Thoughts about Mastodon's quasi-monopoly

The almost-monopoly that #Mastodon has on the #Fediverse nowadays is kind of becoming a nuisance and actively making other #ActivityPub federated software worse, sadly. This is not the fault of Mastodon or Mastodon users, but it's just an unavoidable side effect of this whole Twitter exodus.

Almost all your interactions are guaranteed to be with Mastodon accounts, even if you are on, say, #Friendica or #Diaspora.

The lowest common denominator between all of you ends up being the most minimal version of microblogging, so you often never get to use all the cool features and interaction paradigmae that your software offers. Usergroups, calendars, events, post titles, games, ...? Nope, everything must be Mastodon-compatible if you don't want to alienate all your friends.

It's just sad because software like Friendica on the technical side has the potential to replicate so much of what made early Facebook cozy and personal. Even though I founded the instance #MyWebFriends to specifically try and build a community in that direction, I still end up interacting mostly with microbloggers from Mastodon and microblogging AP in general.

Just a quick (and short) note to the people who aren't actually visiting my profile on #Friendica but actually are reading this on #Mastodon or other #ActivityPub software: your software/server might not actually display all or most of my posts because they're too long for you! :O

It's better to visit my #MyWebFriends profile directly.
Friendica is a traditional social network, whereas you are likely micro-blogging with a character limit.

Today's #Friendica tip! 

You can go to your settings, navigate to the "Display" settings, and activate the "Stay local" checkbox.

This makes it so that when you click on people's profiles from other places, you don't automatically visit their home site, but instead it displays their profiles directly on MyWebFriends! This is the behavior you might know from #Mastodon and makes sure you stay on #MyWebFriends so you can easily follow them or browse their posts.

The disadvantage you should be aware of is that you might lose out on some information from their profiles that the site they call home offers; for example, profile decoration that Friendica doesn't have, you might miss out on some not-yet-synchronized replies or posts, special formatting, smileys and other server-specific info.

#feditips #fedi

What is MyWebFriends?! Introduction to a new social network.

https://mywebfriends.online/display/40e27c8f-2967-45eb-8574-d72085559658