This week’s issue of #TheFutureisFederated on the surface is more niche than usual, focusing on Fediverse content aggregators (you know, platforms like Reddit, but on the Fediverse).
In previous issues I explored the worlds of Mastodon, Pixelfed and Friendica: Fediverse projects that encourage users to connect to interesting individuals and organizations. Content aggregators are less about human connection; their goal is to surface interesting articles and blog posts, see how users react to them and eventually engage in discussions about these topics.
Why did I say “on the surface”? Because even if you are not into content aggregators, you might find this deep dive and my findings interesting. All the interoperability experiments I ran this month ultimately show how cool the Fediverse is (thanks to the magic of ActivityPub) and they demonstrate the strength of a project in particular.
An important note: previous posts had the goal of introducing the Fediverse to non-technical people who had never heard of it. This article is frankly more suitable for existing users of the Fediverse who already have an account on a project like Mastodon, Friendica or Pixelfed and are curious about content aggregators and interoperability.
A word about Reddit, the world’s most famous content aggregator
The web’s most prominent and most popular content aggregator is Reddit, with over 500 million accounts and approximately 90 million daily active users. For many, it has become a substitute to Google search, with its active communities filled with in-depth advice about any topic you may think of.
Thing is, Reddit is your typical Silicon Valley public company, focused on the bottom line, which has gone down the rabbit hole of platform degradation (what Corey Doctorow calls ensh*ttif*cation):
- it has recently struck deals with both Google and OpenAI to have its content used to train large language models (source 1, source 2);
- it has essentially cut off 3rd party clients from accessing its API with the introduction of exorbitant prices (source);
- and its entire existence and popularity is due to an army of unpaid volunteers acting as moderators who are not gaining a single penny from lucrative deals struck with AI companies (source).
Because of these issues, Reddit witnessed a mass rebellion in the summer of 2023, with many users looking for an alternative. Some set up accounts on Lemmy, the Fediverse’s answer to Reddit. And that’s where I began my exploration of Fediverse content aggregators.
The Fediverse’s answer(s) to Reddit and the superpowers granted by ActivityPub
What sets the Fediverse apart from mainstream, commercial social media is the interoperability made possible by ActivityPub: imagine being able to follow a Reddit discussion from Twitter, with your Twitter reply showing up as a comment on Reddit. On the Fediverse, this is already a reality.
On Mastodon, I follow Lemmy's Fediverse community. This is how it shows up on my feed on Phanpy.social, with a light green background:
Why is this interesting? Because if you publish a post on a content aggregator and tag your Mastodon account, you wouldn’t have to waste time logging onto the content aggregator to catch up on comments – they would appear as notifications inside Mastodon. (Please insert a giant asterisk here because as you will see this only works with one particular content aggregator for now). Still, it’s an amazing time saver to be able to engage in discussions hosted by a content aggregator from a microblogging service of the Fediverse. It feels revolutionary.
My exploration of Fediverse content aggregators will heavily focus on this aspect: interoperability.
You may be reading all this and thinking to yourself: I don’t really care about content aggregators of the Fediverse - I’m happy with Reddit, or I don’t use them at all. Sure, I understand. But if you are on Mastodon, you may be interested in this post because it will confirm how the project is the shining star of the Fediverse.
Spoiler alert: the biggest takeaway from the interoperability tests I’ve done in content aggregators is that Mastodon carries out two-way federation like it’s a piece of cake (whereas other Fediverse projects fail in this regard). These experiments have been further proof to me that it’s a smart strategy to use Mastodon as one’s main Fediverse account, investing time in it - as it communicates really well with other Fediverse projects. It just works.
The Fediverse’s most popular content aggregator: meet Lemmy
The Fediverse’s most popular content aggregator is Lemmy, with about 390,000 total users and approximately 45,000 monthly active users – according to Fedidb.
As usual, upon signup, you are asked to select a Lemmy instance to join: I picked lemmy.world, its most popular one with 164k users (of those about 18,000 are monthly active users according to Fedidb).
Lemmy.world’s user interface is similar to Reddit’s, with a list of popular articles and up and down arrows to vote on them, upranking or downranking them.
You could click on navigation toddles at the top, switching between “Subscribed” communities, “Local” communities (that belong to lemmy.world) and “All” communities (i.e. communities that are hosted on other Fediverse instances). I’m subscribed to “Fediverse” “Technology” and “Ask Lemmy” communities, so this is what my Lemmy.world homepage looks like:
Posts on Lemmy are ranked in a different way. Paul Brown explained in Linux magazine:
Ranking is more complete on Lemmy than on Reddit, allowing you to order posts according to most Active, in which the rank of a post is based on the score and time of the latest comment, with decay over time; Hot, similar to active, but uses the time when the post was published; New, which shows most recent posts first; Old (self-explanatory); Most Comments, which shows posts with the highest number of comments first; New Comments, which ranks first posts when they receive a new reply; and then you can choose to see the highest ranking post of the day, week, month, year, or all time.
So far, so good. I found Lemmy to be more advanced and customizable than Reddit - with the downside of having less users and thus less communities.
Testing Fediverse interoperability on Lemmy
The big draw of the Fediverse for me is the promise of interoperability.
I was curious to try it out on Lemmy, so I published a post titled “Lemmy interoperability with other Fediverse projects.” You could see it here: https://lemmy.world/post/18635732
I used hashtags and tagged my Mastodon username, as well as @informapirata@mastodon.uno, who had written a superb guide to Lemmy communities and Friendica Groups.
I published the post on Lemmy and I was surprised (not in a good way) that hashtags did not federate… they remained simple text preceded by a hash symbol, but they didn’t even turn into links.
Then I went to my Mastodon account to check out my notifications - and didn’t see anything, even though I had correctly formatted my Mastodon username in the Lemmy post. I waited 10 minutes and hit refresh. Still nothing. I gave a heads-up to Informa Pirata that I had tagged them in the post, asking them if they saw a notification. This is the reply I got (translated from Italian):
No, unfortunately I didn't receive any notification, but you don't have to worry about that. In fact, I will never receive it because Lemmy mentions only work in reply posts and not in the first opening post! 😁 😄 🤣
Yes it is a bit of an absurd thing. Maybe it's the most absurd thing about Lemmy but if you learn it the hard way, it sticks with you more... 😅
This is absolutely correct and mind-blowing: yes, if you tag a Fediverse account in an original post on Lemmy, that account will NOT receive any notifications. But if you tag the account in a Lemmy comment they will. My jaw was on the floor when I read that.
This must be a quirk of Lemmy, I thought.
After sharing some of my frustrations with Lemmy interoperability tests, I got recommendations to try out the new Fediverse content aggregator project PieFed - which is only a year old, but showing a lot of promise. And so I signed up for it, determined to test Fediverse interoperability on it.
Fediverse content aggregator no.2: meet PieFed
PieFed’s name is a portmanteau of “Python” (its programming language) and “Federation”. PieFed’s features page describes its differences with Lemmy:
- Comments with -10 score are collapsed by default.
- Communities are organized into topics. See https://piefed.social/topics.
- Image-heavy communities can have a tiled/masonry view
- People who get downvoted a lot end up with a ‘low reputation’ indicator next to their name. You’ll know it when you see it.
- Hide all posts based on keyword filters.
- Better UI design (somewhat subjective!)
Its UI is indeed cleaner and more elegant - and these moderation features sound fantastic.
I ran the exact same test I did on Lemmy: a new post tagging my Mastodon account and also my Lemmy account, to see if federation worked across content aggregators. You can see it here: https://piefed.social/post/203443
Hashtags didn’t work either on PieFed - but this time I added "tags" at the bottom. These work like hashtags would, surfacing other posts on PieFed social (and only there) that use the same tags (example).
Mentions to my Mastodon and Lemmy accounts sadly didn't federate from the original post.
I shared my frustrations on Mastodon - yet again - and some commenters recommended I try out Mbin, a fork of content aggregator and microblogging project Kbin (sadly discontinued).
Fediverse content aggregator no.3: Mbin
I created an account on Mbin’s most popular server: fedia.io.
Whereas Lemmy organizes posts in “communities” and PieFed has “Topics”, Mbin calls these “Magazines” but they are the same thing.
For example, lemmy.world’s “Fediverse” community shows up under Magazines as “Fediverse” in Mbin. This explanation may make things sound complicated, but in reality, the experience of Mbin is really intuitive and very similar to Lemmy and PieFed.
Mbin distinguishes itself from other content aggregators of the Fediverse in another key way: when you start a new post, you could either create a “Thread” (like a Reddit post) for a specific community or a “Microblog”.
I set out to run the same experiment, upping the ante: I created a new Mbin thread and this time I tagged my Mastodon, Lemmy AND Friendica accounts. You can see my original post here: https://fedia.io/m/fediverse@lemmy.ml/t/1098606/Lemmy-vs-PieFed-vs-Mbin
Guess what? This time it worked!!!
I got a notification on Mastodon (but not Lemmy or Friendica). The notification showed up like this:
Fediverse Content Aggregators (Lemmy, PieFed and Mbin) and Interoperability: Other Test Results
Lemmy, PieFed and Mbin are content aggregators filled with advanced features - they are all good substitutes to Reddit, if you are looking for an open source alternative that won’t mine your posts to train large language models.
Now, when it comes to interoperability with other Fediverse projects, I have found that Mbin does a better job than Lemmy or PieFed, with mentions in posts federating (i.e. showing up as notifications across most Fediverse projects).
I also did experiments with Fediverse account mentions in replies to a post. This is what I discovered (a green checkmark represents a mention that correctly showed up as a notification on the specified instance/project).
Lemmy reply mention:
Lemmy reply mentioning a Mastodon account ✅
Lemmy reply mentioning a Friendica account ❌
Lemmy reply mentioning a Pixelfed account ✅
Lemmy reply mentioning a PieFed account ❌
Lemmy reply mentioning a Mbin account ✅ (took some time)
Piefed reply mention: ❌ across the board (no notifications showed up on other projects)
Mbin reply mention:
Mbin reply mentioning a Mastodon account ✅
Mbin reply mentioning a Friendica account ❌
Mbin reply mentioning a Pixelfed account ✅
Mbin reply mentioning a PieFed account ❌
Mbin reply mentioning a Lemmy account ❌
Above, you can see a screenshot of my comment in Mbin mentioning my other Fediverse accounts... and under it, a reply I posted from Mastodon. Federation works both ways!
While Mbin was superior, federating mentions in the original thread (unlike Lemmy or PieFed), the federation of reply mentions was similar on Lemmy and Mbin (with Lemmy performing a bit better in this regard).
I was positively surprised by how well Mastodon AND Pixelfed communicated with the Fediverse’s content aggregators, with comments and mentions synching seamlessly between these projects. I was particularly impressed by Pixelfed because - for now - it’s a photo sharing site. I’m saying "for now" because its developer @dansup shared plans about the upcoming “Pixelfed Groups”:
Imagine if you could bring Facebook Groups to the fediverse, using your Pixelfed account!
What disappointed me about content aggregators and interoperability (and I’m ready to face pitchforks because of its devoted following) was Friendica. No mentions on posts from other platforms (Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin) or even reply mentions showed up in Friendica. Nothing.
The most shocking thing? I could not find any lemmy.world, piefed.social or fedia.io accounts or communities to follow on Friendica; looking them up in the Friendica directory showed no results.
I see three options here. One: Friendica does not communicate well with Fediverse content aggregators (ActivityPub federation doesn't work). Two: there are settings somewhere that need to be turned on to allow this. Three: my particular instance (opensocial.space) does not allow federation with Lemmy, PieFed or Mbin. This third option was pointed out to me by @informapirata, the admin of 3 different instances (on Mastodon, Friendica and Lemmy), who says that their Friendica instance "manages Lemmy communities beautifully" (source). Regardless, the experience is not intuitive and results are disappointing (because Mastodon and Pixelfed just work in this regard).
These tests were further proof - as mentioned earlier - that it’s a good strategy to keep a Mastodon account as one’s main home on the Fediverse. It’s solid and reliable and communicates superbly with this galaxy of interconnected free open-source software. Pixelfed interoperability is also brilliant and I cannot wait for the release of Pixelfed Groups.
If you are looking for a tutorial about how to follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon, I recommend this article by Vijay Prema: "Reddit exodus - Using Lemmy from my existing Mastodon".
If you follow a Lemmy community on Mastodon, all the posts and replies will show up as boosts in your timeline. In order to declutter your home feed, you could put Lemmy communities in lists (as recommended to me by Lemmy user @neblem, who shared a fedi.tips guide on this).
There would be so much more to say about this topic - I've only scratched the surface. Still, I hope that my show & tell was useful to you.
As always, thanks for being here,
Elena
P.S.: You can find all previous issues of The Future is Federated here
💓 Did you enjoy this post? Share it with a friend!
👫 Follow me on Mastodon (my favorite network!) and Pixelfed. All my other social media links are available here.
📽️ If you'd like to support my work, you could buy or rent my documentary The Illusionists on the globalization of beauty. Watch the opening on Vimeo:
💌 If you'd like to say hi, my contact information is here
✏️ If this post resonated with you, leave a comment!