WAFRN is a federated social media platform designed as an alternative to Tumblr, focusing on privacy and decentralization. It offers features similar to Tumblr, such as customizable posts and emoji reactions, while allowing users to connect across different platforms in the Fediverse using the ActivityPub protocol. WAFRN emphasizes inclusivity, with policies against harassment and content restrictions found on more traditional platforms, creating a space for users to freely express themselves. It’s currently in active development, and users are encouraged to host their own instances if desired.
Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t Tumblr just another microblogging site? Wouldn’t mastodon be a viable alternative?
Not that in complaining that there’s another fediverse software, just trying to understand what is the difference or if it’s just splitting hairs.
It’s all just little text packets, this place included.
But hey, that’s all social media. The slight differences in threading, text limits, media embeds and share mechanics do matter.
They do, absolutely. But what are those differences between Twitter and Tumblr? I thought it was just a different CSS.
Tumblr keeps quoted post above your post, just the way it should be.
Oh. Yeah, the few times I’ve been directed at Twitter threads, it felt like having an aneurism.
Twitter has an aggressive character limit, a focus on a streaming feed and historically it’s been built on fast, trending content updated in real time via reposts and this sort of atomized discussion using unthreaded quotes.
Tumblr has changed a bunch trying to stay relevant in a MySpacey kinda way, but it’s ultimately more of a blog platform where the main post is expected to be bulkier and more readable while the threaded responses are framed as more of a comments section you don’t even get to see in full by default, so it more or less splits the difference between Twitter and Reddit, or between Masto and here.
“A different CSS” can impact how you interact with things a bunch, along with how you present trends and follows. Which I guess was my original point.
Character limit on the posts is a big difference, too. Tumblr had lots of short stories and long rants in a single post. You could also post several images in a single post, dunno what was/is twitter’s limit
Feature-wise, it’s entirely different from Mastodon and other Twitter-clone. Though, these days Mastodon copies a lot of features from Tumblr as well.
Example difference: quote feature (not the same as exisiting Mastodon implementation), custom UI, discovery layout, etc.