It would be good to have a UX checklist for new fediverse devs to work though as they implement ActivityPub, and for devs of established apps to check against when doing UX reviews. Things like;
* replies to posts made in other apps federate back to the OP server
* edits to those posts federate
* searching a URI for a post or actor in other apps retrieves it
Maybe with links to implementation tips for each point. An idea for ActivityPub.rocks?
I just thought of a way to provide a sort of group experience native to the way @Mastodon and other micro-posting apps work. Most likely this had already been thought of, but I'm going to sketch it out here just in case.
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It would be great to have ephemeral text in the compose box in fediverse apps, that vanished as soon as we tap on the box to start typing. It's default could be a friendly greeting from the developers, but each person could change it to whatever they wanted for their own app. I would put;
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I like the idea of separate fediverse web apps for posting, reading, and replies. All on subs under 1 domain, with Single Sign-On;
* Posting app has compose and post functions only. No display of posts, including your own.
* Reading app enables browsing a range of feeds, clicking on posts, and scrolling thread. Also comments on other people's posts, but not posting OPs, or browsing notifications.
* Replying app displays notifications and enables replies to those posts.
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This is a really well written essay by @trwnh;
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/10590
It proposes reducing the amount of spam injected into the fediverse, by making manual mod approval of new accounts the default in all fediverse server software.
I thoroughly agree. Admins woulds still be free to use open registration, but they'd have to opt-in to the potential consequences. Not stumble into them.
This was written in 2019. Is manual approval of new accounts the default yet?
Prologue Related: #877, #8122, #10300 With the fediverse rising in popularity and gaining more attention, not all of that attention is positive. More users means more activity, and also more potent...
At minimum devs need to make moderation opt-out in their fediverse software. But admins still need to be free to choose not to host certain kinds of posts in their database. How do we do both?
The answer is that if Alice chooses to turn off moderation for her account, posts from accounts or service excluded from the service she's using are loaded like websites, from the service where they were posted.
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In fact, I don't even know if it always makes sense for Home to be the default. For new accounts, it would be better for Local or Federated to be default, with the follow-all firehose introduced in the interface upon first follow. Progressive disclosure FTW!
#HatTip to @tchambers, whose recent piece on fediverse UX got me thinking along these lines
https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/24/the-seven-deadly-fediverse-ux.html
So you made it through the first fiery sermon in this series. Trust me—I didn’t enjoy preaching it any more than you enjoyed reading it. But every word came from a place of love—for the Fediverse, and for what it still could become. But fear not, dear reader: as the preacher once said, salvation is within your reach. And to reward you for slogging through that earlier wall of hard truths, here’s your moment of grace.
As a fediverse power user, I'd really like to have 2 separate feeds populated by my follows;
* Firehose; anything that someone on the service I use, including me, might find interesting.
* Home; stuff I definitely want to read on a regular basis
Is this an experience anyone else can relate to?
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Maybe my thinking is still too centralised here. Rather than trying to establish a central ID guarantor ("One ring to Rule them all"), we could make use of something like "rel me" to cross-link our identities on different services;
In such a way that searching for an email (or AP or Matrix) address on an unrelated platform, would return any account on that platform with a "rel me" link to the address I searched.
It'd need good UX design though.
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How hard would it be for a fediverse app to give me a daily or weekly notification about each of my saved drafts? So I can start a reply, decide it needs more thought, save it, and get reminded of it.
Bonus points for being able to schedule a reminder notification for each saved post. A day for this one, a week for this one, and so on.
Strypey