Expecting an photo centric app to display text only post is really ridculous. What’s thr point of making pixelfed just another mastodon type app. With the same logic , why not complaining about mastodon only allowing micro blogging short text?
What’s thr point of making pixelfed just another mastodon type app.
The problem is the Fediverse could be a lot more than just “decentralized versions of existing apps”. Most people now have this app-centric mentality because it was beneficial for Big Tech sharecropping, not because it was better for us.
We shouldn’t need different types of apps to see different types of feeds and to sort our data in ways that we want.
We don’t need all fediverse platforms to be a Mastodon clone, we can instead have certain fediverse clients that have a global feed for displaying from all the fediverse and specific feeds for each type of content (videos, texts, images).
We don’t need all fediverse platforms to be a Mastodon clone
We don’t need platforms.
A technology platform is the foundation for building and running business applications. The platform allows users to run their applications smoothly without worrying about the technology that supports them. At the same time, it allows technical staff to rapidly extend, enhance, or upgrade application software, increasing the speed of business.
https://www.sap.com/canada/products/technology-platform/what-is-a-technology-platform.html
Pixelfed is definitely a platform . You only heard the term in context of centralized big social media so you think the term has bad connotation
You only heard the term in context of centralized big social media so you think the term has bad connotation
Please, don’t assume things about the people on the other side of a debate. It’s condescending and it robs us all of learning.
I’m not saying that we don’t need platforms because of “bad connotation”. I’m saying it because I have worked on a “social browser” for the fediverse, an application server for using activitypub as a transport mechanism and I know that we can develop an open social web that does not rely on server-centric applications.
I think you might be conflating two things. Right now the Fediverse largely looks like you just described. It’s in it’s infancy, trying to copy what it sees around it. Eventually it’ll become a rebellious teen and forge it’s on seperate identity. That’s inevitable. I wouldn’t worry about it.
It’s a very different thing though, saying all the apps need to integrate all the features and experience of every other app, so they’re all largely the same and there’s never a need to use more than one. That sounds like a terrible idea.
No, far from me saying that the clients (apps?) need to look the same. What I am saying is that the differentiation should be happening at the client, not the server.
It’s the thing with Communick. I wish I didn’t have to offer separate instances for each of the services (Mastodon, Lemmy, Funkwhale) but that every member could get one account which then could use as their main fediverse actor, regardless of “frontend” suited them best. The shell should adapt to the user, instead of the user being forced to adapt to the application.
So like a single ActivityPub instance that hosts all the data, but users can have a Pixelfed app, Lemmy app, etc. all connect to that one server and use it to give the experience they specifically provide.
That’s a cool idea. I can see how that would work.
Yeah, the frustrating thing is that https://activitypods.org/ already does the hard part, but we need more developers interested in creating these clients that can work well with it.
Well, Mastodon will show everything in the feed, no matter if it’s a video, a short blog, a long blog, a picture, a podcast, whatever. Mastodon is (primarily) microblogging in terms of output, but an everything platform with a chronological feed in terms of input.
This is where this user seems to get confused - they expect everything on the fediverse to display every type of content, just like Mastodon strives to do. Which is, as you said, ridiculous. If PixelFed was to display audio content and Funkwhale was to display pictures, what would be the point of these services in the first place? If they want everything to be Mastodon, why don’t they just stick to Mastodon? Maybe Pixelfed users have no interest in reading their dumb blog posts?
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Well, Mastodon will show everything in the feed, no matter if it’s a video, a short blog, a** long blog**, a picture, a podcast, whatever.
Doesn’t the long blog simply got truncated to 500 characters and link you to the original content? Which is very not user friendly
It make sense for PixelFed to only display pictures, the same way it makes sense for Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed to only show posts made on a community.
Using ActivityPub doesn’t mean you can’t have different formats and platforms.
the same way it makes sense for Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed to only show posts made on a community.
To be fair, that’s not how Mbin works. Its communities also capture microblog posts that weren’t originally posted to a community, based on the community’s configured hashtags.
That’s nice of Mbin, I usually recommend it to people looking to have the two formats in one, but the majority of the Threadiverse users seem to prefer Lemmy or Piefed
I’ve been on Pixelfed for a long while and never did I ever think “If I follow someone, I want to see their text-only posts.” Why? Because it’s an image sharing platform. It’s specifically designed to show images and that’s fine with me.
I feel like this article is trying to stir up some controversy where there isn’t any.
I do not see Pixelfed dominating anything. I have been using the Fediverse for years now, but only recently I applied to a Pixelfed instance. The first instance I applied to - I am still awaiting approval. The second instance I joined did not require approval to join, however, the 1st photo I posted was met with this message; “You (sic) recent post been unlisted. Click here for more info.” (link w/ vague instruction) The 2nd pic I posted made it through. All in all, I am not seeing this as a viable option if it is so hard to use/join/post…
I think OP has a valid point - it’s not about experienced users, but newcomers to the fediverse, who may think they are following an account, when actually they only see a small part of it - there could be some indication of what’s missing.
No it doesn’t. Just like someone don’t expect to see images on tiktok or long form text on x. Nobody would expect to see text only posts on Pixelfed
It’s well known that each person has to have a different account for each of those big-tech services. Whereas in the fediverse, the original idea was that one account can traverse multiple services. The problem as the OP explains, is that it may seem you are following your friend’s account, whereas actually you might see just a small fraction of it, and not be aware that there is more.
Then he just have to use mastodon which support fetching all posts from pixelfed. People are joining the fediverse for different reasons some for privacy, some for less censorship etc. This guy want to force text content on everybody which is rediculous.
I don’t want to see text only if I want to see images. I don’t want to see mastodon posts on lemmy with ton of hashtags when lemmy do not support them.
There is another better solution which is instead of forcing all type of content on people you can have a client that support all the main fediverse platform
Pixelfed grew to begin with because instagram was forced videos on people and now the authornwant to force text on people
What would be really confusing is two friends being on different instance then the two instances defederate
To me, this is a very strange take. As a Pixelfed user I absolutely don’t expect to see text posts on there. It’s very clearly a platform for sharing images.
I can understand the reservation against an AP-Platform not making clear that they display only a subset of messages, but not against the practice by itself. After all, it’s a platform specifically for showing images. A notification when following a non-pixelfed account that only image posts will be shown would do the trick too, but implementing the option to view text posts gives the user more agency, which is normally the best path as long as it doesn’t mess with usability.
I read the post and understood the problem. Then I read Dan’s reply. And he’s fixing it. In fact, he’s fixing it in the exact way the blog post says it should be fixed, “… but those filters should be manually triggered and always removable.”
Here’s Dan’s reply:
“… I hear the community: you want text-only posts. We are going to build this as an opt-in feature. If you want microblogging, turn it on. If you prefer the classic media-only experience, nothing changes.”
Why was this blog post even written then? Now it’s seeming to be personal.
We are going to build this as an opt-in feature
I think that the the problem is that it’s opt-in, when it should be the default.
Seems like the article was written first maybe?
Pixelfed doesn’t provide the same service as Mastodon. It’s stupid to think of them as identical services.
The problem is threatening the whole Fediverse
(…)
This is a grave abuse of the protocol: messages are silently dropped. It stands against everything the Fediverse is trying to do: allow users to communicate. My experience with open protocols allows me to say that it is a critical problem and that it cannot be tolerated. Would you settle for a mail provider which silently drop all emails you receive if they contain the letter “P”?Oh, the drama. I think this is a wrong take. The point of ActivityPub is not that we all see everything. Is so the servers can exchange activities. But whether it makes sense to put it in our inboxes or not, depends on what particular application is supposed to do. If using AP would require the application to show everything, what would be the differences between the apps?
I use Threadiverse because I prefer a bit more structured content than what’s happening on Mastodon. While I would love to be able to follow the few accounts and tags on Mastodon that interest me, the fact that I don’t see all that traffic is not an abuse of the protocol
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, since
Pixelfed is designed to mimic Instagram
Then what Pixelfed does is also correct, Instagram also does not show the whole wall from Facebook. Only the pictures, right?
I sure do like this picture:
So many Fediverse mascots I don’t recognize! Glad to see there are so many more clients than I knew of
You sly dog you made me open my network tab to see if there actually was an image there! (there is, it was just being blocked because of my uBO setting for fetching remotes).
the fediverse is just a collection of content across multiple sites; activitypub items can be one of many types. how is limiting the display of fediverse content on an app to just image types “being against the fediverse”?
why would i want to see text posts when i join a photo sharing app?
Can’t wait for the follow up post decrying PeerTube for only allowing videos, or Bookwrym for only allowing book reviews. Just because it’s ActivityPub doesn’t mean it has to be a Twitter timeline.
Once a major actor in a decentralised network starts to mess with the protocol, there are only two possible output: either that actor lose steam or that actor becomes dominant enough to impose its own vision of the protocol. In fact, there’s a third option: the whole protocol becomes irrelevant because nobody trust it anymore.
You mean like Mastodon? Where’s the angry diatribe about Mastodon not allowing posts to have more than 4 pictures despite other platforms allowing more (Pixelfed allows up to 20 for example)?
The consideration you should pay to other software should depend on your power and influence in the network.
If PixelFed was dominant in the fediverse, and other apps did feel the need for a dummy pic workaround, that would clearly be a problem. No client feels the need to do that because PixelFed is not dominant, but if it was, it would be fine to criticise them for not “playing nice” and helping the rest of the ecosystem.
I think there’s much more scope to criticise Mastodon for the workarounds other software have to use to be interoperable, than PixelFed, purely because of its power in the network.
We need different apps to experiment and work out what users want. It’s totally fine to experiment with different models and ways to view content. Only when you have a lot of influence over the ecosystem should you have extra responsibility.
Come on, the whole purpose of pixelfed is to be an image federated platform.
If you want something different, use something different.
You ordered a pizza and are complaining it isn’t a salad.
The problem is not “you ordered a pizza yet are complaining it isn’t a salad”. The problem is you are selling pizzas and salads, but the middleman is undercutting you on the delivery of the pizzas, leaving your clients with the fake impression you sell only salads and/or provide a bad service.
All that said, from an interface design perspective the current mode is exactly how it should happen. Pixelfed and pretty much everything else are purposefully subset-specific apps. All that’s needed is the reminder (as visible as possible) that content you are looking at is incomplete and you can find the more complete version on this or that URL or app. Same principle as if I wanted to eg.: design a “hashtag explorer” for the Fediverse. I’d focus on that instead of the posts (and pictures); but what I can’t ethically do is prevent my users from discovering their existence.
But pixelfed is only selling pizza and the cudtomer complains that he didn’t find a salad option
Because PixelFed is purposefully hiding the salad option from them. Which is what we are complaining about: it’s lying to our potential customers about us. Note that it didn’t do that before.
Pixelfed never claimed to want to sell or promote salads , it’s a business choice you may say. There’s billions people in the word with different interests you can’t simply please anybody. Mastodon is already able to fetch from pixeled so why would you want everything to be mastodon? Do you have the same complains about peertube not fetching text only content too or instance defederating from each other without notices so basically hiding content from thousands of peoples?
More along the lines of a “pizza finder” service that scours different menus and shows the pizza options at a bunch of places, whether those places exclusively offer pizza, specialize in pizza with some other options, or just offer pizza as one of several options. It would be perfectly reasonable for such a service to only return results related to pizza, without any implicit suggestion that each place it returns only has pizza available.
PixelFed never claimed to be selling pizzas (images) and salads (text). Just pizzas right?
They [partially] did, https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/106617110297151132
No, you as a poster in the Fediverse are selling pizzas and salads. PixelFed is “misrepresenting” you, for lack of a better word, by telling people you only sell pizzas. The thing is, it wasn’t doing that before. It was purposefully made to hide useful information that was there before. IMO there should be a sticky “this user has other content which is not images” headbar or something. Only removable as an opt-in per account followed, so that it is not possible for people to say that PF purposefully hid information.
Oh, so the poster is upset that the person who is running a pizza-only app isn’t also getting their salad offers.
Exactly! And that’s why the choice in the UI is important. My understanding is previous versions of PF at least let your viewers know you offer salads. There’s no (good) reason why the very minimum useful version of that can’t be maintained. Comaps and OSMand for example are map applications, but they let me know when a given location has an associated Wikipedia article for example. They don’t even need to implement something like a Wikipedia Viewer itself; just offer the links. Links are cheap, and are the foundation and backbone of both the internet and of any useful concept of a “fediverse”.
All that’s needed is the reminder (as visible as possible) that content you are looking at is incomplete and you can find the more complete version on this or that URL or app.
That’s what Mbin does, it displays a banner on federated user profiles explaining that they may be incomplete, with a link to the same profile on the originating instance.
This is great yes and IMO how it should be done. It’s not necessary fr eg.: PixelFed to implement themself all the functionality to process forums, videos, cooking recipes, Pokémon boxes, microblogging, macroblogging, nanoblogging, femtoblogging, nanopicturing, macroboosting, etc. Just one: linking (and, well, properly announcing the link is there).
