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Dr. Quadragon ❌

@BigFoxBoss I oppose this being a defining characteristic.

There's nothing special about social networks, or the Web being impermanent.

@iliazeus @mittorn

22 comments
BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Unfortunately, with the way these platforms were made and what they encourage (short messages, "in-the-moment" attitude towards posts, which awards low-effort posting), makes them for the most part characterized by being disposable, consumption oriented and demanding one's attention at all times (which is what these social networks want to stay relevant).
Any well thought out post (which is longer on average) will be flooded/overrun in the timeline by a ton of low-effort posts, because barely anybody takes time to read anything that goes beyond the post's visual scope and has a cut saying "Read more". TL;DR applies very much so on these social networks.
Microblogging not just is built in a specific way, it attracts specfic kind of audience.

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Unfortunately, with the way these platforms were made and what they encourage (short messages, "in-the-moment" attitude towards posts, which awards low-effort posting), makes them for the most part characterized by being disposable, consumption oriented and demanding one's attention at all times (which is what these social networks want to stay relevant).
Any well thought out...

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss the Fediverse also doesn't end with microblogging. It's much more general.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Yet 70% of AP software is made for microblogging first (some is also microblogging with extra steps), other stuff on AP is like a separate island.
Stuff like pixelfed doesn't even federate properly with mastodon and other fedi software, that's the simplest example.

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss Dunno, Pixelfed mostly federates okay.

I'm toying with idea of making something like Livejournal or rather Liveinternet for Fedi. Someone should just go out and do it.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Doesn't WriteFreely do something more blog-focused?

At least they advertise themselves as "Blog first".
I am not sure how well they would federate, however, and comments feature is behind paywall (if that's important).

Wordpress has an AP plugin too.

There are not much platforms which would qualfy as actual blogs/diaries ala Livejournal/Liveinternet.

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss It does, but it's so stripped of features, it doesn't even support comments and interactions. And those *are* important.

There also was Plume, but it was... weird. It certainly wasn't effective.

I'm aware of the Wordpress plugin, but Wordpress is such a legacy at this point, and much of their plugins have very little to do with the software's intended purpose. They should have introduced the federation earlier, It may have saved it as a blogging platform.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
There is a thing "remark.as" which is like a commenting system for "write.as". But it's not released publicly apparently, it's just for "write.as" users

For something "more general" like LiveInternet probably Hubzilla is the closest thing that tries to be "everything", like a big hub.

Wordpress is really old, barely see anyone using it, but I'm guessing it's just in general trend of people being attracted to bite-size posts and memes that also brought decline to this platform.

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
There is a thing "remark.as" which is like a commenting system for "write.as". But it's not released publicly apparently, it's just for "write.as" users

For something "more general" like LiveInternet probably Hubzilla is the closest thing that tries to be "everything", like a big hub.

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss I think, it's *actually* lack of federation that did it in.

What's the point writing a standalone blog, when nobody can comment on it without registering (which nobody will)? I killed mine with the same motivation, having written for it for 5 years or so.

And there were some fucking elaborate posts in there, what a waste.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
That's the point I'm making, people just moved on to more easily digestible platforms and microblogs in general. Maybe th public eventually expected every other platform to be commentable and interactive like microblogs and social networks, and they stopped reading and interacting with anything that didn't nteract immediately with them. So everything became a social network, apparently... :blobfoxo_o:

So then writers ended up either advertsing their blog on a microblog (and barely get anything), or just abandoned it in favour of microblogs and their kinds of posts.

Wordpress might just have been late to catch up.

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
That's the point I'm making, people just moved on to more easily digestible platforms and microblogs in general. Maybe th public eventually expected every other platform to be commentable and interactive like microblogs and social networks, and they stopped reading and interacting with anything that didn't nteract immediately with them. So everything became a social network, apparently... :blobfoxo_o:

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss My point is not longform blogging being not easily digestible.

My point is standalone infrastructure being obtuse and not easily interactable without federation, there's no community.

As for "everything became social network", well... The first proper social network was Livejournal - there were friend subscriptions in there, as the prominent feature. And it was longform blogging platform, also the first one. So, always has been.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Yet Livejournal is not as popular now and is on decline. The latest generation probably doesn't know about it and won't use it ever :blobfoxthink:

Communities sure bounded even without federation protocols. Thematic websites/forums were all you needed. It's just that their time has passed. I know only a few niche hobby communities that have their own hubs which allow to register and host a blog on their account, but these are very damn niche interests that only interest very specific people. It's not there to make a following, it's there to mostly talk to an already bound community.

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Yet Livejournal is not as popular now and is on decline. The latest generation probably doesn't know about it and won't use it ever :blobfoxthink:

Communities sure bounded even without federation protocols. Thematic websites/forums were all you needed. It's just that their time has passed. I know only a few niche hobby communities that have their own hubs which allow to register and host a blog on their account, but these are very damn niche interests that only interest very...

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss But what if your main niche is just you and your homies?

It's VERY hard to convince people to register on your website so they could interact with just your and their posts, even if they're your friends.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Niche being you and your homies? What do you mean?
If the case is that they just want to keep contact, people exchanged ICQ/Skype/Mailru thing back in the day for instant messaging (and e-mail before that, websites had e-mail to reach the author anyway).
Some might actually be interested to read their friend's blog and comment on it. Besides, you didn't always have to register on the website itself, there were some comment hostings similar to "disqus".
And having "you and your homies" may already attract some people, friends call their friends in by a word of mouth, some might stick around, then strangers come in to read and follow. It just takes time anyway

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
Niche being you and your homies? What do you mean?
If the case is that they just want to keep contact, people exchanged ICQ/Skype/Mailru thing back in the day for instant messaging (and e-mail before that, websites had e-mail to reach the author anyway).
Some might actually be interested to read their friend's blog and comment...

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss I'm not an imbecile, I know what instant messaging is, and I remember ICQ. I had a 6-digit number.

I'm talking strictly about social blogging. Only that. Not other platforms/protocols/whatever.

Social networking/social blogging is easy to do when you're on the same website, and nigh impossible to do if you're standalone. Unless there's federation. Then it's not as easy as the same website, but suddenly - it's doable.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
I am making a point that social blogging you speak of existed on standalone stuff through some means, like, comment hostng services.

Well, somehow people did gain a following before mainstream social networks and microblogging happened.

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss Centralization around Disqus notwithstanding, yeeah, kinda. It's a crawl compared to what we have with Fedi now, though, when you just click "follow" and boom, subscribed.

@iliazeus @mittorn

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
and then the entire feed grows into something unmanageable or take hours to scroll through, which noone except terminally online people can afford.
Said subscriber/follower might just miss things because feed is flooded with memes or whatever happened during the day to someone else who is terminally online babbling about what they did or constantly reblog whatever they saw on a federated timeline. Muting everytime is also kind of annoying, maybe you'd end up missing something again.
And that "missing out" thing is one more can of worms of social networks that builds addiction and it's a whole other topic.
Keeping stuff separate might be more manageable to followers who might just want blogs, for instance, not a constant flood of whatever microblogging stuff is being reblogged/posted

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn
and then the entire feed grows into something unmanageable or take hours to scroll through, which noone except terminally online people can afford.
Said subscriber/follower might just miss things because feed is flooded with memes or whatever happened during the day to someone else who is terminally online babbling about what they did or constantly reblog whatever they saw...

BigFoxBoss replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @iliazeus @mittorn Also, I heard that tumblr is integrating with AP, so they may join fedi, but no further news on that yet still.
It's a tumbleblog though, something in the middle between a blog and microblog.
I am not even sure how they would even federate and keep formatting intact, but we'll see I guess.

Dr. Quadragon ❌ replied to BigFoxBoss

@BigFoxBoss They've been promising this for quite a while now.

@iliazeus @mittorn

mittorn replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq @BigFoxBoss @iliazeus Even if do normal blogging, mastodon is not good idea.
It does not even accept formatting.
It is possible to implement normal blogs with AP by showing Summary text as post text and blog post data in some other field or even like attachment. Summary should include link to static blog viewer for unsupported instances/frontends and suppoered instances/frontends should implement separate blog interface which only will show blog post and open when expanding blog data. Maybe this similar to vk blogs. This will allow have normal blogging and let users not skip other blog posts because blog posts whill be shown in separate timeline in blog interface.
How blog interface should look? Imagine any news site, which want to keep user reading it as long as possible and remove all ads and.
Also, comments may be shared with microblog interface (which should only show summary for main post).
Also, it is possible to add reply with limited text-based representation of blog post for non-supporting instances or clients. That would not appear in timeline, but would be shown in blog post as first reply.
Why blog post should be separate entity? Because we need support formatting, tables, right-placed attachments (which should federate as well). And of course not limit by attachment entities. For comments, microblog is still ok, it can also fit in blog interface like comments block.

@drq @BigFoxBoss @iliazeus Even if do normal blogging, mastodon is not good idea.
It does not even accept formatting.
It is possible to implement normal blogs with AP by showing Summary text as post text and blog post data in some other field or even like attachment. Summary should include link to static blog viewer for unsupported instances/frontends and suppoered instances/frontends should implement...

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