Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?
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The problem is threatening the whole Fediverse
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This is a grave abuse of the protocol: messages are silently dropped. It stands against everything the Fediverse is trying to do: allow users to communicate. My experience with open protocols allows me to say that it is a critical problem and that it cannot be tolerated. Would you settle for a mail provider which silently drop all emails you receive if they contain the letter "P"?Oh, the drama. I think this is a wrong take. The point of ActivityPub is not that we all see everything. Is so the servers can exchange activities. But whether it makes sense to put it in our inboxes or not, depends on what particular application is supposed to do. If using AP would require the application to show everything, what would be the differences between the apps?
I use Threadiverse because I prefer a bit more structured content than what's happening on Mastodon. While I would love to be able to follow the few accounts and tags on Mastodon that interest me, the fact that I don't see all that traffic is not an abuse of the protocol
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, since
Pixelfed is designed to mimic Instagram
Then what Pixelfed does is also correct, Instagram also does not show the whole wall from Facebook. Only the pictures, right?
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the same way it makes sense for Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed to only show posts made on a community.
To be fair, that's not how Mbin works. Its communities also capture microblog posts that weren't originally posted to a community, based on the community's configured hashtags.
That's nice of Mbin, I usually recommend it to people looking to have the two formats in one, but the majority of the Threadiverse users seem to prefer Lemmy or Piefed
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I remember reading that Loops (? - may be wrong about which one) does the same thing, only displaying statuses with videos in them. I have not, so far, seen anyone claim that that is a bad thing, and frankly don't agree that it is. If we can't do that, then we can never have specialized platforms built on ActivityPub, e.g. platforms only for videos or for photos, etc., and that would severely limit what we can do with it.
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I can understand the reservation against an AP-Platform not making clear that they display only a subset of messages, but not against the practice by itself. After all, it's a platform specifically for showing images. A notification when following a non-pixelfed account that only image posts will be shown would do the trick too, but implementing the option to view text posts gives the user more agency, which is normally the best path as long as it doesn't mess with usability.
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this is a dumbest opinion out of all the dumb fediverse opinions i've read.
I go to pixelfed to post my art and view other peoples art. that's it. I don't go there to read posts or what's going on in peoples lives. For that I have Akkoma/Mastodon. If I want further interaction and discussion I have Piefed/Lemmy.
this blog post just reeks of "I need my voice to be heard on all the various platforms at the same time and I don't want to go to each individual platform to do it" well I'm sorry cupcake that's now how things work. Why isn't this person complaining about Piefeed posts not showing up on Mastodon or vice versa?
If I sign up to Instagram I don't expect to see facebook posts. Most people understand this concept. People aren't going to go to Pixelfeed and then assume they instantly have access to view Mastodon and Lemmy at the same time.
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I read the post and understood the problem. Then I read Dan's reply. And he's fixing it. In fact, he's fixing it in the exact way the blog post says it should be fixed, "... but those filters should be manually triggered and always removable."
Here's Dan's reply:
"... I hear the community: you want text-only posts. We are going to build this as an opt-in feature. If you want microblogging, turn it on. If you prefer the classic media-only experience, nothing changes."
Why was this blog post even written then? Now it's seeming to be personal.
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Imagine a new client, TextFed, that will never display posts with pictures.
Sign me up!
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The thought behind the post is worthwhile to ponder and discuss.
Personally, I don't think it's as dire as the text makes it seem. The speculation that a steadfast refusal of showing text only on PF might lead the AP protocol guardians to include a dummy pic in every post seems to me to be in the "possible but outlandish" category.
If the premise of AP was that every user should be able to see everything everywhere then defederating from certain instances shouldn't be possible. But that's a feature, not a bug.
The tree of the fediverse is big and nobody needs to saw off any branches. A picture only branch can sit next to a hypothetical text only one. I can see an argument that newbies to those particular branches could be more explicitly made aware of the filtering they will experience. While I was reading the text about the users who thought they saw everything from Mastodon on PF, my first thought was: this strains credulity. But then again, users are dumb. I hadn't realized for a while that shared posts don't show up in my PF feed on the app either.
I don't think anybody could become too big for their breeches on the fediverse because the fediverse is in no position to challenge the incumbent corporate platforms. Don't get me wrong, I love it here and on Mastodon (and on PF). But if you come from those polished centrally organized platforms and you're not willing to invest at least a little bit of time into learning how federating works (also refer to users are dumb above), you'll already be disappointed and put off before you realize you now need to also become your own algorithm. The threat scenario that PF could become so big that it can dictate protocol also presupposes that AP is the protocol that will endure forever. And with AT it already has a competitor waiting in the wings. As I said up top, the thought about how one dominating branch could damage the whole tree is worthwhile. But in a dramatic shift from this metaphor: we are in no position to have to cross this bridge any time soon.
Another reason why PF won't be getting out the chainsaw is its usability. It's only great for looking at pictures. It's terrible for having discussions about them unless you only use the website. I'm using the Android app and it's not great. Features came and went. The UI leaves a lot to be desired for me. It currently feels a bit abandoned because Dansup is more preoccupied with challenging TikTok. I still like PF because I go there just to look at pictures. I go to Mastodon for memes and dry remarks. And I don't feel like I'm breaking the protocol.
This image may be a bit wonky but convenience stores don't go out of business just because 24h supercenters exist. They both exchange ice cream for money but one of them has a bigger selection of flavors. PF is 7/11, Mastodon is Walmart.
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Does this person not understand how media specific sites work? If you want a mixed media website, there are plenty out there on the fediverse. Saying every site should host every media type gives users less options, not more.
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Come on, the whole purpose of pixelfed is to be an image federated platform.
If you want something different, use something different.
You ordered a pizza and are complaining it isn't a salad.
The problem is not "you ordered a pizza yet are complaining it isn't a salad". The problem is you are selling pizzas and salads, but the middleman is undercutting you on the delivery of the pizzas, leaving your clients with the fake impression you sell only salads and/or provide a bad service.
All that said, from an interface design perspective the current mode is exactly how it should happen. Pixelfed and pretty much everything else are purposefully subset-specific apps. All that's needed is the reminder (as visible as possible) that content you are looking at is incomplete and you can find the more complete version on this or that URL or app. Same principle as if I wanted to eg.: design a "hashtag explorer" for the Fediverse. I'd focus on that instead of the posts (and pictures); but what I can't ethically do is prevent my users from discovering their existence.
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The Fediverse has plenty of problems but...this ain't it.
A bigger problem would be the inevitable outcome of what happened with Instagram; people just post pictures of text to get more reach (and probably also to circumvent Mastodon's stupid character limits).
It's a stupid and arbitrary limitation, but I digress.
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Would you settle for a mail provider which silently drop all emails you receive if they contain the letter "P"?
Yes, if the mail provider is advertising the fact that they are dropping everything containing "P" AND if I'm currently not in the mood to read anything containing "P" AND if there are enough good alternative mail providers that do show me things containing "P".
What a weird take.
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Would you settle for a mail provider which silently drop all emails you receive if they contain the letter "P"?
Yes, if the mail provider is advertising the fact that they are dropping everything containing "P" AND if I'm currently not in the mood to read anything containing "P" AND if there are enough good alternative mail providers that do show me things containing "P".
What a weird take.
And if it didn't tell you and you had to find out via an article?
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Expecting an photo centric app to display text only post is really ridculous. What's thr point of making pixelfed just another mastodon type app. With the same logic , why not complaining about mastodon only allowing micro blogging short text?
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I read the post and understood the problem. Then I read Dan's reply. And he's fixing it. In fact, he's fixing it in the exact way the blog post says it should be fixed, "... but those filters should be manually triggered and always removable."
Here's Dan's reply:
"... I hear the community: you want text-only posts. We are going to build this as an opt-in feature. If you want microblogging, turn it on. If you prefer the classic media-only experience, nothing changes."
Why was this blog post even written then? Now it's seeming to be personal.
Seems like the article was written first maybe?
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The Fediverse has plenty of problems but...this ain't it.
A bigger problem would be the inevitable outcome of what happened with Instagram; people just post pictures of text to get more reach (and probably also to circumvent Mastodon's stupid character limits).
It's a stupid and arbitrary limitation, but I digress.
It's totally a problem: If I take a look at my Mastodon account from Pixelfed, there are a lot of screenshots shown and some other random images. Which totally does make sense as I do post stuff like that on Mastodon and screenshots totally make sense there. But if you take them to the center of the stage into a photocentric app, that really does look like shit
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No, you as a poster in the Fediverse are selling pizzas and salads. PixelFed is "misrepresenting" you, for lack of a better word, by telling people you only sell pizzas. The thing is, it wasn't doing that before. It was purposefully made to hide useful information that was there before. IMO there should be a sticky "this user has other content which is not images" headbar or something. Only removable as an opt-in per account followed, so that it is not possible for people to say that PF purposefully hid information.
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I think OP has a valid point - it's not about experienced users, but newcomers to the fediverse, who may think they are following an account, when actually they only see a small part of it - there could be some indication of what's missing.
No it doesn't. Just like someone don't expect to see images on tiktok or long form text on x. Nobody would expect to see text only posts on Pixelfed
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This article's core argument seems to be that Pixelfed is violating the ActivityPub protocol by not displaying posts that do not contain images. That's just not true at all. I'm interested to know where the protocol ever has such a requirement.
The principle behind a communication protocol is to create trust that messages are transmitted.
And they have been transmitted. They've been filtered out after transmission, but the protocol did its job.
If a message is not delivered, the sender should be notified.
Perhaps. But that's not in the spec. There's no obligation to notify iirc that a post got filtered out on the target instance.
Even if Pixelfed sent Reject(Note) back for every post without an image, would Mastodon even display that to the user anywhere? Would most users want to see that for every post not containing an image multiplied by every Pixelfed instance it got federated to? I'd personally interpret that as spam.
If that guy was right there wouldn't be defederation and many defederation are not announced
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The problem is not "you ordered a pizza yet are complaining it isn't a salad". The problem is you are selling pizzas and salads, but the middleman is undercutting you on the delivery of the pizzas, leaving your clients with the fake impression you sell only salads and/or provide a bad service.
All that said, from an interface design perspective the current mode is exactly how it should happen. Pixelfed and pretty much everything else are purposefully subset-specific apps. All that's needed is the reminder (as visible as possible) that content you are looking at is incomplete and you can find the more complete version on this or that URL or app. Same principle as if I wanted to eg.: design a "hashtag explorer" for the Fediverse. I'd focus on that instead of the posts (and pictures); but what I can't ethically do is prevent my users from discovering their existence.
But pixelfed is only selling pizza and the cudtomer complains that he didn't find a salad option
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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You jest, but I'm pretty sure someone out there made a cli interface for AP.
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But your saying Peertube should have all the forum functionality of Lemmy, and the endless short video scroll of Loops.
rgluilis suggested a generic server idea, where the media and experience differentiating is done at the client app level. That could work well. But that's an entirely different cincpet and structure.
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If I have a mutual who is on multiple platforms, and I also have accounts on those same multiple platforms, we would generally be following each other mutually on those same platforms.
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And that's great! Everyone gets what they want. But suggesting Lemmy, Pixelfed, and Peertube, etc. should all try to do it the way Friendica does, is a bad idea.
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So like a single ActivityPub instance that hosts all the data, but users can have a Pixelfed app, Lemmy app, etc. all connect to that one server and use it to give the experience they specifically provide.
That's a cool idea. I can see how that would work.
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I sure do like this picture:
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I can from a number of other Fediverse platforms. I may not be able to follow you on Lemmy like I can follow a community, but I can still find your account to see your posts and comments, and that limitation doesn't really impact me having to have per-instance accounts versus having a fediverse-wide account. I have probably a dozen fediverse accounts across multiple platforms. I want to have my fediverse identity able to access all fediverse platforms and that other people using that platform can find me as.
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Yes, people do. Thankfully we as a community aren't bound to corporate shareholders, so it doesn't matter how many people choose to use it, we don't have a need to increase users. While we don't have a fiduciary duty to be kind for similar reasons, I think it is generally a good idea to do so. In my experience when I have used words/phrase like "everybody" "nobody" or "people don't" some have told me they found it off-putting or belittling when they are in the minority so I try to avoid it but I still find it hard sometimes as that is not the way I was taught to speak in government indoctrination camp so there is a lot of de-schooling I need to do.
