this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023

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Thoughts on the general idea of integrating a microblogging interface into lemmy (at some point) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by maegul@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml

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It's come up in the github issues before, but I was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative thoughts about the general idea.

I say microblogging, but it would not need to be micro at all, as many/most fediverse platforms don't bother with the (IMO silly) small character limit default in mastodon.

The feature is probably better described as a "personal feed", where the primary agent is another user not a community.

I've thought about it and come to believe that I would rather like a platform that is lemmy + a microblogging interface/integration.

How it's implement and how viably I don't know. But in terms of design I have the following thoughts:

It would feel natural to treat users much like communities (with one post author) and the "microblog feed" just like the current lemmy feed but of followed/subscribed users' posts.
In addition to Subscribed, Local, All, you'd have Personals or Blogs.
Each user would then have their own "Personal Community", which they could post to like any other. They'd also have moderation controls over it too, which might be a nice addition to the microblogging platform space.
Unlike mastodon, replies/comments wouldn't appear in the feed, as all replies would be available only once you view a post, which, I think, would be a wonderful way to organise microblogging content.
A "boost/retweet" behaviour could be treated as a cross-post from one personal community to another, except you'd probably want to enable such a "cross-post" be applicable to a comment, which would be congruent with the more free-form nature of "microblogging".
You'd want to keep the sorting algorithms, which combined with being able to view only the top-level posts, would again I think be a nice way to handle a "microblogging" feed.
Being able to create lists or multi-communities, as has been requested ordinary lemmy, would be very useful for microblogs.
Following a microblogging account would obviously just create+subscribe to a "personal community" representing that account. Following a lemmy user account would involve subscribing to their personal community, which would exist by default.
You'd probably want to make it as easy as possible in the UI to post links between the microblogging and community "interfaces", so that they could cross-pollinate each other, which, in the case of lemmy users, would be quite nice as any link from one "side" to the other would drop right in a native interface where you can immediately comment/reply or vote etc.

Potential issues I can see:

Implementation is likely more difficult than I realise
DB sizes could potentially blow up with a whole bunch of microblog content from mastodon?
Posting to and engaging with the microblog side might distract many users away from engaging in communities. I suspect that this is a real but minor concern, especially if some improvements come to the communites side of lemmy (eg, multi-communities, the "best" algorithm, making it easier to search through subscribed communities).
Some thought would probably have to be given to how to deal with mastodon privacy measures like the no-index option and limits on following etc.

Beyond all of that, my impression of such a platform, should it ever come to be, is that it would be awesome, not just because of the fusion of two formats, but because presenting "microblogs" within the lemmy structure and with lemmy features would bring a number of improvements over something like mastodon: longer posts, markdown, post/comment organisation, feed sorting, search, and direct/native interaction between communities and microblogs. I can see it becoming natural to treat your lemmy(+mblog) account as a quick blogging platform (ie, writing longer posts because you can on lemmy), and cross-posting to the appropriate communities while enjoying that your direct followers will also get the post in their feed. Though this does raise an interesting question about whether following a lemmy user, which would entail getting all of their posts to everything, should also be enabled as a separate option from just following their "personal community"?

Thoughts?

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[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Do one thing and do that excellent.

[–] amanneedsamaid@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I want to microblog, I will use Mastodon.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

Counterpoints:

What about people that really don't want to have separate accounts and platforms, especially for two not that distantly related activities (surely at some point it's all "social media")
The split between mastodon and lemmy in terms of their ability to effectively federate with each other is splitting people and conversations/discussions that don't need to be. It's not people who don't want to talk to each other it's people who can't because they're stuck on a particular platform/app. If you're worried about "twitter culture", that seems to be a seriously moot point as mastodon and the wider "microblogging" fediverse is a very different place, and intentionally so.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I hear you. And realistically, this will probably be the path of lemmy at least into the medium term.

Still, the thing that bothers me is that the fediverse's strength is that platforms can talk to each other and so leverage its diversity into feeling like a "meta platform". Except that the community - microblog formats seem to be distinct enough that there's real friction (worsened by mastodon's brutally simple UI) despite the fact that plenty of the conversations are entirely compatible with each other.

Honestly, the sort of platform-tribalism that might be manifesting in any negative responses to this suggestion are probably "old-hat" and, I hope, will become less meaningful in regards to the fediverse over time.

[–] donio@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sure but a more generic ActivityPub instance implementation and client API with good support for both Mastodon-style microblogging and Lemmy-style group discussions (and FEP-400e if that goes anywhere or whatever else people settle on) can easily fit within the "one thing". There is a ton of overlap between the two and I am pretty sure such implementations will emerge eventually.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Yep

One of the oldest fediverse platforms, friendica, a sort of Facebook alternative, has had groups and a normal personals feed for ages and happily interacts with both lemmy and mastodon.

This proposal isn’t some alien whacky idea, it’s pretty natural and mostly involves extending things rather than adding some brand new feature.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That already exists, its called Kbin.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ooohhh ... interesting to see you weighing in here (I didn't expect that)!

From what I've gathered about kbin, it's a half-way house between the proposal i've written up and lemmy as it is now. You can't, for instance, see a feed of posts just from people you follow (AFAIU).
Without seeking any kind of statement of intent or anything representing lemmy's future ... what's your personal opinion on the general idea of having both group and user based feeds of some sort?
- FWIW ... The essence of my personal interest in the idea isn't to recreate microblogging here (not at all really), but to diversify the networks that can form and also meet those who do like the microblogging platforms where they are and so get them to engage more with community-based spaces like lemmy.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Things have calmed down now so I finally have some more time now.

If Kbin is already halfway there, then its much closer than Lemmy. Microblogging users can already participate in Lemmy communities. Following users from Lemmy makes some sense, however it would be extremely complicated to implement and I really dont think its worth the effort.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Cheers! Thanks for the response!

[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not a feature I would be interested in, otherwise I would have joined Kbin or Mastodon instead. As long as I have the option to not see it, I wouldn't mind it being added. Like as long as I can just choose to not subscribe to those feeds.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Like as long as I can just choose to not subscribe to those feeds.

Yea I think that would be the idea, to keep the "personals" and "communities" separate from each other in separate feeds. If you never "followed" any users, there'd be nothing in your "personals" feed and you could just ignore it, unless you wanted to peek at "all" for the "personals". Beyond that, the design philosophy, in my mind, would be to enable users to mix and match how they use both and how much as they see fit. Someone could use lemmy just for microblogging, for instance, because the like the UI and other features (that's make sense to me).

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

Lemmy should be made less complex, not more. If anything, it could integrate an external microblogging service via its API.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unlike mastodon, replies/comments wouldn’t appear in the feed

You can set this in Mastodon today too:

In my opinion we already have software for microbloging like Mastodon, micro.blog, Pleroma and so on, but I'd understand if people don't want to host two different technology stacks for microbloging and link aggregating. And /kbin does it already.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

You can set this in Mastodon today too

With lemmy, you'd still get threaded comments that can be sorted by hot, active, new, old or viewed as chat (though I'm not sure if that works well?). So yes, but it's not quite the same thing for other reasons (though apparently threading is coming to mastodon?)

we already have software for microbloging like Mastodon, micro.blog, Pleroma and so on

Yea, and in the case of mastodon at least, the view of group/community platforms is poor. As microblogging, at least how mastodon does it, seems to be the simpler format, it makes sense to render that here so that people interested in interacting with both formats can do so from lemmy.

And /kbin does it already.

My limited understanding of kbin is that it's still essentially community/magazine focused. For instance, there isn't a true microblogging interface on kbin in the same way there is on mastodon etc. Instead, kbin is more dedicated to integrating with microblogging platforms like mastodon, allowing you to follow people and for microblogged posts with particular hashtags to be folded in to magazines, but that all seems to be for populating the magazines with more content. I could be wrong of course, and it also doesn't matter too much if something can also work well within lemmy.

[–] RunAwayFrog@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

From a technical point of view, I'd rather Lemmy didn't federate except with itself, and maybe possibly also with similar networks, but only as long as that doesn't hold Lemmy back from doing its own thing.

Getting ActivityPub federation to work reliably between Lemmy instances alone is already proving challenging for developers.

From a personal point of view, I have zero interest in what I consider a shit paradigm of social communication. The "micro" lie in micro-blogging, as you quickly conceded, is long gone. The interface is horrible for effective exchange of well-thought ideas. The social networks formed are hypernormalized echo chambers of unhinged ranting faux intellectuals and champagne activists, usually led by a cult of personality or two who are tasked with making sure the one-upping posturing game continues forever.

When you are about to "micro"blog, presumably you will be writing something coherent enough that it relates to a certain subject of interest to a section of the public. It is also presumably meant to be viewable by the public since you're not sharing it in a private group chat.

If that's the case, there should be a community in Lemmy where those interested in that subject congregate. That community would either be low-traffic, then you can make your "micro"blog a post there breathing more live into it. Or it would be a high-traffic one, in that case a lounge/chat/MegaThread post should exist where you can chat with people interested in that subject, in an interface that actually facilitates good discussion.

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy essentially already has this feature. You can set a community to moderator only posts.

[–] ComptitiveSubset@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mastodon exists. It’s pretty good. Using 2 apps is fine.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

2 apps is fine, but not good. And for an ecosystem like the fediverse which has other pain points, leaning into its strengths rather than simply expecting users to make things work multiple apps etc, is probably a good idea.

I’m not suggesting all platforms/apps be all things to all people. But treating groups and users as essentially equivalent sources of feeds seems like a reasonable expectation for enabling good interop across the fediverse.