#Pixelfed

[riotouseaterofflesh]

A warning to anyone trying out the fediverse/Mastodon

There's a large cluster of people who are basically an alliance of photomatts and (if you're on Twitter) Jai orbiters who try to police the various servers to isolate people they deem to be undesirables.

They are deeply transmisogynistic and unhinged, in ways that make photomatt's recent behaviour seem downright enlightened in comparison.

A recent good summary of what's going on is posted here.

A much lengthier history of this drama (which has been going on for years) has been put up by a kindly anon here.

The fediverse isn't all like this, but you do need to watch out which server you make your account on.

General red flags to avoid:

any involvement with "The Bad Space"

mastodon.art

users who frequently post to the #FediBlock hashtag

use of automated or shared blocklists (these are for entire servers blocking other servers, not individual accounts)

reasons for blocking a server mentioning "oliphaunt" or "tier" anything

As a general rule, you will want to coordinate with your mutuals which servers you go to as much as possible, to minimize the chances that you end up on different instances and end up getting cut off from each other until at least one of you makes an alt so you're both on servers that communicate with each other. This takes a bit of trial and error but unfortunately that is the nature of a decentralized social networking system.

So all that said... I really hope staff smarten up, Matt gets put in his place by his and Tumblr's lawyers and we can all stay where we are.

[dearimasu]

[bnyrbt]

Mainly coming from an art perspective here, although I know that’s not the only thing people use Instagram for. If you use something else in place of Instagram, please name it in the tags! Even if your “Instagram alternative” is just Tumblr, lol.

[boreal-sea]

Would people be interested if I curated a list of fandom-themed, lgbtq-themed, or art-themed Fediverse servers?

[mrclmlt]

O Manifesto da comunicação não hostil

Virtual é real: Só digo e escrevo online coisas que tenho coragem de dizer pessoalmente.

Você é o que você comunica: As palavras que escolho contam a história da pessoa que sou: elas me representam.

As palavras dão forma aos pensamentos: Dedico todo o tempo necessário para expressar melhor o que penso.

É preciso ouvir antes de falar: Ninguém tem sempre razão, nem eu. Ouço com honestidade e abertura.

As palavras são uma ponte Escolho palavras para entender, me fazer entender, me aproximar dos outros.

Palavras têm consequências Eu sei que cada palavra minha pode ter consequências, pequenas ou grandes.

Compartilhar é uma responsabilidade: Compartilho textos e imagens somente depois de lê-los, avaliá-los e compreendê-los.

Ideias podem ser discutidas: As pessoas devem respeitar-se umas às outras, não transformo aqueles que têm opiniões que não compartilho em inimigos a serem destruídos.

Insultos não são argumentos: Não aceito insultos e agressões, nem mesmo a favor da minha tese.

O silêncio também comunica: Quando a melhor escolha é permanecer em silêncio, eu permaneço em silêncio.

Encontrei isso da primeira vez aqui no Pixelfed, mas o link está desativado.

[darnellclayton]

Oh wow! I am surprised that @eltonjohn has left Twitter. Maybe he will return to @Tumblr‽

Not surprisingly Elon Musk replied:

I do not think that Elon Musk realizes that he is the problem here.

In recent days, the platform’s new CEO has reactivated the accounts of known neo-Nazis; shared a picture of a white supremacist who said he’d like Trump to be more like Hitler; failed to prevent users from posting videos of the Christchurch massacre; tweeted a popular alt-right meme; used a known antisemitic trope; and, inadvertently or not, shared a dogwhistle that white supremacists interpreted as praise for Hitler. […]

“As soon as he took over Twitter, we saw extremists trying to exploit the platform, we’ve seen hate of all kinds increase, so these messages that he’s sending have to be understood in the context of what is happening to that platform,” Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told VICE News. “As it’s becoming a hellscape for antisemitism and racism and bigotry, it just so happens that he is putting out the type of language that is appreciated by those who are doing that.”

This is a major problem. I have noticed a massive increase of hate upon the platform of all kinds (not just white supremacy). Right now companies are fighting for the right to replace Twitter, but Tumblr & Mastodon are leading that fight.

For what it’s worth this whole Twitter debacle has reignited the geek passion within me which inspired me to:

Double down on Tumblr by investing resources here & Darnell.co

Upgrade my Vimeo account (which was expensive) to integrate with current & future sites

Upgrade my WordPress account: Darnell.tv

Launch a solo hosted Mastodon account: one.Darnell.one/@Darnell

Launch a solo hosted Pixelfed account: darnell.app/darnell (as I am having unrelated issues with Instagram)

Launch a solo hosted Matrix account: Darnell.ooo

Start a solo hosted WriteFreely account: Darnell.day (it’s a blog platform that is fully integrated with ActivityPub)

Restart my medium account: Darnell.Africa

I do not think Twitter will disappear completely from the Internet (pending governmental fines), but if the place becomes too toxic I desire avenues I can express myself upon without interference.

[tommyandtabitha]

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. The human who maintains the kitties' social media accounts (me) realized that they were nearing burnout, and needed to drop some of their expectations of themself and spend some time just chilling, followed by some reflection and decision-making.

We are happy to announce that Tommy the Cat and his sister, Tabitha (also a cat), have joined the Fediverse! Pixelfed(dot)social, specifically. We will keep our old social media profiles for now, but posting on them will be intermittent, and will likely be reshares of old content.

[mergaliscious]

Another friendly reminder that we're allowed to talk shit about CEOs on the fediverse and while it's probably not a good idea to make death threats against your server admin, if you run your own server you can say literally anything you want

[swanye-fediverse]

What's Been Goin' On?

I, unfortunately, do have a habit of updating the Mastodon account more than here but I've also been tied up with various responsibilities.

Most recently, I've done some work to cleanup how data is stored and to, hopefully, make Swanye better able to interface with other ActivityPub implementations.

Half a year ago or so, I may've been light on details regarding this or just shown a .gif or video of another small feature so it didn't feel, to followers, like no development was being made.

But, then, Musk started tanking Twitter and, suddenly, a good chunk of the population knew what Mastodon is. And then Reddit decided to charge for use of their API and a bunch of people suddenly knew what Lemmy and Kbin were.

I'm sure that there're still plenty out there who don't but the distaste and disgruntlement people have with corporate social media grew well more than I expected and people are aware of alternatives.

So, though I've mentioned it before, just a reexplanation that, though I plan to make Swanye similar to Tumblr, it is also software that will be able to interface with other ActivityPub implementations.

That means you'll be able to view posts from Mastodon, reblog videos from PeerTube, like photos on PixelFed, and comment on Lemmy threads – all from your Swanye account, without having to leave your Swanye instance's website, due to its decentralized design.

And, because all of these softwares are open-source and free, you or anyone else will have the option to spin up your own server (that can talk to any other server running an instance of the same software) and set the moderation that you might hope for or expect.

I always worry that I'm communicating the possibility and idea well but – at this point in time – the thing that has me most excited is the amount of alternatives we're seeing. A corporation will always be driven towards more profit; they will always need to figure out a way to extract more.

In contrast, software that anyone can use or view will always belong to the commons, can always be picked up by someone else, can always be able to be used and bettered.

I think most people joined social media in the hopes to connect with others and make communities; when we have more control over our platforms, I'm hoping that will – simply – just remain trivial, rather than a battle.

And, because I still always worry that too many updates without any visual update on anything can feel just like vaporware, here's the most recent change I made.

I always thought the the icon of the poster/reblogger scrolling with the post was a neat way to remind you who did the post (especially on long posts); and I was scrolling through the Tumblr mobile app. and realized that there was no similar behavior which I thought kind of sucked.

So I modified Swanye's mobile to do just that:

[VD: A screencast of a web browser with a small enough window width to cause Swanye to go into mobile mode.

The page is scrolled downward and, as it goes down, the top part of a post which says who reblogged the post from whom moves downward, as well, once it hits the top of the page.

It continues to scroll down, remaining visible, until it hits the bottom of the post it belongs to and, then, scrolls off screen. end VD]

[nezmar]

It me! -> https://pixelfed.social/nicoladagostino

[asphaltapostle]

actually quite embarrassed to admit how much the upcoming PixelFed iOS app's experience is changed by today's addition of a dark mode. other stuff too! coming along incredibly well.

[z428]

First snow...

[swanye-fediverse]

While I don’t really disagree with much of any of this, I do think one thing that’s interesting to think about – if we consider social media outside of a capitalist driven framework – is claim #1.

It (understandably) assumes that the algorithm in question is one to maximize engagement (of any kind) – and (if we’re being honest) that’s likely the type Tumblr has in mind – but…there’s no reason it has to.

There’s no reason there couldn’t exist an algorithm that recognizes smaller accounts that get less engagement and recommends them to others; it’s perfectly doable: just not the type of algorithm capitalist-minded social media – where engagement is paramount for their bottom-line – has tended to’ve ever developed.

PixelFed was discussing a few weeks ago transparent exploration:

There could be a variety of algorithms a user could pick from (with chronological being the default) and with each transparent about what it does and how it alters the way you run into content.

Want a more Art/Art-creator driven experience? You could just select that – and, if you find you don’t like it, easily switch back.

Of course, that kind of user customization and transparency and control is only really incentivized when generating as much capital as possible isn’t the (real) driving goal; that kind of transparency to the user only makes sense in a software that’s already Open-Source.

I think (part of) the reason so much of Tumblr immediately could see where things were heading is because, for how much it’s claimed that user experience should be controllable, we can already see how much it isn’t.

The marketing is ubiquitous, you can only turn live off for a week before they try to trick you into using it – again –, and things like chronological view aren’t defaults but things you need to know you can turn on.

These aren’t the behavior of a company who wants you to be able to control your experience.

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

Response to the Update

Under the cut for readability, because everything said above still applies.

I already said this in a reblog on the post itself, but I'm adding it to this one for easy access: people read it that way because that's what you said.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.

People read it that way because that is what you said.

[boreal-sea]

What’s the fediverse?

So, imagine if you could download the code that runs Twitter, and upload it to your own website, and run your own version of Twitter that could connect to the official Twitter. People could follow you, you could follow them, and it would function exactly like Twitter. Big difference is, you'd be in control of your little copy of Twitter and could do whatever you wanted with it.

Or maybe you're not so tech savvy, but you know someone chill, and they're running their own side version of Twitter, so you join their copy. Or maybe you want to join a mini version of Twitter that's run by queer people or PoC who have strict rules against hate speech.

That's what Mastodon is. Mastodon is like a version of Twitter anyone can run - I run my own copy of Mastodon! And I can follow anyone else on every other copy of Mastodon. There are Mastodon servers themed to all kinds of things, from tech to social stuff to art.

Now imagine there was a clone of Instagram. Same concept as above, but it's called PixelFed. You can run your own copy, upload pictures, follow people, etc. Just like Instagram.

But here's where it gets really cool.

I can follow people on Mastodon, but I can ALSO follow people on PixelFed using my Mastodon account!

Imagine if you could follow someone's Instagram account from your Twitter account and see their Instagram posts on your Twitter feed. Imagine seeing Reddit threads, long-form blog posts, or Facebook posts, all on your home feed!

THAT is the Fediverse.

[darnellclayton]

Five Features Fediverse Creators Should Copy From Counter Social

With Threads, Tumblr & Post on the verge of joining the Fediverse in the latter half of 2023, the number of Fediverse users could reach 250 million before children worldwide open their presents on Christmas Day. The entrance of formally centralized players embracing ActivityPub to stay relevant (after all, they are not embracing federation for the “feels”) may result in some classic Fediverse…

[artmctalon]

I'm starting a new art account on pixelfed

Mostly just uploading my past artwork to it (for now)