Hello Fediverse!

Zeitgeist 2 Minutes

This week, WordPress.com announced that all of their blogs would now have the option to join the Fediverse. The announcement included instructions on how to enable it.

As Twitter, now X, has become increasingly less usable, a number of other platforms have been vying to be its replacement: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and several others. Unfortunately, choosing a social media platform has historically been more about who was on that platform than its feature set.

But one trend offers the chance of upending that calculation: interoperability. If someone on service A can follow and interact with people on service B or any other service, then, similar to using email or the straight web, everyone can be free to choose the platform of their choice. The biggest new factor in the calculation might be whether a particular service participates in that interoperability.

WordPress.com’s announcement means they’ll be part of that broad federation. For now, turning it on just means a couple of million Mastodon users, as well as users of a few other Fediverse services, can subscribe directly to your blog. However, both Tumblr and Threads have announced plans to join the Fediverse, so eventually this could dramatically increase the reach of anyone participating in these services by hundreds of millions of users.

Hopefully critical mass will incentivize other services to join. Bluesky, with its own federation protocol, might eventually be brought into the fold. And even the old legacy social networks may find it worth their while. It’s a future which could marry the benefits of the old open web with the conveniences of social networks.

So this blog is now on the Fediverse. The purpose of this post is to announce that, and to note that the current implementation has some rough edges.

The biggest I’ve noticed so far is that while the blog posts themselves federate out to other services, comments currently don’t. A direct reply to the post on another service does show in WordPress as a comment, which is cool, but it appears to be one way. Replies to that comment do not currently go back to the other service. Which means if you reply to a comment from Mastodon here in WordPress, the Mastodon person won’t see it.

In the short term, I’m not sure how many of these there will actually be. (So far I’m the only Fediverse follower of my blog.) But you can recognize a Fediverse comment because it will have “@blog-account-name” in it (“@selfawarepatterns.com” for this blog). You can see the reply in its native service, along with any subsequent replies, by clicking on the comment timestamp.

Hopefully this is something that will be fixed soon. I checked with the developers on their Github, and it’s slated to be included “in the next iteration”. Hopefully that means the next version release which is quickly incorporated by WordPress.com. Until then, if it becomes an issue here, I’ll do my best to bridge any conversations.

There are other issues, such as the post title not being included in the federated version, as well as the Fediverse profile looking a bit rough. And I’m sure others will come out with usage. But overall it’s progress.

Anyway, if you’d like to subscribe to this blog in the Fediverse, it’s address is selfawarepatterns.com@selfawarepatterns.com.

Do you plan to put your blog in the Fediverse? Or wait until the kinks are worked out?

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42 thoughts on “Hello Fediverse!”

  1. @selfawarepatterns.com I'm not sure I understand the value of reproducing every blog post's comment stream on another service. Sure, having replies to my comment coming back to me directly would be nice, is that the thinking here?Also, looking at the diagram, what's the difference between "publishing" and "microblogging"?

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    1. It seems like that’s always true. I have to admit that the WP community in general has historically been better than most social media interactions. Although I’ve also found that to be true of Mastodon. But not sure what happens when Tumblr, Threads, and other services start spilling in.

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    1. Did you have to do anything to make your site icon show up or did it just happen? Asking because mine shows the generic WordPress one.

      On the creator economy, yeah, that’s long been a problem. Writers often get screwed, and most people either don’t care or seem unable to understand. It seems like they think every writer is Stephen King. I read something this week from E. E. “Doc” Smith, classic sci-fi author, noting that he made more money per hour laying bricks than writing.

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      1. The Writer’s Digest did a recent survey, professional writers make less than minimum Fed wages, median, from writing alone. So obviously “full time” writers do not, on average, write full time, else they’d starve.

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  5. Very nice. I don't have any WordPress blogs anymore, but if I did, they'd definitely be connected to the fediverse.
    @selfawarepatterns.com@selfawarepatterns.com

    Liked by 1 person

  6. @selfawarepatterns.com This feels incredibly positive to interconnect each others ways of expressing our trains of thought. The nuances of numbers of characters published and who sees who’s comments etc can settle into place in time. The most important thing is to move power outside of walled gardens. This is done by inclusion and connecting to as many variants as possible. 🙏😊

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      1. Thanks for the clarification. Let’s see if Fediverse enhances network cooperability and brings more traffic. WordPress ‘support’ confirmed that I have set it all up correctly and my new posts should appear in Fediverse. I hope all the kinks get worked out.

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          1. Hey, thanks for confirming it’s on Mastodon. I imagine you have to sign up at Mastodon to view, follow and promote it? Forgive me, but I am completely ignorant about this whole topic.
            I hope they fix the appearance of your site.

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          2. No problem.

            On having to get a Mastodon account, not necessarily. Mastodon is currently most of the Fediverse and it helps in seeing how your stuff looks there. And if you want to be able to respond to any comments you get from the Fediverse, your responses in WordPress won’t go back to the commenter. For that, you’d have to respond with another Fediverse account. (Hopefully this won’t be the case for too long.)

            That said, getting a Mastodon account is free and easy: https://joinmastodon.org/
            (If you can’t decide which server, you can just do mastodon.social to get started.)

            On the appearance, thanks. I played with the site icon yesterday and now it’s showing. Good enough for now.

            Liked by 1 person

          3. Hi Mike. I just joined up to Masterdon and created a profile – Thanks to your link. I also created a redirect ‘HTML coding’ on my blog to Masterdon as per the recommendations on their ‘verification’ menu.
            I’m glad you worked out the appearance issue. Thank you once again for your information and assistance on all of this Mike.

            Liked by 1 person

  9. @selfawarepatterns.com My blog predates WordPress and other modern day blogging platforms meaning I would have to figure out myself how to insert my blog into the Fediverse. So I think it's more prudent to just make posts on my Mastodon account and link to the post I want to share.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. As a Star Trek fan, I’m always happy to join the Federation.

    But seriously, I’ll have to take some time to look into it. I feel like the traditional social media platforms are dying, and the Fediverse (or something very much like it) will be the way forward from here. So I do plan to put my blog on the Fediverse unless I discover some serious problem.

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    1. I hope you’re right. It’s definitely the direction I’d prefer to see things go. It seems like the illusion of benevolent walled gardens has been shaken, at least for now. (It’s a lesson we apparently have to relearn every decade or two.)

      So far, I’ve hit a couple of issues. One I mentioned in the post, that comments in WordPress don’t federate outbound yet, so to have a conversation with a Fedi commenter, you have to take it to Mastodon (or some other Fedi account).

      The other is I’ve caught some grousing in Mastodon about timelines being fill with blog posts. I was originally going to repost my blog posts from Mastodon, but until the app UIs catch up, I think I’ll let the federated posts stand alone and continue just linking to web versions from my Mastodon account.

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      1. That’s good for me to know. I kind of hoped/assumed that Mastodon would show a truncated version of a post, and you’d have to click on it if you wanted to read the whole thing. I don’t want to fill up people’s timelines with huge blocks of text like that.

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        1. The web version does (at least on the latest version), but after getting a couple of (polite) complaints, I looked at it in the official Mastodon iOS app, where long posts are shown in full. A lot of Fediverse platforms allow long posting, but given Mastodon’s current dominance in the federation, I guess it’s never been enough of an issue until now.

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  11. I feel so behind the times. Never even looked at Mastodon and your blog the only reason I’ve heard about it. I do like the idea of allow people from outside WordPress to comment. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing how to avoid upgrading to the business plan to get the plugin. (WordPress is irritating me more and more lately!)

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    1. Yeah, I’m not sure how many people are actually hearing about it. I knew about it because I follow tech news and was expecting it. And until Tumblr or Threads is in the Fediverse, this is mostly for Mastodon users. (Although one of the commenters in this thread is using something else.)

      Under your WordPress Settings / Discussion there should be a small non-descript button labeled “Enter the fediverse”. There is a big red button further below it about upgrading to Business. But you can click the Fediverse button without clicking the upgrade one. And once you click it, you’re done. (Business reportedly provides more options, but not enough to make me pay the extra money, at least for now.)

      I’m not sure I’d enable it right now though without a Mastodon account to reply to Fediverse comments. You can reply in WordPress, but the commenter won’t see it. If you do want a Mastodon account: https://joinmastodon.org/

      WordPress is definitely irritating. But I’m not enamored with any of the current alternatives.

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        1. Mastodon is basically a kinder gentler (most of the time) version of Twitter. You get more characters (typically 500). It’s typically a much calmer environment. Anyway, just saw your account and blog out there and followed them!

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    1. Thanks. Kind of dispiriting, but writing has never been a lucrative profession except for a miniscule number of people. Annoying that the sci-fi / fantasy genre didn’t rate a mention. Interesting that fulltime self published authors are doing relatively well. I wonder how many books you have to have out there to earn $24k a year.

      I was looking at the SFWA eligibility requirements this morning, and noticed that it’s now only having had $1000 in earning from writing. Not earnings in a year, just earnings period.

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