IceShrimp ! UI and features are much more modern than Mastodon
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Although Mastodon plus web client phanpy.social is arguably even more modern. But I encourage supporting smaller projects such as Iceshrimp!
Didn't know about this project, thanks!
one of the misskey forks. imo "vanilla" misskey is lacking a fair bit of essential stuff (post editing being a giant one)
the most interesting ones to watch for now are iceshrimp (misskey v12 hardfork based on an early version of firefish, mainly focused on backend tech work compared to new features) and sharkey (misskey ”v13” softfork, aimed at qol changes and other feature work while keeping up to date with misskey itself)
akkoma is alright if you need something light on resources but I personally can't get used to it's interface
and mastodon is just... too bland in comparison to both
Why iceshrimp over firefish?
I personally find the development to be more "sensible". firefish bungled up their flagship with a (imo) failed transition to scylladb and hasn't been doing much of importance since then (they changed the boost icon to a rocket though!)
compared to that, iceshrimp rewrote their mastodon api compatibility layer to the point where it may be the most compliant one among misskey forks, uncovered several perf bottlenecks (one really big one related to word mutes since fedia migrated over), fixed the http signature security vuln ahead of firefish (and provided the patch to them, which they didn't put in a stable release for something like two days even after merging)
quite a lot of firefish instances seem to be migrating over to sharkey for similar performance and stability reasons, but if you like the firefish UI/UX compared to the "classic" misskey one (or want a smoother migration path from firefish that doesn't involve a major version bump) then iceshrimp is the one to check out imo
Ah, thanks for the writeup. Definitely sounds like the better option.
Them not having a flagship instance or a website that lists iceshrimp instances makes it difficult to try though.
https://fedidb.org/software/iceshrimp is a thing, and there are several general purpose instances such as fedia.social and iceshrimp.social (which isn't anything official despite the name)
not having an (open) flagship is, to the best of my knowledge, an intentional choice as moderating it would take time away from development
Iceshrimp seems more stable than FF
I've used Mastodon in the past, and currently Sharkey(a Misskey fork) is my microblogging platform of choice.
Mastodon: fast, polished, and has a huge choice of different apps for all platforms. But the main drawback is its lack of features. "Why can't I search for the posts" " or "Why there's no quote repost button?"
It was obvious to me that Mastodon can't do all the things I need. I was desperately thinking that I'll have to move back to Twitter, but at the last moment Calckey rebranded itself to Firefish, and it got my attention. "Finally, a great replacement for Twitter" I thought. But the terrible performance of firefish. social made my experience with fediverse just terrible (I also used Calckey.world, but I moved from it for no reason tbh).
I was once again searching for an alternative, and this time I found it.
Sharkey: has all the features of Misskey + added some from other forks (like Firefish's post editing). I picked a small instance with less than 10 people, and the performance is really great. My only nitpick is that you can't swipe between home/local/federated feeds like in Firefish, but that's a small issue.
I personally think Misskey (and its forks) should become the mainstream microblogging platforms on the fediverse, while Mastodon should retire.
If I wanted to run for myself or a community of a few thousand people: pleroma.
If I wanted to run for more people than that: takahe.
In both cases: look into a different frontend like elk.zone, soapbox or semaphore.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of glitch-soc (Mastodon fork). I previously used CalcKey and HajKey but never IceShrimp so maybe the Misskey forks are onto something.
For me it came down to a simple physical limitations that some interfaces show too much information at once and it's mentally overwhelming. This is a highly specific issue, hence why I just switched to glitch instead of trying to make a Misskey forks that fits my needs.
In terms of feature-set and "coolness" I have to give it to the Misskey forks. Though I've never tried Akkoma so IDK what it feels like. The features out of CalcKey were pretty awesome and I kinda wish I could use an instance with those features.
I'm a pretty specific case where my "daily driver" per se is out of accessibility reasons and not feature set. I adore the features of CalcKey but I have to use a simpler system like Mastodon. And luckily the glitch-soc instance I'm on is running a custom fork with additional features like emoji reacts and such. So it is pretty far away from "vanilla Mastodon"
mastodon or hajkey