I’d be very curious to know what the people here think about this specific topic.
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I often do want to see an image-only feed as I read a lot of text all day. Sometimes I only want to see art. If dansup (yes, I know) follows through with the edit and makes a setting so that you can also choose to see text-only posts as well, I see it as solving the problem the writer is concerned about - even if that problem could/should have been solved earlier
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Oh, absolutely, dansup is sawing off a branch: the one Pixelfed is sitting on. He’s already ruined his reputation in the Fediverse. Everyone’s tired of his shit. Sooner or later there will be a reckoning.
Incidentally, the Lemmyverse has a similar problem, that almost keeps it separated from the Mastodons and MissKeys out there. And it can still talk to them better than that.
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Somehow surprised to find out that there’s even more reasons to criticize Pixelfed than the ones I already knew about.
Quoting the takeaway here:
The Pixelfed app has unilaterally decided not to display most Fediverse posts for the arbitrary reason that they do not contain a picture.
Yeah that’s ridiculous.
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I’m tempted to suggest defederating all Pixelfed instances until dansup gets his head out of his arse and implements ActivityPub as is, but since I’ve been Fediverse-sober for over a year I don’t have skin in the game.
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Was interesting enough as a topic to get a post On open protocols – Manu
But why though? If the people who sign up for the service know what they’re getting into why is it ridiculous? Should all the AP services follow the same model and all give access to all the content all the time? That’s the broader issue here.
If I want to make a service that only displays posts that are < 160 characters and don’t have emoji, should I be able to do that? Or AP has to be treated as an all-or-nothing protocol?
They don’t, as was covered in the post.
We could talk about a hypothetical other scenario where they all do know, sure. Since @small_cypress indicated there’s interest, I support the idea of implementing an optional toggle between all posts and the images-only setting. That would be fine.
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Well the post just assumes people don’t know. If that’s the case or not that I don’t know.
But if knowing is the problem then this could just as easily be solved by simply better communicating what is happening so that people do know.
Instead the proposed solution is “implement all the standard and serve all the content”.
But the question remains: why is it ridiculous to create a service, on top of AP, that only serves a subset of content?
Full disclaimer, I’m not part of the Fediverse and don’t use any of the services mentioned.
I don’t see why it’s bad that Pixelfed won’t pull text-only Mastodon posts. It seems to be oriented towards images and I’d assume that’s what makes it different from being just another Mastodon instance. If I used something like Instagram, I’d do so in order to view and post images, specifically. I don’t think that Pixelfed’s decision to focus on images is arbitrary, it seems like a decision based on its whole point.
I often see Fediverse users trying to get people to drop “mainstream” social media sites in favour of these alternatives. This makes more sense if what’s on offer is actually usable as an alternative to those services. It does not make sense if it all seems like multiple versions of the one thing, especially if that one thing is Twitter/X. Would it be bad for a fediverse project to focus only on longer posts instead of microblogging, for example? Or to focus on video, as an alternative to TikTok?
There’s clearly a large amount of people who want image-based platforms, so why not provide this instead of just pushing them to use Instagram?
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The part of the post where this is addressed is here:
Nearly all Pixelfed users I’ve asked were unaware of that problem. They thought that if they follow someone on the Fediverse, they should, by default, see all their public posts.
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This is the real issue. People don’t really understand what’s going on under the hood, nor should they have to. ActivityPub federation works best when federated entities play by the well-established implicit rules, which are really pretty simple: when a message is delivered to a user, the user should be able to see it.
But people just aren’t aware of how and why this might not happen, which makes it worse. Here’s the example that I shared in an email reply to Manu:
Let’s say you have a Mastodon account, manu@mastodon.social. And let’s say you also have an account on a Pixelfed server, manu@awesomesauce.social. Someone on another Mastodon instance follows both of your accounts, and they want to mention you in a message, so they start typing “@manu” and “manu@awesomesauce.social” pops up first in the autocomplete (because it comes before manu@mastodon.social alphabetically). So the person clicks that, types the rest of their message, and posts it.
And you will never see that message, because of the issue that Ploum raised.
The Mastodon user did exactly what they were supposed to do. They may not know that awesomesauce.social is a Pixelfed instance, and why should they? They may not know that Pixelfed silently discards text-only posts, and why should they? They may not even know what Pixelfed is in the first place. None of this should be required knowledge before someone can send a message to someone they follow using an open protocol and federated services.
If Pixelfed wants to operate in the broader Fediverse and use ActivityPub, it should respect the most fundamental element of the protocol and allow people to communicate. It’s nice to see that Dan eventually realized this and is adding the option.
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I agree with most of this as someone who built a career (as cringe as that sounds) on Instagram because it was designed for images. We have to have a place for the normies to go where, like @Neatnik says, they don’t need to know what’s going on under the hood. I don’t use Pixelfed for other reasons kind of hinted at in this thread, but Mastodon, Bluesky (I know I know) etc. are really not great for looking at and publishing art.
And I do think all messages/posts should be available on an image-optimized version of something like Pixelfed. I wonder if the UI of something like Are.na might be something to look at for inspiration - it’s optimized for images, but text, pdfs, etc can be shared as well and don’t get lost.
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That could be 5 people in total for all we know. Unless you pool a significant portion of the whole user base I don’t think we can just state for a fact that the people don’t know.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that “people not knowing” is a problem that’s solvable in various ways, including let them know.
This may be a larger problem with AP as a protocol, or a problem with my understanding. In anycase, I often see AP being promoted as a general-purpose multi-use protocal which can be used to create "all-kinds” of social networks.
However, if all instances are expected to implement it in exactly the same way, I am not sure what room for creativity that leaves other than the UX of the client? It sounds like the default behavior the author is requesting is just mastodon in a different client. Which I can understand their desire for transparency (and I think the lack of transparency was probably the big problem here) but at that point, what is the point of PixelFed?
Idk, I am happy to be correcteed here, maybe there is more flexibility in the spec than I realize.
Edit: To rephrase, If AP isn’t “just mastodon” is it possible to design a network around things which do not fit into a mastodon client? e.g. long form blogging? Or if everything has to fit into a mastodon client, why are we pretending that any other applications of AP matter?
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For example in the Lemmyverse you don’t follow people, but communities. From the Mastodon side, they’re visible as ordinary accounts. The first post in each new thread then shows up on your timeline; you can reply to it, and the reply will federate correctly. It’s not seamless, but it works well enough both ways. That’s great.
However if you try to follow someone’s Lemmy account from Mastodon… it will let you, but you’ll never see any of their posts, and there’s no indication why. That’s not so great.
People need to be able to trust a protocol. It’s the difference between an e-mail being returned as undelivered (preferably with a stated reason) and the same e-mail being silently dropped. Bad enough already that ActivityPub is more of a framework for creating related protocols that may or may not be interoperable, in part or at all. If developers do this on purpose, the protocol becomes a lie, and people start going where they can communicate predictably, even if much worse.
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By my very superficial understanding of the whole AP ecosystem, I think the confusion is due to the fact people look at AP as a communication protocol and they compare it to email, for example. But if you open the W3 page related to AP, right at the very top they define it as
The ActivityPub protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol based upon the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and content.
To me this definition is vague enough and broad enough (I suspect intentionally) to the point where every possible corporate social media platform can be reimplemented on top of it. Which I think was the goal.
But if you allow that, then making sure perfect integrations across platforms is basically impossible. Also, what does “trusting a protocol” means in this context for you? Because the protocol is implementation agnostic.
And it’s the same for SMTP. Sure, you can trust that the protocol will deliver your message, but if on the other end the person you’re writing to uses an email service that has decided to implement arbitrary rules and your message is discarded, does that mean you can’t trust SMTP?
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…I didn’t claim AP and SMTP are comparable. It was an example. And yes, that’s exactly what it means, because communication protocols are made and used by people. If I can’t trust people, I can’t trust the protocol. It’s the same with laws.
Sure, one could argue that as long as Lemmy and mbin can talk to each other, while Mastodon can talk to MissKey and Akkoma, you still have federation. That’s a lot better than centralization. But then it’s no longer a single federation: it becomes a bunch of non-overlapping circles. The ActivityPub Microblogging Protocol is only branded the same as the ActivityPub Discussion Forum Protocol. And in that case it should say so.
That’s why I was pleasantly impressed when WafRN showed up and immediately proved fully compatible with Mastodon, despite being more similar to Tumblr / Cohost. Turns out it is possible, when developers care.
…I didn’t claim AP and SMTP are comparable. It was an example.
I know you didn’t. You used email as an example which is why I also used SMTP as an example.
If I can’t trust people, I can’t trust the protocol. It’s the same with laws .
Ok so when you’re saying people need to be able to trust a protocol you mean they should actually be able to trust the people using such protocol? Asking because I’m trying to understand the overall argument.
But then it’s no longer a single federation: it becomes a bunch of non-overlapping circles.
Maybe I’m just a pessimist at my core, but I think the idea of a unique federation is something that will never happen, can’t happen, and it’s not even desirable. I mean, when Meta hinted at the possibility of joining the party some people were all up and arms and wanted them to go fuck themselves.
And for good reason considering their track record.
Turns out it is possible, when developers care.
I have no doubts in my mind that it is possible. But the hard part is not figuring out if they can do it, but if they should always do it, even when what they want to build clashes against that.
Simple question: in your opinion, if I wanted to build a service, on top of AP, that only displays text posts from the wider fediverse containing links, and trashes everything else, should I be able to do it?
…Yes. We’re human. We’re using tech as a tool to communicate for human reasons. Tech doesn’t exist for the sake of it, and isn’t neutral. Two tin cans and a string are better than a messaging app you can’t trust. And we trust Mastodon admins not to read our direct messages. It’s the only thing that keeps them confidential. That’s normal. It’s life.
Because nobody trusts them to play nice with the same protocol as everyone else. See above. The protocol alone isn’t enough. So yes, like you said. (Good riddance, too.)
You’re able to do it regardless of what I say, just like dansup was. And you’re free to deal with the inevitable social consequences. Why exactly is it such a big surprise that choices have consequences? We live in a society. Our actions impact other people.
Freedom isn’t the ability to do whatever. It’s being given the chance to do what’s right.