I just posted a message about a weather report about some snow that we're going to be getting here in #Ottawa, and I used #hometown's very convenient "local only" feature–the main reason that we're running this fork of Mastodon.
By marking a post as local-only, it doesn't federate–it's only visible to users on our instance, https://ottawa.place. The combination of a regionally-focused instance and local-only posting means that I can post stuff like this that applies to Ottawa, without worrying about cluttering up the feeds of my followers that are elsewhere.
Local-only posts and Hometown are one of the main reasons that I'm excited about growing region-specific instances! It means that we can have a nice community here, but still keep in touch with friends, followers, colleagues, etc. from across the wider #fediverse
@mauve Yeah, I do wish there was an easy way to engage folks that are on other instances; I definitely don't want to require that people make https://ottawa.place their primary instance if they would prefer to be elsewhere.
I think you're right that multi-account setups, ideally with first-class support from mobile and desktop applications, could make this much easier.
I'm also investigating relays, and am hopeful that the community figures out something; maybe there's a way local-only posts could be relayed to certain other instances, for example?
Maybe Hometown could do something like what Akkoma has introduced which is the concept of the Bubble timeline? Instance admin can choose instances they want to be part of their "neighbourhood" and then the feeds of those instances would all be stitched together into a "bubble timeline".
This is a feature I think more fediverse microblogging platforms should "steal" from Akkoma. It's so useful.
Funny thing is that I think what you're looking for Akkoma already has. It has the ability to set your own post character limits, have local only posting, has the bubble feature, a built in relay and more.
There are some features missing that Mastodon has but for the most part, it's all there 😋.
@deltatux @mauve I actually really like a bunch of stuff about Akkoma–I think Elixir + the BEAM VM is a much better way to run an ActivityPub server, reaction emoji are neat, and the "Message Rewrite Facility" seems way more powerful than Mastodon's moderation tooling (IMO).
I think Mastodon is still much better for running large instances, though, and the client support is much better AFAIK?
Yes, Akkoma is much leaner than Mastodon, it's perfect for small & medium communities. Yes, I think Mastodon is better suited for very large deployments.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole MRF feature. It is powerful indeed but it's not that user/newb friendly lol. Using the Admin-FE web interface makes configuring Akkoma much easier.
As for client support, Pleroma (by extension incl. Akkoma) supports the Mastodon client API, so any Mastodon mobile app will support any Pleroma/Akkoma instances. Only exception is tooot! because of reasons, it's the only Mastodon mobile app that doesn't work with Pleroma/Akkoma.
For Android, someone forked the Tusky client, calling it Husky which supports Akkoma & Pleroma specific features. The latest beta supports Akkoma's Bubble timeline. However, the latest beta is quite buggy as notification & media upload is broken. The regular Tusky app works with Akkoma/Pleroma just fine, you just lose specific Akkoma/Pleroma features is all.
The official Mastodon app works with Pleroma/Akkoma but because it doesn't implement the standard Home, Local, Federated timelines, it kinda breaks the whole experience because the whole Trending & News sections are features that Pleroma/Akkoma lacks.
Other clients like Fedilab works great with Pleroma/Akkoma as well but I didn't like the app, ended up getting a refund from the Google Play Store.
On the iOS front, MetaText works great with it, so far it's my favourite free client. Didn't bother with the paid apps since it's not a personal device... Like Tusky, you do miss specific features but still very usable.
That is true but given how much more popular Mastodon is compared to any other fediverse platforms, devs are more likely to use the Mastodon API over the regular ActivityPub API.
Heck, most of the people who I follow and follow me are on Mastodon (or its forks), even looking at this thread, I'm the only person that's not on a Mastodon (or its forks) instance.
@andrew I think this means that the fediverse is in need of a "private groups" feature in general that's not just tied to instances and the instance moderators. E.g. a private group can span many instances and have cross-instance moderation for adding and removing members. 🤔
It would probably not be a mastodon feature but a new fedi-capable system.