Firefish is a new Fediverse social platform with a beautiful design, cool features, and great tools for your feed. It has a lot of potential to grow.
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As someone who spent a bit of time earlier this year (pre-rebrand) on firefish poking around on it I can personally vouch that the reviewer (@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml) has definitely eaten the dogfood here and is pretty much spot on about everything.
I was pleasantly surprised to see clips described as your favourite feature … mine too! One thing you didn’t quite make clear is that they can be either private or public. A public “clip” (collection of bookmarks) is a great way of sharing a series of posts. In a way it’s a nifty and very easy way of building up a web page of some sort. A nice example usage I ran into was creating a public clip of polls which together formed a survey that I could link to with a single URL.
Another thing you didn’t seem to touch on is MFM and the properly crazy things you can do with it (here’s a public clip of notable animations using MFM) but also the simple things that really do add some expression to your posts (colored text, actual bold and italic formatting, font size changes).
Longer posts may have been missed too? In my experience the 500 char limit of mastodon is just annoying. On firefish, with 4000 chars, you never have to worry about it … just write and it’ll be fine … just about any thread on masto can fit in a single post on firefish.
You’re absolutely right about Antennas … biggest disappointment I’ve had on the fediverse … seriously don’t trust anyone who tells you they’re awesome as they’re just spouting hype without having actually tried to use the feature for anything but the most basic things that can be done elsewhere.
And yea, the instability of the main instance is a serious problem. It’s the main reason I don’t use firefish anymore. Not only was the stability annoying, but the admins, IMO, are not quite upfront about how much of an issue it is and why it’s happening (there’s a competency gap that isn’t or wasn’t being managed well enough). Which is a shame because there was a moment there where firefish really could have taken off more than it has but a number of people, myself included bounced off of it.
While you praise the UI, I think there’s a fair critique around it being too much with too many features with text that is generally too small for many. Users have been asking since I was there for a more streamlined UI and I think many would enjoy that.
As you say, the Gallery feature could do with some love. Same goes for the Page feature which is a much more flexible tool for building effectively a web page except the UI is pretty bad and way too complex (an unaltered hangover from misskey I suspect).
In the end, what firefish/calckey/misskey shows is that the fediverse doesn’t need to merely be either a twitter or instagram or reddit clone … it can be many things often combined in different ways. Many have kinda forgotten (or worse never realised) that that can be the case largely because of how stagnant big social platforms are. If firefish gets its shit together, I agree with the reviewer, it could really take off.
Another more gossipy story around this is that some past maintainers forked firefish (over some sort of spat with the current lead dev and admin AFAICT). It’s called iceshrimp and last I heard the blahaj zone instance, who’ve always run a downstream fork, were going to align with iceshrimp over firefish. I don’t know where all of that is up to now, though iceshrimp is still going (they have a few servers and users: https://fedidb.org/software/iceshrimp), but it does emphasise I think that there’s something non-ideal at the developer level of the platform that probably needs to stabilise.
Antenna used to work differently, but were changed to be less performance intensive (and less useful) somewhere after the rebrand to Firefish.
Before the change, they were the single best feature of Firefish IMO
Interesting. I wrestled with them before the rebrand and concluded that where they were useful I could do the same with mastodon, but that they introduced too much complexity that just wasn’t helpful, and that was apart from the performance. From memory a central issue was that antennas pull down partial word matches and you couldn’t opt of that, which meant hashtags were the most useful queries as the leading hash avoided spurious matches.
The one exception to that would be the way you could select sources for any antenna, that is useful for sure.
I found the extra flexibility really useful. I could have an arbitrary number of words or hashtags in each antenna, rather than 4 like mastodon, which allowed me to cover all of the variations I wanted. I could use multiple words on one line for a boolean “and” function. Rare words, I would use without hashtags, common words, I would restrict to hashtags.
I could follow instances, I could follow people, I could follow keywords, and I could follow regular words, with more control than basic hashtags.
Ooooh, is that what happened? I noticed Antennae got worse after the rebrand but wasn’t sure what happened.
Wow, thanks for the great in-depth feedback! 🤩
Yeah, there’s definitely other areas I could’ve delved into, like Public Clips or MFM or pagebuilding. These in-depth reviews are challenging, due to trying to strike a balance between features and actually getting something published. Most articles of this nature takes me weeks, sometimes even a month or more.
The UI definitely has a learning curve, too, but as a veteran Fedi user, it suited me just fine. I’ve dealt with far, far worse 😂
The instability really bums me out. I’d like to think that things are slowly improving, but the lack of transparency (and frankly useless error messages) make it really hard to triage where the problem is and forge a path forward. The lead dev has also been sick recently, and suddenly is not very active online.
Finally, I think Firefish takes part in a long tradition of Misskey forks, where a half dozen systems all branch off of each other. It’s a shame that more of them don’t collaborate on the same platform, leaving many devs to cherry-pick across forks. I wonder sometimes whether this hurts development more than it helps.
"In the end, what firefish/calckey/misskey shows is that the fediverse doesn’t need to merely be either a twitter or instagram or reddit clone … it can be many things often combined in different ways. Many have kinda forgotten (or worse never realised) that that can be the case largely because of how stagnant big social platforms are. "
This statement by @maegul@maegul@lemmy.ml is a very important sentence for me. It reminds me of a statement that a participant at a Fediverse meeting said: “Maybe the Fediverse shouldn’t be sold as a substitute product like ‘vegan sausage’, but as something in its own right.”
(transl./ original in german: “Vielleicht sollte man das Fediverse nicht wie ‘vegane Wurst’ als Ersatzprodukt verkaufen, sondern als etwas Eigenständiges.”)
Thank you for your articles @deadsuperhero@deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml , which show that!
Vegan sausage is a perfect analogy! Thanks!
The instability really bums me out. I’d like to think that things are slowly improving, but the lack of transparency (and frankly useless error messages) make it really hard to triage where the problem is and forge a path forward.
Yea I feel you. I check in occasionally to see where things are at and from what I’ve seen, including your reports here and in the review, it really hasn’t dramatically gotten better. Which makes sense as I suspect the root cause hasn’t been fixed either.
It’d be curious to know how other instances are going and if they’re far more stable. I suspect they are, and if true, then the admins of firefish.social are doing a disservice to the platform (and a silly one at that) and should really make clear that their instance is experimental and unstable and that anyone wanting stability should go to another instance (of which there are a sufficient amount).
if anything, its gotten worse tbh. the upside is that the move account feature to mastodon works, was a bit concerned about that.
it doesnt block your old account after a move like mastodon does, so i still have a functional firefish account, just not my followers anymore
chris stating that hes hesitant to open his new (4 person) firefish server to other people until theyve tested more for stability makes me quite hesitant to recommend the platform for now, if stability issues are this deeply ingrained
Yea well instability has been such a perennial problem , especially given what you say, and it’s essentially a legacy platform so it would only be logical to presume it’s ingrained … not to mention that stability is basically the first job of a social media platform. Occasional downtimes are fine, but if it isn’t reliable it is likely not worth using … so it’s not something to fast and loose with.
I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but the lead dev has openly admitted to lacking the DB expertise they feel is necessary, and he and Chris were hoping to rely on an expert they know that didn’t show up for whatever reason. That on top of the legacy of the old misskey code base and it seems likely that the lead dev is just struggling to stay on top of the issues without creating new ones. Which is very reasonable! There’s a lot that goes into writing and running a social media platform! You really need a team.
Plasmatrap.com is very stable (for now)
I tried firefish. When I tried to do something, I was told my account was suspended for violating the rules. I hadn’t done anything on the platform yet, so I don’t know how I could have violated any rule. It also didn’t tell me which rule I violated.
very nice article…
…Just a few small comments:
- “Firefish is a hot new microblogging platform”: it’s not that “new” at all, #Calckey, which has been around since 2021, has only recently changed its name to Firefish
- the antennas / news picker had apparently not yet been fully understood by the author: they do not fill retroactively and it is a full-text search that also finds parts of words. Therefore, if it doesn’t fit, search words can be excluded - it works very well for me! If you use it for a little longer instead of just taking a quick look, you can use it to structure your content very well.
- “Lack of an official app is kind of disappointing”: “official” apps are perhaps important as a “brand” for some, the so-called “Mastodon” app is also the worst app ever for Mastodon (fortunately with many better alternatives). The PWA for Firefish works great on all devices, if you don’t want to miss out on any features and want the best look, you don’t need an app.
- The biggest hindrance at the moment right now is the flagship instance at firefish.social:" The instance has clearly communicated that it primarily serves as a test instance, i.e. it does not strive for or want to guarantee stability. In contrast to mastodon.social, Firefish itself also makes clearer reference to the selection and there are now really many Firefish instances.
For me, the biggest disadvantage of Firefish at the moment is that it doesn’t yet federate properly with Lemmy.
Yeah, I get that it’s not that new, especially since it’s a rebranded fork. But, as a fediverse project with its own brand and design sensibilities, it’s relatively new, especially compared to Mastodon.
Unfortunately, I’ve used the Antennas for like two months, and they’re janky. The “non-retroactive data fill” point that you make is only partially true, and seems to mostly apply to filters pertaining to a collection of users, or a collection of servers as a data source. It’s a confusing UX papercut. Worse yet, my Fediverse Devs antenna example has been around for two months, and barely produces anything most of the time.
I don’t believe that an “official branded app” is strictly necessary. What I meant was more in line with “Firefish could really use apps developed for its features specifically.” Sadly, Misskey compatible apps continues to be a wasteland compared to the plethora of Mastodon ones.
The whole “the flagship instance is a sandbox test instance” is kind of a sometimes-true sometimes-not situation. It’s definitely less stable now than it was two months ago, but that kind of messaging and expectations management didn’t seem to really happen until sometime after the CalcKey migration.
And yeah, proper group / community federation with Lemmy is a huge deal! I’m looking forward to what Pixelfed is doing with Groups, as they look somewhat similar, and aim to maximize compatibility while providing good management tools.
Thank you for your answer. I hadn’t realised before that you yourself are the author ;-) So it’s a really good article, I just selectively quoted the aspects that I see differently or have experienced differently.
I don’t use Firefish that much yet. My main account is in Friendica and I would like to move my Mastodon account to Firefish, but the lack of federation with Lemmy (or other groups like Friendica forums) is still holding me back. However, I have had very good experiences with the Antennas in particular and have also heard of many good experiences with them. I get a lot of content there that is usually appropriate and not covered by subscribing to hashtags. Lemmy accounts/communities cannot yet be followed from Firefish, but I get content from Lemmy via the News Picker. You might have to ask Firefish experts what the problems could be.
I am perhaps a bit sensitive to the topic of the flagship instance, because it reminded me of all the discussions about Mastodon-social and their onboarding process, which pushed their instance very aggressively, which in my opinion had negative effects for the Fediverse (centralisation) and for the users of this instance (very slow, lack of moderation, spam bots, etc.). When I have heard from Firefish users about performance problems, it was always users of firefish.social (or previously calckey.social), never from other instances. But that is of course a subjective impression.
On the subject of apps, it was also difficult that the “Mastodon” app pushed itself so to the fore. Many who enter the Fediverse via this app do not even know that 1. there would have been other instances than Mastodon.social 2. that they are in the Fediverse and also communicate with many users who do not use Mastodon 3. that there are many other apps they could use.
Very often questions like “Help, x and y don’t work, I can’t find that etc.” come up and very often it turns out that it really doesn’t work in this official app (but in all the others). In any case, Firefish doesn’t need an app like this. But of course it would be great if there were an app that really included the Firefish-specific features. In my opinion, an app as an end in itself has no added value when the PWA is much better. I think the Firefish project should therefore prioritise the stable functioning and further development of the existing functions rather than the development of its own app. But I can’t really comment because I don’t really need any apps (for the Fediverse).
I hope that the proper group / community federation will come soon. In any case, the devs wrote to me once about the question, saying that it is planned.
the so-called “Mastodon” app is also the worst app ever for Mastodon (fortunately with many better alternatives).
Btw, can you suggest some?
I’ve been happy with Tusky https://tusky.app/
I’m using tusky already. it’s alright, but it doesn’t even have an explore tab.
I’ve tried a few of them but haven’t found anything better than the PWA 🤷
Random question that people may not know the answer to, but is calckey.world run by the same people that run Lemmy.world? I’ve been pleased with this Lemmy instance and the people who are running it seem to know what they’re doing, and if so I’d just sign up with that one.
I believe it is. Calckey was the old name of the platform.
Thanks!
Actually there’s confirmation here: https://blog.mastodon.world/
Ruud’s blog where they provide financial and other details about the servers they run.
Oh wow, I didn’t realize how transparent and well run they really are, I was just basing that on vibes. Cool!
@caos
One point on Lemmy. What software best federates with Lemmy? I’m posting this comment from a Mastodon account through Fedilabs. The Lemmy thread is understandable, more or less. Is this only a matter of client and UI?
@deadsuperhero@RookieNerd
Nope, the main post of each lemmy thread is a title+link only as seen from mastodon web client and background interface. Although comments are fully readables.
Let’s hope this will be better in lemmy/masto future versions
@caos @deadsuperheroMastodon cannot display posts with headings and the thread view is very rudimentary. In my experience, the best way of displaying and federating with Lemmy is with Friendica.
@talou @caos @deadsuperhero A nice and good read in this regard comes from the ActivityPub academy: https://seb.jambor.dev/posts/understanding-activitypub-part-2-lemmy/
This explains it very well
@RookieNerd
Also seen from a pixelfed account, the main post of a lemmy thread is fully readable, but I can’t see the comments
@caos @deadsuperhero@talou @caos @deadsuperhero whaaat :O screenshot please
The instance has clearly communicated that it primarily serves as a test instance, i.e. it does not strive for or want to guarantee stability.
that’s just not true > when c.s switched over to dev branch in april 2023, this was not motivated by wanting to become a “test instance” > rather, this was a desperate move to keep the instance afloat which by then had been become quite wonky > afterwards, things got even worse, so the transpicuous idea to rebrand the whole project
noting, absolutely nothing about f.s is about being a test instance > see also atomicpoet’s post about movin away from f.s - f.s was supposed to be a flagship instance, but only evolved into a shipwreck
the biggest disadvantage of firefish: its community which has become like a sect - but that had been going on for a very long time already …
Didn’t know about atomicpoet moving on from firefish.social. Makes sense. Interesting time for firefish then, as it seemed atomicpoet and their contacts were supporting the platform in a number of ways. The departure seems a little like that got burnt out leaving the lead dev and their contributors to their own devices.
This is perhaps not representative it’s just random infos that reached me. I am not in the Firefish community or even sect, but only have a test account on a small instance as a supplement. I only have a relatively large number of contacts to other Firefish users, who in turn help newer users get started with Firefish. And there is very often the recommendation to avoid the “flagship” instance, also with reference to the recommendations of devs. I had also followed Atomicpoet for a while, but there was a bit too much input, so I rather heard from Kainoa or Calculator.
For those who don’t know what Firefish is: https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Firefish%3F
I go to firefish.social click on explore and nothing shows up 🤷♂️
All I saw was a message that “trans rights are human rights”…
Yeah no shit. But can I get an app too, or?
That was mentioned in the article, that firefish.social is not recommendable and does not run stably. Have you looked at other instances? There is a selection on the JoinFirefish page and there are many more instances.
Same. Swim harder?
Can anyone enlighten me regarding Firefish? I tried to pick a server and there are servers with “beta”, “alpha”, or nothing on their mini profile on the join page. Which one should I pick based on what?
Also, I’m still not quite sure abou the connection between firefish, calckey, and misskey. Are they the same thing? Honestly, I haven’t done any research.
Misskey is a relatively old Fediverse platform (older than Mastodon, since 2015?). It is relatively widespread in Asia, especially Japan. Calckey was a fork of Misskey developed since 2021, which aimed to be more oriented towards European needs (e.g. a less manga style). In summer 2023, Calckey was renamed Firefish.
The servers: I think “alpha” is maybe the dev version and “beta” the older stable version? at least Firefish.social has alpha. Edit: Alpha =version 1.0.5, Beta = 1.0.4, without specification = 1.0.3 - this is how it looks after exemplary matching with Fediverse.observer
Thanks! No wonder there are a lot of Japanese servers there. I’ll try making an account now :)
Here is a little user guide for Firefish: https://thefedi.wiki/firefish/user/home
