I don’t know, I have very good experiences with the Antennas. It (almost always) delivers the expected content. Do you perhaps have a keyword that is also (part of) an instance name?

Then it would have to be added as an excluded word.

The topic of the instance only really plays a role in Mastodon. With Sharkey and most other Fediverse software, there are much better features for structuring the content you are interested in. In Friendica, for example, via the channels and in Sharkey, Misskey and its other forks with the Antennas / News Picker

mmh, I thought this had been working for a relatively long time. I’ve been subscribed to some a.gup.pe groups for about a year now. For example this one: https://feddit.de/c/wuppertal@a.gup.pe What exactly is new now?

Here you can find (at least for Android) app lists for Fediverse apps (take also a look at the subcategories): https://android.izzysoft.de/applists/category/named/fediverse?lang=en

Mastodon cannot display posts with headings and the thread view is very rudimentary. In my experience, the best way of displaying and federating with Lemmy is with Friendica.

Maybe WriteFreely or Plume? These are blogging services with Fediverse connection.

Here is a little user guide for Firefish: https://thefedi.wiki/firefish/user/home

Misskey is a relatively old Fediverse platform (older than Mastodon, since 2015?). It is relatively widespread in Asia, especially Japan. Calckey was a fork of Misskey developed since 2021, which aimed to be more oriented towards European needs (e.g. a less manga style). In summer 2023, Calckey was renamed Firefish.

The servers: I think “alpha” is maybe the dev version and “beta” the older stable version? at least Firefish.social has alpha. Edit: Alpha =version 1.0.5, Beta = 1.0.4, without specification = 1.0.3 - this is how it looks after exemplary matching with Fediverse.observer

This is perhaps not representative it’s just random infos that reached me. I am not in the Firefish community or even sect, but only have a test account on a small instance as a supplement. I only have a relatively large number of contacts to other Firefish users, who in turn help newer users get started with Firefish. And there is very often the recommendation to avoid the “flagship” instance, also with reference to the recommendations of devs. I had also followed Atomicpoet for a while, but there was a bit too much input, so I rather heard from Kainoa or Calculator.

That was mentioned in the article, that firefish.social is not recommendable and does not run stably. Have you looked at other instances? There is a selection on the JoinFirefish page and there are many more instances.

"In the end, what firefish/calckey/misskey shows is that the fediverse doesn’t need to merely be either a twitter or instagram or reddit clone … it can be many things often combined in different ways. Many have kinda forgotten (or worse never realised) that that can be the case largely because of how stagnant big social platforms are. "

This statement by @maegul@maegul@lemmy.ml is a very important sentence for me. It reminds me of a statement that a participant at a Fediverse meeting said: “Maybe the Fediverse shouldn’t be sold as a substitute product like ‘vegan sausage’, but as something in its own right.”

(transl./ original in german: “Vielleicht sollte man das Fediverse nicht wie ‘vegane Wurst’ als Ersatzprodukt verkaufen, sondern als etwas Eigenständiges.”)

Thank you for your articles @deadsuperhero@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml , which show that!

Thank you for your answer. I hadn’t realised before that you yourself are the author ;-) So it’s a really good article, I just selectively quoted the aspects that I see differently or have experienced differently.

I don’t use Firefish that much yet. My main account is in Friendica and I would like to move my Mastodon account to Firefish, but the lack of federation with Lemmy (or other groups like Friendica forums) is still holding me back. However, I have had very good experiences with the Antennas in particular and have also heard of many good experiences with them. I get a lot of content there that is usually appropriate and not covered by subscribing to hashtags. Lemmy accounts/communities cannot yet be followed from Firefish, but I get content from Lemmy via the News Picker. You might have to ask Firefish experts what the problems could be.

I am perhaps a bit sensitive to the topic of the flagship instance, because it reminded me of all the discussions about Mastodon-social and their onboarding process, which pushed their instance very aggressively, which in my opinion had negative effects for the Fediverse (centralisation) and for the users of this instance (very slow, lack of moderation, spam bots, etc.). When I have heard from Firefish users about performance problems, it was always users of firefish.social (or previously calckey.social), never from other instances. But that is of course a subjective impression.

On the subject of apps, it was also difficult that the “Mastodon” app pushed itself so to the fore. Many who enter the Fediverse via this app do not even know that 1. there would have been other instances than Mastodon.social 2. that they are in the Fediverse and also communicate with many users who do not use Mastodon 3. that there are many other apps they could use.

Very often questions like “Help, x and y don’t work, I can’t find that etc.” come up and very often it turns out that it really doesn’t work in this official app (but in all the others). In any case, Firefish doesn’t need an app like this. But of course it would be great if there were an app that really included the Firefish-specific features. In my opinion, an app as an end in itself has no added value when the PWA is much better. I think the Firefish project should therefore prioritise the stable functioning and further development of the existing functions rather than the development of its own app. But I can’t really comment because I don’t really need any apps (for the Fediverse).

I hope that the proper group / community federation will come soon. In any case, the devs wrote to me once about the question, saying that it is planned.

I also use Tusky, but only for simple purposes, to have a quick look at my Mastodon and Friendica accounts. Fedilab (which also supports Firefish, but only basic functions) can do a bit more. For Mastodon, Moshidon and Megadolon are often recommended.

very nice article…

…Just a few small comments:

• “Firefish is a hot new microblogging platform”: it’s not that “new” at all, #Calckey, which has been around since 2021, has only recently changed its name to Firefish
• the antennas / news picker had apparently not yet been fully understood by the author: they do not fill retroactively and it is a full-text search that also finds parts of words. Therefore, if it doesn’t fit, search words can be excluded - it works very well for me! If you use it for a little longer instead of just taking a quick look, you can use it to structure your content very well.
• “Lack of an official app is kind of disappointing”: “official” apps are perhaps important as a “brand” for some, the so-called “Mastodon” app is also the worst app ever for Mastodon (fortunately with many better alternatives). The PWA for Firefish works great on all devices, if you don’t want to miss out on any features and want the best look, you don’t need an app.
• The biggest hindrance at the moment right now is the flagship instance at firefish.social:" The instance has clearly communicated that it primarily serves as a test instance, i.e. it does not strive for or want to guarantee stability. In contrast to mastodon.social, Firefish itself also makes clearer reference to the selection and there are now really many Firefish instances.

For me, the biggest disadvantage of Firefish at the moment is that it doesn’t yet federate properly with Lemmy.

I think Diaspora continues to be an active and relevant macro-blogging platform. However, in Fediverse it is now only connected to Friendica and Hubzilla, not to Lemmy and the other software that only use ActivityPub protocol.

In my experience, Friendica has the best threaded view of the micro/macro blogging platforms in the Fediverse. This thread here is displayed in Friendica like this:

Also in the timeline (unlike e.g. Mastodon) no individual posts/replies are displayed without context, but always the initial post + the (latest) replies.

Will all images be federated from Pixelfed to Lemmy and vice versa? Between Lemmy and Mastodon Pleroma etc., only one image is currently federated in the initial post, and not at all in the replies.

Will the groups also federate with Firefish and Friendica? (Friendica has had a group function for a long time).

… in the Fediverse

What are you missing with the Firefish pwa? I think it’s possible to switch from Firefish to Mastodon if the account is only deactivated and not deleted, but Mastodon doesn’t take over the posts when you move.