We're joining the Reddit blackout, to protest the planned API changes that will kill 3rd party apps

laurent · 2023-06-06T10:40:00.539Z

More info on the subreddit!

https://old.reddit.com/r/joplinapp/comments/1429aaa/were_joining_the_reddit_blackout_from_june_12th/

graphit0 · 2023-06-08T12:14:32.827Z

If I may, here's all other places to socialize instead of reddit:

Official communities

Discord
LinkedIn
Mastodon
Twitter

Unofficial communities

Telegram (in chinese)
Matrix (in english)
Matrix (in german)

Additionally I just created unofficial sub on lemmy (reddit open source / fediverse alternative) - https://sopuli.xyz/c/joplinapp

laurent · 2023-06-08T12:31:56.172Z

graphit0:

Additionally I just created unofficial sub on lemmy (reddit open source / fediverse alternative) - https://sopuli.xyz/c/joplinapp

Great, thanks for creating it. But what is solupi? Is that one server among many in the fediverse? And if the server disappears, the sub too? Just curious how that works, i wonder about the durability of these subs on random servers

graphit0 · 2023-06-08T13:09:56.863Z

Yes, it is indeed top-10 server (instance) in the network of Lemmy instances (root project is named Lemmy). This particular instance allows creating subs by users while in many others this feature is reserved for admins only.

Word "sopuli" means "lemming" in finnish since it's the Lemmy instance run from Finland.

At the moment there's no french instance, so the choice fell on this one.

laurent:

And if the server disappears, the sub too? Just curious how that works, i wonder about the durability of these subs on random servers

Each of the instances caches (federates) content for all them, so if the instance is down, you still can access sub on all other instances. Additionally, it's possible to move sub from one instance to another.

image1345×412 35.3 KB

sopuli is 6th in rating of lemmy instances

laurent · 2023-06-08T13:19:34.909Z

Thanks for clarifying. I tried to register but it says I'll need to wait for an admin to approve the account... doesn't sound great as a reddit replacement where you can create an account in two clicks.

Then I tried to login anyway, and all it does is spin a wheel with no feedback or error messages (in the console, I see it doesn't even make an http request).

I think they'll need to get basic things right like login and registering if they want to get somewhere, and realise nobody wants to wait for an admin to approve the account, not to mention that it doesn't scale

graphit0 · 2023-06-08T13:39:15.844Z

laurent:

Thanks for clarifying. I tried to register but it says I'll need to wait for an admin to approve the account... doesn't sound great as a reddit replacement where you can create an account in two clicks.

This registration quirk is the nature of whole fediverse: since all instances are connected open registration attracts bots and spammers giving them the access to all other instances -- creating the work for admins in every other instance. So, all major instances closed their registration to combat spam.

laurent:

Then I tried to login anyway, and all it does is spin a wheel with no feedback or error messages (in the console, I see it doesn't even make an http request).

After signing up, admin approves the application (typically it takes about an hour) and then you should verify the email address

Anyways, I do understand that many things are quite unintuitive for beginners which is typical situation for major part of open source projects. That's a nowadays reality, it's true

Same situation happened with twitter and mastodon: twitter users were puzzled by instances, approval forms, toots, federation etc etc. Bit by bit situation improves on both user end and UI of the product itself

benmordecai · 2023-06-08T16:47:32.159Z

Reddit is perhaps the absolute worst website on the whole web. The best thing that creators and communities can possibly do is leave Reddit and refuse to support them in any capacity.

I could rant on this topic with objective evidence as to why for probably hours.

truthsword · 2023-06-11T22:56:20.843Z

Why Lemming? We have Discourse!

dnzm · 2023-06-14T17:08:51.680Z

Because Discord is an even worse walled garden. Where reddit threads can at least be indexed by search engines and viewed without an account, Discord is completely closed. All content will be gone when they inevitability go down their enshittification path.

~~Apart from that, it's a chat platform, not a forum or information aggregation platform.~~

CalebJohn · 2023-06-14T21:54:17.630Z

Discourse, not discord. The names are unfortunately similar. This is a Discourse forum, open source and accessible via search engine

dnzm · 2023-06-15T05:36:01.691Z

...oh wow, I clearly couldn't read, yesterday. I could've sworn @truthsword suggested Discord...

Mea culpa, Discourse is of course totally fine, especially for those of us who can actually possess basic reading skills.

graphit0 · 2023-11-02T12:15:06.203Z

Just an update about open social media

Not long ago Discourse released ActivityPub plugin that allows following "categories" (such as News) from Mastodon, Lemmy and other open social platforms

Discourse Meta – 15 Jun 23

ActivityPub Plugin

plugin

:discourse2: Summary Discourse ActivityPub allows you to publish Discourse posts via ActivityPub so they can be read on services that support ActivityPub such as Mastodon. 🛠 Repository Link GitHub - discourse/discourse-activity-pub: Adds...

Reading time: 40 mins 🕑 Likes: 291 ❤

Pros:

easier for Joplin forum users to keep up with news and topics on official forum
increases reach and importance for official forum topics and polls among Joplin users who are not registered here
easy presence on fediverse (2 millions of monthly active users) without the need to maintain separate social network account

Cons:

can't edit posts, only delete them and post again
federation (aka relaying posts to other websites) can be confusing for those who aren't used to it
learning, testing and maintaining federation is a time investment

At this point in time it's not necessarily an easy solution but it could be a interesting project to keep an eye on