I’m thinking of moving to Pleroma because Mastodon feels really slow. Maybe it’s just that I’ve selected a popular instance and I should have chosen a more unpopular one. Anyway, I would like to know what are the pros of Pleroma over Mastodon from a user perspective.

  • F00FC7C8 likes to infodump
    11•2 years ago

    @OptimusPrime Some differences I’ve noticed from a user perspective:
    - Indeed, the default frontend is lighter, and a bit more customizable
    - Post formatting in either Markdown, HTML, or BBCode is available
    - You can react to messages with arbitrary emojis
    - Polls can have more than four options
    - My instance has an instant messaging “chats” plugin; it seems to only work with other Pleroma users, but it’s potentially useful

    And some cons:
    - It’s a lot tougher to find a good instance, since Pleroma unfortunately attracts a lot of bad actors. Read your instance’s rules very carefully and skeptically, and check the public (local) timeline to make sure it’s a good fit for you.
    - By default, timelines do not auto-update and you have to click on a button to reveal new messages.

    I personally like Friendica the most out of all the platforms, but Pleroma isn’t bad at all from a usability standpoint.

    • @0x1C3B00DA@lemmy.ml
      2•2 years ago

      By default, timelines do not auto-update and you have to click on a button to reveal new messages.

      I consider this a pro not a con but to each their own. Like a lot of things on the frontend, its customizable. You can enable auto-updating timelines and there’s an additional setting to only auto-update when the tab is in focus (saving some battery on non-desktop devices).

      I’ll add a couple more differences:

      1. Clicking a post in pleroma doesn’t expand the thread; there’s a specific button you click to expand. I like this because I’ve accidently opened threads on mastodon quite a few times.
      2. An image’s alt text is automatically displayed as a caption in the image carousel.
      3. I like Pleroma-FE better than mastodons frontend, but frontends are swappable and there are a few to choose from.
      • F00FC7C8 likes to infodump
        6•2 years ago

        @jackalope
        I honestly don’t know. Could be that it’s easy to pop up instances and abuse people, could be its development history (I’ve heard of some controversies, but don’t know much about them), could be its early use as a replacement for GNU Social among instances populated by 4chan types, could be that those bad actors resent Mastodon and its developers and thus choose the top alternative. In any case it seems that whenever I see an obvious troll in the replies to a post I’m looking at, there’s a high probability that they’re on a free speech or shitposting instance that runs Pleroma. And when I wanted to try out the software, every instance I found on fediverse.observer was either tiny, or failed a vibe check.

      • poVoq
        4•2 years ago

        Because there are some high profile Pleroma users / devs that apparently want to die on the free-speech hill and as a result many bad actors seem to think it is a playground for them.