Hmm. Dows Mastodon work as an alternative to Tumblr, for those of you who use Tumblr? Or is there something missing? :/
@Kaelyrhn Mmm, gotcha. Do you think Mastodon could replace that functionality? Or would it just be awkward without heavily reworking the UI?
@Angle @MariBari Really long posts might make the current Mastodon UI awkward. That's really the only functionality I think Tumblr have that Mastodon doesn't. Though they might do them different they both have commenting, liking, and sharing, but so does Twitter and Facebook.
And yeah as @MariBari said embedded media is something Tumblr is good at. I also like the way of formatting posts.
Mastodon is more micro-blogging, like Twitter.
That's was long.
@Kaelyrhn @Angle Definitely. Now, if Mastodon had a federated sister site for proper blogging, then we'd be off to the races.
...Then again, it'd be much easier to just make a "real blog" on Wordpress or something at that point. Since a blog hosted on its own domain is basically the same functionality. 
@Angle @Kaelyrhn @MariBari Hey, we used Diaspora a million years ago! @InspectorCaracal ran his own pod at some point, the nerd
The idea was pretty good but the community was terrible and creepy, and because Twitter didn't suck yet (this was what, 2010?), none of us got really invested...
@Heliodora @MariBari @Kaelyrhn No no, you make a good point. It is pretty overkill for most things. XD
@Heliodora @Kaelyrhn @Angle Don't be sorry! You weren't butting in at all.
I don't know if I'll ever use Diaspora, since I try to limit my social media output to just a couple of cites. Still, it's good to know other websites are doing the whole federated thing. :3
@Heliodora @InspectorCaracal @MariBari @Kaelyrhn @Angle I'm currently trying out hubzilla which is another federated social network on a manifestation run by @woozle
This is me there https://hub.iseeamess.com/channel/becka?f=&jsdisabled=0
@Shutsumon @Heliodora @InspectorCaracal @MariBari @Kaelyrhn @woozle Hmm, Firefox won't let me access it cause the ssl certificate's invalid. I've heard about hubzilla though - it good? :/
@Angle @Heliodora @InspectorCaracal @MariBari @Kaelyrhn @woozle I like the functionality but the community is still very small
@Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora @Angle Seems kinda like Facebook with more functionality?
@Kaelyrhn @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora Yup, exactly. It's a little odd in that it's halfway between facebook and tumblr - on the one hand, it's supposed to be a site where you follow people who share your interests, but on the other, it's also supposed to be a facebook substitute, so. :/
@Angle @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora Trying to be too many things?
That's part of why I like Mastodon, it knows what it wants to be and just does it.
@Kaelyrhn @Angle @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora it aimed to be a Facebook workalike, but because it only attracted bleeding-edge techies, privacy nerds, and the political fringes, people ended up assorting by interest and using it like tumblr but with comments. Say, that userbase sounds familiar 🤔
@Kaelyrhn @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora @deutrino Eh, you forgot the gay curries and random shitposters. :V
@Angle @Kaelyrhn @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora gay curries? Sounds hot 😂🌶️🌶️
@Kaelyrhn @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora @deutrino The hottest. :V
@deutrino @Angle @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora That does sound pretty cool and attractive. My problem is choosing a node/server/instance to initially join Where do I go? Which interest do I want to focus on? Stuff like that. I followed a friend to my instance here so I kinda cheated :P
@deutrino @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora @Kaelyrhn Eh, diaspora seems pretty much the same all over. I've an account on diasp.org, or you want to follow me there. XD
@Angle @deutrino @Shutsumon @woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora
Ah stop seducing me with your attractive social media wares! :P
@deutrino @Kaelyrhn @Angle @Shutsumon @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora
I've actually never seen it used like Tumblr. I suppose that's doable by resharing a reshare? (On G+, you only get the original post's contents, not the contents of any reshare-post -- so if that works on HZ, it's a bonus.)
@woozle you can reshare a reshare but I don't think you can glom stuff on to the bottom of it like on tumblr. It's more that people are definitely resharing reshares and also assorting into networks of users by common interest. Follow the right people and your feed gets fairly well tuned to your interests. You could say all contemporary social media is like this but I find tumblr to be particularly good at it and people do use diaspora in a similar way.
Lack of Tumblr emulation verified:
@Angle @Kaelyrhn @Shutsumon @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora
I mean, it seems like the core is your basic generic social network. You make posts, posts get comments. You can reshare posts and add your own comments in the reshare. You can set up groups and restrict write or read access. Et cetera.
Maybe I should do a summary document.
(There's some other stuff off to the side (wiki-like documents and static HTML), but I'm not yet sure how useful those are and the UI needs work.)
@Kaelyrhn @Angle @Heliodora @InspectorCaracal @MariBari @woozle I think it's supposed to be flexible so different manifestations can focus on different parts of the functionality. I like it more than Diaspora so far.
@woozle @MariBari @InspectorCaracal @Heliodora @Angle @Kaelyrhn I also like it more than either facebook or tumblr but that's a really low bar...
@Shutsumon @Angle @Heliodora @InspectorCaracal @MariBari @woozle True given both are garbage fires. Tumblr a little less so.
@Kaelyrhn @Angle @Heliodora @InspectorCaracal @MariBari @woozle I'm going to have to bow out of the conversation for now. Time to leave for work. Feel free to keep tagging me and I'll reply when I get home this afternoon.
Oh, the cert's bad? Shouldn't be... <checks> Still looks fine from here. What's the error?
@woozle "your connection is not private" NET::ERROR_CERT_NOT_VALID or some such. I can't copy paste it on my phone. XD
@Angle Maybe your phone doesn't recognize Let's Encrypt certs?
@woozle I get the same thing on my desktop though. And the rest of your site is fine, it's just that bit. :/
@Angle I can see the problem on my phone. Will track it down when I get back home in a couple of hours. Thanks for noting it earlier, btw :-)
@Angle I think I've got it pinned down to a problem with IPv6 access. I've updated the config in a way that *should* have fixed it, from past experience, but the SSL test service is still showing the same problem...
...although my phone now says it's fine.
What are you getting?
@woozle nope, still doesn't work. :/
"Your connection is not secure
The owner of hub.iseeamess.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."
@woozle "hub.iseeamess.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for cloud.vbz.net Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN"
@Angle Bleh.
And I have to go out again.
I think I've got it this time. Cert test service says it's good.
What started the cascade failure was that Apache wasn't configured to deliver that domain over IPv6 (though IPv4 was fine) -- which apparently causes another domain on the same server to respond. (This has happened before.)
So the last time Let's Encrypt renewed its cert, it somehow gave me a certificate for that other site.
I had to fix the IPv6 problem *and* renew the cert.
@woozle Yup, it works. I went and made an account, but I'm not sure how to find anyone else with it. :/
@woozle Oh huh. So Hubzilla federates with Diaspora? :/
@Angle It does, but not by default; I think I had to install a plugin or something.
Its default federation protocol is "Zot".
I'm told it can federate with OStatus, and ActivityPub was in the works last I knew (several months ago), so in theory Mastofederation is also possible -- but I may need to seek technical help with that.
@Angle I've authorized you! :-)
There are, like, maybe 3 other people from Mastodon on there at this point. Also, I'd forgotten this, but the connection to Diaspora does seem to be working -- so if you know anyone on Diaspora, you can connect to them too.
You connect with other users by entering their handle (e.g. woozle@hub.iseeamess.com or becka@hub.iseeamess.com) in the "Add New Connection" box.
Let me know if you have any questions; eventually I'll put together a new user guide. ^.^
@maritroniuity ( @Angle )
I don't see you in my notifs yet...
You showed up *just* before that toot! :-)
...and now I get to figure out why I can't seem to "connect" with you...
General note: The place to add connections is the page you get to from the "connections" item of the right-hand drop-down menu (the one with the three horizontal lines... there's probably a name for that...)
( @Angle ) @maritroniuity
Can you try to "connect" with me? Go to https://hub.iseeamess.com/connections and put "woozle@hub.iseeamess.com" in the "Add New Connections" box.
@Shutsumon @woozle @Angle @Kaelyrhn @MariBari @InspectorCaracal And here's Becka, the one who's always on the lookout for new social networks xD She's the one who found Masto (and maybe Diaspora as well?)
my friends are all nerds
it's 4am sorry
@Angle @Kaelyrhn @MariBari The userbase is hostile to both new users and feature requests. I left my hat hung up there and don't even want to go back for it.
Mastadon could fill this gap with the addition of HTML attachments (like images, ideally with an inbuilt editor) and the ability to attach more than one image.
@Kaelyrhn @Angle I was working on a tumblr alt but have been very busy but https://github.com/haleyashleypraesent/ProjectPrionosuchus
@Kaelyrhn @codeawayhaley Hey nice! How far along is it? :0
@Angle @Kaelyrhn not far along, the issue is it is based on mastodon but lacks comments so it is difficult to read through so for accessibility my main focus is to first comment the hell out of it so you don't need to read all the code to just find what you need, plus it breaks it up into managable chunks when you do read.
I applaud the matter of your observation to be ignorant of the larger fediverse network created by Evan Prodromou to promote a more decentralized blogging platform to share information with peers about information that matter to them called StatusNet.
What I do find most appalling is the suggestion that the particular server you use under tootplanet use one particular counterfeit network that chooses to defederate itself from the whole known fediverse called Mastodon is similar to centralized services aimed at tracking your habits and violating your privacy for the profit of profiling you as an individual.
Usability aside, it's similar to Usenet, wherein users in nodes would post articles on "status" with attachments, but addressable like like email. The focus gears itself on social networking more so than content networking.
If you wish to learn more, please educate yourself with these brief articles made in light to shed knowledge on the history of the whole network:
https://robek.world/featured/what-is-gnu-social-and-is-mastodon-social-a-twitter-clone/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social
@Angle mang, they love to abuse your ignorance!
@benis @Angle @InspectorCaracal Wow, what? Thank you for extra information. But comparing like things to like things is human way of understanding things. As Mastodon *functions* to the user perspective, it is like Twitter in many ways. Obviously it differs in many ways from Twitter, which is why a lot of us are here instead of on Twitter. I don't need to be aware of the development history of a service to use it. No one *needs* to be aware. It's nice to know sure. But it's not integral to my UX
btw, I only posted that as shitpost. Glad there sane people left open to read new thoughts.
We wouldn't want your admin all the sudden to block our instance. Thank you have good ignorance!
@benis I included the tootplanet admin so he was aware of your concerns.
Shitposts usually aren't so wordy and vociferous, but fair enough.
Personal views and comparisons aside. Mastodon is nice and I like it. That's all that ultimately matters surely?
@Angle Less rich media support? Plus the "narrowness" of the default UI (though that's not insurmountable, I suppose).
@alis Mmm, so it would need a pretty thorough rework? :/
@Angle I don't think so?
I mean, it'd mostly be frontend work to change the dashboard, which could be a client app that leverages the API. You could do things in that like parse out Youtube URLs into embeds, etc.
Like, it's non-trivial work in-and-of-itself, but it's wouldn't need a rewrite of the core backend I don't think.
@Angle (Though obviously you could take the same GNU social/OStatus/etc. protocols and write a compatible federated system that's more Tumblr-esque than Twitter-esque. *That* would be the Big Work.)
@Angle that triggers some interesting thoughts.
I haven’t used Tumblr since the old days but back then it was more of a complete blogging platform than this is.
That said, using masto as a more full-featured blog is intriguing. With a little better rich text and embedding maybe it could get there?
I’d love to have a blog with intrinsic federation features like this.
@jjg Mmm, yeah. Not sure how that would work out in practice though. :/
@jjg I mean just from a UI perspective. On the one hand, it feels silly to have fed! tumblr be its own separate network, but on the other having the functionality to view both kinds of posts on Mastodon would be weird and awkward. I'm still working on my own federated thing, but mine's supposed to be a replacement for reddit/forums, so. :/
@Angle certainly on the authoring side (although on the consuming side the existing UI might be OK).
@elomatreb @Angle that sounds like a good start :)
A specialized client would be good and probably not too much work (the masto api is pretty good and there is decent sdk support)
@elomatreb @Angle if you remember the instance let me know, I’d like to learn more (and I’d really like to stop using Wordpress 😂)
@elomatreb @jjg @Angle I reeeeally want a federated tumblr workalike. A lot of the tumblr UX is a good fit for the current reality of decentralized social media - namely, it's on the bleeding edge, thus you're likely to meet people on such networks by shared interest, rather than by other mechanisms a la Facebook. I see a lot of tumblrish usage of Diaspora, for example, despite its Facebookish UI, I think for this reason. I want a decentralized network that's highly visual but NOT Instagram.
@deutrino @elomatreb @jjg How easy do you think it would be to add this functionality to Mastodon? Or is that trying to pack too much functionality into one application? :/
@Angle @elomatreb @jjg I think it would be best with a different UI and possibly not even full overlap with the ostatus-mastodon fediverse. Why? The UX that generally evolves on platforms based on this network is fundamentally Twitter-like. One part of the tumblr UX which is actually pretty important to the overall experience is the additive reblog-to-converse paradigm. People do converse and have Discourse👌, but less, and #aesthetic/art/meme tumblr thrives with a little less conversation.
@Angle not quite! Tumblr has longer posts and the layout works better for viewing pictures/videos.
@Angle The big thing missing for me is all of the embedded media and support for long, rambling posts that tumblr provides. Like @Kaelyrhn mentions, Mastodon is really meant to be a replacement for twitter, so it makes sense that it's not really made for blogging. 
In my experience, though, Mastodon has been a strange hybrid site, like if tumblr and twitter were glued together with actually good web design. It has some functions of both, and some functions of neither.
@Angle In theory it could, but it doesn't have aspects which made tumblr popular with arts and fandom folk; Decentralized platform makes it harder to share stuff on a wider scale, image uploads more like twitter, so no "aesthetic" photo/gif sets could work atm... character count is still too low for real essay-styled post.
I feel like Masto might try emulating whatever fandom livejournal was like, buuut I never got to experience that.
@Angle
Viewing the hierarchy of reply chains could leave something to be desired, I think
@Angle I think tumblr is much better for viewing images, because here they are tiny, automatically cropped previews.
Also, tumblr allows for long posts; mastodon is still a microblogging service.
Another thing is that I like pinning watched tags to the search field way better than pinning entire columns to the webapp.
@Angle absolutely it does
it is a social space which caters to those of us who are sick and tired of the gamer/boomer cultures
it is a place where we can either spam at the void or seek strangers' attention (and we can decide that per-awoo)
and it's also the better mastodon than birdh*ck bc its interface and options are just better which is a bonus
so basically mastodon > birdh*ck + tumblr bc of the community and bc of the ui
the only thing it's missing is gysfjKFEJWehf hH >> edit toot
@Angle hmm, I use Tumblr mainly for reblogging stuff that is pretty/funny/relatable/etc, and lots of it at a time, and I only go there to do that. Technically, that does work here (even though the ui is not meant for image-centric stuff), but I wouldn't want to do it here because it would feel like drowning out conversations, and because i come here to read about other people and sometimes even talk to them, not to consume content.
@Angle mm. i think making masto more like tumblr is likely to bring with it various unpleasant dynamics from tumblr
i have suspicions about the kind of interactions tumblr's 'reblogs with commentary are visible to all my followers' promotes, vs masto's 'replies are only visible to my followers if they also follow the person I'm replying to'
@Angle Seems to be more of an alternative to Twitter, Tumblr is more long form blogging. I use both Twitter and Tumblr.