this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Fediverse

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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

Getting started on Fediverse;

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[–] NotAPenguin@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Firefish is a way better experience than Mastodon, of course shares content; https://joinfirefish.org/

[–] be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for posting this. It's hard not to become the "but muh firefish" guy every time a thread like this pops up.

Solves nearly every complaint I've seen about the Mastodon interface, has features I haven't even seen folks ask for (I like the "antennas" feature a lot), federated with Mastodon, and will guide you through importing everyone you follow or who follows you - literally migrating your Mastodon account over in just a couple clicks.

I'm not anti-Mastodon whatsoever, but for the folks who find it klunky, Firefish is the answer for sure.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

I like the "antennas" feature a lot

For the uninitiated, Firefish's antennae are saved searches, where you can specify lists of keywords and users and come back to them over and over again. It's similar to Mastodon's hashtag follow feature, only more flexible. Though, IIRC, it doesn't add the search results to your home feed; it keeps them separate, and undiluted.

From an administrator's point of view, Firefish's Recommended timeline is super cool, and is similar to Akkoma's 'bubble' feature. It lets you specify a list of other federated servers to display posts from, creating a kind of "super-local" timeline. It's the kind of thing I'd love to see in Lemmy and kbin.

[–] heimchen@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 year ago

I like the fediverse theme of naming their platforms animals

[–] IzzyData@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It looks pretty cool, but I can't help but feel that a really catchy name for a service is important. I wish it weren't true as it is such an insignificant aspect of an entire platform.

Either way I'm going to sign up and check it out.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Firefish is definitely a bit of an unfortunate rebranding. Though 'Calckey' wasn't exactly setting the world on fire, as a name, either. But at the end of the day, we really need to learn to recontextualize fediverse plataforms as software that runs a service, not the service itself. They're website engines that power social websites, not a social brand in and of themselves, kind of like how WordPress is a quasi-static website suite that is used for a huge number of blogs and quais-static websites.

No one shares something from, say, the TechCrunch website, or Time website, and goes "Hey, Iook what I found on WordPress!"

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

Can confirm. I find Firefish (formerly Calckey) a much nicer, much more refined, and much more expressive piece of kit.

I've liked Akkoma, too. And there's something really comforting about Friendica, with its "Facebook as it should have been" interface.

[–] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Firefish is nice but I'm yet to find a stable instance and also for some unfathomable reason you can't follow hashtags. And the federation doesn't really work properly, which is kinda important when 90% of the Fediverse is on Mastodon.

[–] NotAPenguin@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://plasmatrap.com/ seems stable.

You can follow hashtags with antennas.

Federation should work just fine as far as I know.

[–] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You can follow hashtags with antennas.

Yeah well that's great but I don't want it in my antennae, I want them in my "timeline". I don't want to have to page over to antenna and select one every time I load/reload the service.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t want to. I just want to have them in my home feed.

Fair enough. I'm glad there's something out there that meets your need, then.

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 2 points 1 year ago

I'll have to check that out if nothing else but for the name. Friend of mine and I have had a running gag for 20+ years around 'firefish'.