uncomfortable)
  • #CWHashtagMeta (= I'm talking about hashtags and what I think about them which makes some people uncomfortable; hashtag version of "CW: hashtag meta")
• Hashtags for when I talk about content warnings:
  
  • #CW (= I'm talking about content warnings; also for discovery)
  • #CWs (= I'm talking about content warnings; also for discovery; two hashtags because I can't know who follows/searches for/filters the singular and who follows/searches for/filters the plural)
  • #ContentWarning (= I'm talking about content warnings; also for discovery; multiple hashtags because I can't know who follows/searches for/filters what)
  • #ContentWarnings (= I'm talking about content warnings; also for discovery; multiple hashtags because I can't know who follows/searches for/filters what)
  • #CWMeta (= I'm talking about content warnings and what I think about them which makes some people uncomfortable)
  • #ContentWarningMeta (= I'm talking about content warnings and what I think about them which makes some people uncomfortable; also for discovery; multiple hashtags because I can't know who filters what)
• Hashtags for when I talk about character limits:
  
  • #CharacterLimit (= I'm talking about character limits; also for discovery)
  • #CharacterLimits (= I'm talking about character limits; also for discovery; two hashtags because I can't know who follows/searches for the singular and who follows/searches for the plural)
  • #CharacterLimitMeta (= I'm talking about character limits and what I, as someone with over 16.7 million characters, think about them which makes some people uncomfortable)
  • #CWCharacterLimitMeta (= I'm talking about character limits and what I, as someone with over 16.7 million characters, think about them which makes some people uncomfortable; hashtag version of "CW: character limit meta")

@💀 Mirko 💀 @Kristian 🌒 Genuine Hubzilla posts (character limit = 16,777,215 = maximum capacity of the database field):

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/c8a14063-b4e2-48fa-baf9-cb4faef7225b
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland?mid=c8a14063-b4e2-48fa-baf9-cb4faef7225b
48,977 characters, posted October 27th, 2023, all in one go, guaranteed.

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/f8ac991d-b64b-4290-be69-28feb51ba2a7
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland?mid=f8ac991d-b64b-4290-be69-28feb51ba2a7
62,514 characters, posted May 16th, 2024, all in one go, guaranteed.

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/8c2b4728-dda5-498b-9f84-2f11e163a4a5
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland?mid=8c2b4728-dda5-498b-9f84-2f11e163a4a5
76,780 characters, posted September 24th, 2023, all in one go, guaranteed.

(If you can't open either of these links, say so, and I'll reply with full quote-posts of these three posts.)

All character counts are raw, i.e. the actual number of characters visible. The characters are not counted the Mastodon way (= summary/CW counts into the character count, links are always 23 characters). BBcode markup is not counted in either, nor are the alt-texts, although both internally add to the character count.

Important to know: Local character limits aren't necessarily inbound character limits. For example, Mastodon is hard-coded to a maximum of 500 characters internally, but (AFAIK) it accepts posts coming in from outside up to 100,000 characters.

Likewise, Misskey is hard-coded to 3,000 characters internally. The Forkeys have a configurable internal character limit. But their inbound character limit is higher, hard-coded to ca. 8,000 as @aliceif :totally_a_real_lesbian_flag: has said.

Pleroma and Akkoma have configurable internal character limits that default to 5,000, but AFAIK a hard-coded inbound character limit of 20,000.

In all these cases, longer posts coming in from outside are immediately deleted from the inbox.

#Long #LongPost #LongPosts #LongToot #LongToots #CWLong #CWLongPost #LongPostMeta #CWLongPostMeta #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterCount #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Hubzilla #Mastodon #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Pleroma #Akkoma

@der.hans @Esther Schindler Still, you must never explain images in the alt-text. You must never offer any information exclusively in the alt-text and neither in the post nor in the image. That's because not everyone can access alt-text. See this wiki page of mine.

If you absolutely have to explain an image, and if this happens only once, and you only have 500 characters, then explain it in a thread. If it happens repeatedly, move someplace in the Fediverse that gives you enough characters.

I always have to explain my images and image posts because they're always about extremely obscure niche topics. But I'm also in the lucky situation of having a "character limit" of over 16.7 million that also includes the alt-texts of an unlimited number of images per post, even though Mastodon, Misskey and their respective forks cut longer alt-texts off at the 1,500-character mark.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Pino Carafa Why would one block accounts that sometimes post longer toots, though?
Because people are invited to Mastodon with no word that it's connected to something that isn't Mastodon. That'd make things too complicated.

So they join Mastodon and the Fediverse, thinking that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Nothing but a decentralised microblogging platform with no more than 500 characters.

For quite a while, all they see is vanilla Mastodon toots with no more than 500 characters. "Quite a while" may be anything from two months to four years to even more. So they get used to the Fediverse being only Mastodon and not having more than 500 characters.

But then, the more people they follow and the more people follow them back, the more people do they follow who don't live in a Mastodon-only bubble. This means two things:

• These other people will boost content that exceeds 500 characters to their timelines.
• Their own toots end up outside Mastodon where people see them who don't have 500-character limits. And they reply to their toots with no regards for Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules. In other words, with over 500 characters.

In other words: They suddenly get "toots" (that aren't toots because they aren't from Mastodon) onto their timelines that are way too long. As in over 500 characters.

And they completely. Flip. Their. Shit.

Of course, they don't know that this particular "toot" is from Friendica. A place in the Fediverse that's over five and a half years older than Mastodon, with its own culture that's vastly different from Mastodon's, and with 33,000+ times more characters than Mastodon.

And they don't care. They only want their only-Mastodon, only-500-characters Fediverse back that they got used to, that they learned to love.

Besides, they don't know about third-party apps. That, and/or they couldn't possibly wrap their minds around using Mastodon with an app that isn't named "Mastodon". Thus, they daily-drive the official Mastodon app.

However, the official Mastodon app is geared towards a Mastodon-only Fediverse where nothing exceeds 500 characters. It can't fold long posts in. You get a 10,000-character message onto your timeline, and the official Mastodon app will show you the full 10,000-character "essay", full stop.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta