Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?
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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
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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?
Well, Mastodon will show everything in the feed, no matter if it's a video, a short blog, a long blog, a picture, a podcast, whatever. Mastodon is (primarily) microblogging in terms of output, but an everything platform with a chronological feed in terms of input.
This is where this user seems to get confused - they expect everything on the fediverse to display every type of content, just like Mastodon strives to do. Which is, as you said, ridiculous. If PixelFed was to display audio content and Funkwhale was to display pictures, what would be the point of these services in the first place? If they want everything to be Mastodon, why don't they just stick to Mastodon? Maybe Pixelfed users have no interest in reading their dumb blog posts?
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And if it didn't tell you and you had to find out via an article?
Then you probably should have double checked before signing up to an e-mail server dedicated to "Explore + Share beautiful e-mails without the letter P in them". Pixelfed is extremely open about being a picture platform.
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The consideration you should pay to other software should depend on your power and influence in the network.
If PixelFed was dominant in the fediverse, and other apps did feel the need for a dummy pic workaround, that would clearly be a problem. No client feels the need to do that because PixelFed is not dominant, but if it was, it would be fine to criticise them for not "playing nice" and helping the rest of the ecosystem.
I think there's much more scope to criticise Mastodon for the workarounds other software have to use to be interoperable, than PixelFed, purely because of its power in the network.
We need different apps to experiment and work out what users want. It's totally fine to experiment with different models and ways to view content. Only when you have a lot of influence over the ecosystem should you have extra responsibility.
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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
I guess the consequence of this is that you won't have many followers on Pixelfed.
Occasionally photographers on Mastodon I follow from Pixelfed will post things I don't care much about, but at least I get to see their pictures without having to see their text posts in which I have little to no interest.
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Imagine a new client, TextFed, that will never display posts with pictures.
Sign me up!
That sounds great. It's like people on the internet don't know how to start a conversation anymore. Can't just say "man I'm struggling with my ADHD lately," they gotta post every decade-old meme from their
personalitymeme folder so people can reply with "haha same"A new social media site doesn't mean new content, it's just a new bucket to fill up with the same shit from every other platform.
(I feel obligated to point out that PugJesus is generally an exception for my meme hatred because he includes descriptions/context for the history memes he posts and I actually get something out of it. Shout out to PJ)
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And if it didn't tell you and you had to find out via an article?
Then this would be pretty shitty.
However, pixelfed is very straightforward about the fact that the focus is on image posts and even if they would not advertise that fact you should realize in less than five minutes of using it that all the posts you see are image posts.
Additionally there are enough apps out there that show all content (I use the default mastodon app to see image posts as well as text posts, etc.). If this is what you want just choose that app.
And if somebody makes an app that only shows text posts then this would be great for people who only want to see text posts. I really don't get the authors problem.
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.
