The Fediverse is growing and we have decently successful platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon. What else would you like to see?
Any big tech platform not yet replaced or maybe something new altogether? What are we missing?
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Closed/private Communities akin to Discord or Whatsapp, where you could have family channels or work groups, classes and the like.
Has been possible on Friendica for 16 years now. Even more possible on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. And all still part of the Fediverse (unless you count a Hubzilla or (streams) channel with ActivityPub off that only runs on its native protocol as not part of the Fediverse).
Movim is a federated Discord alternative, though not part of the fediverse/Activitypub, as it is based on XMPP instead. It’s still a bit clunky in the UX department, but is currently the most full featured federated alternative.
This may be self serving but if someone could maybe contact Mojang and get the Minecraft instance to be an officially recognized Social Media outlet like r/Minecraft is on Reddit, that would be peachy.
Oh and a syncable mobile app
Windows admin content. I am unfortunately cursed with the task and I’d love to be able to keep up with the patches here instead of needing reddit.
I think it’d be fun to have a kalshi/polymarket clone, but with internet points instead of money.
I would love to see an alternative for google maps where openstreetmap is not enough. So a system where you can post reviews, photos, menus of locations etc.
There is apparently an incredible amount of manipulation and legal fights happening around these reviews on Google maps, so that is probably a minefield any independent open-source developer should avoid.
CoMaps (which uses openstreetmaps) has the option of adding a link to a menu for restaurants, though I don’t think it has reviews.
You can add websites to businesses on OSM too. It’s not that common, unfortunately
That would be neat. It would also be really nice to have some kind of community notes section where you can info on parking, best times to go, etc. Especially for tourist destinations.
OpenStreetMap is frankly about as good as a crowdsourced map can possibly be.
And it’s always improving. Mobile apps like CoMaps let you add business information. There are also apps like Every Door, MapComolete, or SCEE, which particularly emphasize updating OSM on the go.
There are apps for adding photos, such as Mapilary or Panoramax, which are not built into OSM, but built on top of it.
There have been a few attempts at FOSS review projects, like lib.reviews or mangrove.reviews, although it is tricky to reach critical mass.
Each of these are huge organizational challenges and data management challenges separately. Without selling ads or mining data, it’s hard for me to imagine a single project that does evey part and does it well.
There are apps for adding photos, such as Mapilary
just in case you don’t know, mapillary is a facebook project
There have been a few attempts at FOSS review projects, like lib.reviews or mangrove.reviews, although it is tricky to reach critical mass.
I think it’s even impossible if not accessible in a popular OSM map app
Thanks, I did not realize. I just did a quick search because I remembered an app but couldn’t remember the name. Must be something else.
Edit: Maybe it was mapillary after all. They were acquired by Meta in 2020. A better option looks to be KartaView.
kartaview is not better either. they are hypocrite liars: https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/4942
panoramax thought, that is promising.
I couldn’t quite follow all that. TLDR?
they started out as openstreetcam. they turned out to be not open, in source code and licensing of uploaded content. their app couldn’t even be open source, as it used closed source components (including facebook data mining components), that they did not want to remove. they have got renamed to kartaview and belong to a crappy company. they also don’t value user privacy, shown partly by using facebook (among other) tracking code both on the website and in the app.
at first, they turned out they don’t value privacy of its users, but with an openstreetmap adjacent project that is essential. most OSM editors and users are here partly for the privacy properties of the services and accompanying apps, and like that we can’t honestly recommend something to others that we ourselves wouldn’t use.
openstreetcam privacy policy said they share user data with third parties for analysis of the users. that alone shows how they treat their users, but their website contained facebook tracking technology among others, which is significantly worse for reasons I will not detail here.
in the openstreetmap ecosystem another thing that is important is openness and free software. because that’s how you can know how is your data handled, or how you can continue development if the original devs abandoned the project. all significant android osm apps are available on the F-droid store. F-droid vets all apps it accepts, including all updates to them, and closed source components are not allowed in any of them, because what they do can not be audited.
openstreetcam (at some point renamed to kartaview) was not willing to remove the unauditable components for f-droid inclusion. it was more important for them to collect enormous amounts of user data for facebook and other data brokers.then the open source app completely stopped being open source. they did not officially stopped development, they just started to forget uploading the source code changes. they even tried to argue other points with “but our app is open source!” when it could not be built from source for several years already. that shows they only used open as a marketing term.
later it turned out the app was owned by a crappy company, and that they take all rights, irrevocable, for all images uploaded.
probably other things also happened I don’t remember now.
I want all the twitter clones to implement a better system for how they create posts on the reddit clones than use a random hashtag.
Like, even just give them a setting to enable it instead of by default.
None of them ever understand that they’re spamming us, it needs fixed at a system level
Trouble is, first came Mastodon, then came Mastodon’s culture, then came Lemmy.
Mastodon is 60+% of the Fediverse, mastodon.social alone is 20+% of the Fediverse.
Except for Redditors who have escaped to Lemmy and those Japanese and Koreans who discovered Misskey first, literally every single last Fediverse newbie thinks that the Fediverse equals Mastodon. More than half of them still believe that. As in, they don’t even understand that their content may end up someplace that isn’t Mastodon or that isn’t a Twitter clone.
More people
I mean reddit is doing their best to send them our way!
It’s always worth posting something. I post a lot and the majority of stuff gets comments
Came here to say exactly this.
Any city/county/state/federal (or your countrys equivalent) running their own fediverse servers (especially Mastodon) instead of simply having a twitter handle.
You know how that would end up: massively slow server for 3 million a day hosted at politician X’s friend.
I don’t know that at all. Public services where I’m at are pretty well run.
I’m not saying they need to physically host the metal, but the addresses need to be Fediverse addresses. Like how they current do email. I have no idea if my mayors email is outlook or Gmail or whatever, the important part is it’s mayor@city.gov.
I’m just kidding, it would be great :)
Not so sure I want them to self host, just based on their track record for security, but I would like them to be more visible.
Also news outlets could benefit from doing this instead of us having to rely on repost automation.
I would also love to see peertube become more competitive to YouTube. It would probably need some kind of revenue sharing model or donation integration for that though.
I agree about the self hosted part. That part isn’t important. But an @city.mastodon server is better than an @city on twitter username. The important part is getting them off proprietary platforms.
Like how they all do email and websites now.
Probably someone needs to start a service aimed at them, like a mastodon instance called localgov.social or something
Yep. That’s what I meant. I want them to come to the fediverse but I don’t necessarily want the city’s IT admin to manage it between fighting laser printers.
A self-hosted instance has a big advantage: only those working on that admin can have a user. So if you see, p.e., @Emmanuel.macron@gov.fr you know it’s the real account and not a fake one.
Agreed. I don’t think I explained myself clearly enough: I want them to have a presence online. Among the reasons being exactly what you’re pointing out. However, I think at least for smaller cities with very little staff, it’s not realistic to ask them to literally self-host it (as in having a server on-prem running it). I would be fine with them outsourcing it or cloud-hosting it under their own domain. A potential solution for the small ones could be something like a state-level hosted service where municipalities can sign up and get their own accounts, for example. That would work even for something like Rittman, Ohio pop. 6,131.
They can certainly self-host, it doesn’t mean you have to join those instances. Them making those instances would be good for adoption.
Absolutely. The organizations that have the most to gain and the most capability to manage instances are
- local governments,
- news publishers/journalists, and
- Universities
These are groups that have unique publishing and legal mandates that already have the IT departments and adequate sway to compel users. They already host email and websites, and regularly come into conflict with corporate messaging platforms.
The Netherlands has removed many departments form shitter and moved them to Mastodon.
Nextdoor but less toxic
That would be neat. Able to get the info you want without the constant ads or emails from Nextdoor.
I’d love to see bands, venues and event promoters listing their upcoming shows on Mastodon. But I can’t really see it happening in the immediate future, since they have to cast the broadest possible net to lure people in. I tend to see a lot of punk / garage shows (it’s an emotional outlet, I guess) and they’re allllll advertised exclusively on Instagram, often with AI-gen flyers. To add insult to injury.
Having more localized communities would change that.
A lot of small punk shows need to build a following locally before they can get traction nationally/internationally.
My friends and neighbors and loved ones.
YouTube, obviously. And peertube is not it.
Why not? Because of the software, or just the lack of content?
Not the one you’re replying to, but I’d generally agree.
If someone wants to post on Peertube, they basically either have to have the time, funding, and know-how to self-host, or arrive with an established audience. Someone with great creative talent does not necessarily want to run an expensive and complicated software project. Someone who has an established audience has very little incentive to jump to federation.
PeerTube is improving slowly. There are now a few instances with open registration, which could mean more fertile ground for good content. We shall see.
OK, so not the software, but the accessibility for non-techy people
My main problem is the lack of discoverability. Maybe the content is just not there, but even if it is I don’t think I’d be able to find it. And I regularly try.
this issue is adoption. for 90% of the casuals, they get their fix from Reddit, tiktok, Instagram, Imgur and youtube. Facebook if they are boomers, and linkedin if they are corporate types. They tend to be milquetoast parrots and regurgitators who think they are so clever “observing” a take that has been so well worn it’s its own ship of theseus three times over at this point. Short of the AI bubble bursting and forcing them elsewhere, I don’t see that changing anytime soon, sadly.
Government agencies and businesses from my area. Information about local events. Everything is on Facebook 😔
There’s a few trickling in to mastodon
more mod standards/tools better spam /content actions/ protection across all fediverse apps where they can opt in to the standard.
identity management/bridging which really ties into the next one-
communication hub (ingest email, messaging, etc like allin1 clients)
fediverse highlights over X period (this may exist and I’m lazy/shelteres)
Lots if nice users posting original content.
