In the wake of the announcement to bring nomadic identity to ActivityPub, Hubzilla catches people's interest, but not only in positive ways; CW: long (4,903 characters), Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta
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This is interesting to watch.
The cat's out of the bag. @
Mike Macgirvin 🖥️'s
announcement to implement nomadic identity à la Hubzilla and (streams) in ActivityPub is in the news all over the Fediverse. Of course, you can't expect everyone in the Fediverse to know what nomadic identity is, so the explanation is that it's that stuff that Hubzilla does.
Which, in many cases, is the very first time that Mastodon users even read that name and learn about the existence of that project. I mean, I've seen a poll just yesterday, according to which three out of four Fediverse users have never heard of Hubzilla.
This, in turn, piques their interest. All of a sudden, lots of Mastodon users are curious about Hubzilla as it's said to be able to do things that Mastodon can't, but that they wish Mastodon could.
Some like @
dynamic who haven't used any other Fediverse projects than Mastodon so far actually
go as far as trying it out themselves, only to discover something probably absolutely unexpected: Hubzilla works and handles
absolutely nothing like Mastodon. And that's not simply due to the formerly-default-and-now-only UI that's perpetually stuck in 2012.
They may actually wonder why Mike had the audacity to build something that's so much different from Mastodon instead of just aping Mastodon and slapping extra stuff on. And I guess they're even more surprised when you tell them that Hubzilla was made
before Mastodon. Which means that there was a Fediverse before Mastodon.
It occurred to me only recently just how many ways Hubzilla has to completely blow Mastodon users' minds.
However, it isn't like people who have come from Twitter to Mastodon to Hubzilla over the last year and a half are all happy about how Hubzilla is different from Mastodon. Switching from Mastodon to Hubzilla takes more getting used to than switching from Twitter to Mastodon, especially if you expect Mastodon to be a standard that everything else has to follow.
There are, in fact, lots of things about Hubzilla that'll irritate people used to Mastodon to no end. The confusing difference between account and channel. The unusual conversation model that sends posts to other people than on Mastodon which doesn't have a conversation model. Separate editors for posts and comments. In fact, posts and comments being something different. ActivityPub not being on by default, and instead of having a simple opt-in switch in the settings, you have to "install" an "app" to be able to connect to Mastodon. No CW field (it's the summary field, but there's none for comments). No alt-text field. No distinction between followers and followed. Stuff in the settings not being where you'd expect it to be from your experience with Mastodon.
And I'm not even talking about the vast permission options yet. Or the filters which even I say need improvements. Or Hubzilla being unable to boost (shall be fixed with Hubzilla 9) and follow hashtags. Or people telling you that you have to type code manually if you want to have alt-text.
Even those who learn about Hubzilla without trying it are confused. Why is it so different? Why does it have to be so different? Why can't it be like Mastodon?
In fact, it doesn't really occur rarely that Mastodon users consider almost everything in which Hubzilla differs from Mastodon a bug which they think can be fixed. It seems to be hard to imagine that what they take for a bug is part of Hubzilla's concept, and it has often been part of the concept since the early days of Mistpark back in 2010, almost six years before Mastodon came out.
I think over the next days and weeks, Hubzilla will increasingly be considered not only weirdly different, but disturbingly different. Along with that, more and more Mastodon users will become aware of the "atrocities" from a Mastodon point of view which Hubzilla users commit in the Fediverse, and which they justify with their different culture. Enormously long posts, text formatting, quotes, quote-posts, as if it's all the most normal thing in the world. Which, for Hubzilla users, it is.
In the near future, Mastodon will likely produce two more forms of drama. One is strong opposition against nomadic identity
anywhere in the Fediverse, not so much because it's "un-Mastodon-like", but because it's expected to be used in malicious ways.
The other one is increasing opposition against Hubzilla itself and more and more calls for Fediblocking it in its entirety, along with all Mastodon or otherwise Fediverse instances that don't Fediblock all Hubzilla hubs. All because it's got that disturbing stuff like nomadic identity and huge posts well over 500 characters and quote-posts with no opt-out for anyone. And because more and more Mastodon users become aware of it.
I hope it won't happen, but I can't exclude it.
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