In 2023, I plan to advocate more for client apps to embrace the larger IndieWeb and fediverse. Mastodon going mainstream is a great step forward, but we don’t want a monoculture. A key IndieWeb principle is plurality: multiple apps with different codebases that can interoperate.

@manton I wholeheartedly agree! I’m curious… why do you think some apps support only Micro.blog but not Micropub, even though it’s the same API under the hood? Predictability of implementation? Name recognition? Something else?

@paulrobertlloyd Probably a little of both. It can be tricky to test Micropub because everything else requires your own server. If we nudged developers more into using IndieAuth, it would help too.

@manton Good luck for that. I’m very excited to see how the social open Web evolves next year, and what new kinds of uniquely interesting roles in it Micro.blog will continue to play. :)

@manton Out of curiosity, do you know if ActivityPub clients like Ivory tend to work with Micro.blog?

@manton Yeah, it’s the authentication piece that differs. I guess using app tokens is similar to how authentication with other services work? And perhaps IndieAuth is a bit of an odd-ball way of doing things. Hat-tip to iA Writer for doing the right thing.

@manton On requiring your own server… maybe that’s another way Indiekit can help. It includes its own IndieAuth server, so could be used to test clients against. Perhaps I should make some support requests to these apps suggesting this 🤔

@esjewett Ivory and most clients won’t work because they use the Mastodon API, which is not a standard like ActivityPub or Micropub. In theory we could support this but it will cause some UI problems (what if you click the boost button?) that will have to be sorted out.

@manton I’m a weirdo, so it would be unwise to make any decisions based on my preferences, but for the record: I really can’t stand Mastodon (it’s just Twitter Redux) and yet I feel that it has taken over my micro.blog timeline. In theory I’m all for interoperability but in practice I’m worried about Mastodon’s emerging dominance and wishing I could build a firewall to protect me from it.

@paulrobertlloyd Yeah, on mobile especially IndieAuth can be an extra step because you might not be signed in already on the web. Our auth intro help page does say that IndieAuth is “best” for most apps. Ideally M.b apps would default to M.b but it could be easy to switch in the prefs. This is how Epilogue works.

@ayjay I have the same concerns, and I’ve had to unfollow Mastodon people and hide replies in my timeline while I figure out what I want to see. It can be jarring right now.

@manton let’s get it! Plurality is such a strange concept in this day and age of walled gardens, but interoperability was at the heart of the open standards that power the web. Let’s make that dream a reality!

@manton It’s good to know that I’m not the only one!

@manton The setting to see only posts and replies from people I follow has been huge here. Love that setting!

@ayjay I love the Micro.blog Web Setting “Show posts and replies only to people I’m following”

@manton Somewhet related, recently added a few issues on GitHub regarding Micro.blog’s IndieAuth implementation; requires me parameter which is now optional, and doesn’t use PKCE.

@paulrobertlloyd Thanks, I saw them. We need to update that.

@manton I wrote to the Tapbots developers asking if somewhere down the line they could include ActivityPub support in Ivory, not expecting or even knowing if that is possible. Based on what you have said here, I am guessing not possible. And at the same time, as has been said elsewhere in this thread, I am finding the Mastodon presence in the Micro.blog timeline a little jarring.

@crossingthethreshold Thanks for reaching out to Tapbots, that helps. I’m happy to work together with Tapbots on a solution, maybe after Ivory 1.0 ships.

@manton I was thinking about just that this morning. We’re seeing a Mastodon boom, of course, but I’d like to see a fediverse boom. Hopefully all those millions of Mastodon users will see that they don’t have to replicate Twitter; they can use lots of services in parallel, with Mastodon being one of them.

I was also thinking about ways I might suggest that micro.blog could do more to integrate with Mastodon while not becoming Mastodon. Like, might I be able to use my micro.blog account to interact with Mastodon users as a peer? Boosting toots is a big thing that I can’t currently do from micro.blog. It seems like something I’d want to do there, on Mastodon, but not here, on micro.blog, but could I use my micro.blog account for that somehow? And no I haven’t thought that through yet–the overall thing I’m thinking about is the things that I now do on Mastodon that I could use micro.blog for instead, ways that I interact with other people on Mastodon.

I haven’t tried logging in to a Mastodon client using my micro.blog credentials. I’ll try that soon. What could go wrong, right? Hold my beer.

@ayjay Why don’t you like Mastodon? What do you mean by Twitter redux? The primary difference between Mastodon and a true blogging platform is the 500-character limit–but micro.blog has a 280-character limit, so how is micro.blog different in a significant way?

I’m not arguing with you. Those are genuine questions.

@manton @esjewett I am pro-boosting! I would like to be able to boost toots with micro.blog but not from micro.blog. And I know that doesn’t entirely make sense. I have not though this through to the end.

@manton @ayjay Yeah, I ended up following a few mastodon folks from micro.blog, and then unfollowing them because the experience seemed jarring.

@manton This is what made me think it would be possible -

“First, I added my Pixelfed account to Ivory, the Tapbots Mastodon app that’s currently in alpha testing. That lets me post photos and respond to followers in the same app I’m using for Mastodon.”

@manton John Voorhees says in the article this is because Pixelfed supports ActivityPub, but I bet it is because it supports the Mastodon API, huh?

@esjewett Right. Pixelfed supports ActivityPub, which means it can work with Mastodon and Micro.blog. Pixelfed also supports the Mastodon API, so it can work with clients like Ivory.

@MitchW It’s functionally a Twitter clone, with follower counts, likes, and RTs (AKA “boosts”). All of those features promote the worst kinds of online behavior. I’m very grateful that we have none of them here.

@ayjay I absolutely agree with you. Already the ‘popularity’ contests are beginning on Mastodon and despite what everyone is saying, it’s just a twitter clone at the moment.

@manton I’ve heard rumors of Apple embracing the fediverse as well with their own app.

@MitchW My feeling is that @manton is making a lot of good decisions around avoiding the Twitter popularity contest. That results in a less sticky platform, but personally it works for me, as the stickiness was the main reason I stopped most Twitter use a few years ago.

@ayjay I find likes useful just as a measure of if anyone is listening at all, and occasionally I get a like from someone special. But I hate seeing each individual one–just give me a daily report.

Other people’s RTs allow me to see posts that I might not otherwise see. My RTs do the same for other people.

I’m with you on follower counts, though. And do they really tell us anything we didn’t already know? Lady Gaga has a bazillion Twitter followers, which tells us … what, precisely? That she’s famous. Like we didn’t already know that?

@esjewett Yes, @manton is doing a great job. And I demonstrate my feelings about this by suggesting changes. :)

@manton How to hide replies on the Android micro.blog app?

@mdalves It’s a global setting across the platform, so on the web go to Account and scroll down to the “Timeline” section. That setting will apply everywhere.

@manton Thank you. I was getting crazy with too much information from mastodon on my timeline. I may loose interesting discussion, but it is OK.