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The Federated App Problem

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Re: The Federated App Problem

#61

Post by drdaeman »

ajdude wrote: post #52
drdaeman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works with email, but not so much with Fediverse. There is no standard or - AFAIK - even attempts domain/account sharing (unless you hack your way around), you'll have to be you@mastodon.your.name and you@lemmy.your.name and you@peertube.your.name, but not [at least not easily] you@your.name if you want to use it with multiple systems.

I had absolutely no issues with hosting my own mastodon, I pay $7 dollars a month for a VPS with backups. I'm the only user that can register on my instance so it's just me. I'm `@aj@s.aj.immo` and I can follow and have conversations with other mastodon users of various servers seamlessly. I was just doing it this evening in a thread while tagging four different people on four different servers. When people tag me in…

> I had absolutely no issues with hosting my own mastodon

Just Mastodon - it's not what I'm talking about. Please let me know if my parent comment wasn't clear enough.

Mastodon certainly works and you can be just @aj (as long as no one else with the same host-local part walks in, I guess) no matter where the actual conversation is hosted. But what about Lemmy, Peertube, or other Fediverse systems? I'm aware that Mastodon can talk to them with some success, but AFAIK it is only optimized to present certain types of content, so if you want Reddit-like user experience rather than Twitter-like one you want Lenny. And then you need a different subdomain. And then you realize you're splitting your identity on the same network in two - and in my opinion that's an indicator that something is wrong.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#62

Post by copperx »

asnyder wrote: post #18

As far as email is concerned, one reason why you don't see as much as self-hosting or any frankly, is due to deliverability. Doesn't help to have your own mail server when all the mail coming from it is classified as spam and filtered out of inboxes leaving you to have to use a "trusted" hosted provider to ensure your email actually works as you'd expect.

Is it really a problem or cargo culting? I certainly thought it was a problem, but I know a sysadmin that runs two small businesses's email on prem and he says that deliverability, even to major providers, has never been a problem, as long as you set up everything right.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#63

Post by jeroenhd »

armchairhacker wrote: post #39

A big problem is that you don't actually see content on other instances. Also, you can't link accounts between instances (EDIT: you can post and subscribe to communities on other instances, but it's not obvious. You can't link 2 accounts on separate instances though) There are several rust instances: https://lemmy.ml/c/rust , https://programming.dev/c/rust , https://lemmyrs.org/ , and probably more. Why aren't they l…

I think grouping different communities together would be a great feature, but you'd still have to find someone to curate and collect those groups, and host them somewhere.

"Why are all of these communities there" is a bit of a weird question, in my opinion. Why is there a news.ycombinator.com when Reddit already existed? Why was reddit founded when Digg was around? Why aren't don't Outlook and Gmail combine forces into one? Why would anyone want to go to stackoverflow when expertsexchange and hundreds of forums already existed?

Every server has its own rules, that's why. Some are more tolerant of abusive behaviour under the banner of free speech, some will use bans liberally to maintain their community. Some servers ban NSFW posts, others don't care. Some servers block some other servers for abuse, others don't. Some communities are fine with meme posts mixed into serious posts, others want to stay on topic.

Even on a centralised platform such as Reddit there have always been duplicate subreddits because of people who disagreed with another subreddit's rules or moderation practices.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#64

Post by StephenAmar »

assbuttbuttass wrote: post #23
evouga wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well since circa mid-2010s the Internet is apps. Or app-like centralized web sites (like Hacker News). People want to install a single “Lemmy” app on their phone that shows them all Lemmy content and lets them post to all instances, using a single account and a *simple* user interface. If Lemmy cannot provide that user experience (abstracting away the federation), then yes it is doomed.

There isn't even a single Reddit app. And the whole point of federation is that you can use a single account to post on any instance

The problem is that Twitter, reddit, and other social platforms are mostly read, not posted to.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#65

Post by bobsmooth »

ikt wrote: post #60
eddythompson80 wrote: post #7

The problem with federation is that “HTTP browsers” simply just don’t work that way. There is nothing you can do to make Firefox or Chrome to understand what a “federated network” even is. For a browser, an “Origin” is an extremely well defined concept. You can’t just decide to amend it because that’s how you feel it ought to be. If you can’t make mastodon.social be relates to social.mastodon in the browser, then you…

> Federated services have so, so so so, many usability issues I like how you're talking about it like it's some abstract underground BBS style system that requires a modem, ISDN line installed, custom software running on a unix subsystem I mean I found https://fosstodon.org/home signed up, clicked on local, liked posts, followed people, now I get a stream of posts to my home feed every day Maybe your everyday faceboo…

Try loading up an image on a different instance, or browsing that instance from a different instance. If you can figure it out, it's as slow as molasses.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#66

Post by copperx »

jacooper wrote: post #15

I think the only reason people know about email supporting multiple providers is because its old, if email was made today, you bet its going to be centralized. Heck people already scratch their heads when an email isn't hosted @gmail.com or @hotmail/outlook.com. And the learning curve exists because unprofitable companies like Twitter and Reddit made centralization possible by burning money, the old internet was dece…

> Heck people already scratch their heads when an email isn't hosted @gmail.com or @hotmail/outlook.com.

What people? Are they in the room with us right now?

Anyone that works at a small/medium/large company has an email address @company.com

Re: The Federated App Problem

#67

Post by foogazi »

crazygringo wrote: post #22
donio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Email is often a good analogy for questions like these: Why do you pick one email service over the other? Maybe you think the domain is cool. Maybe you heard that they are reliable or have features that others don't. Maybe your university, company or other community you belong to runs its own service. Or you decide to host your own. O…

Except that with e-mail there are obvious good reasons, which basically boil down to whether you've centered your digital life around the Google, Microsoft, or Apple ecosystems (or never moved away from Yahoo, etc.). These are recognizably proven brands that aren't going to disappear next year, and which integrate with your other tools in ways that clearly provide benefit. And back in the day before webmail was a thi…

> But none of these are even remotely applicable to Mastodon instances.

Sure they are - come join my instance which I run from a pentium beige box in my closet and check the uptime

Re: The Federated App Problem

#68

Post by foogazi »

sxg wrote: post #4

I agree with the premise of the article. I’m a new Mastodon user trying to give the platform an honest shot, but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Why choose anything other than the pseudo-default Mastodon.social? If I’m forced to choose another server, is that choice actually meaningful? I feel like I’m randomly picking between Hachyderm and TechHub.io and others. One advantag…

> why would all problematic users congregate on the same server?

Because they have been banned from other servers ?

Re: The Federated App Problem

#69

Post by audiodude »

copperx wrote: post #66
jacooper wrote: post #15

I think the only reason people know about email supporting multiple providers is because its old, if email was made today, you bet its going to be centralized. Heck people already scratch their heads when an email isn't hosted @gmail.com or @hotmail/outlook.com. And the learning curve exists because unprofitable companies like Twitter and Reddit made centralization possible by burning money, the old internet was dece…

> Heck people already scratch their heads when an email isn't hosted @gmail.com or @hotmail/outlook.com. What people? Are they in the room with us right now? Anyone that works at a small/medium/large company has an email address @company.com

I've heard plenty of stories of people saying "my email is fred@fredsmith.com" and it being input by a customer rep as "fred@fredsmith.com@gmail.com". Or them asking "At gmail.com or hotmail?" and you have to explain "No, at fredsmith.com".

Re: The Federated App Problem

#70

Post by sxg »

jojobas wrote: post #58
sxg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time I signed up for Mastodon and a server, I didn't consider and wasn't presented with any of these questions/answers or other points of differentiation among servers. I guess that's part of the issue: when an ordinary user signs up for Mastodon, they're unaware of what they should even consider when picking a server. As an ordinary Mastodon user myself, I just wanted to get on the platform and start using it…

Well signing up for anything important (or anything at all really) you should consider all of that, federated or not (especially if not). Yes, it's a problem that the majority of people "just want to start using it" and wouldn't consider any of the above when exposing, I assume, their lives to strangers.

Sure, on paper we should all carefully consider every decision we make. However, in practice I’m confident the vast majority of Mastodon and Twitter users (including myself) don’t consider using either service particularly important or deserving of more than a couple minutes of thought. From Mastodon, I aim to follow some interesting users to find interesting articles, learn new things, get a sense of “what’s happening” in the circles I follow, and broadly be entertained for a few minutes at a time. I absolutely don’t consider it a critical component of my life and can’t justify spending much thought on it.
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