
Movim – Federated, open-source alternative to Tumblr - edhelas
https://nl.movim.eu/?node/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim/hey-tumblr-users-here-is-why-movim-could-be-the-best-platform-to-migrate-to-BpGnsH
======
zimbatm
> Movim is easy to deploy

> Movim is lightweight (only a few megabytes) and can be deployed on any
> server. We are providing a Docker image, a Debian package or a simple
> installation tutorial if you want to deploy it yourself.

I imagine a typical Tumblr user landing on this page and not getting a single
word of the "easy to deploy" section. A lot of these distributed project
suffer from this unfortunately. Developers not understanding what a typical
user would look like.

Unless the user can click a button, enter a credit card and get an instance
they are not going to use that service. And it has to look nice.

~~~
qqn
One of the biggest misconceptions I had about the federated/decentralized web
getting into it a decade ago was this customer v. service provider model we're
so used to everywhere else. These free[0], decentralized services rarely
prioritize building a big user base. Their goal is to liberate the web, most
often for their own use, and so the approach is generally "do-ocratic":
something bugs you, you fix it, or you wait for someone else to come by and
try. The beauty of this approach is it weeds out the impatient, "I want this
now, do it for me" types, leading to more intelligent, polite interactions on
the service.

 _[0] Both as in free beer and as in
freedom:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre#%22Free_be...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre#%22Free_beer%22_vs_%22freedom_of_speech%22_distinction*)

~~~
zimbatm
Don't get me wrong, I am very much in that camp too and spend a lot of my time
contributing to F/OSS projects. Having the freedom to tweak, debug and improve
software is awesome.

My main objection here is that there are a lot of intelligent and polite
people that are not developers and being left out in the cold. We need another
option where users can rent out a server (from a multitude of providers) and
install webapps as easily as installing phone apps. We are slowly getting
there with Docker images but it's still very technical to do so.

EDIT: there is also [https://sandstorm.io/](https://sandstorm.io/) that tries
to tackle this problem but isn't very popular yet

~~~
wuliwong
I'm not sure if the time for this is now but it certainly feels closer to
"now" than ever before. The recent corporate censorship I believe has ignited
a lot of interest in various segments of the "non-hacker" world. I think to
harness this interest there needs to be a relatively user-friendly product
that solves their problems.

------
xte
Only a small note: we have had a free, functional, decentralized social
network in the past, even supported by thing like Microsoft Outlook. It's
still there, despite semi-abandoned state, today. It have a name, of course:
nntp news.

All we need if we want a free alternative to ANY social network is being back
on nntp. Of course we can add features to it, we can start to shake heads and
think seeing the role of IT today it it's time to buy serious mail solution,
perhaps a VPS and a domain name, perhaps create a small home-server that
mirror public/semipublic personal stuff from the VPS to us so we can easily
jump from a vendor to another without change anything from our mail address to
our datas.

IT is not _only_ a game anymore, it start to be a serious thing even for
casual people, better know a bit of it and be prepared.

~~~
tomjen3
I have been looking for an NNTP server that I can run privately, with a
minimum of fuss, user accounts and encryption, so that I can host one for our
family (previously we used G+, but that is being shut down).

I haven't found one that fits the bill.

~~~
FraaJad
Here you go -
[https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed](https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed)
(news aggregator, newsgroup client, web newsreader and IRC bot) -- powers
[https://forum.dlang.org/](https://forum.dlang.org/), NNTP server and IRC bot.

------
joshlemer
I followed the links to the site, [https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/), and
the link to "Create an account" in the phrase "Create an account and connect
to one of our public platforms." links to
[https://movim.eu/accounts/register](https://movim.eu/accounts/register),
which returns a 404.

~~~
edhelas
Sorry for the 404, the link has been fixed. Thanks for the report!

~~~
elcomet
And when I try creating an account through
[https://api.movim.eu/accounts/register](https://api.movim.eu/accounts/register)
(main link), I get the following error:

    
    
        Invalid form
        Unknown error

------
throw7
"You don’t have Javascript enabled. Good luck with that."

You might have gotten a chance at a user. Good luck to you.

~~~
bhauer
First thing I saw, too, before giving them temporary JavaScript execution
privilege.

It's one thing to be JavaScript-rendered only. It's another to be impolite to
users who happen to constrain JavaScript privileges of yet-untrusted sites.
This seems especially relevant since you are attempting to convince an
audience to adopt a federated opensource platform. The Venn diagram of people
who understand the value of federated platforms has greater than average
overlap with those who restrict JavaScript execution in their web browser.

I recommend revising the <noscript> tag to say something like "Please enable
JavaScript to read this content. We use JavaScript for the following ... [a
brief summary] and we do not use any third-party hosted script." (Incidentally
bravo on not using third-party scripts!)

~~~
wtfstatists

        <noscript>
            <style type="text/css">main {display: none;}</style>
            <ul class="list" style="color: white;">
                <li>
                    <p class="center">You donve Javascript enabled. Good luck with that.</p>
                </li>
            </ul>
        </noscript>
    

Wow. Going out of the way to annoy js blockers.

~~~
edhelas
This message was initially added more than 5 years ago and not really changed
since then :) The related ticket has been fixed and master is now having a
better wording for this message
[https://github.com/movim/movim/issues/737](https://github.com/movim/movim/issues/737).

~~~
wtfstatists
I am more refering to the css. All content is fetched without needing js. But
its css hidden because ...

~~~
edhelas
I've created a ticket for it
[https://github.com/movim/movim/issues/738](https://github.com/movim/movim/issues/738).

------
jandrese
It is an interesting idea to built it on top of XMPP. I'm not sure how much
advantage this is over just running a regular webpage. The front page is
pretty breathless about getting updates to your readers instantly, but that's
not really a feature I'm interested in for a blogging platform. They also talk
about being able to use chat clients to use the platform, but I don't see how
a big HTML rich text post is going to look very good on a chat client.

It seems like an unnecessary complication to me.

~~~
cyborgx7
I like XMPP but this honestly just seems like a weird fit to me. ActivityPub
seems like the more appropriate protocol for this. Also gives you federation
with stuff like mastodon and peertube.

Or just RSS would work as well.

~~~
edhelas
Actually most of the social features of Movim are built on Pubsub
([https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html)).
The articles are Atom
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_\(standard\)))
items published on Pubsub where ActivityPub define it's own JSON structure to
handle articles.

------
condescendence
Yeah this just isn't going to replace Tumblr, Movim's user base and Tumblr's
user base are two totally different user bases.

I do like it though!

------
sabret00the
The creating of an account is really quite convoluted.

There needs to be a way to create sub accounts.

Finding content seems to be broken. Typing a search only seems to search for
usernames.

Needs a one-click reblog.

~~~
pdimitar
What do you mean by "sub accounts"?

~~~
kinos
Tumblr allows you to log into multiple blogs using a single account. You have
a "main" blog directly connected to your account. In addition you have as many
blogs as you wish that you can reblog or post to, and can be owned by multiple
people.

------
radus
Is it possible to customize a Movim instance such that it behaves more like
tumblr or a photo blog? As it stands it seems to be a lot of things that
Tumblr was not, which is great, but perhaps this would be more attractive to
Tumblr refugees if a pared down interface was available.

~~~
edhelas
As it is explained it is possible to provide a custom CSS stylesheet for your
own blog. Just provide the link to the file (that can be hosted anywhere) in
your account configuration.

There is no "advanced" UI like on Tumblr where you can pick a theme or
customize the current theme graphically but we can imagine something like that
in the future (or a website where people could create custom CSS file and link
them with their account).

The HTML code of the pages is kept as simple as possible to make it easy to
select the elements that you want to customize.

~~~
radus
I understand. I guess I was thinking about how Scuttlebutt works where you
have multiple client apps (with radically different UIs) that can federate
over a common protocol.

------
slaymaker1907
Scrolling sucks on iOS since it doesn’t have momentum.

------
Midnightas
Finally something that's not just piles upon piles of blockchains.

------
joshstrange
The number 1 feature I'm going to miss from Tumblr is the video seeking. The
ability to place your finger on a video and slide forward or backwards is to-
date the best way to seek IMHO.

~~~
smlsugarlumps
What if your fingers are.....sticky

~~~
acct1771
Then you're likely long past needing to scroll.

------
kabacha
I've been using Diaspora as tumblr alternative since 2015 and it's great! I
love tag driven social network idea, the only problem I have is low user base.

To me diaspora ruined every other free social network. How am I supposed to
find someone to follow on a new social network? Tags (read interests) are a
great idea, lets have more of that please.

------
NedIsakoff
My wife does a lot of Tumblr stuff with her online Anime community, 95% of the
people in the community are not technical. About 50% of those only have a
phone.

So I'm looking at Movin, I see no iOS app. No Android App (Google PlayStore
link is dead). I see DOL.

~~~
jandrese
An app is unhelpful if the site works fine in a mobile browser. I would never
install the Facebook app for example.

~~~
bobthepanda
The existence of an app doesn't preclude a good mobile website. There are tons
of people who don't browse sites on mobile web, myself included.

~~~
acct1771
You didn't provide a reason why, let alone a good one.

~~~
elcomet
He did provide a fact: a lot of people don't browse the web on their mobile
and will expect this kind of service to have an app.

------
qwerty456127
Federated means all your data is served directly from your own computer so as
soon as you switch it off it becomes unavailable and all the kinds of attacks
(DDoS, pwned, lawyers etc) hit you directly and everybody can find out your
home IP address, right? I feel like I would strongly prefer distributed over
federated unless I really misunderstand federated (which is very probable).

~~~
kstrauser
Email is federated. Do you host your email on your laptop? I mean, you _could_
but most people use remote servers instead.

------
thecleaner
Does anybody else also get a broken webpage ? I can't scroll in Firefox 63.0.3
(64-bit)

------
cosarara
How does one write comments on a Movim post?

~~~
edhelas
By simply authenticating using a XMPP account and going to the post page :)

~~~
cosarara
How would one do that? There are no links to authenticate that I can see.

------
aaaaaaaaaab
Off: this website breaks scrolling on iOS.

------
KryDos
thought someone forked NeoVim...

------
NedIsakoff
Is there going to be CP blocking? If not, have fun with your Android and iOS
apps.

~~~
joshmn
This is such a nearsighted comment.

~~~
Latteland
What does cp blocking mean?

~~~
gbear605
Cp refers to child porn, the unfortunate publishing of which on Tumblr led to
it being pulled from the iOS app store and then disallowing nsfw content on
Tumblr.

~~~
condescendence
The real reason behind the disallowing of NSFW is Tumblr positioning itself to
be bought by Verizon.

~~~
wmf
Just to nitpick the causality here, Tumblr was bought by Yahoo in 2013 then
Yahoo was bought by Verizon/Oath in 2017 and now the porn ban is hitting
afterward.

------
therealmarv
Nah, we need something EASY either with IPFS or a competitor from Russia which
is not in this stupid NSFW censoring scheme. I don't see how movim can be a
good replacement for Tumblr.

