Fediverse

Too many app devs don't know jack about the Fediverse. Or they didn't when they started developing their apps.

It happens again and again that someone jumps into Fediverse app development, maybe even claims to build a, quote, "Fediverse app," end quote. And then they build it hard against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. Not even just the Mastodon API. Straight against Mastodon with both a frontend and a backend that only supports Mastodon.

Usually because at this point they still think the Fediverse is the Mastodon network, and there's nothing else in the Fediverse than Mastodon. Some 99% of all Mastodon newbies come into Mastodon believing that, the vast majority still spends the first months believing that, and my estimation is that every other Mastodon user still believes it.

And when you tell such a dev that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon, and there's a whole lot of stuff that isn't Mastodon, but that uses ActivityPub, and that communicates with Mastodon like Mastodon communicates with itself, they're taken off-guard.

"What? What do you say? You aren't on Mastodon? How can you talk to me then? Like, black magic or what? Whaddaya mean, that's normal? There's other stuff connected to Mastodon? But Mastodon is the Fediverse. Whaddaya mean, it isn't? The Fediverse is not only Mastodon? So it's Mastodon forks? No? Is it extra stuff glued onto Mastodon then? Not either? Like, WTF? Yeah, sorry, no. I've built my app hard against Mastodon, and if I wanted to support anything else, I'd have to rip everything out and rewrite everything from scratch. 'Sides, it ain't worth doing anyway. Literally nobody uses that stuff. You're, like, literally the first whom I talk to on Mastodon who isn't on Mastodon. Everyone else I see uses Mastodon.* Over 99% of all people in the Fediverse are on the original, Mastodon. Ain't worth supporting those few others."

All this explains why you have tons of iPhone and Android apps for Mastodon that either only work with Mastodon, or that you can connect other Mastodon API stuff to, but only have Mastodon's features at hand. And at the same time, you barely have any apps that support anything beyond Mastodon's features. Exception: Lemmy apps, often written by people for whom the Threadiverse or the Fediverse as a whole is Lemmy.

*No, they don't. But Mastodon users can't see it unless either non-Mastodon users do something that's painfully obviously not possible on Mastodon, or they rub it straight into Mastodon users' faces.