this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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Fediverse

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (12 children)

Hidden inside the whatsapp->signal box in tiny faint font. I was wondering why there isn't a big "Discord -> Matrix"

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago (26 children)

Signal is centralized, loops is closed source and not accepting new users.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not really all that invested in trying out Friendica, because Facebook is basically the exact sort of social network service that I really don't give a darn about. I wanted to check it anyway, but the only tangible information on what Friendica is about is the project/marketing page. I can't browse the instances. If I go to your massive social platform, the last thing I want to see is just a brick wall of a login page. Then I looked at fedidb and... um, those aren't huge user numbers.

So I guess I'll keep posting on the services that seem more sensible to me, like Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Thank you, this covers everything I could have thought of!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I got the PeerTube android app. It's very bare bones. As a first foray into peertube I'm not sure it's the way to go. I think I've set myself up for failure.

Anycase, I'll dedicate some time to try find some pocket of content I like tomorrow. Getting away from YouTube sure would be nice.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

May I recommend NewPipe on android? It's a proxy for YouTube/Bandcamp/Plus a bunch of other stuff including Peertube. As a creator, Peertube is nice, but yea, using it as a full time video watching platform just isn't viable rn unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

NewPipe is awful for Peertube. You have to add AND SEARCH every single instance manually. It's only useful if there is a creator on a specific instance that you specifically want to watch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Is there an android app for loops.video? I can't find one.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

You need to sign up and wait for a beta invite. Took 15-30 days for me to get in. It's not ready for primetime.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Loops.video isn't accepting new users atm. Even if it was, I got in on early signup and I have next to zero functionality out of it rn. Just informing the curious masses

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Loops isnt even federated or open source yet. Deleted my account

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Loops really isn't ready for primetime. It's too new and unpolished, and will need a bit more time.

I wonder if peertube can scale. YouTube has a whole sophisticated system for ingesting and transcoding videos into dozens of formats, with tradeoffs being made on computational complexity versus file size/bandwidth, which requires some projection on which videos will be downloaded the most times in the future (and by which types of clients, with support for which codecs, etc.). Doing this can require a lot of networking/computing/memory/storage resources, and I wonder if the software can scale.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Im using it now. I never used tiktok but i can see the draw now.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children)

Ok, downloaded peertube (because to hell with Google and YouTube) looked around... Um, is there not too much to look at right now? Are the people I normally watch on YouTube unable to be seen on peertube? Don't get me wrong, all about decentralized everything but if the people I like aren't there I'm feeling a bit up a creek.

Or, more likely, am I missing something? Forgive me, please, I am rather new to this concept and how to work the federations and such.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's not an alternate way to view Youtube, it's a totally separate service. You're not missing anything, if no one's using it to post content, then there's no content. Youtube is a tough one to compete with because the infrastructure needed to host that much data and distribute it is insane. Peertube is super niche and not many know about it, but I do wonder how fast scaling would become a problem if it suddenly got an influx of new users.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Are the people I normally watch on YouTube unable to be seen on peertube?

Basically this. There are some creators that either switched or publish on both platforms, mainly from the Linux sphere (and, unfortunately, also some crackpots and/or scammers who got kicked from other platforms), but overall, it doesn't have a lot of content, especially content that's on a "professional" level.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Facebook Marketplace - > Craigslist

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Loops really seems like it sucks. You can't see how long any video is, there's no way to thumb down really bad videos, and about 80% of all the videos seem like "really bad videos". I never even used tik tok, but im sure it wasn't content similar or it never would have gotten popular.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Loops definitely needs more features but it's early. I've enjoyed it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

loops is still very early in development. people need to tamper their expectations.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I'm surprised this hasn't been said yet... but what I hate most about Signal is its requirement for a phone number. I don't want to be identified, and I want to be able to create multiple separate accounts with different identities if I want to.

I also hate the fact that it's a mobile-first service. Yes, there is a desktop application (and just one really crappy one at that), but it's clearly designed to revolve first and foremost around your phone and be virtually impossible to use without one. As someone who hates writing on a 3-inch screen, this is a also non-starter for me.

I understand the arguments about perfectionism, but this is too much. I'll stick with XMPP, Matrix and IRC, thanks.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It's meant to replace people's text messaging apps with .i imal barriers to entry. People's existing SMS/MMS contacts aren't stored by user account names, but by phone number.

When I added Signal to my device, I was able to open up my existing contacts and go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

They used to allow their client to be used to send unsecured SMS. Then they stopped. Whatever they thought they were doing, they killed the simplest path to onboarding laypeople they had. I kinda gave up on signal after that.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

My understanding from what you're writing (and from this article) is that the phone number is really the account number. That's all well and fine, but then they force you to verify that the number is yours (or at the very least, one that you have access to because you need to receive a confirmation over SMS), so you can't use something more private. And sure, it makes it a little harder to find your new contact, but I don't think it's really that big of a deal - just exchange your other "account number" via some other channel.

Besides, don't think for a second that when this identifying information inevitably falls into the wrong hands that it will benefit you in any way. "What are you hiding, citizen?" and all that bullshit.

The part of it that bothers me is the sense of entitlement that these companies exhibit. The "Give us your phone number or fuck off" sentiment is something I just refuse to accept. If Google forces us to do the same and we refuse, what makes Signal think that we'll do it for them when they're so much smaller by comparison? Especially when you're trying to claim you're more secure and private to people that much more tech savvy than average, this just comes off as not understanding your audience very well. I'm sure I'm not the only one that is holding out against using Signal because of this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

The last thing we need is more barriers to entry. People have hundreds of SMS /MMS contacts they'vebuilt up over decades. You can't expect people to say "fuck all that" and start over from scratch.

And you also WANT verification unless you want some bot setting up an account with my phone number so they can scam people pretending to be me.

It really sounds like your issue with Signal is it's not the correct service for your use. It's like declaring a wrench bad because it's not good at driving nails.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

(momentary confusion as I wonder why I'd want to switch from the X Window System to Mastodon)

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