I know there’s been a little discussion here about the Fediverse, but I’m not finding very much detail. And a lot of what I’m finding even with a basic web search seems to assume you already understand it. There’s lots of software that appears to work with it, but I’m having trouble sorting through what it actually does, and whether (and to what degree) it’s currently active. Some seem to suggest it’s no less wretched a hive of scum and villainy than Mos Eisley:
But certainly the prospect of escaping Zuckerberg is attractive. So let’s suppose I’d like to use (or really run–on the Neth server, of course) something that works like Facebook–I can follow people or organizations; write posts of arbitrary length; share pictures, videos, and links; comment on others’ posts; react to them; and have some private messaging capability. What are my options?
Diaspora
- There’s already a how-to to install this, though I wonder how current it is–the last post is almost two years ago.
- Some of the changes discussed in the topic haven’t been made to the OP, despite the OP saying they would be or had been.
- From what I’ve been able to find so far, this seems the most Facebook-like of the major players.
- No iOS app is available
Mastodon
- This looks more like Twitter than Facebook, with a 500-character post limit.
- Subjectively, looks like teh new hawtness vs. Diaspora with respect to its popularity.
- Don’t see a how-to for Neth installation, but there are instructions for CentOS installation, which should get close.
- Doesn’t play well with Diaspora on the same server (which really seems like something the respective devs should be able to work out, but apparently that hasn’t happened yet).
Nextcloud Social
- Introduced with plenty of fanfare four major releases ago, but in typical Nextcloud fashion (see also: E2EE), it’s still Alpha code.
- From what little I can see, appears to mimic Mastodon, at least insofar as it has a 500-character post limit.
- At least with a Neth Local LDAP installation, auto-generates “Fediverse IDs” that don’t work–they’re @uuid@localhost, which (1) is ugly af; and (2) simply won’t work, as nobody else’s host will resolve “localhost” to your server
Hubzilla
- Not entirely sure what this one does, but I’ve seen it mentioned in the mix as well.
- Installation instructions look a lot like pretty much any other web app on a LAMP stack.
- Their demo doesn’t give much confidence:
What else should I be looking at, what else should I be aware of among these, what’s activity like away from BigTech, etc.?