the fediverse
created 2024/03/12 category text, info, internet
reminder to thank your mods and admins, and to donate them if you can, they work vewy hawd!! 🥺
misskey fork of theseus
~ @kopper@brain.d.on-t.work
the fediverse (federated universe) is the term used to represent the entire activitypub-based social media ecosystem! hundreds of thousands of servers, each running different software (mastodon, akkoma/pleroma, misskey and its forks, etc) catering to different userbases, talk (federate) with each other to form 'the fedi' — it has a lot of quirks, but that's what makes it fun!
like centralized social media platforms (ie. twitter, facebook, tumblr, etc) it is quite easy to get lost in the noise, but once you understand the meta of fedi it is so much more fulfilling then any other platform. the biggest thing is **the fediverse is decentralized**, you can choose your instance/server which means you can choose your admins/moderators, picking the sphere of personality you fit into.
my story
aka how i became a terminally online loser
toot.cafe (2018-2019)
toot.cafe is a generic public mastodon instance, where i first became acquainted with fedi and got to grips with it. no disrespect to nolan the admin but as a public (specifically masto) instance crowded with cishet white ppl, the local timeline was mid — not worth the read, and the global timeline almost always filled with garbage but somehow more interesting. regardless, i managed to curate a fascinating home timeline for myself with content i actually care about, and some people actually cared about what i had to say
@zvava@toot.cafe
merveilles.town (2020-2023)
merveilles.town is a private mastodon instance, where i really learned what it meant to be a part of the fediverse with respect to all its moving parts. there was an actually interesting local timeline, global timeline being mid but occasionally providing gems. there was a nice flow of art and projects most of the time, but i would find discussions thereof getting more and more disinteresting. a few have even reached out to say i was the one to aggregate 'the funny' into the local timeline!
@zvava@merveilles.town
merveilles
mk.catgirlsfor.science (2024-present)
catgirls for science is a pubic *firefish* instance, and though firefish has its numerous, ahem, characteristics, i've found myself settled in quite nicely! i still follow faces from merveilles, but mostly i surround myself with internet friends and uncountable gay trans people. my timeline is so fucking gay it is unbelievable, sometimes even providing inciteful information! though it is mostly shitposting lol. i make up like a third of the local timeline as this instance is teeny and doesn't have many active posters (that are very pubic, at least). we have a cute gay "recommended" timeline, probably curated by the mods. the global timeline is made up of public posts of people we follow, and since we are all little and gay, it is full of interesting content!! i love it here~
https://mk.catgirlsfor.science/@zvava
firefish
now firefish has a long backstory, and several quirks. it was forked off a buggy ahh activitypub server called misskey when it started bloating too much, misskey has been polished a lot since but still not perfect. due to hitches in development, it was forked off into iceshrimp (which is like the more polished sibling to firefish) which has since gone in a different direction, to rewrite itself in csharp
firefish is since back in limited swing! the core experience is really sweet but still suffers greatly from early misskey bugs, most of which remain unsquished, and may only be fixed/exacerbated by partial backend rewrites in rust or replacing nodejs with bun. my dream is to become one of the top contributors to it and return it to the glory it deserves! the features i'd likely focus on are simplifying the ui and improving ux overall, i'd also go all in on supporting and extending plugins, and i'd try my best to rewrite the backend so that it runs alright in bun instead of nodejs ^^