I’ve been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon’s responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that’ll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn’t be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can’t have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they’re probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there’d be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that’s why they’re separate to begin with. You don’t see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don’t necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the “All Content” tab if you’d like, they’re styled differently enough that it’s very clear when you’re looking at a thread and when you’re looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I’ve been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that’s what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that’s also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, “Wait, what’s this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated,” even if you tell them to ignore it.
It’s probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I’m expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would’ve made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin’s magazine system). However, this doesn’t mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I’d love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn’t mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
@ThatOneKirbyMain2568 Oh hello there! It’s me on my kbin account. Please excuse my ramble, I wasn’t feeling very well.
I will say that your point is well made and that different platforms should definitely prioritise different kinds of content. For instance, I find it entirely reasonable for Lemmy to not federate anything that is not in a magazine, and that Pixelfed only supports content with images. That is simply what they were made for.
But Mastodonians account for nearly 80% of Fedizens making it most people’s entire viewpoint of the Fediverse, which makes it reasonable that they support its entire diverse range of content, considering that they are almost there (microblogs, macroblogs, pictures; only thing left is titled content, which they could simply reformat just like Lemmy reformats microblogs).
They will mostly see microblogs anyway, since that is currently more than 90% of the Fediverse and that’s what people are more likely to boost, but it will be an option to view other content, maybe helping other platforms get off the ground and allowing the Fediverse to develop like it should. I will also add that the mismatch is not that big. I have often seen Mastodonians making meaningful contributions in Lemmy discussions, and I’ve seen a Lemmy comment making the boost rounds on Mastodon.
And I completely agree that a distinction should be made between different kinds of content. I have quite a few times seen a stray Mastodonian complaining under content from other platforms saying it doesn’t live up to their expectations. I quite like Friendica’s approach to this; putting the platform as a badge next to the username in each post.
@Masimatutu
I get that Mastodon has most of the people on the fediverse, but that doesn’t mean it’s on Mastodon to feed activity to other platforms. Even if it wanted to, I don’t think it could.
Even if we ignore the issues, I just don’t think other ActivityPub platforms would benefit much from this. People are going to Mastodon for microblogs, not all the other stuff. Even if you give people the option to view PeerTube videos from Mastodon, if that’s not what they’re here for, then most of them won’t bother. We see this on other platforms. Even on Kbin, which has great support for the microblog format with a unique tab and all, a ton of the people who came here for a Reddit alternative just don’t bother with the Twitter stuff.
And again, that’s ignoring all the downsides of implementing this stuff. Add all of this non-microblog stuff, and more people who are searching for a Twitter alternative will disregard Mastodon as too cluttered and confusing. People already do that because of needing to pick an instance, and yet more do because they can’t immediately grasp federation. Additionally, those who do interact with, say, a Lemmy comment through Mastodon won’t be aware of the context behind it being in a Lemmy thread that’s part of a community and which has different functionality (e.g., downvotes & a title). You could have a badge to indicate that it’s from Lemmy, but then you worsen the problem of people getting to Mastodon and going, “Wait, wtf is this? Why is this platform so confusing?”
And let’s say Lemmy/Kbin threads did get some great surge in activity from this. You’d end up with a significant portion of activity on these platform being people using a Twitter alternative, which I don’t think people looking for a Reddit alternative (or even people already on these platforms) would find desirable.
Since you brought it up, I think Lemmy’s handling of microblogs is a good example of what I mean, as I don’t think Lemmy should be handling microblogs at all. Lemmy has to assign a title to something that doesn’t have one and downvotes to something that doesn’t accept them. The result is that several Kbin magazines, when viewed from Lemmy, are dotted with posts that obviously aren’t meant to be there and which would clutter the thread to death if microblog usage on Kbin increased. And for what? When I make a microblog post, I don’t intend for it to reach people on Lemmy, as that format is not what most people on Lemmy are interested in. Likewise, most people on Lemmy aren’t trying to reach people on the Twitter alternative and might prefer not to. Lemmy supporting microblogs doesn’t really do much, and the same would go for Mastodon even given its large user count. People just won’t be interested.
EDIT: Forgot some text.