Robert KingettApr 19
I’m watching the discussion that’s taking place today on this page, and people are saying that this platform was never made for long form content. It’s always been shorter form content. I legitimately do not understand the reasoning behind not allowing administrators to change the character limit without complicated configurations. I know this is supposed to be micro blogging, favoring shorter posts, because it’s continuously pointed out, to me, and others, that this platform is not a blog but it’s very clear to me that nobody really wants short post to be locked in for everybody. They just want the ability to change it. You can have your flagship instances that keep character limits at 500. That’s totally fine. You can even pretend like instances with 90,000 character limits simply don’t exist if you don’t want to acknowledge them, which, it seems like there is a extreme dislike of instances customizing things to meet the needs of their own communities. None of these rebukes are holding up and it frankly doesn’t make any sense whatsoever because if nothing was meant to change, the option for even increasing or even decreasing the character limit would not exist at all, even via code. Let the admins easily setup the character limits · Issue #12265 · mastodon/mastodon https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12265#issuecomment-2815833860 #Fediverse #Mastodon
Let the admins easily setup the character limits · Issue #12265 · mastodon/mastodon

Pitch I found useful to keep the 500 characters limit but many instances are already changed this limits, so why can't we let the admins to easily decide how their istances manage the characters li...

GitHub
Show threadMatthias2d ago

@WeirdWriter That's the point. Mastodon wants to be a microblog. That's fine. But the Fediverse is not. There is no character limit.

What I also can't get my head round. Why should Mastodon be anything other than what it wants to be when there are projects in the Fediverse that are not microblogs?
Why not just switch to a project that has all the things Mastodon doesn't want to have? Why is this fixation?

Unlike the closed systems, we have a choice. Why is it not being utilised?

Show threadutopiArte

@feb

What I also can't get my head round. Why should Mastodon be anything other than what it wants to be when there are projects in the Fediverse that are not microblogs?

To begin with I'm not against such a proposal, do have accounts on mastodon instance that for example have 5k limit and consider that reasonable and better. At the same time I came from diaspora, and wasn't so much looking for microblogging. In any case I loved twitter with only 144 characters, that at least was a challenge. Also the display toot's up to ~500 characters entirely and than go to "see more" already creates a certain self restriction for toots.

That said, to a certain extent this request is just another nail in the coffin of the idea of a #fediVerse. Same as the intent to create a mega instance like #mastodonSocial. #Diaspora* and it's developers made the mistake to create such a death star, and the project kinda went down with it, beginning with changes in the code like skipping "likes" because of the burden on the server. Anyone who really is in favor of the main idea of the #fedi and #activitypub, and that is decentralization, should always consider any idea, proposal or request in terms of "what does this mean for the entire setup"?

We already had, again and again criticism by the community on #mastodon because it doesn't respect activitypub definitions or interprets them in an uncommon way. Only dominance in user numbers makes that possible.
Like to say, you only can say:
"I give a sh** on common agreements because I can allow me to do so".
Same goes for the centralization of the community onto one (or two) server, obviously showing off with the fact that the main problems and bottlenecks in social networks weren't understood. That's just a childish conservative expression of the view that "big is beautiful" and that you are successful if you become a big player. Nothing new and not even a mean criticism, we humans are as we are and are children of our time. So if someone is caught by the Zeitgeist and fashion of the moment, that's just what should be expected.

For me it's fine if mastodon has a 500 character limit and that it takes a little bit more of digging into the code to change that. In any case I'd consider it a problem if because of that an instance gets blocked by "the founding father".

We truly don't need any kind of benevolent dictator, and fostering and supporting any kind of hard or softfork of mastodon, as well as all the other projects out their, is way more important than fighting details of a project that's alive and well as it is. In that context, in any kind a true hardfork is creating incompatibility with the activitypub standards at that's what we really should be aware of.
Your comment Matthias, as well as mine, is in favor of the fediVerse, not mastodon, in favor of diversity not monoteims. And, I hate to bring it to you but, people are tribal, identify with brands and where raised social walled gardens, so the y expect "eierlegende Wollmilchsaue" and that, as of now, is the platform you are on, so .. let them be, we for our selves will always be on the side of those who reach out to create interoperability and understanding. That's how we tick.
:)
.. my few cents ..

@WeirdWriter

Apr 24 at 1:48amWeb
Show threadRobert Kingett2d ago
Number of users doesn't make Mastodon behave in unexpected ways related to activityPub. That's all on the developer of Mastodon, not it's users. A truly open Fediverse will make it easier to stay here, not harder. @utopiarte @feb
Show threadutopiArte2d ago

@WeirdWriter

Number of users doesn't make Mastodon behave in unexpected ways related to activityPub.


That isn't what I was trying to point out.
Overwhelming numbers of users, of participants in the network gives mastodon developers the ability to "give a f***" about generally agreed on conventions, because they can kinda dictate the terms for the rest by simply imposing them.

Here an example conversation about how different platforms embed audio, actually it looks like part of the conversation is gone, probably due to automatic deletion of posts or answers. Someone, I think it was @fabrixxm, pointed out that mastodon (or castodpod) declares audio different than the actual activitypub specifications define, there for the content gets differently displayed, if at all. Like to say, they put in the header for audio what belongs in the content string:
tupambae.org/display/0ac89072-…
(just trying to explain somehow, I don't know about the details of all this, and actually don't want to either)

@feb

utopiArte

@Friendica Support Hi there, testing around with the software #castopod, developed by @Castopod :podcasting2: . In general terms federation with #friendica...

Show threadJupiter Rowland2d ago
@utopiArte Tribalism and brand worship are key factors in all this, yes. While some Fediverse users choose the software they use by what suits them best, especially feature-wise, others behave more like fanbois and fangurls. They cling hard to what they use like someone who has been driving the same car brand for decades out of principle and out of being convinced that everything this brand makes is superior to all the competition.

This seems particularly wide-spread amongst Mastodon users. First, when they joined, they were eager to defend Mastodon against 𝕏 as much better. When they learned about Bluesky and Threads, they started defending Mastodon against these two as much better. But the more they learn what else exists in the Fediverse, like Misskey and its forks or Friendica and its family, they even feel compelled to defend Mastodon against these as well as much better.

In addition, there's instance tribalism. "My home instance is better than yours" or even "my instance is better than all the others!" Not the only reason why Mastodon users refuse to move to a better-suited instance, much less better-suited software, but one of them. That is, this seems more of an issue on Lemmy where users are being judged according to which instance they're on.

But there's also convenience. Moving instances is inconvenient. Always staying on the same instance is convenient. Also, having to configure your account is inconvenient. The default settings being perfect is convenient.

Why do Mastodon users demand all kinds of features be added to Mastodon although they're readily available elsewhere in the Fediverse? Not only because most of them don't know that these features are available in the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, but also because they want these features without going where the features are. They want the features to come where they are. They want the features on the instance that they're on right now.

And if these features are optional, they have to be activated by default on their home instance. Oh, and if they don't like a feature, Mastodon must not add it, or at the very least, it must be off by default on their home instance. Yes, even if it's mastodon.social that they refuse to move away from, home of over 20% of the Fediverse's population. See full-text search. See federation with Threads. See the Bluesky bridge. And so on.

From the point of view of a veteran of Mike's nomadic software, this has to look hilarious. Granted, there is some sticking to brands there, too, even on (streams) where the intentional lack of a brand has become a brand of its own, although (streams) users seem to constantly be ready to jump ships to Forte or back to Hubzilla, should (streams) go under. But there is no instance tribalism. For one, there are only so many instances. Besides, if you go nomadic, you're on multiple instances at the same time anyway.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity #Tribalism
Netzgemeinde/Hubzilla

Show threadutopiArte1d ago

@jupiter_rowland

jupiter rowland wrote:

In addition, there's instance tribalism. "My home instance is better than yours" or even "my instance is better than all the others!"
..
That is, this seems more of an issue on Lemmy where users are being judged according to which instance they're on.

requeteche wrote:

2012-01-06 on diaspora:
"The sporial Guide to D*'s Cyberspace #TSGDC"
Chapter 1
  • The underlying structure of D* combined with the unhidden laws of human civilization will create a new world in which different citizens stick together on different pods to attack other distant pod's and their pod members meanwhile they raise flags of the countries their pod belong to on their desks.

@WeirdWriter
@deadsuperhero

Show threadRobert Kingett1d ago
@utopiarte @feb This might blow your mind, but I’d rather people want to make changes to the Fediverse software they use instead of going back to centralized social media. Also, anybody that comes over to BookWyrm or Hubzilla will want to make changes to those projects as well. What are you going to do when that happens? Tell them to use a different project?