pixelfedJan 19, 2023

Mastodon supports media uploads, so why should I join Pixelfed?

When you filter out the text posts and only see photos/videos, the experience changes.

The process of capturing & editing photos/videos requires more effort and curation than a simple text-only post.

Portfolios are one example of this, a feature that gives artists, creators and photographers their own portfolio website https://portfolio.pixelfed.social/dansup

We ❤️ Mastodon, compatibility not competition is what makes the fediverse so special!

@dansup's Portfolio

pixelfed
Show threadKristian (inactive/moved)Jan 19, 2023
@pixelfed The "problem" however starts where there are features that don't work well for other platforms. In example: pixelfed supports ten images per post. Friendica does support multiple images as far as I can tell. Mastodon however will only display four of them by default. Same way, Mastodon or Friendica don't display stories at all. On the other side, media views in Friendica and Mastodon are ugly so portfolio is an incredibly great feature. You're perfectly right, the process of capturing and editing visual content requires a different workflow than, say, posting short- or long-form text content. But... shouldn't at this point, this only be a matter of a dedicated _client_ for posting content to a more "general-purpose" network? Wouldn't it at this point suffice saying pixelfed comes down to a dedicated (frontend? mobile?) "app" to post content to whichever activity-pub aware system you could come up with...? Compatibility is better than competition for sure, but maybe re-use and not-reinventing-the-wheel is even better than compatibility...? 😉️
Show threadJames J MalcolmJan 19, 2023
@z428 @pixelfed
That’s what I was thinking.
I’m wondering what the difficulty would be for logging in with a mastodon-activitypub account. Does the account need to be be able to save different things on a different server?
Show threadKristian (inactive/moved)Jan 19, 2023
@jamesjm As far as I remember, some people out here (@one ?) managed to use #pixeldroid to log in to Friendica too, with the usual effects ("works somehow"). Biggest issue I see at this point is ... that even in activitypub, client-server APIs are proprietary for virtually all apps and platforms. There is activitypub-cs too, but I am only aware of @AndStatus to support that, which is a neat app but most likely not what you'd like to use for pixelfed.
@pixelfed
Show threadMatthiasJan 19, 2023
@z428 @pixelfed
Using the Pixelfed app with Friendica works surprisingly well. But of course only within the supported processes of the app and without deepDive by hardcore users.



Show threadKristian (inactive/moved)Jan 19, 2023
@one (Just to clarify this is @PixelDroid , not the "pixelfed app". Quite good nevertheless... 🙂)
@pixelfed
Show threadMatthias
🤔🤭
Jan 19, 2023 at 12:55pmWeb
Show threadKristian (inactive/moved)Jan 19, 2023
@one This one ( mastodon.social/@pixelfed/1097… ) doesn't seem to work with anything but pixelfed so far... .
Show threadMatthiasJan 19, 2023
@z428 I don't understand the discussion here. The (once again) insufficient functions of Mastodon should be compensated by other project?

Mastodon is what it is. A microblogging that can't do much more than send short texts. If you want more, you have to use another project.
Show threadKristian (inactive/moved)Jan 19, 2023
@one No real discussion I guess. The point I was trying to make (starting with the original post) at large is that maybe having fewer independent "platforms" and more client applications dedicated to specialized use cases might be a better way to help people utilize the Fediverse at large than to re-build totally new platforms full-stack several times. In this case: Maybe pixelfed in general might have been better off being "just" an image-centric desktop/mobile app talking to Friendica, Pleroma, Mastodon, ... backend rather than a wholly new platform. YMMV. 😁
Show threadeyajpngJan 19, 2023
@z428 @one I mean…that’s still an option? Nothing about Pixelfed is preventing that idea from being developed?
Show threadKristian (inactive/moved)Jan 19, 2023
@jepyang No. 🙂 That's where I actually hope for, in example, pixelfed client apps to work well with other platforms, or (dreaming) generally having a portable, standardized client-to-server API for such apps. At the moment, I use #fedilab with Friendica and pixelfed and it doesn't too much make a difference which platform I'm connecting to, but the tool itself isn't too image-centric at the moment.
@one
Show threadschoolingdianaJan 19, 2023
@z428 @jepyang @one Is there one that works better with Apple products? I see some that sound like Android compatible, but that could just be the name that was chosen for it.
Show threadJames J MalcolmJan 19, 2023

@z428 @one
Exactly - being able to save everything to the same account on the same server is key to really deliver the benefits of having one federated protocol.

It’s of course quicker and easier to evolve functionality with your own app and our own extensions to the protocol.

Hopefully the particular extensions each app invents can be fed back to the main ActivityPub standard to ensure compatibility and evolve the standard as a whole.

Show threadschoolingdianaJan 19, 2023
@z428 @one Twitter and Instagram are exactly that (different projects) so I’m missing what point that was. You can cross post IG to Facebook, so I would assume folks are already familiar with that connectivity concept: Pixelfed and Mastodon being part of the FediVerse.
Show threadKristian (inactive/moved)Jan 19, 2023
@schoolingdiana Yes, but to be honest crossposting always felt like an ugly workaround in situations that were or are missing real interoperability... 🙂
@one