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ISSUED: 2024-05-03 EDITED: 2024-05-07
I started using Diaspora* in 2016 and I continued to use until 2022 (I guess) when my account was closed by inactivity. I recently opened a new account because I am generally unsatisfied with the kind of interaction Mastodon offers.
Diaspora* is a social media platform built on easy of use and focused on privacy (with its on limitation though), perhaps well known a bunch of years ago, but today it is almost forgotten.
This social media, that aimed to be a privacy focused competitor of Facebook, had a turbulent genesis: launched as startup, it failed its original mission and it ended up becoming a real community project endorsed exclusively by its contributors and users.
More information are available here:
Today Diaspora* is an stale position by design and principles, and it does not offer any connectivity to ActivityPub like, for instance, Friendica which on the contrary supports its own protocol DFRN, diaspora-protocol and ActivityPub.
If you, like me, love to interact with freesoftware and opensource culture the majority of the geeks & nerds moved on Mastodon, but in the past the closing of Google+(1) let poor a lot of its users on Diaspora* and for a couple of years (2018 & 2019) it was a vibrant space even though tech-folks were slowly moving toward Mastodon (and Friendica or Hubzilla). I did the same too. I used to have a Friendica account mostly used on the desktop and my old Diaspora* account mostly used on mobile because the former didn't have a suitable mobile application yet.
Despite this critical situation the project is still alive and under development even though the pace is quite moderate.
I don't know the reasons why many people left Diaspora*, I guess are multiple, but observing the opensource scene from the border, as an outsider for almost twenty years, I was able to recognize some patterns that are common in this environment:
The project born as startup led by a bunch of young guys failed its promising and turning everything over the community[2], this event marked Diaspora* negatively before the eyes of the (opensource) devs community.
Both the project and the protocol were also labeled, and considered, as amateurs creating frictions between the core team and external contributors.
A closed attitude, which is pretty common on the opensource space, let the project completely isolated.
When the tech people started to move away the majority followed after them.
Once I made a poll on Diaspora — the poll is lost cause I closed that account — asking to the people still there if they were using other platform like Friendica, Hubzilla, or Mastodon, and if at least they heard about them; and the result was quite predictable, more than 90% of participants (they weren't that much honestly) didn't know the existence of the other platforms.
This confirmed to me that (tech) people were leaving Diaspora* out of bias, not because the platform was by any means shoddy.
Because the project failed to become a successful startup and quickly handed everything over to its community, today Diaspora* is the sole true social media platform driven by a community, and its protocol isn't endorsed by any "official" body, like ActivityPub which is a W3C project, and we know that W3C is an organism that is heavily manipulated by its members, which includes among the others also Meta and ByteDance.
Diaspora* was ditched quickly by the venture capitalists and they probably will never show up again, thus we can consider it a safe spot. I would refrain to be extremely optimistic or romantic, but having a real independent community that cannot be manipulated by anyone, including an hypothetical BDFL, is a great relief for the end-users.
Nonetheless Diaspora* is a great platform that has many arrows in his quiver, let's review the main ones:
Aspect management: this was introduced by Diaspora* and borrowed by other major service like G+ and Facebook.
Long post: since its inception it was designed for long written post.
Grouping messages: post and replies lie in its own "room", each participants is notified about any other user activities in that "room".
It uses markdown to style the text.
It does less so it usually pretty fast.
You can add endless tags to fill your stream.
Grouping messages is my favorite feature and is the main reason why I dislike Mastodon. The latter adopts what I call: "the farting threads mode" — which was carbon-copied from X (former twitter) — and that allows a persistent stream of posts that let anyone constantly engaged on the platform rather than to participate to a collective discussion. On the other hand, ActivityPub is designed to notify to a single person plus the ones that are mentioned, so does Mastodon, this ends up reinforcing the pattern "followed-followers" which is the core modality of the privative social networks. Diaspora* instead is closer to a forum-like approach, although without any hierarchy or structure, and definitely more dynamic! Perhaps the long posts and forum-like mode depends by Diaspora* being born earlier.
Diaspora* is still missing some key features that have never been implemented so far:
Modern multi-column layout — the default single column layout really belongs to the past where wide-screen weren't the standard.
Editable posts — this a nice feature to have and is now available across the Fediverse.
Better moderation tools — this area really needs a refactoring, ignored people are still able to appear inside other people posts you participate in; you can't block entirely pods (servers) like in Mastodon.
Grouping hashtags — to better segment your areas of interests.
Granular control over reshared posts — grouping and disabling reshared posts is a necessary feature.
Other protocols compatibility — to be able to reach a broader audience.
If Mastodon with its 10 millions of users is able to influence all the other ActivityPub projects, what is going to happen when, with its 150 million of users, Threads by Meta will be 100% ActivityPub compatible?
Projects that aim for some monetary return will go where the users are in abundance, and it will be up to each individual node to block or not the Thread rampage. Surely ActivityPub will be extend and poured into ActivityPub 2.0, an upgrade that will unquestionably please Meta; as a matter of fact the machine propaganda has already started its engine. [3]
Eating the breadcrumbs of a trillion-dollar company is still worth any effort. A lot of current projects and potential newer ones, are really interested in gaining access to Threads' user base, however when you invite the Devil at your table there's no coming back! Never!
If you are unhappy with this scenario you should re-evaluate your thoughts against Diaspora*. I heard that many developers didn't like the way the data was(is) stored and represented into the Diaspora* protocol. I also heard that they weren't satisfied with ActivityPub either! I already mentioned about Diaspora* being considered an amateur project and therefore marginalized, the reality is that all the open protocols without the W3C endorsement were marginalized: I am referring to Friendica DFRN, Hubzilla zot-protocol and Diaspora-protocol.
Apparently on the internet only some open technology are allowed to be diffused, while any independent project will be marginalized exactly as our beloved Gemini protocol. I like this quote from the FAQ (Responses and rebuttals to common criticisms of Gemini):
> we're pretty content with our little amateur world. [4]
And so am I! I prefer an amateur project that respects their users, respects their privacy, has a slow but steady pace, creates a sane environment for devs and user, and most important does less — because «less is more» — than this new shiny thing many want to squeeze out from ActivityPub.
Diaspora* can be all of that, and because the overall simplicity of its UX/UI it may also being feasible to create a GemUI for it and use a capsule to connect to the Federation, exactly as Tootik does with ActivityPub.
The future of Diaspora* depends by you! Yes also you and also me (but I currently have an account), and your and mine friends and acquaintances! But a decentralized social network can't be isolated by the other projects, we should be a whole community. Unfortunately Diaspora* doesn't support any other protocol like Friendica and Hubzilla (they also support ActivityPub) and I don't know if because for technical reasons or something else, but without evidence and knowledge I attribute the lack of interoperability to that "close attitude" I mentioned earlier.
However Diaspora* devs have a clear understandment about this missing feature, and honestly I don't disagree with this comment:
> Mastodon, Friendica, and diaspora* are very different projects, and I would not say either one is “better”. Mastodon had perfect timing and is catering a lot to the nerds who want something that feels like twitter but is not. Friendica caters a lot to the small group of people who want a tool that “can do everything” and are willing to spend weeks with learning Friendica. diaspora* caters to people who don’t want to spend weeks on learning how things work, and people who appreciate a simpler UX and are fine with the reduced set of features.[5]
But I do believe that a minimum of interoperability is a good thing even though people continues to stay on their own garden.
Perhaps a bridge that translates the diaspora-protocol calls to ActivityPub and vice-versa it might be the solution that makes everyone happy. Actually, It does already exist a project that has exactly this scope, it is called "Bridgy Fed"[6], it still doesn't support Diaspora* and I am not even sure it could, I asked on the Fediverse I hope to get an answer anytime soon…
When we speak about social media the "network effect" is important and any opensource project needs a certain number of users to get out of it enough developers and testers to keep the project alive, the stale situation of Diaspora* is the reflex of a shrunken user base, perhaps a bridge toward ActivityPub may help Diaspora* to reach more people and get again more involvement.
Diaspora* is a great platform with a sleek and nice UX/UI, but some improvement are really needed to catapult it into 2024, if really the Fediverse is at risk of enshittification then the diaspora-protocol, supported also by Friendica and Hubzilla, will be the last resource available and therefore it is important to keep Diaspora* alive!
For comments or suggestion write me at:
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