This is why I see the BlueSky lifetime as a grace period for fedi to get its act together. It’ll be a lot of work, we better start now. https://mastodon.social/@molily/113480811492965996
@janl @molily Yes 100% The fact that Mastodon did get neither quote posts nor search not to speak of anything innovative done since the Twitter acquisition is really something. There is of course also the fact that money is missing. @MastodonEngineering just needs money to hire a few people to get more than the absolute basics done.
@mrtoto they shipped search tho :)
@janl Well, yes. Functionally it's there. But e.g. why am I not asked as part of the onboarding process if I want to opt in for example.I mean is there even an onboarding?
Also there needs to be some kind of broker to search across the fediverse, not only instance local.
The only place I see these things being done is @dansup (who never seems to sleep!) with @loops. That looks like steps in the right direction which gives me a bit of hope :)
@mrtoto @janl @dansup @loops Well, this is completely not true. We (the Mastodon project) are publicly working on https://www.fediscovery.org thanks to a grant from the NGI program, with the goal to solve the (very hard) discovery/search problem in the Fediverse, in a privacy-compliant way.
Quote Posts are also in progress, well specified so the other Fediverse software can implement them and with a lot of controls to respect users choice and privacy. We publish monthly blog posts with our progress
Fediverse Discovery Providers

A project exploring better search and discovery on the Fediverse as an optional, decentralized and pluggable service.

Fediverse Discovery Providers

@renchap @janl @loops I know you are and looking very much forward to the results (see https://social.mrtoto.net/@mrtoto/113481096839149350 ) 😊 And the problems are indeed hard, no question about it. Also that the resources are limited (probably the main problem compared to places like bluesky).

My point was more frustration about the speed of progress. The fact that Mastodon does not seem to be more attractive to the new wave of refugees (neither from πŸ‡§πŸ‡· nor now the πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ) is concerning.

toto (@[email protected])

@[email protected] True. There is also more progress I know Wordpress (if that's still a thing), Flipboard, Ghost are all embracing AP. Threads is also moving forward as is https://www.fediscovery.org so things are moving, albeit slowly.

Mastodon
@mrtoto Yes it is, and comes from multiple factors. One being the resources, Bluesky has at least 10x our resources, they have been able to recruit a top notch team, do marketing, comms and overall execute very well. I am personally doing my best to get things moving with whatever means I have, and I like to think that this shows real results (for example the projects mentioned above, as well as tripling the engineering team over the last year)
@renchap No argument about that. You (Mastodon) are doing what is possible with the resources you have no doubt. It's also clear that Bluesky has way more resources plus the US ecosystem. I personally view the fact that Mastodon (and other Fediverse projects) does not have more resources as a clear failure of EU policy. They are always talking about autonomy but when they can do something about that it's just not done enough.
@mrtoto Well, there are programs from the EU (at least the EU Commission) like NGI. But you dont get money if you do not fill grant applications. One has been done a few year ago, I did two last year (Fediscovery & Quote Posts), and as a result the EU (commission) is funding those projects.
NGI is an amazing program, but you need to get into their processes and ask for grants, it does not come magically. And I am fine with it, they cant give money without checking how its used

@renchap @mrtoto yeah, grant funding is a different vicious cycle to the VC fundraising cycle.

It took me pretty much a year to absolutely secure funding for my FIRES project – wrote the draft September 2023, applied for a grant in the October round, due to various reasons it wasn't approved until May 2024, and the Memorandum of Understanding (the document that guarantees the money for work) wasn't signed until early/mid September.

And this was for a project I think we needed yesterday in 2023

@renchap @mrtoto I'm currently trying to find the time to do grant applications for funding throughout 2025 now, and trying to figure out what I need to apply for & when.