I just started using mastadon, is there something wrong with it? Why would I want to switch to firefish?
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Just thought if there were people interested in migrating instead of having parallel accounts this article would be useful. It boils down to what style of UX do you want. Twitter? Maybe Mastodon. Instagram? Maybe Pixelfed. Tumblr? Maybe Firefish. All of them are fully compatible with each other, you can follow users across all of them and they all show up in each others' global feeds.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Mastodon, per se. I'm just still trying out the various ActivityPub platforms to see which UX is the most natural to me. I've found the common 500 character post limit occasionally problematic, but haven't wanted to take the time to find an instance which increases it. No markdown/markup formatting. Threading of replies is hard to follow with the web UI and official app (Fedilab handles it much better). I haven't really explored Firefish's antennas vs Mastodon's lists yet.
Interesting, I'm just looking for a twitter replacement so it sounds like mastodon is probably the best option right now for me. I've been happy with it, fedilab is a little confusing so I'm currently using megalodon.
I haven't tried megalodon yet. What do you like/dislike about it?
It's performant and smooth on my pixel6a, every mastodon app I've tried is jittery and choppy. The interface is just easy to understand, I'm sure fedilab is fine once you get used to it, but it felt like jumping into the deep end without a life jacket.
I like Megalodon because I can follow/unfollow hashtags. I don't think that feature exists on the official Mastodon app.
So FireFish is similar to Tumblr? Because that’s what I’m looking for at the moment.
I haven't really used Tumblr in a while, but that's the comparison I've seen/heard.
I find it has a lot of Discoverability issues. A lot.
But I don't actually know if Firefish solves it. I know it is a fork of Misskey, so by default it should have galleries and text search, but I'll figure out when I try it later today.
I read it. Even looked at firefish.social. I fail to see the difference. It's people posting and people replying just like here. Or do I need to actually sign up to see the differences? Or can some one elaborate, because this simply smells of advertisement.
fail to see the difference. It’s people posting and people replying just like here. Or do I need to actually sign up to see the differences?
Some of the differences are justthings an instance an admin can change on Mastodon, such as
- Post character limit is 4,000
- Search results include post contents
But there are things that would require a Mastodon admin to to fork and modify, too
- Quote boosting is supported
- You can format your post with markup
- Emoji reactions instead of only 'like'
- Antennas are a more dynamic way to group posts than just following hashtags. You can specify keywords to match from the post body (both include and exclude), specific users, specific servers, include or exclude reply posts
It's ultimately just another front-end to ActivityPub and the Fediverse. Use whichever one suits your preferences as they can see and follow each other regardless.
This is really good info, thanks.
AFAIK mastodon has a hard limit of 500, changing it would either require source code modding, usage of a fork or using another software
Well, I know there are Mastodon servers that allow more than 500. Guess they did have to modify the code or run a fork though.
I think Firefish has some nice UX improvements over Mastodon, like kbin vs Lemmy, but I like having a Tusky or Fedilab type of app. I see Milktea for Misskey/Mastodon, but looks like probably not FOSS and the screenshots in the Play Store listing don't really entice me to try it out.
Kaiteki is open source and supports Firefish as well as a lot of other fediverse services.
I poked at it a bit and it does indeed let you log in with a Firefish account, but it seems like it doesn't support threaded replies like Firefish and also lacks the Antenna feature?
yea, it's still a pretty basic implementation at the moment. Hopefully it'll be added in the future.
Forgot to mention that app! I did see it but they are listed as alpha and without any actual versioned release of the app yet. I'll keep an eye on it, but the Firefish devs also said they're working on their own native app. Fedilab devs did announce they would support Calckey, but it seems to have taken a major backseat as that was like a year ago, and the issue was then closed as "we'll only support Mastodon API platforms in this app" and then the issue was re-opened after some vote.
I use kaiteki from time to time and so far I find the application quite nice. Otherwise, I don't know if all the features are already supported, but I've just tested and my Firefish account works in Fedilab.
I've just tested and my Firefish account works in Fedilab.
What the what? I'll have to try it out. They don't list Firefish as a supported platform!
https://fedilab.app/wiki/home/
Maybe it's API compatible with Mastodon? There's an open issue for some functionality not working, but it's in French
Side note on Fedilab, do you find it battery-heavy? Do you have the push distributor thing setup for it?
I've tried some of the features mentioned in the issue and reactions seems to work but the quotes are still broken.
Maybe it’s API compatible with Mastodon
According to the codeberg issue, it is.
Side note on Fedilab, do you find it battery-heavy? Do you have the push distributor thing setup for it?
I can't really answer that yet, I've just installed the app to test firefish.
having 1719 fediverse platforms won't help fediverse grow
Thanks for the cool article, I was just looking for something like this!
Do you know if it's also possible to migrate multiple accounts into one with the same process you explained? I have a Misskey account that I don't know if I want to keep and thought I could merge all of them.
The screenshot at the start, for aliasing the old account to the new, says "#1 account you're moving from" and has an "Add" button. I infer from that it is possible to direct multiple old accounts to one new one.
Ok, that will be handy, thanks!
Got an invite to the main instance?
It's invite now? I'll check. It was open registration, still calckey.social, when I signed up.
Yeah. It directed me to the other instances unless I had an invite code. As of now, the firefish.social site isn't even loading in multiple browsers.
Yeah I haven't been able to login yet, but I'm out and about with bad roaming coverage right now and thought it was on my end. Oh it looks like they were upgrading. I'm logged in now but don't see anything anywhere about invite codes. I'll try to watch for it.
Yeah... when I click the "Sign Up" button I get this:
https://i.imgur.com/012Nr5K.png
"Signups on this server are currently disabled, but you can always sign up at another server! If you have an invitation code for this server, please enter it below."
Ok, I found this post from an admin
https://firefish.social/notes/9g76tp4bgwkc1oyf
So only admins can give them out it seems.
That's profoundly strange, I registered a new account for Firefish.social just the other day without any invite.
It was just after the re-launch with the new branding, though, and their servers have seemed slow, so maybe they had to close signups again?
Also if you're on Firefish.social yourself, are you able to follow Lemmy communities? I only get an endless spinning wheel and "Processing", but it works fine on Calckey.world.
Also if you're on Firefish.social yourself, are you able to follow Lemmy communities?
I haven't tried, will give it a shot tonight.
I appear to be seeing the perpetual "Processing" when trying to follow a community.
Got it. I signed up for another instance. It looks like a cool interface. I may migrate over from mastodon. Thanks for the heads-up!
Are you thinking of Bluesky, maybe?
Nope.
Mastodon lets you hide posts in a list from your home timeline. Is there a way to do this in Firefish?
Sorry, I don't have the answer. I haven't really tried lists in Mastodon so far.