I've been experimenting with installing and self-hosting several fediverse instances, so I thought I'd post my quick impressions.

Remember that I'm very much not a developer or sysadmin. I'm comfortable in the terminal and can do some slight code tweaking, but that's the extent of my skill set. I'm pretty much your average user in all regards.

Mastodon

Mastodon is the big one, when it comes to the fediverse. It's been featured in quite a few articles over the years as a solid alternative to Twitter and you can find a wide scope of users from every facet of life. There are hundreds upon hundreds of instances that range from tens of thousands of users, to small one-person instances.

Self-hosting is simple as long as you can follow the long and complicated installation, although DigitalOcean does give you the convenience of a one-click install that sets up everything for you. It does require quite a bit of power from your server, so the smaller VPS solutions aren't always going to cut it.

For myself, it was too much effort to try and keep it maintained, especially as it would be an entire instance for just myself.

Pleroma

Pleroma is sleeker and a more cool version of Mastodon, in the sense that it's far more open to hacking and customizing it to your heart's content. It also uses far less resources than Mastodon to run, and it was far simpler to install it.

I did find it far harder to find users to follow, but that could be that the way Pleroma approaches federation is slightly different from Mastodon, so I'm willing to give it some time and see if it sticks.

Hubzilla

Hubzilla is by far the simplest to install. It even works on shared hosting! I've been running my own Hubzilla node for a few weeks now, and I'm constantly learning new things about it. It's far more powerful than I'll ever need, but I'm enjoying tinkering around with it.

I haven't been able to connect with many other users yet, because the directory for connections seems to be flooded with bot accounts and abandoned accounts.

Misskey

Misskey is another micro-blogging network that's similar, and yet very different, from Pleroma and Mastodon. I couldn't come right with the installation and just gave up trying. It does look pretty though.

Movim

Based on the XMPP standard, Movim is centred around sharing articles on Pubsub channels and has chat built in. It's a mash-up of Telegram/WhatsApp/ and Facebook-lite.

I haven't tried hosting this myself, but it's a service I love using and as it's based on XMPP, you can be sure that it's stable and extensible. All you need is a XMPP account, and you're set to go.

WriteFreely

I just installed my own instance of WriteFreely today and as someone who enjoys writing, I fell in love with it immediately. It's very much a stripped down blog system, with the focus being on your words. It's minimalistic, which is exactly what I want when it comes to writing and presenting my work to others out there.

Not only that, but it was relatively simple to set up and should be good for those of you who enjoy writing, both professionally or as a hobby.

Scuttlebutt

Scuttlebutt is the service I've had the least time to dig into. It's an interesting form of an offline Reddit / Facebook network, but that doesn't really do it justice. It can take some time to connect with others, and until you do, your feed will be pretty much empty. It's a good reason to introduce yourself in the #new-people channel and dive into groups that might interest you and connect with people you find interesting.

Conclusion

The fediverse is as strong as ever and there are a multitude of options out there, so it should be easy to find something that suits your taste and use case.

You can self-host and control your data from start to finish, or you can join one of the thousands of available instances out there.

There's definitely no better time than now to try and experiment and find your home in the fediverse.

#scuttlebutt #fediverse #movim #pleroma #writefreely #hubzilla #misskey #mastodon

I was reading some toots on #mastodon and i saw something about mov.im and now i am posting my first post haha

Some random ideas about how likes should work in a social network, e.g. #Movim #Salutatoi #Libervia in the long run.

I'm referring to postings only, not chat.

Social networks are all getting high by the alternation of Adrenaline and Dopamine, intensified by the occasional dose rate of Caffeine, when geting #likes.

1. On Movim, I can get information about recent likes in the notifications, but I would like to have an overview about all likes I ever got.
2. Also, I'm missing an overview about all postings, that I liked at some point.
3. In social networks one can find like-minded people. How about notifying me, when posting I liked or commented on, get more likes or comments by others? #Diaspora does this.
4. Movim only allows for a like, but not for any other reaction. Message Reactions OTOH, allow for multiple, different #reactions, which I find more interesting.
5. If a network becomes larger, fraud and abuse will be quick to follow. I'll post "vi is great", wait for some likes, and the correct the post to "Emacs is great". My likers will not even get a notification, nor is there a change history. Diaspora "solves" this by not allowing changes of posts, which is horrible - I can't even fix my typos. #Mastodon seems to replace the orginal post with a complete new one on change - losing answers and likes (favourites). Therefore:
   1. Likers must be notified, if a posting they liked has been altered, so that they can decide to remove their reaction.
   2. A change history should be visible.
6. When talking about fraud and abuse: At some point, it should be possible to digitally sign postings, e.g. using #OX, so that everybody can verify the authenticity of a posting. This is esp. important in a federated network, where fake sites might appear. Likewise, reactions should be optionally signed, too.

On Twitter I have 774 followers after 12 years of use, and on Mastodon I have 538 followers after only 3 or so years. I post the identical posts to both networks at the same time, and respond on both. Yet I see noticeably more engagement, queries, comments, etc on my posts at Mastodon. This poll had 136 votes on Mastodon but only 25 votes on Twitter. It got 12 reshares on Mastodon and 1 on Twitter. Both polls had the same hashtags and #DeleteWhatsApp was very busy on both networks.

My theory is that on Twitter an individual's posts get largely drowned out by adverts and promoted posts, and of course the algorithm that shows "top posts", whereas on Mastodon users only see who they are following giving more visibility to a user posting...

#twitter #mastodon #alternativeto #fediverse