Link: https://catodon.rocks/notes/akiq56cfomyh0kfn

Catodon is a new Sharkey/Misskey fork (Edit: sadly with AI code contributions).

Should we be suggesting Catodon/Sharkey/Misskey over Mastodon for new users?

Not unless someone is gonna bother to explain what the difference is and why it even exists.

See, this is a big problem with all the stuff on the fediverse: people announce all of these strangely named projects, but no one, not anywhere, will ever bother to explain what any of it is or why any of it exists. They just assume everyone already knows, and it’s very very, very annoying. And if anyone does bother to link to a project page, it’s extremely long and complicated with 20 to 30 paragraphs, or it’s buried deep in some long long long chain of extremely circumspect and vague posts.

Just be clear, concise, and direct about what the project is, what it does, and why it exists. Please. For once. Just tell me what the hell it is and why it exists in one single simple sentence. THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE. PREFERABLY THE HEADLINE.

404 ☹️

More options and innovation is good, though I'm not sure there's enough users yet to viably support a fourth mainline Threadiverse protocol. Mbin serves the same role Catodon is trying to fill and doesn't have many users as it is.

The benefit is that the other microblogging platforms might also implement or improve threadiverse support if this goes well. We could get more activity and users from the people who are only on a microblogging platform

These are all forks of forks of the microblogging platform Misskey, so they tend to focus on their differences compared to other Misskey forks or Misskey itself. I don’t think it’s strange for people interested in the Fediverse to at least have heard of these. Misskey is older than Mastodon and it supported ActivityPub before e.g. Lemmy existed.

Is this something like Mbin, but for integrating Threadi and Sharkey/Misskey?

You were somehow even more vague than the post itself, giving even less-useful, more-extraneous information. It’s as if I was looking through a blurry camera lens and you made it even more blurry. Thanks for doing exactly the opposite of what I asked for.

I'm confused. What's the difference between mastodon and other such platforms mentioned in this thread? I thought these mastodon like platforms were the equivalent of twitter on the fediverse

That's a lot of words (and even more negativity) to not say precisely where and how you consider that comment has failed to meet your requirements. For someone asking for clarity, I thought that could be worth considering. Why not show the kind of useful answer you're expecting, or at least show precisely where that comment has missed the point?

And, nope, if you're wondering, this not an attempt at trolling you: there is not enough of us around here, so instead of spitting towards one another face, maybe explaining why one feels… disappointed could help change what may need to be changed?

What is Catadon:

Catodon is open source software for building federated communities

Catodon is a fork of Sharkey, but with many features ported from Firefish, and some new ones! Its target is to provide a smoother, more comprehensible UX - so terminology is simplified and made more descriptive, and several features of Misskey/Sharkey that were not widely used or not federated were removed from the frontend. There is also an attempt to make the design more minimal wherever possible - see the redesigned posting form for example. One of the main design goals is to make something more user-friendly, where you can invite your friends and they can adjust easily.

Please join our Matrix space at #catodon-space:matrix.org for direct communication! Feedback and code reviews are much appreciated.

Main differences from Sharkey:

• A new, rounder look!
• You can follow hashtags and words in you Home timeline, by adding Custom feeds (Antennas) to Home
• You can integrate GIF search for your users through Klipy
• Improved notifications: Added a "mark all as read" button to the Notifications widget, there is a highlighted divider between new and old notifications, and they are marked read easier when you view them, so that you no longer need to use the "mark all as read" button as much. You can also see a list of who reacted in grouped reaction notifications
• Threads in timelines (imported from Firefish), greatly decluttering timelines for longer threads
• Users now have the choice to link to external media (including GIFs) without permanently saving them to their Storage, using a new dedicated cache - allows admins to provide less permanent storage space per user, keeping server resources under control
• There is a global, admin-definable cap to the cache for remote files, so that you no longer need to manually delete it regularly
• Different/simpler terminology so that new users can understand what everything means more easily
• Decluttered buttons under posts: Like/Reaction (merged), Reply, Repost/Quote (merged)
• Deprecated/removed from the frontend the gamifying or local only/not widely used features: Channels, Achievements, Gallery, Clips, Games, Chat, Play
• Redesigned left sidebar. Much fewer items in the Navigation Bar, which now expands/collapses with a button. The profile picture now acts as a direct link to your profile, as it's separated from the account menu that sits under it
• Fewer timelines, no hardcoded links in the header menu - everything is a timeline
• "Accounts timeline" based on the "Following" page, but upgraded to a timeline with columns scrolling independently and a search bar
• The local timeline now takes the server's short name, adding a unique touch to your community
• Custom feeds and Lists are in their own dedicated timeline
• More filters in timelines and Lists - you can now view your following accounts' replies to others (or only to accounts you also follow) in Home, choose between Following and Mutual followers, and include the public posts from your server in Home (covering the functionality of the deprecated "Social" timeline)
• Post area is now clickable everywhere, not only over the text area
• You can view all reactions together under a post in detailed post view (added "All" tab). You can also see the total number of replies+subreplies next to the number of direct replies, showing instantly how deep the discussion under a post goes
• Redesigned posting form with buttons in more practical positions - also the collapsed posting form at the top of timelines takes up half the space the old one did
• The posting form autoexpands as you write longer posts - imported from Firefish
• Autocomplete also shows results for names of users - you no longer need to remember the exact username to mention or DM someone
• You can disable sign-in emails by deactivating sign-in notifications
• You can now close the alt text window over images, which can make parts of them hard to see/read, by clicking on it
• Much better key navigation - both with h/j/k/l and arrows. Focus is more often where you expect it to be, so that you can key nav instantly when opening a page. You can also swipe through timelines on desktop with left/right
• Countless bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements!

Only server i found: https://catodon.rocks/

So you didn’t even bother reading my comment. It’s like talking to AI.

Works here 🤷

Whatever you say. Have a great day.

Probably not, as the compatibility for Mastodon api using apps is experimental and not included at all in Misskey itself.

But if you want to host a server for a specific community that would apprechiate the more playful features of it, it is definitly a good alternative.

You sound a bit like someone who demands to be explained what a car is when entering a car shop 😅

That's my dream :3

Car shops are clearly labeled and have giant windows that have their products on display, and people driving in and out of their parking lot and running ads on TV night and day explaining what their products do.

So, no, it’s not at all like that

Yes, as I said 🤷

And Fediverse instances are similar. But that only works when you know what a car actually is.

If you’re referring to Lemmy/PieFed, Mastodon, and the like, well, people know about those because there was a huge amount of publicity about those services within the tech community that explained exactly what they were, and the benefits, especially in places like Reddit and twitter.

It was more like convincing people who drove cars and rode motorcycles to go electric.

For now, Catodon is a part of the Threadiverse at the same degree as Mastodon. At this moment it allows following/subscribing a community only.

To my knowledge, Catodon was started by @panos@catodon.rocks, who for the longest time was a Firefish advocate, but was disappointed by the bait and switch pulled by those devs.

With the advent of AI, Panos is taking it upon himself to fork Firefish and build the social media experience he wanted all long.

Can't really argue with that :smile:

Hey folks, just discovered this thread thanks to @julian@activitypub.space 's mention above!

To be more accurate, I was in the Firefish core team, I started Catodon with another Firefish dev when Firefish was being abandoned, but that dev quickly lost interest. Since then (a couple of years ago now) I've been trying to work with a dev but had no luck. So yeah, I recently started experimenting with LLMs and it went much better than I expected - you have to be careful with some things, but it's doable.

So Catodon (which was first announced as a Firefish fork in 2023) finally had its first stable release in March, and I intend to continue working on it. It's based on Sharkey, but I've also ported some Firefish features, and so far I've added a Direct Messages chat-like page, an RSS timeline and a LOT more smaller features, and my next goal is implementing Lemmy/Piefed/NodeBB compatible forums (which I wanted to do -and had suggested- since I was in Firefish).

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer, and thank you for taking interest in my project! Hope to join the threadiverse with my main account very soon - the goal is within April.

Ok, so I give you credit for trying but you didn’t actually explain:

• how is this different from mastodon?
• WHAT SPECIFIC FEATURES ARE DIFFERENT FROM MASTODON?
• how, SPECIFICALLY, is it different from Mastodon?
• IN WHAT WAY, does it function differently than Mastodon?

- WHY SHOULD ANYONE GIVE A SHIT?

Interpersonal drama is something that nobody cares about. Put that shit on your Tumblr so no one can read it.

@homes@piefed.world if you want to use Mastodon, you are very welcome to just do that. I never liked it, never used it, it always felt to me like an outdated Twitter. I respect everything they've accomplished, of course, but that doesn't mean I want to use the software :p

Misskey is probably the second biggest fedi microblogging platform, and has a very different approach, less strict, more fun, and with a much better looking interface. It also has emoji reactions, it has had quotes since forever (which Mastodon added very recently), there's a ton of things that are different, another one is that Mastodon has a 500 character/post limit while Catodon has 5000 etc.

There's wonderful ecosystem in fedi, and it would be a shame if we lost that pluralism and only use one or two platforms. Another thing that is obviously different (or will be very soon), is what is described in this topic. The reason that you made your post from a Piefed account, and not a Mastodon one =)

Usually the UI, character limit per post (mastodon is 500, misskey-like tend to be 5000) and reactions - misskey lets instances create custom reactions, like those you can see on discord servers

Doesn't Mbin also support Mastodon?

On Lemmy/Piefed I've only ever subscribed to communities.

Lemmy has comically bad integartion with Mastodon. I tried to make a template with some basic rules to only post once, but this approach was no where near close to being viable.

Indeed, Mbin allows following Mastodon et co. accounts

Any way to customize the layout? I'd rather to not have rounded corners on everything.

@staden_@pawb.social sure, in Settings > Preferences > Other you have three options, Catodon, Misskey and Sharkey styles, with Sharkey being the more squared one (and Catodon the roundest one). You can also change themes or create your own.

Oh, nice. Thank you!

https://lemmy.world/post/45381392 =)

@panos@community.nodebb.org Was not able to resolve the post, but I don't think it's your fault, lemmy.world turned on CF bot protection and it's blocking me :(

@julian@activitypub.space ugh - I can fetch it from this NodeBB server though by using the original url! I gave the url through lemmy.world above. https://community.nodebb.org/topic/439c1e92-64f5-41ae-8dd4-24d763313149/hello-world-from-catodon?_=1775733822991

@panos@community.nodebb.org I'm also not able to fetch it directly

https://catodon.rocks/notes/akv4dziup8bz00hy sends HTTP 401 to my local dev instance. Might be because it's a localhost address.

It loads on from a properly hosted instance though :)