I also missed being able to just self-post onto my own profile, which is why I made !pillow_talk@lemmy.world. Use it as a catch-all for anything you want. The only rules are not to break the site rules.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Fediverse
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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
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oh cool interesting thanks!!
It's not the same, but I've seen people create a community for that. As a workaround. You can call it like your username and link it in your bio.
that could work but that means anyone could join and post there right??? or is there a way to set a community private and make it so that only a specific person is allowed to post?? wait i think there is!!! maybe
You'll be an ~~admin~~ mod and you can only allow ~~admins~~ mods. Like how Lemmy world announcement does. You can only comment
Mod, not admin.
Mod is community level, admin is server level.
Yes, you’re right
I am vehemently against it.
Just make a community. Build it, they will come.
Not everyone needs a personal board. When reddit did it it made me think of how discord does the same thing and all it does is muck up ux.
Just make a community. Build it, they will come.
This is exactly what I've done, but I must say that in the particular community's case, it hasn't been easy. We're going on 1.5yrs now, 900+ subscribers, and I've personally contributed ~360 posts (most of them curated mini-articles) out of 466 total posts, yet the sub still essentially needs me to provide the content.
So IME, niche-type subs can take a hell of a lot of work to take off, and we're not even that much of a niche.
Yes, there is definitely a limit to the "they will come" part.
It even applies to Lemmy as a whole, 44k monthly active users is nice, but you would expect more people for an ad-free alternative to Reddit with solid mobile apps
The Lemmysphere sure seems to get slammed a lot at places like r/RedditAlternatives. I wonder if possibly some of that is sockpuppet-stuff, as unlikely as that sounds. Still, more than ever we live in the age of misinformation and manipulation by opposition groups & monied interests, so the idea & practice is certainly on the table.
Unfortunately, there's also the reputation of at least one of the primary Lemmy coders. Seems like the sooner Kbin, Mastodon, etc can get better integrated, the less notable that should be. *knock on wood*
Isn’t that kind of what mbin does? With Magazines as communities and Microblog for more blog style content
https://fedia.io/ for people who want to give it a try
https://github.com/jwr1/interstellar for an app
kinda, but you still have to put the microblogs in a community. it's a little odd but I like it.
That's called a blog, and it's not part of the Lemmy model. You might like Mastodon, though.
it’s not part of the Lemmy model.
It's not part of the model yet. There is absolutely nothing stopping it from being implemented, and it could be very useful to do so.
This whole "Lemmy is only for doing this one thing, Mastodon is only for this other thing, Matrix is for this other thing" mentality is frankly short-sighted. There is a common standard that can allow application developers to implement multiple use-cases, we do not need separate accounts/services/clients for each of that.
If that were the case, we would never have webmail and everything would have to have its own specific client that could talk with only one specific server.
The thing is, mbin is right there if you want that kimd of functionality. There isn't really a reason why everything needs to evolve into omni-applications. It's better to have a broad ecosystem that has something for everyone, rather than a monopoly that's servibg everyone a compromise.
Just look at the Twitter mugrations in 2022, and the clammor for quote posts. Misskey was right there, giving them exactly what they wanted, but you couldn't speak the name of anything that wasn't "mastodon" because everyone is brand focused and context blind.
What OP wants exists. It's right there. It's just not named Lemmy.
To go back to the webmail example, we could have said "no need for hotmail/gmail because Eudora or Pegasus already exist." "No need to have Google Maps because MapQuest already has a desktop client".
Yes, we didn't really need any of these, but the problem with this thinking is that it assumes that the progress of software application is linear and "intelligently designed", when it reality it much closer to how actual life evolves, by testing many different adaptations and keeping those that make them more fit to their environment.
It doesn't matter that kbin already have certain functionality if its main developer was a control freak who was holding back its evolution and its users had not trust in him. There were other features that it was lacking (no API, no third-party clients, not easy to deploy, no moderation tooling, etc) and still do. We can not just tell someone "what you want is on kbin, use that instead", because there will be different use-cases that kbin does not fulfill.
Software co-evolves. Lemmy should "steal" from mbin, as it should steal from Pleroma, or Mastodon/PixelFed is now "stealing" things from Bluesky. This is wasteful, but is at least robust.
If software was "intelligently designed", we will not have any server-side platforms and just have "Generic ActivityPub servers" that can handle the messages being passing around actor inboxes, and we would all be using client-side browsers that are aware of the ActivityPub vocabulary. But this will be like the GNU/Hurd of the Social Web, and saying that server software should have each only have one defining feature is a recipe to have the whole ecosystem ossified.
I'm not sure about that argument. I mean there are right and wrong tools for a job. There are people constantly trying to drive in a screw with a hammer. They might be better off with a screwdriver. We could also devise a multitool, or not do it. Ultimately, if just the right tool is in front of you, you'd better have a specific reason why not to use it... I can see one general abstract argument, and that's competition is good or more general or featureful tools are good.
Not having server-side platforms is a very interesting argument. I mean most users are using smartphone apps anyways... I don't know why we bother with translating everything twice and doing that many server-side things. ActivityPub with it's concept of inboxes and outboxes is kind of designed to run with a minimal server and do most logic and rendering client-side anyways. We'd need to take care not to fragment the platform into many incompatible pieces... But we could do a lot of things inside of an app instead of on some intermediary server.
Ultimately, if just the right tool is in front of you
That's the thing. The "better" tool isn't right in front of me. OP didn't know about it.
And if they did, they would have to do the whole "which instance to join" dance, again.
And after they joined the instance, they would have to find a mobile app to use. (oh, oh, there isn't one)
And after they said "fuck it, let's just use the web UI", they'd be like "okay, I can follow people from mastodon and I can follow Lemmy groups, but if there is an user that is on Lemmy, it still means that they can only post things to groups. (IOW, incomplete interoperability resulting in functionality silos)
Wouldn't it be a whole lot simpler/easier if Lemmy had the capability to let the user create posts without referencing any group? Even if it wasn't the main feature, it could be implemented at the server and documented just enough for those working on alternative clients. The "purists" that don't care about the functionality would still keep their tools intact, but the others would greatly benefit.
they would have to do the whole “which instance to join” dance, again.
Oh, this again.
Seriously, you're now arguing for a monoculture and centralization.
At that point, just go back to Reddit.
One more of these ridiculous "so you are saying..." comments, and I will start responding to you with Cathy Newman memes.
Well, stop expressing that people shouldn't have to make choices about what they use, and maybe I'd give a shit what you say or do.
I agree like 80%. I think with the tools, it is how it is. They don't necessarily owe you anything. I did some renovations lately, and realized (again) that choosing the right tool and method might be essential. We wasted hours and hours in some cases doing some amateur work. And after asking someone how to do it properly, or getting a recommendation to rent the professional tool instead of bothering with the consumer-grade power tools, something that would have taken days, got done in one morning. Same applies to computers in my experience. I learned how to use some tools that just make things a lot easier. Sometimes they automate a boring task. Or make me 100x as fast. And it doesn't really help to complain I was not aware of it's existence. That's how it is. You can't know everything. You'll have to make ends meet with some amateur work then. Or somehow become aware of how to change things to your advantage.
And things like being locked in, or being invested in something can be problematic with software. Sure you don't want to begin all over after you invested effort and labor into one solution. Or learned something for a long time and now you have to switch to something else. I believe that's one of the main reasons why people stick with Microsoft Windows. Despite it not being particularly great. Ultimately that's your choice. Either you put in the effort, re-learn a few things and adapt your workflow. And that's somehow worth it to you and you'll start to benefit from it after a while... Or you don't do it.
But all of this is very abstract. And just from the user's perspective. My point mostly applies if you're the user and faced with a fixed situation which you can not change. Of course that does not apply to the software developers. They should listen to the requests of their users and implement features unless there is a specific reason not to do it. And that's where I completely agree with you. It would be great if the software was capable and had a lot of features. I mean there are some limitations in practice, you need someone to invest time to implement it. And feature creep kills projects, you can't add everything... But I think Lemmy could really benefit from some more useful features. And I don't see a reason why they should reject them without a specific technical reason.
Maybe the correct course of action is to file a feature request with the Lemmy project. I hope they'll implement it. And if they don't, I think it boils down to what I lined out. You'd either be okay without your feature and keep using Lemmy, or you really want it and discard some of the other requirements and have a look at other software.
That’s the thing. The “better” tool isn’t right in front of me. OP didn’t know about it.
People mentioned Mbin in this very thread
And if they did, they would have to do the whole “which instance to join” dance, again.
And after they joined the instance, they would have to find a mobile app to use. (oh, oh, there isn’t one)
We can not just tell someone “what you want is on kbin, use that instead”, because there will be different use-cases that kbin does not fulfill.
So instead, it's "let's beg Lemmy to fulfill these use cases that it currently does not". Got it. Makes total sense, and is not internally incoherent at all.
Definitely not just arguing for a monoculture.
Definitely not arguing for a monoculture. You are overreacting and reading whatever you want, instead of what I've actually written.
I'm not saying "people should leave mbin and use only Lemmy as the end-all solution". I'm saying "those who are already on Lemmy should not be forced to adopt yet-another tool just because some other alternative fulfills one use-case better".
mbin might make some of what Lemmy does and it makes some of what Mastodon does, but it is not a perfect replacement to neither. There is always a cost to adopt any new piece of software (and I'm not talking about price, here). If some users are happy with it, by all means let them continue using it, and I hope it keeps improving. But to think that is reasonable to tell everyone "Lemmy doesn't do this, use mbin instead" is like saying "Linux is not good on the Desktop, use Windows instead".
They're websites. You're arguing that people shouldn't use different websites. On the Internet. Which is kind of how the Internet's been going the last 15 years, and has turned out to be a total disaster.
The idea that the largest game in town should adopt the features of smaller players, rather than users exploring other options because there's a slight inconvenience to the user just seems, I don't know, incredibly entitled. It's also how smaller projects stay invisible and die, leading to a monoculture.
So no, you're not arguing that "we should have a monoculture!", you're just saying "people shouldn't have to make choices!" which... leads to monoculture. And overwhelmingly supports the status quo.
Why would you want to do that? Like what's the point?
Literally the last thing I would want from a link aggregator forum is facebook. I hated when reddit started shoehorning that dumb shit into their site and I hate that people are asking for it now.
Oooh ooh oooh, what if they made a 'top 8 friends' list you could post on your profile?
I use mbin and it does threads and microblogs. it's a little janky at times and there is only one app (interstellar, android) but I like it.
thanks for the suggestion, i may look into mbin later!!! it looks like a comfy fediverse platform!!!
nice. I should mention that the microblogs need to be put in a magazine (community) as well, but you can always just use the random one.
Yeah, that still seems weird to me. Does it connect the post in any way to the magazine (especially Lemmy communities), or just end up a hashtag if people read from a fedi microblog instance?
no idea, I mostly use it to be able to read microblogs and reply to them while still using threads primarily all on one account. my best guess is microblog-only things don't see the community and threads-only things see it as a regular thread formatted like a microblog.
You can register on an instance with a backend that combines the microblogging fediverse and the threadiverse (afaik: mbin, piefed, friendica), then you can both microblog and post to communities.
I thought it was just onlyfans spambots doing this crap, hoping you'd stalk a profile.
What's the actual point?
Blogging and posting things that don't fit anywhere else.
totes, peepz
*toats
Tots (Napoleon Dynamite)
"get your own fricking tots!!!"