I migrated from Mastodon to Micro.blog. Here's what worked well, and where I have problems

Hosting on Micro.blog
1

This may prove informative, useful or enjoyable to folks here:

1 Like
2

I was not aware that I can use micro.blog as my Mastodon profile. I would say, the marketing is not very clear and easy to understand. Also the how-to was hard to understand, but as I already moved my Mastodon profile before a few times, I understood what needs to be done.

Here are my remarks what I miss with the Micro Social app:

  • Unfortunately the app doesn’t allow me to see when someone marks any of my posts as favorite.
  • Loading of profile picture in the timeline is very slow, same when I open a profile of a user … its loading very slowly. The app should have a kind of caching.
  • Usernames are not clickable. If a post contains a username, it’s not possible to click on that name to get to the Mastodon profile of the user.
  • I really miss website previews for most (all?) websites linked in posts.
  • Hashtags are not clickable and therefore there is no way to see what’s happening within a hashtag
  • ALT text for images is not displayed
  • I would love if the app would automatically refresh the timeline every time when I open the app. Right now I need to pull down and wait until it syncs the timeline (again, slow syncing)
3

Note: Micro.social is a third-party client to Micro.blog, so most of that feedback can/should be directed to the dev.

That said, Micro.blog the service:

  1. Ignores any “likes” completely-- that’s not a feature implemented as a part of the ActivityPub functionality that Micro.blog enables, as it’s not a part of the Micro.blog platform and Manton has chosen not to add that functionality for AP users.
  2. (app)
  3. (app)
  4. Micro.blog makes this same decision to not use OpenGraph previews at all.
  5. Micro.blog makes the same decision-- the service doesn’t support hashtags, and it makes no special affordance for hashtags coming from a Mastodon post.
  6. (app)
  7. (app)/possibly limitations in how timeline fetching works with the service.

The goal of support on Micro.blog is not “great Mastodon client” but instead “ActivityPub compatible timeline”.

1 Like
4

You cannot use Micro.blog as your Mastodon profile.

However, you can follow Mastodon users in Micro.blog. I choose not to do so because it is not an ideal experience. But I understand many Micro.blog users do.

Also, Mastodon users can follow Micro.blog users.

Micro.blog and Mastodon both use the ActivityPub protocol for communications. Another way to say that is that they are both part of the Fediverse.

5

It’s a Fediverse profile, you are right. I was simplifying it a bit, because it’s accessible in the whole Fediverse. That’s the beauty and even though it has some limitations, I’m fine with it as it helps me to maintain my online presence under my own domain. I might change that if Mastodon will allow to use custom domain handles for Mastodon profiles.

1 Like
6

Gosh, I was not noticing that Micro Social is from a different developer. There are so many different Micro Blog apps in the App Store, that I just assumed it’s another “experiment”. I ping @gregmorris and he might chip in :upside_down_face:

Thanks for your answers, very helpful to understand what decisions were made intentionally or limited by design by the AP protocol.

Regarding 7.: The timeline in the web does support hashtags, even though they are linked to the Mastodon instance the post is coming from. But you can see the post belonging to the hashtag there.