Good news for Federation fans.
Matrix (or more specifically, Synapse) servers are now visible on the The Federation info website at https://the-federation.info/matrix%7Csynapse. The website collects lists of servers for various federation protocols (like Matrix, ActivityPub, Diaspora, etc). If a server outputs usage information, it also shows some historical information for servers and projects. Currently the information available from Synapse on the site is just version, availability of registrations and (obviously) domain name. If you want to register your server, check https://the-federation.info/info for more details. Tips also welcome on how to register other Matrix server projects and how to get more data out of servers.
https://the-federation.info/info
Matrix (or more specifically, Synapse) servers are now visible on the The Federation info website at https://the-federation.info/matrix%7Csynapse. The website collects lists of servers for various federation protocols (like Matrix, ActivityPub, Diaspora, etc). If a server outputs usage information, it also shows some historical information for servers and projects. Currently the information available from Synapse on the site is just version, availability of registrations and (obviously) domain name. If you want to register your server, check https://the-federation.info/info for more details. Tips also welcome on how to register other Matrix server projects and how to get more data out of servers.
https://the-federation.info/info
THIS. LOOKS. INTERESTING.
ReplyDeleteAnd possibly exactly what I've been looking for.
Dan Eastwood Bridges to...
ReplyDeletematrix.org - FAQ | Matrix.org
Great to see this :)
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck is Matrix/synapse? I don't "get" what it's supposed to be. How does discovery work? What is the basic post/comment paradigm? (for example, G+ and diaspora associate each post with a comment thread, while tumblr and Mastodon has independent posts where it's generally impossible to control or even view the full reply thread).
ReplyDeleteI just don't understand what it's even supposed to be.
Isaac Kuo It is a next generation messaging application. Comparable products are Telegram, Slack, Signal, etc.
ReplyDeleteIsaac Kuo Riot is one of the leading GUIs for Matrix.
ReplyDeleteabout.riot.im - Riot – Riot – open team collaboration
Thanks! I thought that it must be something more than that, because folks have been discussing Matrix as a possible replacement mass migration destination for G+. But I see that it's really more of a possible replacement for Hangouts.
ReplyDeleteObviously, my questions were pretty specific to social media platforms, so irrelevant to Matrix.
Since I'm not interested in chat, it's no wonder that I'm not on any of the things Matrix has bridges for. I kept on wondering why there weren't any bridges for anything I'm interested in if it's so "easy" to make a bridge as they say.
Isaac Kuo Convergence is happening. Take a look at ActivityPub.
ReplyDeletemedium.com - A quick guide to The Free Network – We Distribute – Medium
Mike Noyes Unfortunately, ActivityPub's comment propagation seems inherently broken, and this is the big reason the diaspora devs aren't interested in converting to it. Diaspora's comment propagation is nice and solid, so I wouldn't want to see them go backwards on that.
ReplyDeleteBy far, diaspora and Mastodon have the biggest user bases (together over 99%). So, it's unfortunate that they don't federate with each other.
In practice, I've found the lack of Mastodon federation to be...not a big deal. Mastodon seems almost like chat to me, with almost nonexistent commentary discussion and of course practically no long form posting. Discovery seems to be pretty much zero except for connecting up with other Twitter escapees (I don't use Twitter).
So, I've found myself using Hubzilla less and diaspora more. In theory, Hubzilla gives me federation with a lot more users. In practice, discovery seems limited to the diaspora side and other platforms which federate with diaspora (Friendica, Hubzilla).
Isaac Kuo Mastodon is often compared with Twitter.
ReplyDeleteI've gone the other way. I'm using Hubzilla more. Admittedly, I'm still getting my feet wet. What do you think of nomadic identities?
The main difference in all these platforms is immediacy of communication.
Mike Noyes I love the idea of being able to maintain a live sync'd nomadic clone of all of my Hubzilla stuff. That's the killer reason I went with Hubzilla rather than Friendica.
ReplyDeleteHowever, be careful with it - if you accidentally follow/post/comment/etc from one of your "backup" pods, things will get messed up. Just make sure to treat your "home" pod as the "live" account, and only use the clones as backups just in case.
This has to do with how diaspora, ActivityPub, and such treat the pod address as an inherent part of a user's identity (while Hubzilla does not). Things inherently get confused.
So. I was thinking that I'd post all of my "permanent" blog stuff from Hubzilla, so there would always be a live backup available even if my "home" pod went away. I'm still doing that, but I'm also posting everything to diaspora also. I got burned when a Hubzilla software upgrade broke diaspora federation, so ... meh.
Isaac Kuo As for ActivityPub and Diaspora*, have you read...
ReplyDeletegithub.com - Support ActivityPub · Issue #7422 · diaspora/diaspora
Mike Noyes Yes, and if you dig a bit further into the linked discussion, you'll see the last comment on the linked discussion is from a diaspora developer explaining his criticism of ActivityPub here:
ReplyDeleteschub.io - ActivityPub - one protocol to rule them all? - Dennis Schubert
That criticism is from February of this year, and as far as I've seen their opinion has not changed since then. I tried to push for at least some Mastodon optimized ActivityPub federation but...no go.
OTOH, the developer of SocialHome (the guy with the rainbow shades) is on board with ActivityPub and is currently actively working on bringing ActivityPub federation to SocialHome. SocialHome is fundamentally diaspora based, so its comment propagation should be solid.
This would be significant, because SocialHome would be the first example which is fundamentally diaspora based, with ActivityPub tacked on. If it works adequately well, that might demonstrate to the diaspora devs that it can work well.
OTOH, SocialHome hides comments behind tiny clickable buttons, so comments are not really its focus. That maybe good for Mastodon federation since Mastodon doesn't really do coherent comment threads anyway. But it's less of a convincing argument for applicability to diaspora.
Isaac Kuo I defer to you. You have demonstrated greater knowledge on this topic than I have. My hope is for a unified standard social media protocol.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
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.
I do think eventually Activity Pub will be a primary protocol that facilitates convergence. Diaspora's federation protocol is but one of the six major social media protocols.
ReplyDeleteMastodon is a microblog service. But this community is not about Twitter which is a microblog. For suitable G+ mass migration, one needs to look at macroblog equivalents first.
Some users are flexible on features and only want to go where their friends go. Others are specific on features which puts them in a position to lead their crowd of friends. This dynamic is changed when considering the Federation aka Fediverse because you are not limited to making a single choice to move to another centralized service. No matter the choice made on which server to move to in the Fediverse, users can still be in touch with others in the Federation regardless of choice (and vice versa).
Choosing a replacement macroblog service in the federated web space is aligned with how a person used G+. For me, Friendica is my choice based on features and outreach capability. Hubzilla shares that outreach capability but its features are a difference use case.
While Diaspora has a larger base of adopters at present than Friendica or Hubzilla, its outreach capability is limited because it does not federate with as many others as possible. It also has vastly different use case than Friendica or Hubzilla based on features.
The good thing is, Friendica and Hubzilla do federate with Diaspora. They also federate with many others Diaspora does not. Checking today's stats, there are roughly 660K Diaspora users. Setting Mastodon aside for the moment, there are roughly 45K non-Diaspora users in the Fediverse - many of which Diaspora does not federate with because it is not using Activity Pub or OStatus. Now for the big one on outreach, there are roughly 1.7 million users on Mastodon.
Not federating with Mastidon limits Diaspora user outreach. If this fits the use case of Diaspora users, then this is not an issue for them. Others who want maximum outreach capability can migrate to other solutions like Friendica or Hubzilla and still be in touch with those who migrate to Diaspora. I see the latter as a win win win.