scratchpad

fediverse-notes-servers

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-07T11:27:36+00:00

Mastodon Started using Mastodon in around 2018. Still having two accounts on there, and , the latter one being my primary Fediverse hangout as of today. * (+) By far the most consistent experience in terms of web interface and mobile apps. Maybe also the federated platform with the most well-polished user experience.

fediverse-notes-identity

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T09:49:29+00:00

Identity and community aspects * The Fediverse lacks some sort of “shared”, agreed-upon identity and some “structure” of whichever sort to communicate that identity to the “outside” world. This causes interesting and at times annoying effects, because that's very much unlike what Mastodon gGmbH does - they do marketing, communication, advertisement in this way or the other which might be a reason for Mastodon (as a brand/software name) being quite a bit more known than Fediverse (as a much mo…

fediverse-notes-comments

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T08:48:55+00:00

Comments This page is open for editing. Feel welcome to leave thoughts here.

fediverse-notes

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T08:47:54+00:00

Fediverse Notepad This is a collection of odds and ends I learnt to know while hanging out on the Fediverse, dealing with various ways of social networks outside the walled gardens and enjoying its community while trying to sneak around its various pitfalls. This is not and never will be a finished document but I'll revisit it then and now to add and fix things. Content warning probably should be: Consume with a grain of salt. Some aspects are personal opinions and should be taken as such. This…

fediverse-notes-clients - [Fedilab]

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T08:45:40+00:00

Client aspects This is focussed on Android clients as this is the only mobile platform I use. General considerations * Most of the Android clients I tested are open-source projects, community-supported at best. For a lot of them, support boils down to either talking to a developer or app account on the Fediverse or filing an issue somewhere on github or a similar site.

fediverse-notes-interoperability

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T08:00:37+00:00

Interoperability glitches * Server implementations provide feature sets that are at times drastically different. Examples: * Friendica and Hubzilla (and its clones/siblings) are able to connect to Diaspora* as well, all along with ActivityPub nodes. Friendica is able to connect to Bluesky and a bunch of other systems too. Mastodon and most other newer Fediverse implementations, though, aren't.

fediverse-notes-privacy - created

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T07:59:58+00:00

Privacy glitches * ActivityPub messages are, as far as I managed to figure out, “just” signed, not encrypted. Meaning: Even apparently “private” messages exchanged between individuals aren't really “private” but exchanged between services merely with the assumption of them being

fediverse-notes-users

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T07:59:46+00:00

User and onboarding aspects * A myriad of different server implementations, in different stages of maturity so it's difficult to impossible for an arbitrary user to initially pick one balancing its advantages and its drawbacks. There are some comparison pages floating somewhere out there but even those take a considerable amount of time to dig through and understand to its full extent.

fediverse-notes-ap

z428 (z428@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-04T06:38:30+00:00

ActivityPub protocol level shortcomings The ActivityPub protocol itself has a bunch of drawbacks and limitations I really fail to grasp, even looking at it some years after it's been published. (Which was in 2018, and the fact that apparently there seems to be neither a formal process nor a working group to work towards update versions of that