The Fediverse is growing and we have decently successful platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon. What else would you like to see?
Any big tech platform not yet replaced or maybe something new altogether? What are we missing?
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More interactability between the different fediverse softwares.
I can think of optional integration to other services as being an useful feature while at the same time relatively friction-free.
Some examples that come to mind that could give some integration ideas are Facebook the company with Threads the social media (but is tarnished by the company itself), Bridgy Fed, Wafrn, and Friendica bridging AT Protocol and ActivityPub (the first one seemingly being very popular), NeoDB allowing cross-referencing and importing entries from other databases and platforms, and RSS Parrot sharing posts from RSS feeds as ActivityPub posts (though sadly in this last one, interactions are one way only).
Lobsters and hackernews.
Lemmy and piefed can be deviated into being used as a single sub instance as an alternative but it’s just not the same.
Other than this, we are pretty fine with the basics, it would be nice to have more people working towards letting mods be mods with proper tools without involving CLI.
Also some combo like local first acting as a PDS being able to be written by different softwares. (Basically atproto or solid yes)(yes silverpill and holos are working on this but 2 different people working on 2 different implementation of the hardest thing in the fedi doesn’t seem optimal for a network made of devs lol)
Users, that could help.
*Organic users
I’m ok with genetically modified users.
I’m a talking butterfly if that helps
Sounds like we need to get to cloning.
I’d love for bands, venues and event promoters to list their upcoming shows on Mastodon. But I can’t really see it happening in the immediate future, since they have to cast the broadest possible net to lure people in. I tend to go to a lot of punk / garage shows (it’s an emotional outlet, I guess) and they’re allllll advertised exclusively on Instagram, often with AI-gen flyers. To add insult to injury.
Having more localized communities would change that.
A lot of small punk shows need to build a following locally before they can get traction nationally/internationally.
Windows admin content. I am unfortunately cursed with the task and I’d love to be able to keep up with the patches here instead of needing reddit.
More people
I mean reddit is doing their best to send them our way!
It’s always worth posting something. I post a lot and the majority of stuff gets comments
Came here to say exactly this.
A federated roaming user directory so you can have the same user at once in different aspects of the Fediverse.
That’s the feature I want most as well
100% this would be it. I also think one unified account would help with adoption. I run my own instances and think it’d be much easier to get friends on board if i didn’t need them to sign up for several services.
This is technologically impossible to implement. And believe me, I’ve discussed this very same topic often enough.
Thing is, if you want to use a Fediverse server, any Fediverse server running any Fediverse software, if you want to use it like a local user with a local account, then you will inevitably require an account on that server, full stop.
Whatever you do on that server, it will inevitably have to store it in its local database. It can’t store that in the database of another server. So it will have to create database cells that are attributed to your Fediverse identity. But it can only attribute them to an identity on itself, not to an identity on another server.
You can’t log onto discuss.aethelgard.space, go over to hub.hubzilla.hu to try Hubzilla as a user, be automatically logged in as a user, do all kinds of stuff there, and then hub.hubzilla.hu stores all your content, all your settings etc. etc. in the remote database of discuss.aethelgard.space. Servers don’t work that way. Especially if they’re so incompatible.
Like, where in its database is a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space supposed to store the contents of your Hubzilla profile, considering Hubzilla has dozens of dedicated profile text fields, and Lemmy has literally none?
Where does a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space have the appropriate database fields for other Hubzilla-specific content and settings?
Where does a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space have the appropriate database fields for the various configuration options that Hubzilla offers for each contact, seeing as Lemmy doesn’t even know the concept of contacts in the first place, save for which communities you’re a member of?
If you want to do stuff as a local user on hub.hubzilla.hu, hub.hubzilla.hu must store your stuff locally. And attribute it to a local identity, like, on the same server. No, it can’t attribute your stuff to your discuss.aethelgard.space account.
Trust me, I know a thing or two about running Fediverse servers. I used to self-host a few private servers on a machine at home long before even Mastodon became so hugely popular, long before Reddit was so enshittified that people escaped to Lemmy. No Docker, no YunoHost, straight on the Debian GNU/Linux system, all the way to manually setting up and configuring SQL databases.
If you want to be able to use any Fediverse server running any Fediverse software, you’ve got the following options:
One central login server for the whole Fediverse.
Like, go to fediverse.com, log in on fediverse.com and have full access to thousands upon thousands of Fediverse servers running 100++ different server applications.
Yeah. And then that server shuts down because whichever hobbyist runs it has no time for it anymore. Or Elon Musk or Sam Altman or Larry Ellison or whoever comes and buys it out. Or it’s running in the USA, and the FBI seizes it. With the one and only login server gone, the Fediverse as a whole is dead.
Mike Macgirvin, the most creative Fediverse developer ever (this guy created three Fediverse protocols and over a dozen Fediverse applications in over 16 years, four of which still exist, two of which he still maintains), hasn’t invented nomadic identity in 2011 without a reason. That reason is servers shutting down with no warning, and people losing everything, because their home server was a single point of failure. Reducing the Fediverse to exactly one login server gives the whole Fediverse a single point of failure and goes into the exact opposite direction of nomadic identity.
You create one account, you create it literally everywhere.
Go anywhere in the Fediverse, and your login credentials work all the same everywhere, regardless of where you are.
Yeah. That’s like 30,000+ individual servers. Maybe minus servers with closed login if you don’t want to be able to use these. Also, any Fediverse server that’s being spun up for the first time is public with open registration by default. Which means that anyone in the Fediverse must be able to use it. Which means that when it spins up, it’ll have to create one account for each of the 10,000,000++ Fediverse users. Like, I set up my own little Forte server, I start it for the first time, and a few freaking days of automatic account creation later, that thing has over four times more registered users than mastodon.social. Just in case one of them may come over to try Forte. Because you never know.
But now you’ll say, “I don’t want to use 30,000 servers! I only want to use a few!” Believe me, I do have heard that before.
Yeah. And how, pray tell, are these servers supposed to know in advance that you want to use them so they can create an account for you?
Each server can look into the future and knows whether and when you’ll want to use it. Only those servers that you’ll want to use will have an account for you.
Unrealistic for hopefully blatantly obvious reasons. If they aren’t obvious: How is a Web server supposed to see the future, all the way to your own spontaneous decisions?
When you arrive on a Fediverse server while logged in on discuss.aethelgard.space, there’s automatically an account created for you with the same login credentials as on discuss.aethelgard.space, and you’re automatically logged in.
I call it “drive-by account creation”.
Not only isn’t that realistically possible (if anything, the other server will only be able to pull the password hash from discuss.aethelgard.space and not the password itself), but it’d open its own can of worms. For example, admins who have configured their servers so that new accounts must be manually approved and activated by the admin are probably happy whenever someone creates a new account just by coming by while logged in elsewhere, and it’s activated immediately, and they’ve got no control over it.
Forums for long, linear discussion, like phpBB or Discourse, with good discoverability.
nodeBB literally is forum software in the Fediverse. I don’t know if it can do strictly linear like phpBB, though.
Or you create a channel on Hubzilla. You can configure it for your stream to be strictly linear as opposed to be tree-style. And then you can join Lemmy communities, /kbin or Mbin magazines, PieFed communities, nodeBB subforums, Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups, Forte groups, you name them, and they’re all strictly linear from your POV. It’s just that you, on Hubzilla, will always only directly reply to the start post (as opposed to the most recent comment) when the thread itself at its source is actually tree-style.
I do miss a good forum. That used to be my favorite thing about the internet.
I really miss those days, when you had a good one you were like a family.
Discourse has an ActivityPub plugin: https://discourse.org/plugins/activitypub
This plugin, for example, is enabled on SocialHub https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/about (it’s a forum for fediverse developers)
This may be self serving but if someone could maybe contact Mojang and get the Minecraft instance to be an officially recognized Social Media outlet like r/Minecraft is on Reddit, that would be peachy.
Oh and a syncable mobile app
eBay/marketplace/etsy alternative.
I believe Flohmarkt is a fediverse alternative.
Interesting … It looks pretty active. A few dozen instances, mainly in Germany. This has real potential.
Would be even better if these things didn’t use completely stupid names!! They’re not clever, or hip, or even fun. Flohmarkt sounds like I’d be too embarrassed to share what it is.
Is just German for flea market.
Yeah I see that now after looking it up. OK that makes more sense. Still not a great alt for North America yet
You can name your flohmarkt instance whatever you want though.
That’s good to know, I see is avail on Yunohost, too
If it was named something else illogical itd work, like weinerschnitzel selling no schnitzel
Flohmarket is just the name of the software, which as another said, is the German word for flea market. I suspect the creator is German.
Anyone who self-hosts their own flohmarket instance can call their instance whatever they want.
Names are subjective. “Youtube” makes no sense if you discard all the grab that it has now in retrospective. “Craiglist” is even worse.
YouTube always made sense because “tube” is old slang for TV.
Yeah, I guess I’m old enough to remember TVs being referred to a such hah 😅
…this is the first time in the entire Fediverse that I feel not-that-old 👀
Also known as the “boob tube” with “boob” being a synonym for “idiot”. I’m not that old…
I do think that would be neat but wonder how payments might be integrated from a technical perspective. I also wonder if there are any regulations that would get in the way or if it would even apply to something like that.
Edit: also, if people buy something then the instance goes offline. That would be another issue to figure out.
The whole thing needs legal, insurance and escrow. Nobody in their right mind would want to host it for free if it actually handled the money. Could go anonymous and crypto but really that’s just asking for it.
Hooking up buyers and sellers and having them sort out prices, taxes and shipping would prob be the only viable way.
At some point, someone is going to do enough business to get a good rep and make a large sale and screw someone out of money.
The issue in the US with accepting payments on behalf of sellers is that you have to then collect sales tax which is different for every locality. Then you also have to issue tax forms to the sellers for sales over a certain amount. Which leaves us with sellers collecting payments on their own which means using something like PayPal or Bitcoin. You would just have to have people build trust through reviews and hope for the best. You could base the service in a random other country so that you wouldn’t have a bunch of regulations to deal with and leave all the tax stuff up to the buyers and sellers. You’d probably run into issues with accepting credit cards though.
What about something like wero integration? Isn’t that supposed to be peer-to-peer?
I get that the trust is another issue though. What happens when a person gets stiffed? Who’s guaranteeing the purchase or vetting sellers?
On darknet markets they use an escrow account and admins act as mediators, so as long as you can show that you have a valid tracking number. The issue becomes when people try to scam you by selling you broken electronics or scam buyers pulling fraud returns. Weirdly this is common with VCRs on eBay. There’s large resellers who buy good VCRs and steal parts out of them and return them. Then they resell on Amazon. I guess it comes back to having a karma system.
Yeah I’ve thought about the question there of like is it acceptable then for those managing the instance to collect a percentage of transactions in the case where they provide payment management, arbitration, etc. Because if someone is a bad actor on Lemmy or mastadon you just ban them or the instance, but in the case of money changing hands that’s more difficult to administer
There is flohmarkt.
So Lemmy and Mastodon are mirrors of two popular forms of social media; what I think might be the next real step is innovation.
No, not a fediverse AI, something more human and “old web”. A federated forum system paired with a solid fedi-search engine could do slot of good - especially with the walled gardens and AI slopfest that the surface net is becoming.
I am a bit disappointed by all the federated social media kinda being boring clones of existing things instead of branching out more. More customizability would be nice. Just got Marvis for apple music and I really like the idea of setting smart rules for my social media feeds. (Creating your own algorithm) Cyberspace.online is a pretty interesting looking alt take on social media, not open source tho I don’t think.
Something that lets us create our own profiles like myspace would be nice, using threejs or some sht to allow for interactive experiences
More adoption by the public
More non-English communities.
The Fediverse it’s pretty English-centric and there are very few communities of non-English speakers, even huge languages like Spanish with hundreds of millions of people.
I’d love to get some BAME make up skincare etc in !Womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone but I’ve had zero luck
I think that’s largely due to the lack of variety in our clientele.
It seems to be hard to get anyone from the non-geek community over here. My wife isn’t interested at all if it doesn’t have an algorithm. She wants the tech to spoon-feed her things she’ll like instead of finding communities. Threads, Bluesky, Tiktok, Instagram just have all the people because it’s what the masses crave.
I dunno I have zero tech skills… I am a bit of a nerd though if that counts
I agree with this. Outside of German, I’ve found it very difficult to find communities in other languages. I couldn’t tell whether those communities didn’t exist at all or whether they were simply not discoverable.
My friends and neighbors and loved ones.
