Mastodon is focused on posting on your personal account’s page and doesn’t really support groups AFAIK. Lemmy does have groups (communities) but doesn’t support personal posts. While I get that the two mimic their proprietary counterparts and this defines their functionality, as a self-hoster I’d like to host just one service that would combine the functionality of both Mastodon and Lemmy and potentially other Fediverse platforms.
So what is the platform that implements the most of ActivityPub features?
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It’s the most powerful and feature-rich Fediverse server application ever, hands down. Also because it has features implemented that go vastly beyond what ActivityPub is capable of.
It was made by Friendica’s own creator by first forking Friendica twice over in 2011, then completely re-writing the second fork in 2012 and then expanding the re-written second fork in 2015.
While it was the first application to ever implement ActivityPub (July, 2017; two months before Mastodon), it has always been based on its own protocol, Zot, that was invented by Hubzilla’s own creator in 2011.
It’s Friendica, much more modular, with nomadic identity, with a staggering permissions system, expanded into a full-blown “social content management system” with all bells and whistles.
It’s basically Facebook meets WordPress meets Nextcloud meets a whole lot of other things.
Features:
- Can be used both like Mastodon (follow people/accounts) and like Lemmy (join groups), and that’s just the beginning
- Account and identity are not the same
- One account can contain multiple fully independent identities (kind of “accounts within an account”, only they’re called “channels”)
- Nomadic identity: A channel can exist on multiple fully independent servers simultaneously; the instances of the channel are mutual live and hot backups of each other; this also makes moving identities from one server to another vastly more complete than on most other Fediverse server applications
- OpenWebAuth magic sign-on: Hubzilla logins are recognised by (streams) and Forte and itself; Hubzilla itself recognises logins on Mitra, Friendica, (streams), Forte and itself
- ActivityPub connectivity is only optional; can be used as an “anti-Mastodon drawbridge”
- Optional connectivity to diaspora*
- Optional crossposters to WordPress, LiveJournal, Libertree and DreamWidth
- Can subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds
- Each channel generates two Atom feeds itself, one for posts, one for comments
- Content from any contact can be automatically reposted (“channel sources”)
- Can be installed as a progressive Web app
- Multiple profiles per channel; one default public profile and any number of additional private profiles that can be assigned to certain contacts so that they can know things about you that the general public must not necessarily know
- Extensive profiles which can be made even more extensive (multiple dozen dedicated fields) optionally
- Channels can hide from directories
- Channels can be flagged NSFW
- The second-most advanced permissions system in the whole Fediverse; it works on three levels (for the whole channel, for each contact individually, for certain content)
- Discussion groups (called “community forums”) which are channels with a special channel type/with special channel settings
- Four channel types to choose from: public, private, community forum and a custom type in which 17 permission settings can be adjusted individually
- The custom channel type allows for various degrees of private and/or moderated groups
- The permissions system makes it possible to grant full administration permission for your channel to any contact with client-side OpenWebAuth support; this also makes it possible to appoint additional admins/moderators for community forums
- Channel-wide filter, consisting of one blocklist and one allowlist; optional individual filter with blocklist and allowlist per contact (as in, you can follow someone and then filter them and only them); the filter system has loads of options from regex to a special filter syntax with Boolean operators, making it one of the most advanced and powerful filter systems in the Fediverse
- Enclosed threaded conversations like on blogs/Facebook/Tumblr/Reddit/Hacker News/Slashdot/etc. with one post and otherwise comments; supports FEP-171b “Conversation Containers”
- Fully capable of long-form blogging
- Hashtag cloud
- Optional list or cloud of internal, non-federating keywords
- Can both render and generate the full gamut of HTML text formatting
- Supports both titles and summaries in separate fields (the summary field is the same field that Mastodon has been misusing as a CW field since 2017)
- No character limits worth mentioning (technically, the character limit for message texts is 16,777,215)
- Images can be embedded within the message text of any post or comment like in a blog post; no limit for how many images can be embedded
- No limit for poll options either
- Full support for forum-style quotes
- Full support for quote-tweet-style quote-posts; these are dumb copies of the original message
- Stream sorting options:
- Complete conversations, most recent comment first (default)
- Complete conversations, most recent post first
- Single-message piecemeal à la Mastodon
- Stream filtering options:
- DMs
- Messages/conversations from a certain privacy group
- Messages/conversations from a certain community forum
- Messages marked with a star (a kind of primitive bookmark)
- Your own messages
- Messages filed into a “folder” (a more advanced bookmarking system)
- Messages/conversations from a certain contact
- Built-in cloud file space with support for subfolders at any depth, WebDAV access and its own file manager; the file space is also used to store images and other media embedded in messages; permissions apply here as well, and guest read-access tokens can be granted
- Event calendar with support for Event-type ActivityStreams objects
- CalDAV calendar server which uses the event calendar frontend
- Optional CardDAV addressbook server
- Optional articles (non-federating written pieces of virtually unlimited length; can be used for blogging without throwing excessively long posts at Mastodon users)
- Optional planning cards (similar to articles, but with a few extra features)
- Optional wikis (any number of independent wikis per channel with any number of pages each)
- Optional static webpages that can include dynamic content from elsewhere on the channel; the feature can also be used to pimp up the channel itself
- Optional notes
- Optional OpenStreetMap support
- Optional QR code generator
- Extensive customisation options for what the channel looks like even with the default Redbasic theme, and that doesn’t even take third-party themes into account which basically give Hubzilla an entirely new Web UI
Friendica has only got four advantages over Hubzilla. One, it supports the Mastodon client API (although that’s half-useless because Mastodon apps don’t even cover 20% of Friendica’s features). Two, it has mobile apps of its own, although stable releases only exist for Android; on Hubzilla, there’s only the Web UI for everyone anywhere. Three, it has even more connection options like being able to integrate a Bluesky account and “remote-control” it. Four, it’s easier to use; this is also because Hubzilla is highly modular with tons of optional, off-by-default stuff whereas just about everything is hard-coded to permanently on on Friendica.
Otherwise, Friendica is no real match for Hubzilla, and Bonfire is even less of a match.
Friendica.
but it is not cleanly threaded like lemmy or piefed. a developer said they will improve this a bit in the next version , but certainly not to the level of threadiverse.
Anyway they have all kinds of technical fancy stuff regarding groups, hashtags, saved searches and whatever.
Interesting. I’ll look into it. Thanks!
Pleasure. I don’t know unfortunately which English speaking instances are very good.
One more thing: in order to make it work for you, you really have to dig through the manyfold settings and somehow make yourself understand how channels and all that stuff works. Best would be if you had somebody who explained it to you.
Well, I’ve heard a lot of people saying good things about Friendica, so I’m willing to invest some time and energy!
I just wish they could utilize a shared login framework. something completely foss and doing common sense thing like encryption.
When we do that, it will be game changing.
hubzilla does that. its a fork of friendica and implements some novel features.
yeah i think the problem is as you say friendica does it but it needs to be something to tie the fediverse together. all the stuffs.
This feature is really missing.
It sounds like you’re looking for Mbin. But I’m curious, do you want both mastadon and Lemmy combined into a singular feed? Would you be opposed to having your Mastadon feed as a form of “Community” that fits into the normal feed as its own community?
Yes, I tried Mbin after another user recommended it here and it is what I need!
I would not be really opposed to having Mastodon feed separately, but I’m really enjoying the combined feed feature of Mbin. Although Mastodon posts do end up in the ‘random’ magazine there.
The Random Magazine is for content which does not belong to any real Magazine (/ Community). So mostly all of Mastodon Toots which don’t mention or tag a Magazine.
The best way to get a personal feed is to subscribe to Magazines and users (and you will be able to follow Hashtags in a future update) and then go to the Combined view of
/alland set the filters to Newest + Subscribed (you can also set this filter settings to be your homepage in the settings).
I like MBin. But I haven’t found toot functionality on PieFed.
It’s still early days for PieFed and microblogging. We got the ability to properly follow people a few weeks ago (in 1.7.0, I think). But a lot of stuff isn’t implemented yet. I’m not aware of a way to send out toots. And last time I tried replying to one, it didn’t show up on Mastodon. It’s slowly coming along though. If you’re planning to set up some Fedi service for the future, I think it’s worth keeping it on the radar. But as of now it’s still lacking in this regard, compared to for example MBin.
If friendica is interesting to you, you may give a try to (streams) and Forte. They’re evolutions of the friendica and hubzilla codebase, by the same authors, to turn it in a slightly different direction: namely, (streams) is a ActivityPub-centered experience and Forte is ActivityPub-only, both with honestly amazing features still not found elsewhere. They should both be looked at by more people (unfortunately their style is dated)
@feb
off topic: I saw this post first in Voyager on Lemmy. Why do I see this post here on joinfriendica?
And why do I not see Matthias comments for instance on the lemmy thread?
And why do I not see my own comments which I made on lemmy here in friendica? fediverse is so confusing to me…Now I do see Matthias post from friendica also here on Lemmy. Also, now I see on lemmy this post that I’m replying to and that I made myself on friendica.
I still do not see on friendica the direct reply to OP that I had made on Lemmy. On friendica, I see only three direct replies to the original post. Significantly less than here on Lemmy.
I wonder : it should work and display in both directions, I guess? How is this cross platform viewing and replying correctly called in fediverse?
@myszka
Take a look at Friendica. It offers all the features mentioned on a single platform. Furthermore, it boasts broad connectivity to other networks and is infinitely expandable via an add-on system.Is mbin still a thing?
Yes. I am using it right now.
Damn, this is exactly what I was looking for! Both personal toots and Lemmy-like communities and even a possibility to see posts from both in a combined feed!
Apart from that, it’s possible to create your own feeds (lists of accounts/communities), so, for instance, I can have one for photos from Pixelfed, one for videos from PeerTube and others for communities and accounts filtered by certain topics. There is also another way of categorizing content called ‘magazines’, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet.
I’m not particularly fond of it’s UI, but I found a client app called
Interstellarwhich, on the contrary, I found very ergonomic and functional. Much more so, in fact, than Lemmy clients I’ve used. Btw, Interstellar also supports Lemmy and PieFed, as well as switching between multiple accounts, so I’ll start using it for those, too.A real gem! Thank you.
Apart from that, it’s possible to create your own feeds (lists of accounts/communities),
Where did you find this feature? Do you mean bookmarks?
There is also another way of categorizing content called ‘magazines’, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet.
This is the Mbin term for what Lemmy calls Communities. So nothing for yourself to categorize content, but for you and others to post to (you can post / view threads and posts to a Magazine).
Yup!
I haven’t tried it, but Bonfire looks pretty nice.
Looks promising. I’ll give it a try. Thanks!
The website looks ai generated
They’re probably using a static site template, maybe Astro.
They’ve put a lot of work into Bonfire, off the top of my head
- working with activitypub stakeholders to get a proper standard for groups (which helps us directly)
- tooling for other platforms to use
- a separate platform focussed on academics with integrations to academia services
It’s far from some vibe coded project
How do you explain this? https://github.com/bonfire-networks/bonfire-app/blob/main/AGENTS.md
IMO there’s a difference between the vibe coded one-shot projects (which tend to have those AI generated looking websites), and using LLMs for targeted and focussed suggestions. The contents of that file and a quick skim of the PRs and commits doesn’t change my mind on that, the project still looks like it’s made by competent developers who may or may not use AI for debugging/brainstorming.
I know some people will still prefer having zero AI usage and that’s fine too. For me their AI use doesn’t meet the threshold for me to have doubts about the quality and longevity of the product.
I also found this: their website / blog uses the Eleventy static site generator: https://github.com/bonfire-networks/website-blog
