cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2432594

Hi all! Sorry for this not-so-casual topic … please let me know if it’s not appropriate, but in a way everyone here is an interesting group to ask this question

Basically, would anyone here appreciate or be interested in a more person-to-person based social media interface, kinda like mastodon/twitter, but not necessarily “micro-blogging”? People interested in light and free discussion, I figure, might appreciate something like this … ??

Original post below, and the discussion held over on !lemmy@lemmy.ml should be available in the cross-post link if you’re curious.

It’s come up in the github issues before, but I was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative thoughts about the general idea.

I say microblogging, but it would not need to be micro at all, as many/most fediverse platforms don’t bother with the (IMO silly) small character limit default in mastodon.

The feature is probably better described as a “personal feed”, where the primary agent is another user not a community.

I’ve thought about it and come to believe that I would rather like a platform that is lemmy + a microblogging interface/integration.

How it’s implement and how viably I don’t know. But in terms of design I have the following thoughts:

  • It would feel natural to treat users much like communities (with one post author) and the “microblog feed” just like the current lemmy feed but of followed/subscribed users’ posts.
  • In addition to Subscribed, Local, All, you’d have Personals or Blogs.
  • Each user would then have their own “Personal Community”, which they could post to like any other. They’d also have moderation controls over it too, which might be a nice addition to the microblogging platform space.
  • Unlike mastodon, replies/comments wouldn’t appear in the feed, as all replies would be available only once you view a post, which, I think, would be a wonderful way to organise microblogging content.
  • A “boost/retweet” behaviour could be treated as a cross-post from one personal community to another, except you’d probably want to enable such a “cross-post” be applicable to a comment, which would be congruent with the more free-form nature of “microblogging”.
  • You’d want to keep the sorting algorithms, which combined with being able to view only the top-level posts, would again I think be a nice way to handle a “microblogging” feed.
  • Being able to create lists or multi-communities, as has been requested ordinary lemmy, would be very useful for microblogs.
  • Following a microblogging account would obviously just create+subscribe to a “personal community” representing that account. Following a lemmy user account would involve subscribing to their personal community, which would exist by default.
  • You’d probably want to make it as easy as possible in the UI to post links between the microblogging and community “interfaces”, so that they could cross-pollinate each other, which, in the case of lemmy users, would be quite nice as any link from one “side” to the other would drop right in a native interface where you can immediately comment/reply or vote etc.

Potential issues I can see:

  • Implementation is likely more difficult than I realise
  • DB sizes could potentially blow up with a whole bunch of microblog content from mastodon?
  • Posting to and engaging with the microblog side might distract many users away from engaging in communities. I suspect that this is a real but minor concern, especially if some improvements come to the communites side of lemmy (eg, multi-communities, the “best” algorithm, making it easier to search through subscribed communities).
  • Some thought would probably have to be given to how to deal with mastodon privacy measures like the no-index option and limits on following etc.

Beyond all of that, my impression of such a platform, should it ever come to be, is that it would be awesome, not just because of the fusion of two formats, but because presenting “microblogs” within the lemmy structure and with lemmy features would bring a number of improvements over something like mastodon: longer posts, markdown, post/comment organisation, feed sorting, search, and direct/native interaction between communities and microblogs. I can see it becoming natural to treat your lemmy(+mblog) account as a quick blogging platform (ie, writing longer posts because you can on lemmy), and cross-posting to the appropriate communities while enjoying that your direct followers will also get the post in their feed. Though this does raise an interesting question about whether following a lemmy user, which would entail getting all of their posts to everything, should also be enabled as a separate option from just following their “personal community”?

Thoughts?

  • linuxisfun@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The thing I always liked about forums reddit Lemmy is that it is focused on topics rather than individuals.

    I actually have a hard time choosing accounts to follow on Mastodon, as I am not really interested in specific brands or people. I only really care about communities with lots of like-minded people. So for me such a feature on Lemmy would go completely unused.

    There already are lots of other fediverse frontends that are designed for following individuals. Why does every piece of software have to fill every niche? I much prefer software that’s focused on a few things and does them well, rather than software that tries to do everything, but does nothing well.

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Mastodon didn’t click for me until I started following hashtags. Just follow the hashtags you’re interested in and people who are interesting to follow will come to you

      • linuxisfun@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve followed hashtags in the past, but I found them to be too noisy and they end up cluttering the home timeline. The content is often only vaguely related to the hashtag, as many people unfortunately also add hashtags to posts that aren’t actually directly related to the topic and there is no moderation to combat hashtag misuse (unlike moderation on forums / reddit / Lemmy). The more people join the fediverse, the worse following hashtags gets in my experience.

        If you are interested in topics unrelated to each other, there is no way to separate hashtags into different timelines, as Mastodon limited timelines to only 4 hashtags per timeline a couple of years ago. Before that happened, I found them a great way to have a clean “Home” timeline and categorise hashtags by topic (I joined Mastodon in 2017 and paused my usage when they limited hashtag timelines). There’s also a longstanding feature request to add hashtags to lists

        I’ve also tried Calckey’s Firefish’s antennas (and Fedilab), but the first two issues also apply to those (of course) and I don’t like Calckey Firefish (feature creep, settings are stored locally on the device, no decent mobile apps, etc.) …

    • maegul (he/they)OP
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      1 year ago

      Generally I hear you … but some counters

      Why does every piece of software have to fill every niche

      I’m not talking about an endless series of niches. I’m talking about two similar generic high level social media actions or structures: following communities/groups or following people.

      RSS can and does do both. Other platforms have both. And, as is the thrust of the proposal, they share much in common, and differ principally only in what object or publishers they chose to pay attention to.

      It’s not the same as adding, say, a chatting interface, or a video/audio streaming interface, or a wiki interface … none of these would make sense for the reasons you outline … (way) too much out of scope.

      Moreover, as to why I think this could be a good idea, if it wasn’t clear … I think it’d make a better platform for many without forcing anyone else to use it in a different/new way. I also think a lemmy/reddit approach to (micro-)blogging would be a better form of such a platform (ie, more like actual blogging but more interconnected across the fediverse). And so, I believe, it’d be worth the work.

      I much prefer software that’s focused on a few things and does them well, rather than software that tries to do everything, but does nothing well.

      Well I’m only talking about doing one more thing that shares much in common with what lemmy is already doing.

    • maegul (he/they)OP
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      1 year ago

      Two thoughts:

      1. Multiple platforms can have the same feature with people choosing one over the other for a variety of reasons. Diversity is good, as people have all sorts of preferences that are hard to predict.
      2. kbin, AFAIU, doesn’t have a true “microblogging” interface. You can’t get a feed of posts from just the people you follow. It’s still magazine and community focused, but with more dedicated integration with mastodon posts. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
    • maegul (he/they)OP
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      1 year ago

      Yea I didn’t really know what that interface was about, but I want a heavy Reddit user and couldn’t be bothered to commit to working it out.

      The difference here is that we’re on the fediverse and are connected with mastodon. If Reddit and Twitter had opened up interfaces where they could talk to each other that would have been a much bigger deal.

      Here on lemmy (and kbin) we could immediately start blogging with plenty of active mastodon users happily using the fediverse for that sort of thing.