Seeing some push back here on the idea of confusing things with more terms than just “fediverse”. I get that. The problem is that that cat is very much out of the bag. Surely, for the vast majority of people that have any awareness of the fediverse, they think it’s just Mastodon.
Either way, “Mastodon” is a much larger “brand” than “fediverse” or anything else on the fediverse. So trying to get some conceptual branding going makes sense. It make things more clear, as the idea of the fediverse itself is kinda fuzzy and complex and probably best left out at the beginning. It’s a little bit like the matrix, you have to see it with your own eyes, IMO.
So, my lame contribution … ****Threadiverse!**: “Social media, but woven into threads, like Reddit or Forums, not like the chaos of Twitter, but all on the Fediverse so you can find anyone else doing anything else too.”
Eh we all have our opinions although I feel Threadiverse rolls off the tongue better than forumiverse (or foriverse which I also dislike.)
Also the term predates Threads by a full year, but I refuse to let the term die because of that association.
I just prefer fediverse, because it refers to the common network of apps and services speaking the same language: activitypub. There’s not really any such thing as the “threadiverse”, because lemmy can talk to mastodon, friendica, peertube, discourse, gnusocial, plerome, wordpress, lotide…
A lot of these have communities just like lemmy, and choosing to layout comments flat vs in a tree, is entirely a UI consideration for many of them. So if the thing distinguishing “threadiverse” is just comment trees and communities, then a lot of fediverse services already have those.
but if I am using Lemmy and someone says follow me on the fediverse, I have to say I can’t because there isn’t that ability. I think that’s one of the main differences that the word Threadiverse differentiates
Yes. Not being able to follow people isn’t just a UI question, it’s a core feature of the platform, and one of the main differences between microblogging and forums
[email protected] there’s nothing specifically precluding Lemmy and Piefed from following users.
You can follow users on NodeBB, and in fact because I did worked on Mastodon microblog interop first, the software only gained the ability to follow a category relatively recently.
So [email protected] has a point about it all being the fediverse, because some of what separates Lemmy/Piefed/mbin and Mastodon are artificial.
You can also follow people on Mbin too, and that’s good, but still at the moment, none of the most active Threadiverse software (Lemmy and Piefed) allow their users to.
Those limits might be “artificial”, but on the other hand, most of the userbase here has been around for more than 2 years now, and they still can’t follow other users.
I think there is a fundamental division between services for following people and services for participating in groups.
You are right that some of it is a UI consideration, but not all of it.
A lot of the above have communities in various forms, and they predate lemmy.
Threadiverse vs Forumverse, not sure if there’s a clear winner, I see both used interchangeably
forumverse isnt as catchy
But Threads is now the Meta platform. No ideal solution, really.
Just because a platform named itself a basic English word does not mean it cannot be used anymore there is X does it mean we just stop using the letter X?
If you talk to someone who’s not here about the “Threadiverse” they are instantly going to think it’s related to Meta’s Threads.
I like the name I use it a lot, don’t get me wrong, but that’s still an issue.
Do you have occasion to talk about the threadiverse to people who do not use threadiverse software?
I usually find the conversation is much more elementary (i.e. “what are open networks”, “what is the fediverse”) and I’d never get into discussions about what the subset of the fediverse known as the threadiverse, is.
Yes, regularly on https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ , when threads are posted on [email protected]
Reddit users are already familiar with the Threadiverse UI, and usually are reluctant to use anything “Fediverse” due to the issues with content discovery on Mastodon.
Showing them that there is a subpart of the Fediverse that have a similar UI to Reddit and solves most of the content discovery issues of Mastodon can help to make them give the platforms a try.
Okay that’s fair.
I still think that shying away from the term would just be letting Meta win.
Might be we have to add qualifiers every time we say “threadiverse”…
- threadiverse (not that threads)
- threadiverse (lemmy/piefed/mbin)
Then again I suppose if you have to do that then that defeats the purpose of the term, doesn’t it.
