Alternative assessments: Diaspora
I've been a user since May of 2012, about a year after G+ launched. I'd been inactive for about 4 years prior to the G+ sunset announcement.
First post: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/1622938
Diaspora is not everything I'd want, but it seems a reasonable social home for now. I'm almost certainly going to make several of the federated platforms key parts, though not the core of my online presence. That will be a blog managed off of my desktop system itself via Git.
I am using Mastodon, I have a Hubzilla profile, and plan on looking at Friendica. Solid and other options are things I plan to look at in future.
Diaspora: the Good
Community. The people I've most wanted to be able to stay in touch with from G+ seem to be headed to, or reachable from, Diaspora. Those I'm less interested in hearing from are hard to argue out of heading off to a vastly more racist, nationalist, fascist, and idiot-infested alternative. I may not try arguing too hard with them on that point.
Federation. Diaspora is not Diaspora. That is: who you can reach from, and how you reach Diaspora, is not limited to users of that platform alone. Other federated protocols and platforms are part of the mix, and so the potential world is far larger than Diaspora alone. The notions of interoperability, extensibility, and future-proofing migrations are huge factors.
Syndication / automated posting and response. I plan on syndicating blog content to, and responses from, my future platforms. Diaspora offers means to do this.
Reasonably good discoverability. Post or follow a #googleplus or #gplusrefugees hashtag, and you'll rapidly find people.
Markdown. It's so helpful to be able to use a full set of Markdown formatting in posts, including not just italic, bold, andstrikethrough, but super/subscript, formatted links, bulleted and numbered lists, headers, tables, code, and escapes (so I can actually, say, post Linux commandline sequences without Google butchering them).
https://joindiaspora.com/posts/54c680b0b40801366b870218b798024d
Data export. Disapora content is downloadable in vastly more useful and accessible formats than G+ data, as the past few months have shown. I will not allow my content to be hostage again.
Distinct Notifications. Rather than getting a jumbled tumble of +1s, mentions, post replies, comment replies, etc., in Diaspora each of these can be viewed (or cleared) independently.
Following hashtags. You can include hashtags into your stream, or follow them individually. Interested in a specific topic? Follow that tag and see what pops up.
An integrated, non-intrusive, direct-messaging capacity. G+ had various iterations of this over the years, but all were either incomplete or annoying, often both. If you want to talk directly to a specific person or group, you can, and those messages are tracked independently of stream discussions.
Excellent keyboard navigation. Move up or down through the stream, expand posts, like, or comment, all with the keyboard. This is exceptionally useful.
Responsive developers, open issues tracking. The black hole of Google's so-called feedback system is gone. Diaspora's devs have responded within hours to issues I've filed. As a Free Software project, users can be developers. (Know your Ruby.)
Open standards and protocols. The guts are wide open, visible, and accessible to all. There are no secret interfaces. And the standards interoperate with other systems.
Pluspora. This is a specific pod, and not integral to Diaspora, but Di Cleverly and David Thiery's accidental refugee ship has been a huge boon.
RSS: My posts are available as an RSS feed.
https://joindiaspora.com/people/d8210c0de509264f.atom
It exists. It's proven. Diaspora has been around for seven years. It's time-tested. The user base isn't huge, but it's there, and in a world of here-today, gone-tomorrow options, this is a positive.
Diaspora: the Bad
A counterintuitive, incomplete, and insufficient blocking feature. A critical element of public discussion systems is being able to mute abusive, or simply annoying, voices. "Block fuckwits" has been my one killer discovery on social media, and it can make engagement vastly more useful, and less annoying. Sadly, Diaspora's "Ignore" feature offers only a thin set of G+ "block" powers. Whilst not a showstopper for me, I can very much see this being untenable for many.
No edits. Once published, you either live with errors or delete and start over. I've done plenty of both. The rationales for no-edit range from technical (not fully supported within the protocol) to ideological (people might abuse edit capabilities). Reality is that being able to fix or update content is key to my online use, and I miss this, badly. Changes to this should be forthcoming, but then, that's been the case literally for years.
No full-text search. I've used various tools (Reddit, G+ when it's had useful search) as "external brain' repositories. What I post almost always has some interest or relevance to me, and being able to search that myself, or point others at what I've written, is a huge part of why I write online. I'm not here for the now, I'm here for the future. (And I hugely appreciate being able to re-access the thoughts and writings of Past Me.) Public content is searchable through third-party tools but a native tool would be very useful.
No group or community concept. Whilst I'd not much used these features of G+, and found Google's implementations strongly lacking, there's a place for group discussion. Other Federated platforms offer this, and that may tempt me off.
No profile portability. Whilst you can move your data and configurations from Diaspora, there's no integrated portability capability, contrast to Hubzilla, which is excellent in this regard. Not a killer, but a concern.
Open standards and protocols. The flip-side of openness is that progress is dependent on all relevant sides of a protocol-forming process coming to agreement. Google can move protocols single-handedly, for better or worse. Diaspora has a far harder time, and stagnation is one result. (For sharper instances, see NNTP, SMTP, and IRC as protocols which have been more-or-less stuck for decades.) This sword has two edges.
Developer and Admin trust and viability. Adopters are putting a great deal of faith in the ongoing development of Diaspora, and in the integrity of their pod admin(s). This is a concern of any hosted service. And certainly, proprietary platforms, including the very largest,Facebook have failed in this regard. But it's a concern I'd like to see addressed and mitigated. Decentralisation doesn't Majickally fix all Problems. Privacy and security concerns exist as a consequence.
Limited external awareness. Diaspora has at least been around, but support in various contexts is limited -- you won't find much by way of Diaspora mobile apps, web plug-ins, integration with commercial systems, sharing links, etc. Most of which I personally don't care for or need, but I'm well aware that others care. Again, not a show-stopper, and something that can be addressed, though progress in certain areas (e.g., anything that would be business-development in a commercial context) is likely to be glacial.
Somewhat laggy performance. Especially around notifications. Switching between types takes a second or two, which is a pretty big drag. Activities cannot be completed in the Notifications view. As opposed to, say, G+ (I'm responding here in the Notifs pane) or Reddit (where the notifications window allows responses and other activities, generally). Changing the Notifications page such that comments could be viewed and responded to directly would be a major win.
Assessment
My view is that the plusses handily outweigh the negatives. Diaspora is here, offers enough, and works. There's room for improvement, there is possibility for replacement. For me, and for the community, those should both be positives. Not making Diaspora the core of my activity but an adjunct helps markedly.
I've been a user since May of 2012, about a year after G+ launched. I'd been inactive for about 4 years prior to the G+ sunset announcement.
First post: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/1622938
Diaspora is not everything I'd want, but it seems a reasonable social home for now. I'm almost certainly going to make several of the federated platforms key parts, though not the core of my online presence. That will be a blog managed off of my desktop system itself via Git.
I am using Mastodon, I have a Hubzilla profile, and plan on looking at Friendica. Solid and other options are things I plan to look at in future.
Diaspora: the Good
Community. The people I've most wanted to be able to stay in touch with from G+ seem to be headed to, or reachable from, Diaspora. Those I'm less interested in hearing from are hard to argue out of heading off to a vastly more racist, nationalist, fascist, and idiot-infested alternative. I may not try arguing too hard with them on that point.
Federation. Diaspora is not Diaspora. That is: who you can reach from, and how you reach Diaspora, is not limited to users of that platform alone. Other federated protocols and platforms are part of the mix, and so the potential world is far larger than Diaspora alone. The notions of interoperability, extensibility, and future-proofing migrations are huge factors.
Syndication / automated posting and response. I plan on syndicating blog content to, and responses from, my future platforms. Diaspora offers means to do this.
Reasonably good discoverability. Post or follow a #googleplus or #gplusrefugees hashtag, and you'll rapidly find people.
Markdown. It's so helpful to be able to use a full set of Markdown formatting in posts, including not just italic, bold, and
https://joindiaspora.com/posts/54c680b0b40801366b870218b798024d
Data export. Disapora content is downloadable in vastly more useful and accessible formats than G+ data, as the past few months have shown. I will not allow my content to be hostage again.
Distinct Notifications. Rather than getting a jumbled tumble of +1s, mentions, post replies, comment replies, etc., in Diaspora each of these can be viewed (or cleared) independently.
Following hashtags. You can include hashtags into your stream, or follow them individually. Interested in a specific topic? Follow that tag and see what pops up.
An integrated, non-intrusive, direct-messaging capacity. G+ had various iterations of this over the years, but all were either incomplete or annoying, often both. If you want to talk directly to a specific person or group, you can, and those messages are tracked independently of stream discussions.
Excellent keyboard navigation. Move up or down through the stream, expand posts, like, or comment, all with the keyboard. This is exceptionally useful.
Responsive developers, open issues tracking. The black hole of Google's so-called feedback system is gone. Diaspora's devs have responded within hours to issues I've filed. As a Free Software project, users can be developers. (Know your Ruby.)
Open standards and protocols. The guts are wide open, visible, and accessible to all. There are no secret interfaces. And the standards interoperate with other systems.
Pluspora. This is a specific pod, and not integral to Diaspora, but Di Cleverly and David Thiery's accidental refugee ship has been a huge boon.
RSS: My posts are available as an RSS feed.
https://joindiaspora.com/people/d8210c0de509264f.atom
It exists. It's proven. Diaspora has been around for seven years. It's time-tested. The user base isn't huge, but it's there, and in a world of here-today, gone-tomorrow options, this is a positive.
Diaspora: the Bad
A counterintuitive, incomplete, and insufficient blocking feature. A critical element of public discussion systems is being able to mute abusive, or simply annoying, voices. "Block fuckwits" has been my one killer discovery on social media, and it can make engagement vastly more useful, and less annoying. Sadly, Diaspora's "Ignore" feature offers only a thin set of G+ "block" powers. Whilst not a showstopper for me, I can very much see this being untenable for many.
No edits. Once published, you either live with errors or delete and start over. I've done plenty of both. The rationales for no-edit range from technical (not fully supported within the protocol) to ideological (people might abuse edit capabilities). Reality is that being able to fix or update content is key to my online use, and I miss this, badly. Changes to this should be forthcoming, but then, that's been the case literally for years.
No full-text search. I've used various tools (Reddit, G+ when it's had useful search) as "external brain' repositories. What I post almost always has some interest or relevance to me, and being able to search that myself, or point others at what I've written, is a huge part of why I write online. I'm not here for the now, I'm here for the future. (And I hugely appreciate being able to re-access the thoughts and writings of Past Me.) Public content is searchable through third-party tools but a native tool would be very useful.
No group or community concept. Whilst I'd not much used these features of G+, and found Google's implementations strongly lacking, there's a place for group discussion. Other Federated platforms offer this, and that may tempt me off.
No profile portability. Whilst you can move your data and configurations from Diaspora, there's no integrated portability capability, contrast to Hubzilla, which is excellent in this regard. Not a killer, but a concern.
Open standards and protocols. The flip-side of openness is that progress is dependent on all relevant sides of a protocol-forming process coming to agreement. Google can move protocols single-handedly, for better or worse. Diaspora has a far harder time, and stagnation is one result. (For sharper instances, see NNTP, SMTP, and IRC as protocols which have been more-or-less stuck for decades.) This sword has two edges.
Developer and Admin trust and viability. Adopters are putting a great deal of faith in the ongoing development of Diaspora, and in the integrity of their pod admin(s). This is a concern of any hosted service. And certainly, proprietary platforms, including the very largest,
Limited external awareness. Diaspora has at least been around, but support in various contexts is limited -- you won't find much by way of Diaspora mobile apps, web plug-ins, integration with commercial systems, sharing links, etc. Most of which I personally don't care for or need, but I'm well aware that others care. Again, not a show-stopper, and something that can be addressed, though progress in certain areas (e.g., anything that would be business-development in a commercial context) is likely to be glacial.
Somewhat laggy performance. Especially around notifications. Switching between types takes a second or two, which is a pretty big drag. Activities cannot be completed in the Notifications view. As opposed to, say, G+ (I'm responding here in the Notifs pane) or Reddit (where the notifications window allows responses and other activities, generally). Changing the Notifications page such that comments could be viewed and responded to directly would be a major win.
Assessment
My view is that the plusses handily outweigh the negatives. Diaspora is here, offers enough, and works. There's room for improvement, there is possibility for replacement. For me, and for the community, those should both be positives. Not making Diaspora the core of my activity but an adjunct helps markedly.
Thanks for the assessment. Really don't know what i'm going to do.
ReplyDeleteSo what about Hubzilla in comparison?
ReplyDeleteI would add that federation has it's downsides as well:
ReplyDeleteYou'll only get content that is federated to your pod due to pre-established connections to other pods.
Therefore, you might not get e.g. trending topics/tags (Which I don't really care about, but others might).
And, specific to diaspora's implementation, it is non-trivial to see past content from people you've newly discovered, or comment streams might be woefully incomplete. That's because the content might not have been federated to your pod, and d* does not support transparent browsing or on-demand pulling of other pods' public content.
Similarly, pod-specific URLs to federated content are a real pest...
Carsten Reckord Something like an IPFS pod-agnostic canonical reference might help there.
ReplyDeleteAnd index/search/syndication pods.
I am now on diaspora and am enjoying it.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing I am missing there is a group functionality.
In contrast, here in this post I am commenting in a google+ Community, on a topic that is of great interest to all the Community members. Such community conversations do not happen in diaspora: to some extent one has to rely upon good fortune to encounter a conversation that one can contribute to.
Roy Gardiner For most of Google+'s life, the best discussions happened on specific hosts' threads.
ReplyDeleteBy which, of course, I mean Yonatan Zunger.
(There were others. He was an exemplar.)
Great info, thanks!
ReplyDeleteDiaspora: the Bad
ReplyDeleteA counterintuitive, incomplete, and insufficient blocking feature.
Edward Morbius, as a Pluspora member for 2 months, I agree completely. Inability to block trolls and idiots that live to destroy social media can quickly change your Diaspora experience from enjoyable to a nightmare. I checked with Shelenn Ayres to see if the same was true for Friendica.
She responded :
there are block and superblock tools per user.
Have since joined Friendica at social.isurf.ca - iSurf Social (home)
I should (and will) edit to note: the overall performance is laggy, especially around notifications. Switching between types takes a second or two, which is a pretty big drag. Activities cannot be completed in the Notifications view. As opposed to, say, G+ (I'm responding here in the Notifs pane) or Reddit (where the notifications window allows responses and other activities, generally).
ReplyDelete