Is anyone else of you using twtxt? If so, which client are you using?
Looks like a great platform for experiments. Twitter for ed/sed users.

https://github.com/buckket/twtxt

Awesome, from a hacker's POV.

(06-03-2017, 10:22 PM)jkl Wrote: https://github.com/buckket/twtxt

I'm not into microbloggin (more into blogging0 but it seems really cool.
Sort of like RSS for mini quotes, if I'm not mistaken.

If I ever want to "twit" I'll do it this way.

Thanks for sharing.

If you care about the freedom aspect and have concerns about twitters business model, privacy etc, you could check out https://quitter.se. It's part of GNU social.

The problem with Quitter, Friendica etc. is that it's still centralized. Not free enough.

I do have a Quitter account (which I rarely use), but a major advantage compared to Twitter is not really existing. Every few months Quitter sees a sudden rise of activity. Not for long though.

(06-03-2017, 10:22 PM)jkl Wrote: Is anyone else of you using twtxt? If so, which client are you using?
Looks like a great platform for experiments. Twitter for ed/sed users.

https://github.com/buckket/twtxt

Awesome, from a hacker's POV.

This is pretty useful if you're a person who's only going to share stuff or read from others; but if you're willing to interact I'm yet to find a tool that let's manage mentiones, replies, etc... a bit more.

(Hardcore Twitter user here)

Twitter is a micro-blog, not a chat! Kids today ... :-)

It's sad that Twitter tries to be a better Facebook these days. For those interested in its original purpose, twtxt might be perfect. However, twtxt does support interactions. You'll just need to refresh manually. (Or with a cronjob...)

(08-03-2017, 12:31 PM)jkl Wrote: Twitter is a micro-blog, not a chat! Kids today ... :-)

Even blogs support comments and sharing so I don't get it.

(08-03-2017, 12:31 PM)jkl Wrote: However, twtxt does support interactions. You'll just need to refresh manually. (Or with a cronjob...)

I read it does and it's perfect for twtxt purpose, but can't be compared to the engagement achieved on Twitter

Well, yes, the accessibility of twtxt is slightly lower because of the non-existent central web interface. It has other strengths though.

Guys Hi 👋 I know this thread id at least ~3yrs old but I wanted to drop-by and just say a few things about Twtxt.

Twtxt is very much alive and growing. In part due to a new app I wrote and launched back in Aug 2020. Since then we have grown the community (on a $0 budget) from whatever it was then (mostly idle Twtxt users, many inactive) to +145 new users and reawakened some old ones :)

I built a web app called well umm prologic/twtxt (https://github.com/jointwt/twtxt) and launched the first pod called https://twtxt.net/ -- You are welcome to join there and come check it out!

We now also (this week) have launched and made available to the general public Mobile Apps for both iOS (initially rejected, so we're resubmitting shortly) and Android called Goryon.

It is still built on the same twtxt.txt spec but we've extended a few things to support Profile Avatars/Photos, Taglines, standardised configuration, external feeds (RSS/Atom) and much more.

Come join us! (https://jointwt.org)

Kind regards

James

(07-10-2020, 05:44 PM)prologic Wrote: Guys Hi 👋 I know this thread id at least ~3yrs old but I wanted to drop-by and just say a few things about Twtxt.

Pretty cool project, you took it to the next level.
Now people know of a full-feature decentralized microblogging platform.

If members are interested we could run our own pod.

(07-10-2020, 06:16 PM)venam Wrote: If members are interested we could run our own pod.

I would very much welcome and appreciate this! Do you want to spin up your own or have us host it for you at https://twt.social (our hosting platform). Either/or is fine, but the more pods we have the better we can build out cross-pod discovery and interaction features! (so far it all works rather nicely!)

Kind regards

James

Awesome, although the concept of “pods” mostly voids the decentralized aspect. (I prefer text files.) But I can surely see why this attracts people. I’ll advertise.

Quote:twtxt is a Self-Hosted, Twitter™-like Decentralised microBlogging platform. No ads, no tracking, your content, your data!

(you might get this a lot but) This sounds an awful lot like a number of other projects, some of which have formed very large networks, namely Mastodon and Pleroma. How does twtxt compare, and why might one choose twtxt over one of these other platforms? Or are they actually quite different?

venam Wrote:If members are interested we could run our own pod.

User can already post ! gopher://g.nixers.net/0/~z3bra/twtxt.txt

(08-10-2020, 09:56 AM)mcol Wrote: This sounds an awful lot like a number of other projects, some of which have formed very large networks, namely Mastodon and Pleroma.

I have never heard of Pleroma, so that’s that...

twtxt is basically a Twitter for hackers. The only interface is a command line and the only input/output is plain text. I can imagine that the web interface makes it rather exchangeable.

(08-10-2020, 10:04 AM)z3bra Wrote: User can already post ! gopher://g.nixers.net/~z3bra/twtxt.txt

I wish we could also read.
https://wtf.roflcopter.fr/pics/XYiqbx40/KFVzDEw2

woops, forgot the selector /0/. I updated the link, thanks for pointing it out !

Yup, works. Thank you! :-)

(08-10-2020, 11:18 AM)jkl Wrote: I have never heard of Pleroma, so that’s that...

It's a pretty big twitter clone. According to https://fediverse.network/pleroma it has over 58,000 users over 767 instances. Mastodon is over 3M users across ~3000 instances, and these two platforms federate too, which is cool. In theory, twtxt could federate with them too.

(08-10-2020, 11:18 AM)jkl Wrote: twtxt is basically a Twitter for hackers. The only interface is a command line and the only input/output is plain text. I can imagine that the web interface makes it rather exchangeable.

If "for hackers" is a benefit then there are instances for that, such as fosstodon which has 13K users. As for the interface, there are lots of CLI/TUI mastodon clients. These other platforms do also support posting things like images, videos, etc so I guess being text only could be a distinguishing feature of twtxt.

I haven't looked too closely at twtxt though, so it's possible it has other key differences or improvements.

(08-10-2020, 03:13 AM)jkl Wrote: Awesome, although the concept of “pods” mostly voids the decentralized aspect. (I prefer text files.) But I can surely see why this attracts people. I’ll advertise.

I'm not sure why you say this really :) I mean the fact is you can think of the Pods as a simple implementation of a Web server that hosts the underlying twtxt.txt files. It is multi-user from that respect and has an API so we can build things like a Mobile App, Desktop App and Bots (for example).

So I don't buy the argument (its been said before) that I've turned Twtxt into something centralised, quite the contrary, I've just extended it, made it simpler and easier to use for others (it should not be limited to just "Hackers") :D

(08-10-2020, 09:56 AM)mcol Wrote:

Quote:twtxt is a Self-Hosted, Twitter™-like Decentralised microBlogging platform. No ads, no tracking, your content, your data!

(you might get this a lot but) This sounds an awful lot like a number of other projects, some of which have formed very large networks, namely Mastodon and Pleroma. How does twtxt compare, and why might one choose twtxt over one of these other platforms? Or are they actually quite different?

Yes you're right we do get this from mostly Mastodon folks or those that are familiar. But again like what the other commenter posted, many have never heard of Mastodon nor ever used it.

We have a very long thread on "How Twtxt (the software I wrote, not the spec) compares to Mastodon" over at https://github.com/jointwt/twtxt/issues/86 which you are welcome to read and comment on or discuss here further :D The long of it is that Twtxt and Twt.social pods (https://github.com/jointwt/twtxt) are a very different design mode (pull vs, push) -- Or as you know Mastodon is based on ActivityPub. We do not support Reactions (for good reasons) or so-called Re-tweets (also for good reasons). We support both short-form and long-form (Twts and Twt Blogs). The pods are designed to work with existing (just a twtxt.txt file) feeds (we call external profiles) as well as other pods and even RSS/Atom (news).

There quite a lot more subtle differences, but I can't articulate them here.

(08-10-2020, 04:10 PM)mcol Wrote:

(08-10-2020, 11:18 AM)jkl Wrote: I have never heard of Pleroma, so that’s that...

It's a pretty big twitter clone. According to https://fediverse.network/pleroma it has over 58,000 users over 767 instances. Mastodon is over 3M users across ~3000 instances, and these two platforms federate too, which is cool. In theory, twtxt could federate with them too.

(08-10-2020, 11:18 AM)jkl Wrote: twtxt is basically a Twitter for hackers. The only interface is a command line and the only input/output is plain text. I can imagine that the web interface makes it rather exchangeable.

If "for hackers" is a benefit then there are instances for that, such as fosstodon which has 13K users. As for the interface, there are lots of CLI/TUI mastodon clients. These other platforms do also support posting things like images, videos, etc so I guess being text only could be a distinguishing feature of twtxt.

I haven't looked too closely at twtxt though, so it's possible it has other key differences or improvements.

This is a very important different here in what we've built by extending the Twtxt spec.

We are __not__ just building yet another Twitter clone.

Twt.social is actually more similar (in fact) to micro.Blog (if you've ever used it?) But see my other comments above.

(08-10-2020, 04:10 PM)mcol Wrote: In theory, twtxt could federate with them too.

Yes in theory it _could_ be, however we (the development team behind Twt.social) are not very strongly open to this idea. It is a different design model in our opinion and whilst we _could_ make it works we'd go down the route of micro.Blog (if we decided to integrate with the Fediverse) where the functionality/integration is limited.

There are certain advantages to having a Web-based pull non-realtime model. For example it limits abuse and excessive noise.

We also do not support "Push Notifications" either for the same reasons, but also because we believe "Social Media" should be distraction free (notifications belong to instant messaging).

To truly understand the goals we've set out, you have to think about how Facebook™ and Twitter™ (and their clones) fundamentally work where so many complex algorithms create these "echo chambers", inherent biases and social silos. Worse many use the data to profit from.

We want none of that :)

(08-10-2020, 06:11 PM)prologic Wrote: it should not be limited to just "Hackers"

See, here's the interesting issue:
Why not?

I'd argue that the whole internet was better before everyone was able to join. There are more than enough alternatives for non-hackers.

(08-10-2020, 07:01 PM)jkl Wrote:

(08-10-2020, 06:11 PM)prologic Wrote: it should not be limited to just "Hackers"

See, here's the interesting issue:
Why not?

I'd argue that the whole internet was better before everyone was able to join. There are more than enough alternatives for non-hackers.

Why not? Why should everyday ordinary folk not have access to a social media that doesn't profit from their data? Hmm well because I believe everyone is entitled to their opinions, everyone should be able to freely share and express their ideas and engage in meaningful discussions. Otherwise what is the point? Why should the only place where this can happen is either large-tech giant (and authoritarians) that profit from the data you willingly or unwillingly hand over that is then used to sell advertising to you? Why should the only other place folks can go to have this kind of "freedoms" (as in beer) are either a) too complex to use, understand or even setup or b) relegated to a "special elite group"

Just my $0.02 :D

Sure we can keep the cool factor that Twtxt was designed as a "twtxt is a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers" (1st hit on Google), but why should there also not be a Twt.social for everyone else (that just so happens to use the same underlying spec)?

Also, just as an aside... I would highly encourage anyone here to take me up on what we've built. Go sign up at https://twtxt.net/ get to know what we've built. Install Goryon (if you have an Android phone, iOS coming soon). I challenge you to get to know Twt.social (even host a Pod, or ask us to!). Make some friends, have some interesting conversations, follow some interesting folks. Then form an opinion on what we've built and let me know whether it is a useless waste of time, or whether it has some value :D

(08-10-2020, 07:01 PM)jkl Wrote: See, here's the interesting issue:
Why not?

A lot of communities and techs embrace this, and it's making a come back. Arguably, these forums are niche and targeted at experts, and so are other places like tilde.town and BBS renewal groups. It depends on who your audience is and what type of interaction you want to achieve.

For me, twtxt is RSS for tweets. I personally don't use twitter, nor any other form of microblogging, so I don't know the appeal — I prefer normaly blogging.

(09-10-2020, 04:19 AM)venam Wrote: For me, twtxt is RSS for tweets. I personally don't use twitter, nor any other form of microblogging, so I don't know the appeal — I prefer normaly blogging.

We built support for both forms :D

Think blogs + comments but you also get the benefits of "social" features.

That reminds me that my twtxt client still needs Unicode support and someone with too much free time to implement it:
https://hub.darcs.net/dertuxmalwieder/twtxtc

Contributions are welcome.

(I might move that away from Darcshub some day. Maybe.)

I have ignored twtxt in the past, but now I'm hooked.

As for twtxt.net, I think it's a great initiative. I won't use it myself because I always prefer self-hosting, but lowering the bar for non-tech people is a good thing in my book.

(Just make sure to retain full compatibility with self-hosted twtxt files, now and in the future. At the moment, this works fine. If, at some point, it became kind of mandatory to use twtxt.net, because important features $a, $b, and $c don't really work with self-hosting, then you'll probably be facing the wrath of some angry nerds. :-))