Jupiter Rowland

Technically speaking, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte ought to be parts of the Threadiverse, too. They’ve always had enclosed threaded conversations and even discussion groups built in. Except for Friendica, they support FEP-171b “Conversation Containers”.

But look at how few people on Lemmy have even only heard of Mastodon. Friendica is much more unknown there. Those who know Hubzilla are a subset of those who know Friendica. And (streams) and Forte are next to completely unknown beyond Hubzilla’s actual users.

The Threadiverse is not named after Threads by Meta Platforms, Inc. The term “Threadiverse” is older than Threads by Meta Platforms, Inc.

It is named after Lemmy’s and /kbin’s and Mbin’s and PieFed’s “killer feature” of enclosed threaded conversations, with exactly one post followed any number of comments, where everyone always receives all of the comments. Something that was (and often still is) considered exclusive to these four applications.

In stark contrast to the de-facto Fediverse default, Mastodon. Where everything in a thread is a post. Where the concept of comments doesn’t exist. Where conversations are a filthy hack because it’s social media, and replies to replies aren’t part of the concept.

Where timelines always only consist of single posts with seemingly no context, and only a small variation in a small icon tells you that there is a context in the first place. Where seeing even only the branch of a conversation that any given post is in takes some effort, and seeing the whole conversation with all branches takes even more effort, not to mention the knowledge that this can be done in the first place, much less how it can be done.

Where you have to be mentioned to know that someone has replied to you. Like, where I would have to mention everyone in this branch of this conversation (@fonix232@fedia.io @speedythefirst@lemmy.zip @OpenStars@discuss.online @ceiphas@feddit.org) so that even only they receive my reply (everyone else in the conversation doesn’t). Where whoever will reply to me will automatically mention these four participants plus me.

The “Thread” in “Threadiverse” doesn’t stand for Meta Threads. It stands for “we can do proper threads, as in enclosed threaded conversations, something that Mastodon can’t, something that most Mastodon users believe the whole Fediverse can’t!”

Realistically, they’ll build FediHood against Mastodon and its inner workings and call it a day.

Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte all have (partly optional) dedicated profile fields for your location (street, town, postal code, region/state, nation, Facebook-style “hometown” as in place of origin). FediHood could use these. But, like so often, I’ve got my doubts that the makers of FediHood even only know that Friendica exists.

I mean, if they really knew even only Friendica and Hubzilla, they would have made FediHood a third-party add-on for Hubzilla.

Mastodon doesn’t even really understand threaded conversations on the backend side. It can’t render and display what it doesn’t understand.

That’s also why there’s so much friction between Mastodon on one side and Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte on the other side. All four are based on enclosed, threaded, one-post-many-comments conversations in which all participants in the conversation and everyone who has received the start post always receive all comments (ignores and blocks notwithstanding). Friendica is the only one out of the bunch with no support for FEP-171b “Conversation Containers”.

Mastodon has no sense or support for groups whatsoever.

Mastodon aims to be purist, old-school microblogging. Anything that isn’t purist, old-school microblogging has no place on Mastodon. Not even enclosed threaded conversations. Especially not groups. For Twitter has no groups either.

The result of this is that the huge majority of Mastodon users don’t even know that there are any groups anywhere in the Fediverse. What they can’t see on Mastodon doesn’t exist at all.

FediGroups is kluged Mastodon, but it sells itself to Mastodon users as the only group solution in the Fediverse. And Mastodon users buy it because it’s literally all they know. Come up to FediGroups with something like Friendica or Hubzilla or the Threadiverse, and they’ll still insist that FediGroups is vastly superior to all of them in every way imaginable. As far as I can see, FediGroups was invented by Mastodon users who at that point had never even heard of Friendica or Lemmy, who might even have believed like so many others that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.

On the other hand, Mastodon is rumoured to be working on groups itself. But knowing Mastodon’s track record (as well as Mastodon’s philosophy of trying hard to make the non-Mastodon Fediverse look broken and therefore very undesirable to Mastodon users), we have to expect Mastodon re-inventing the wheel in a way that’s as incompatible with existing wheels and roads as it ever comes.

Akkoma only has two instances and they are both down

Try Fediverse Observer and FediDB, have some more.

Sharkey is a Misskey fork and there don’t seem to be any instances.

Again, try Fediverse Observer and FediDB.