Hello world, I have been using (and am enjoying using) mastodon for a couple of days now but remain a little confused by some things. Many things, but... WELL how does other things in the fediverse like interact? I understand that different servers can passively "bleed" into each other through interaction, but that's just for mastodon. I've seen people advertise for things like Firefish or Calckey but what's the purpose of those? Isn't mastodon the same?
@clueless_capybara I'm sure someone else can explain it better, but my understanding is that Mastodon and non-Mastodon servers can interact in much the same way that different Mastodon servers interact. If you follow an account on a non-Mastodon service (like Pixelfed or Bookwyrm or Peertube), then those posts will show up in your Mastodon feed kind of as if they were toots: you'll see the post author, the time, the text of the post, and any associated content (images or video or whatever) as links.
I'd suggest following an account on another service to see how it works!
@clueless_capybara think of it like accessing the Internet through a PC vs a cell phone.
It’s all the same Internet but the PC and the phone will give you very different experiences. Web pages will at least be much smaller :) but they might also display different versions on the phone, versions better tailored to the different interfaces.
Same with #Fediverse.
Behind the scenes it’s all the same system, but each of these programs is basically a different interface optimized for a different use.
So #Mastodon is an interface optimized for microblogging, Pixelfed is optimized for photos, etc.
All one system, but different ways of displaying the system based on different priorities.
@clueless_capybara I think things are just by nature kind of disorganized around here, still kind of new, with people still figuring out how best to use the platform.
As you can imagine, the setup here raises all sorts of weird questions like, “What should my photo sharing platform do when someone sends it an essay? Or an audio file?”
It’s kind of a wild west without a central authority, but that’s just part of the situation when you move away from central authority.
@volkris @diazona That's honestly a really neat way of explaining it and helped me a lot! So far I seem to find other programmes a little at random, is that as intended or is there a catalogue? I don't mind exploring, I just want to be sure I'm not overcomplicating it :)