Here’s a page with some features https://firefish.social/@youronlyone/pages/calckey-faq
I think I’ll stay on Mastodon. I don’t like the Firefish UI. I haven’t tried Akkoma yet.
To the uninitiated, Firefish is to Mastodon what Kbin is to Lemmy
So Firefish is just a Kbin alternative?
It is a Mastadon alternative where Mastadon is a Twitter ( X ) alternative.
Kbin is a Lemmy alternative where Lemmy is a Reddit alternative.
This is potentially confusing to Kbin users as Kbin also does microblogging.
I understood this comment chain but im so sorry for everyone that is new to the fediverse and has absolutely no clue what is going on lmao
No, not really. Firefish is a microblogging platform. Kbin is a link aggregation and topic discussion platform, with a wonky attempt at microblogging.
I wouldn’t call it an alternative to Mastodon or Twitter either, because Firefish has features that neither of them have. The only Microblogging platform it could be seen as an alternative to, now that it has gone beyond being just a fork, is Misskey.
People tend to compare Firefish and Misskey more to Tumblr, but they still have things that either were inspired by other microblogging platforms (twitter, included), or that are unique to them. So they aren’t fully “Tumblr alternatives” either.
I have a friend who is even less initiated than that. Can you explain for his sake what that means?
Firefish and Mastodon are both microblogging platforms (like Twitter) on the fediverse. Kbin and Lemmy are both forum style platforms (like Reddit).
Where Lemmy and Mastodon are for people who prefer a more basic just the necessities experience, kbin and Firefish provide a more stylish experience with more options and customization.
Does it still support activitypub?
ok but how about you tell me why to move from mastodon to firefish?
It has the better feature set and UX. Some things I like:
- Threaded comment replies (though they display differently from Lemmy’s).
- Antennae for discoverability.
- Can use hashtags AND keywords.
- Can filter results by instance.
- Can create multiple timelines to display content in.
- Customizable UI via widgets.
- I think the theming options are better.
- Full-text search.
- Quote posts.
- Cat mode.
ok but how about you tell me why to move from mastodon to firefish?
I like the UI better (by a lot), I like the “antennas” feature, I like that I can do a traditional blog post if I choose (“pages” they call it), it’s very custom-configurable, and in the 3 days since I’ve joined I’ve already seen bugfixes and improvements deployed.
Why move? If Mastodon is 100% great for you and nothing about the look/feel/functionality of Firefish jumps out at you then there is really no reason.
Maybe I’m blind but I’m not seeing a way to follow tags on Firefish (I joined the main instance because the UI convinced me).
You can’t follow tags (something that should be added), but you can add them to Antennas
I like Firefish, I am on a Firefish instance myself, and I feel really good about it. It’s fun to use and it federates with Mastodon most of the time, and with Misskey some of the time. Unfortunately, microblogging on the fediverse is not as straightforward as forums on the fediverse, as they’re a lot more fragmented and there are 5 or 6 different platforms instead of 2 like we have here.
Related: https://beehaw.org/post/6853561
mastodon.art has decided to suspend firefish.social from their instance due to issues with its administrator
There are other Firefish instances, though, in case one wants to use Firefish and also federate with mastodon.art.
It was actually created in 2022 as Calckey, as a fork of Misskey, so one of the Fediverse social networking sites. It has recently rebranded though to the Firefish name. It is a real breath of fresh air though in terms of features and great UI!
It is a real breath of fresh air though in terms of features and great UI!
I want to be able to do more than just upvote this lol. I was so pleasantly surprised. In minutes I was sure I wanted to migrate my Mastodon account.
What is the advantage of Firefish over Mastodon?
Like every open source platform there are so many alternatives. Like all the open source Linux distributions and all the open source messaging apps. The social media space now has lemmy, kbin, mastodon, now firefish. So many places, Firefish doesn’t appear to be federated yet, hopefully they will soon, users now will have too many options to choose from. This brings me back to when I picked my first linux distro, I had Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, PopOS, Arch, Manjaro, and hundreds more. It’s a bit overwhelming, I’ll be following the development and hope everything goes well.
Firefish has federation support. You can even see the platform the posts come from in the top right corner of each post.
First time user of firefish. Kind of like the UI. “Global” section is kind of chaotic. Guess that’s just the fediverse for ya
What about mobile apps? I’m on mastodon, but I basically never see the mastodon UI as I stick with Ivory (as I’m a former Tweetbot User on some ancient Microblogging Plattform which has transformed to something… else).
I don’t want to use some „nice looking“ Webpages which are optimized for mobile screens. I want dedicated Apps, as they offer mostly the much better experience.
I think the recent run of developing high class Mastodon Apps earlier this year (as the mentioned ancient Plattform kicked them out) gave mastodon an enormous boost.
Also that’s the same for Lemmy for me. Since Memmy and Mlem are in the AppStore (where I preferred Memmy), I use Lemmy much more and haven’t opened Reddit since 1st July.
So, as long as there aren’t any major high class mobile Apps for firefish, I don’t expect it getting anywhere near to mastodon.
HOLY SHIT… I just tried firefish.social and there’s TONS of right wing anti trans lies in their trending “news.”
No fucking thank you.
Does it not depend on who you follow, is what you see in your feed? Like most networks on Fediverse.
Thank you for your service.
What are you talking about? Trending isn’t even working right now… sources please.
they posted multiple anti transgender stories. obvious astroturfing. I’m out.
Isn’t that a problem with specific instances/federation rather than the software itself? There are some hateful right-wing Lemmy instances too but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you as the instance you use has probably defederated from them.
they seem to have an issue moderating content.
They’re also not on your instance in the first place. You’re looking at the Global feed. That isn’t content from Firefish.Social, that’s content from elsewhere on the Fediverse. Firefish.Social admins can’t moderate content on another server.
I went to firefish. I made an account. On fire fish I saw anti transgender astroturfing.
Does this mean firefish is free from all douchebaggery?
No.1- Never join the official instances. They always are too big that are almost impossible to moderate.
2- In which timeline did you see those comments? Because if it was global, it’s possible these are unknown servers the admins aren’t aware of. (The trending section is global)
I’m just saying, that’s like buying a window from Lowe’s, installing it in your home, and then being mad at Lowe’s for having a bad view. They can’t control what you see when you use the tool literally designed to look at the outside world.
I mean, to be fair, the person you replied to is using Kbin rather than Lemmy - they’re interacting with a Lemmy community though.
Just to be clear, which firefish server did you join?
I just checked out the main server (firefish.social) and there wasn’t any transphobic content in the “Global” or “Local” section.
I’m wondering if you ended up on a really toxic right-wing fediverse instance, that happens to use Firefish as its software, and so the Firefish main site stupidly/ignorantly listed it as a possible place to sign up. If that’s the case they need to get rid of it.
That’s a mastodon server.
Not to speak for @jerome, but they were originally talking about the topics appearing in the trending news, which implies that they are referring to firefish.social’s federation/lack of defederation from problematic instances, not the software itself
Correct they seem to have an issue moderating content.
Quite right. Must have been the global feed.
I quickly looked through the #news tag, not seeing this. I guess those bots were active at the time?
There is a variety of instances for Firefish, such as kitty.social. One weird thing I notices is that the Firefish logo is not consistent across all instances. ThatOneCalculator, creator of Firefish, was recently involved in some drama, so some instance owners put an alternative logo instead.
Ew. I’m on easymode.im and it’s a lovely Firefish instance, I don’t see any shit like that.
How did you settle on that instance?
Honestly, I migrated from Mastodon just when Calckey (now Firefish) seemed to be gaining more traction. I looked at available instances, and this was one of the first to pop up that checked most of my boxes, being that it is a generalistic instance (skewed a bit toward video game/nerd culture), was at the time up-to-date (it’s now a little behind) and properly utilized HTTPS, and had limits I was cool with (character limits, drive storage, etc.). I later found out that it’s run by a tech YouTuber I admire, so that was a nice bonus.
My only complaint is that there aren’t many custom emojis. lol
I just tried it out and the UI and additional functionality is a massive upgrade over the current stock Mastodon experience. And it federates seamlessly with Mastodon accounts. The Antenna feature is something that I’ve been looking for in Mastodon since day one. The fediverse rules. Use it if you like it!
I wasn’t a fan last time I tried it out. I’m glad they changed the name though. Calckey sounded more like an excel alternative.
I’ll have to check it out again at some point though.