panos

panos, 5 months ago to fediverse

Ugh, I really tried to stay out of #fediverse drama but I guess I have to say a few things. Most of you know me as a #firefish core team member, so I think I owe it to the admins of almost 500 firefish servers out there and to the almost 5000 members of firefish.social.

So, yeah, if you haven't noticed, things aren't looking good for firefish. Its owner, Kainoa, has practically abandoned the project, which had its last stable release out on July. My last message to them was a week ago, and I haven't heard back since. Firefish.social, besides the other severe technical problems it's had due to mismanagement in the last few months, now also has serious federation issues. I hope Kainoa is well irl, but this is irresponsible and unacceptable.

I hear some of you saying "but you're in the core team too, don't try to put the blame elsewhere!". So I have to explain what being a core team member in firefish meant. Kainoa invited me, Namekuji and a few others to be part of the "core team", but kept all decisions and responsibilities. We didn't co-own this. We never shared donations. We were just volunteers, who were honestly trying to make it a great project. This didn't work well due to concentration of power to one person, who didn't keep their promises. I don't mean to be harsh to Kainoa, I mean we knew they were only 19 when they started the project. Still, it's a bummer to anyone who chose to trust and support Firefish. This includes myself.

I don't know if it's early to consider firefish a dead project, but it sure seems like that for a few months now. Maybe it can be resurrected, idk. It's all up to Kainoa.

In the meantime, Namekuji and I are starting #Catodon, which will have some differences with Firefish, and will include many changes I had discussed with Kainoa but were never implemented. If you decide to stick with us, we promise to be serious about this. I strongly believe in the fediverse and its potential, and I want to build a great platform for it. This was my goal when I chose to be involved in Calckey/Firefish. It's still my goal with Catodon, only this time I can stand behind it 100%, as the project will be co-managed by Namekuji and me. If Firefish left you with a bitter aftertaste, we hope we can build a better relationship and prove ourselves worthy of your trust. Catodon will go public in a matter of days, possibly even hours. We'll have more to say about its direction then.

In the meantime, I just wanted to share my apologies for any inconvenience regarding Firefish, as I'm still technically a core team member, whatever that means. But frankly, I tried so hard to make things go differently - but there's only so much you can do when it's someone else's project. I'm really sorry for how things went.

But this is not the end of the fedi journey for me. I'm super excited about the chance to do some things right this time with Catodon. Life goes on, I guess! Hope to see you soon on our #codeberg repo, so we can start a new creative adventure together =)

​:catodon:​ xx

panos, 3 months ago to bluesky

OK this will probably be an unpopular opinion, but regarding the #bluesky #bridge and whether it's ok to be opt-out... For me the discussion doesn't make much sense because this is how fedi works. When you enable federation, your posts are federated to any activitypub-supporting server, unless you opt-out by fediblocking. Do you approve all of these servers? Do you agree with their ToS? Have you read the ToS of all of them, or know where they belong to? No. I know this might make you insecure about your data, but it's better to be honest than create a false impression of control, which then feels attacked when Threads or Bluesky appear. I understand that somebody may not want their content appearing in Zuckerberg's or Dorsey's platform. But they could already be running an AP server that's federated to your server, and you will never know. This is what we signed up for, adopting an open protocol and using software that federates with everyone as the default. And tbh I like it this way - an opt-in federation would be a disaster for smaller servers, it would practically be impossible to federate. By using an AP-enabled server, I'm telling everyone that it's ok to interact with my content - unless I actively block them. It doesn't include an agreement for how or from whom this content will be used. The fact that both servers run AP-compatible software is only a technicality. So if Bluesky implemented AP support it would suddenly be ok that interacting with their users would be opt-out, like with every AP server?

Don't get me wrong, I understand that everyone wants to be in control of their social circle, and I support you if you want to block Threads or Bluesky bridges. But I don't really see how it's unethical to have a bridge that is opt-out, just like any other AP-server. Our only "agreement" is using an open protocol, not any common ToS. ActivityPub is not ethically superior by definition, anyone can adopt it, and we have the right to block them, and this is all by design, it's not a different corner of the internet, everyone in the internet can use the protocol and see/display your public content. The drama every time some server does basically what we allowed them to do and we don't like it, is getting really old quickly. It doesn't "protect" fedi, it only makes it hostile and boring. If you're concerned about who sees your content, please run a followers-only account and control your followers. Running a public account in an openly federated platform and then getting angry when you don't agree with every single server you're federating with is a recipe to make sure you'll be angry for years to come.

panos, 2 months ago to random

Soooo... I've always been transparent about the project, so I have to give you all an update, as we're in a somewhat tough spot. A few weeks ago we made this public call for a co-lead dev, but we didn't get much interest. In the meantime, our lead dev got tangled up more and more in other obligations irl and now has close to zero time, which means development on #Catodon has practically halted at this point. We had made and announced a lot of plans, but at the moment things have been put on ice until we figure out what to do next. We will make an official announcement, I just wanted to give this another shot - we are looking for someone to work together as equals on this. If interested in leading an ambitious fedi project as a developer, just drop me a line, let's chat to see if this could work.

I really want to apologize to anyone who might be affected by this. In the meantime, Catodon code will be kept up-to-date with upstream Iceshrimp, and catodon.social will be taken care of and will keep running, so even if you're running a pre-release Catodon installation you're safe - it's basically Iceshrimp with a few changes at this point. I'm trying to make the best out of this situation, I'm trying to consider our options, and hopefully we'll have some (better) news soon.

RE: catodon.social/notes/9qqowcuygslkanui

panos, 5 months ago to random

I've noticed some people refer to me as a dev, although I never claimed to be one. One person even accused me of not having recent commits in Firefish. So... I have to confess I am not a dev.

My role in Firefish was community manager/project coordinator. But isn't it interesting that people assume I'm a dev because I was in the core team? It's so often that community-driven open source projects are run only by devs, that people just assumed I am a dev too. And, with all the respect to the wonderful dev community, I think that's kind of a problem.

You see, an open-source project needs much more than coding. My role in #Catodon will include coordinating development, designing features, testing, communication and feedback from the community, managing issues on the repo, decision making, moderating catodon.social, participating and moderating the matrix channels and I'm sure more will be added to that list. Devs may or may not be good at these things - and this clearly affect some projects. Being a good dev doesn't necessarily mean being good at everything around running an open source project, and that's ok. There's a reason companies hire project managers when developing software. You can add every community request out there - if you don't keep UX on your mind and don't have a consistent vision for your software, it will end up poorly designed and bloated.

So, I have to warn you - I may not be suitable to answer your more technical questions! We have a support channel for that, and our lead dev Namekuji is more knowledgeable about the coding aspect - while other devs, who are interested in our direction, have already reached out and are starting to work with us. So hopefully we will soon have a lively dev and admin community where we can support each other.

I'd say that one of my main goals in Catodon is to offer a safe, inclusive and laid back environment where open source devs will be able to cooperate and contribute in a productive way. Making open source code is a wonderful gesture, you are sharing your work for everyone to freely use. And it deserves to be done in a well organized and self-fulfilling way! Good communication is not always easy, but it's definitely worth trying. We have incredibly talented coders here that can do wonders when working smoothly together. That's the mindset with which we'll be trying to make Catodon a community-driven project.

panos, 4 months ago to random

New #Firefish release! And this is the new official account for the project, under naskya's leadership, give them a follow if you want to stay updated. Best of luck in the new beginning! 🚀

RE: info.firefish.dev/notes/9pdqi3rjl4lxirq3

panos, 4 months ago to random

Alright, I think we now have a better idea of what's happening with #Firefish, so I might as well give a small update. Kainoa quit, and left the project to naskya, who is a person I appreciate very much, as they've always been kind and polite and willing to help. I also think they're very devoted to Firefish, and basically were the last person actively caring about the project. As far as I know, they intend to keep maintaining and developing Firefish, and a new stable version will finally soon be released. This is great news, as you don't need to worry that your server is running unmaintained and vulnerable software. So, alarm off everybody, no need to abandon ship.

As for us, we're standing by our decision to rebase #Catodon to #Iceshrimp. The changes we want to do are long term plans, but we've started redesigning some things and, whenever we are ready, I hope we'll show you something worth your attention. So yeah, firefish, iceshrimp and catodon are all alive and valid options (the first two to be precise, for the time being). All projects share code fixes and I think we're on very good terms, here in our corner of the fediverse. Enjoy the ride.

panos, 1 month ago to random

Some news from the #Firefish front! Kainoa (former lead dev who has been absent for several months now) finally passed control of the donations platform to naskya, the new owner of the project. I'm happy to report that Firefish is becoming a healthy project again, and that members of the community have stepped up to get the development going. For those who didn't migrate to other platforms during the project's crisis: You're safe and in good hands.

RE: info.firefish.dev/notes/9s1n283sb10rh869

panos, 2 months ago to mastodon

Small rant about small character limits in fedi, like #Mastodon's 500 limit, just because I had this discussion recently.

I think it makes no sense for the #fediverse. This is a criticism towards #ActivityPub as well, which defines notes as short posts, around a paragraph.

How did "microblogging" came to be? In the early internet we had no limitations like this. If you wanted to post something (say in a forum), you could usually just write what you wanted, as long as it needed to be (there might be technical limitations, but not a conscious limit of "you should express yourself in under xxx characters". How did this become a thing?

#Twitter started as a platform where you could post via SMS, hence the initial character limit was 140. But nowadays we don't have technical limitations like that. So why do software designers still feel the need to restrict users in such a way? I believe it is a failed concept, one that has been surpassed in practice. If people want to write 1000 or 5000 characters, they will. And they do. That's how "threads" are born. OK, sometimes a person consciously wants to split a post in parts, but most of the times it is just to go around the platform's character limit. So if the goal is to have a platform where people express themselves in 500 characters or less, then this design fails hard, because you can't force people to do that if they don't want to. If I want my posts to be short, I will make them short, no need to restrict me. If I want to make a longer post once in a while, I will also post it, I will just have to hit reply as many times as needed for all of my text to reach my followers.

The problem with this, besides that it's impractical and gets in the users' way, is that it actually does the opposite of what might be expected: Instead of not serving long texts to users, you serve them in multiple posts, creating clutter in the timeline. And this way they can't avoid getting the whole text in their timelines, even if it's something they are not interested in!

The simplest and most obvious way to handle this is letting users write their posts, however long they want to make them, and only show the first xxx characters in the timeline, with a "Show more" button. This way users can express themselves in the way they prefer (it's their wall/social feed after all!), and their followers are not served several consequential posts about something they might not care about. It's one opinion, one post, it should come to my timeline once, and then I can decide if I want to click on it and read all of it.

It's funny, but my early fediverse experience was vastly improved when @atomicpoet moved from mastodon.social to calckey.social. I loved reading his posts, but they tended to be long, so I would be online and a new post by Chris would come, and I'd be like "oh here we go again". Because it would fill up my timeline, and it wasn't practical either, because I would read the first paragraph, then wait until Chris typed the next paragraph, and in the meantime I might have seen other things and I had to go back to what I was reading 5 minutes ago and then wait 5 more minutes for the rest of his train of thought. This is not how any of this should work! A person should take their time and write down their thoughts, and then post them on their account. And I should be able to see the start of that post, and click on it and read it at its entirety if it seems interesting to me.

Why are we keeping up with an unnecessary limit, when there is no technical reason for it any more? Plain text takes practically zero disk space (and will take up the same space -basically more- if split in different posts). We post photos that take up kilobytes or megabytes.

When users are forced to go around your design in order to communicate their thoughts, this means there's something wrong with your design. There are people who prefer writing shorter posts. There are people who sometimes want to post something longer for their followers to read. It's still a post, it serves the exact same purpose, it's not like "posts MUST be short, anything over a paragraph is a blog post". I regularly write longer posts, because I want to expand on my thoughts. It doesn't mean I care about keeping a personal blog, or that I think anything longer I write is blog-worthy. I might be talking about whatever, and it can be as significant (or insignificant) as my one paragraph posts. It's even more futile to try to enforce a limit like that in an open network as the Fediverse. People will just build tools to overcome it, as has happened, and many platforms offer much longer character limits. Many Mastodon servers have also manually changed that limit, kolektiva.social for example is a Mastodon server with a 10K character limit. It comes from an actual need, people might also want to post an announcement or whatever longer text.

Basically, the only real reason I can think of for limits like that to exist in today's platforms, it's because short content is more easily "consumable". So I get it as a choice for #X or #Threads, they want addictive, fast-to-read content, witty responses etc to keep their users in their platforms for longer, to show them more ads and keep tracking their interactions for longer. And this is probably how they found out that this restriction is good for them and makes their platform more addictive. It's easier for them to "sell" easily digestable content. It makes sense as a design choice, for their corporate targets.

But why on fedi? If you don't care about longer posts, you can ignore them and not open them. If you prefer following people who only write short posts, then do that. If you don't like that I write longer posts, feel free to unfollow me, and customize your fedi experience to your needs. But why have made-up restrictions like that forced upon users? Are we building something for easily digestible content, trying to make it as addictive as possible, or are we here for communication, according to the users' needs?

panos, 4 months ago to random

Just woke up and saw this. Finally, the right decision - I've been saying for a while that naskya had been very supportive to firefish and would have been the obvious choice since Kainoa couldn't or didn't want to keep doing this. All of the drama and uncertainty could have been avoided if this simple gesture was done a couple of months ago. I also hope that donations from the last few months will be returned or given to naskya - opencollective for firefish seems to have been up and running still. I wish naskya good luck, whatever they decide to do with the project!

RE: mstdn.social/users/noellemitchell/statuses/111865771249665331

panos, 2 months ago to threads

The idea that everyone should defederate #Threads is basically the idea that everyone who uses #ActivityPub chose a completely and perpetually surveillance-capitalists-free web space, so that's what we should ensure. This is a false assumption - and if it was true, then this wouldn't be possible in the first place. We chose to use an open protocol, knowing that anyone could also use it and reach us. And that's why we have blocking. You can't control the #fediverse, it's an exercise in futility. But you control your account and your server. You can choose what reaches your screen or your users' screens, but that's it. Other people will do what they want, no matter how angry you get. You can't force people to federate with Threads, but you also can't force them not to. Even if every known server blocked them, if people want to follow accounts from Threads, they will just make a new server that federates. No point in getting angry with reality. Maybe ActivityPub wasn't exactly what you thought. But a social network that can control who enters is definitely not a network built on open federation. To make sure Meta or Tumblr or whoever stays out of your network, create a centralized network. This is the only network you can control.

panos, 1 month ago to dotnet

I promised I'd be giving updates on #Iceshrimp's #dotnet C# rewrite -a brand new fedi platform really- so here's where we're at at the moment! The backend's basic functionality is more or less finished, although there will undoubtedly be stuff to fix and improve during beta. So theoretically you could use it, but we don't have a frontend yet so you could use it only with masto apps atm. However, the frontend is where the focus is going now, and we plan to have a basic/working frontend soon so that we can release our first beta in a couple of weeks or so!

We expect performance and server requirements to be comparable to #Akkoma. Things are about to get exciting!

panos, 4 months ago to random

Alright, we wanna be as transparent as possible, so here's a small update on #Catodon's development: The idea so far was to have our first release more as a debloated, to some extent, version of firefish, which would be more like the foundation to build our next releases on, rather than something representative of what we want Catodon to be. But it turns out that, in order for things to be smooth in the first release, we'd have to fix some stuff that would need to be refactored anyway for the second release. So we realized it's better to just get directly to it.

So, what does this mean? We'll be sort of merging our first and second planned releases. This unfortunately means that we'll need more time to get where we want to. My advice to you, if you are running a #Firefish server and thinking of migrating, is to either stay on Firefish for the time being, or migrate to Iceshrimp - it will be easy to migrate to Catodon later if you want. The good news is that, when Catodon is finally released, I think it will be worth the wait, it won't be just a transitional version, and I'm much more excited now for the upcoming release. And yes, you can go back to Misskey and forget about firefish forks but... I wouldn't do that if I were you =)

panos, 4 months ago to random

Kinda big day tomorrow as catodon.social's getting updated to our latest dev version, since our announced rebase to #Iceshrimp is finished, which means that, if everything goes well, after tomorrow catodon.social will have all of the performance improvements of Iceshrimp, including full Mastodon API support. It took us back a few weeks but we think it was worth it, and now we can resume development towards our first release.
#Catodon

panos, 5 months ago to fediverse

I'm super excited about the #Fediverse. I've been online since the 90s, been through most evolution stages of the internet, and it feels like we're changing it once again - and this time in a good way.

panos, 3 months ago to fediverse

We know development hasn't been as fast as we'd hoped for due to lack of time, so we are looking for someone to work together on this! If you're a #dev who's interested in the #fediverse and would like to be part of an upcoming and creative project, send us a message!

RE: catodon.social/notes/9qqowcuygslkanui

panos, 4 months ago to fediverse

So, we have a #fediverse alternative to goodreads with #bookwyrm - what about a #letterboxd alternative? I'd love to be able to keep track of films I watched and read/write reviews here. Anybody working on anything like that?

panos, 5 months ago to random

On a more personal note, for what Catodon means to me: The anarchist movement in Greece hasn't widely adopted the Fediverse yet. Most of them are at least using Signal, but for social media they still use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at large. The changes I am pushing in Catodon are also considered in that context: What will make it easier for more people to come to fedi communities, what will make their transition smoother? How can I bring my queer friends and my comrades here? This is, in a way, my letter of love to them.

panos, 5 months ago to random

After #Catodon (and the situation with #Firefish) went public, we've certainly had a lot of support and positive feedback. However, there were also people who shared irony and negativity. There were people who seemed happy to see Firefish's state, and who would be happy if Catodon failed. Some didn't like our name. Some found it unacceptable that the name resembles Mastodon, whereas we start as a Misskey fork. It's sort of a tribute, people. We're in a way a Mastodon alternative where you can be a cat. And we'll improve our Mastodon API support so you can use Catodon with Mastodon apps. No need to take things so seriously and with a hostile stance, if what we're doing doesn't click with you that's fine, we never asked you to like us. There are certainly better things to define and present youself than by your dislike towards an open source project. We're not hurting anyone, we're trying to build a free tool that people may find useful. Lose the hate, it's only a burden.

panos, 6 months ago to fediverse

Alright, since some people have been asking, better to clear this out from the start and not feed any rumours. Yes, @namekuji and I are #firefish core team members, and yes, we are starting #catodon which is a new project based on firefish. But we're not looking to create any sort of #fediverse drama - I think we've had enough of those! So we're not doing a dramatic exit, not storming out, not accusing anyone. I'm not even leaving firefish, I'll try to be around, I love the project - we're basing Catodon on that, after all, and that says something. But at the end of the day, Firefish is @kainoa 's project and I respect that. There are some things I would really like to do differently, and I can't wait to have this rolling - I think that with time it will become obvious that Catodon will try to do its own thing, which is not necessarily better or worse than Firefish, but it might suit some people's needs better. I should also probably clarify here that all of my involvement in firefish has been as a volunteer, I've had no financial affiliation with the project. Hope this clears everything out and I don't have to return to this subject. We just want to start our own thing, and we hope we'll be making something worth your attention - and to build a nice community around it on #codeberg, once our repo goes public. Firefish is also great and I still hope it thrives. Catodon will be another option, which can't be that bad! "Free as in freedom", eh? 🙂

atomicpoet, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

Multiple people have asked me to respond to this post by @panos. We have never worked together since I was never a part of the dev team, but I appreciate all they’ve done for Firefish.

I, myself, had a big hand in the growth of Firefish. I was one of the project’s biggest donators, having provided ~$2,000 in funding over the course of a year. I also helped administer firefish.social, and advised on several community and marketing initiatives. I further spoke to several instance admins in back channels hoping to build strong relationships.

But as you see, I’m not sending this message from firefish.social, and that’s because of severe performance issues with it. To Kainoa’s credit, they did try to work and fix these issues to the best of their ability.

However, I have not spoken to Kainoa since October, and I don’t know the status of the project. Suffice it to say, I have not been working on Firefish for quite awhile.

Despite many people thinking I was a core member of the Firefish team, I never have been—and I always made that very clear. Instead, I saw my role primarily as empowering the project both financially and with other resources when needed.

As demonstrated by the fact I committed large amounts of time and money to the project, I genuinely have wanted Firefish to succeed. I still do, even if it’s with a successor project.

Working on any open source project is hard, and I commend anyone who attempts to do it.

RE: https://catodon.social/notes/9nvp68a5a10zrdi2

panos, 4 months ago to random

I've started watching Google's UX Design course and, while it's well made and easy to understand, I hate how it's all about getting a job and creating more sales. For example, it talks about how accessibility helps websites be "consumed" more easily. I know it's made by a company, so I guess it was to be expected, it just has great reviews, and I guess courses from colleges will more or less have the same mindset, after all they're also businesses and need to ensure you'll get profit from your "investment". It's another example of how capitalism shits on everything we love. I'm trying to learn more about UX to help build a better experience for people, and I'm getting taught how to become profitable for a company. The education system is education on the system.

panos, 2 months ago to random

Alright, I know I haven't given many updates on #Catodon, because frankly there's not a lot to say. We're reorganizing, reprioritizing etc. Things are going slow. I haven't given up on the project, I think we have an interesting approach which is worth exploring, but we're short on human resources atm. Hopefully this will change and things will get exciting again, but we're not there yet. I'll let you know.

However, I wanna talk about another project I'm also sort of involved in lately - #Iceshrimp! So Iceshrimp also started as a #Firefish fork but they are currently rewriting the whole thing on .net/C#! Both the backend and frontend are being rewritten in C# - the frontend on Blazor. AFAIK this is the only fedi project written on .net and I'm really curious for the result!

This has been announced many months before, and Iceshrimp-js is in feature freeze, to allow all efforts to concentrate in the rewrite. Many people were skeptical because it's a huge project - which is true. So let me tell you that finally #Iceshrimp's rewrite will be entering beta soon - meaning, probably before the month is through!

This will practically be a brand new fedi platform, with a UX similar to Firefish (at least initially), with great Mastodon API support for compatibility with existing apps, hopefully with much better performance and a cleaner codebase. I'll keep you posted on how things progress!

panos, 2 months ago to random

I have to say I'm a little skeptical about people who are consciously on fedi, making public accounts on Threads. I'm not against federating, as long as it doesn't create an unmoderatable/unsafe environment for fedi servers. But I am against using Meta's server and wouldn't want to promote using it. People who are important to fedi legitimize Threads itself (and not "federation with Threads") by making an account there. It only makes sense to me if there is some sort of compensation from Meta. Because it mostly sends the message that "it's ok -and safe- to use a Meta service", by the very same people who are trying to build a surveillance-free alternative (and to convince the world that it's needed).