First, thank everyone who took the time to complete this survey and provide excellent and honest feedback. This is something that not only I plan on using to make FurryFediverse.org better, but the detail provided I am sure other developers of the platforms themselves will find it valuable. It means people took the time to be detailed and explain their issues, concerns, and thoughts. So let us get into it without further to do.

Platform Spread

Protocol Usage By User

I consolidated the data from several people, putting in things like Minds, Hive, a lot of Twitter, and some CoHost into the Other category because this is trying to focus on the OpenSource alternatives. Almost a quarter of respondents have used Bluesky’s AT Protocol. I tried hard to get more Bluesky people to provide feedback, but this was all I could get. That said, many of them are overlapping users of the AtivityPub Protocol.

Primarily Used Platform/Protocol

This part of the survey asked users to pick one option for their primarily used platform. This, by a wide margin, appears to be ActivityPub, even from those who are AT Protocol users. Reviewing the rest of the data, we can find the reasoning behind these choices.

ActivityPub

Basic Functionality Feedback

As you can see right away, the most challenging part for people is “Finding People To Follow,” followed by a close second being the “Registration Process,” which many people have said before. Now with charts plotted, let us dive into the responses left by 64 respondents and figure out the common points of contention.

Instance Fatigue: The biggest takeaway around finding people and registration, people get paralyzed by the choice of instance. Several users voiced concerns surrounding their instance owners blocking other instances, so picking wrong could mean losing access to people they want to follow. The different situations around when choosing the instance could poof without warning, and they would lose the ability to have backed up their social graph.

Interoperability: The next big thing I saw is that some software has some pretty big issues regarding how they behave with each other on the ActivityPub standard and thus causing people some problems and confusion. I have also run into this, so I can understand when the people reported hating how expanding a post done on Misskey from a Mastodon instance would redirect them to the Misskey instance, and sometimes the same with viewing their profile. This was something several people brought up. It also brought up some confusion on the integration between Mastodon and Lemmy as it works but is confusing to many as they don’t flow the same way.

How Users Use It

With the feedback from users telling us how they use the platform, most users use the official app but on mobile, using Third-Party Apps. That is a good sign in terms of the usability on mobile that people have gone with recommended Third Party apps, as the official Mastodon App removes many of the features people consider essential. However, we should start looking at ways of improving the first-party experience on the desktop site OR leveraging Third Party site clients like Elk, which create a much more modern and familiar feel to the desktop experience.

Overall Feedback

From reading people’s general comments about the platform, there seemed to be a good amount of wanting to see the protocol adoption continue to expand. However, there were a lot of concerns around a few key points that I drill into below.

Data Stewardship: Many are concerned about the ability to backup, migrate, and own their data. They are trusting their instance owners to do this, and it feels worrisome as there have been tons of instances that are there one day and gone a couple of months later without warning, with users left without warning to backup. To this point, it might be worth considering creating better and easier ways for users to get regular backups or something set up on this front.

Encryption: This has been brought up a few times. However, people don’t realize that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or any others do encryption either for their DMs. Some of them have a secondary app that has encryption support, but I do understand this concern. DMs are more geared toward quick interaction, but if users really want this functionality, it could be looked into or explored by protocol devs.

Post Migration: This also came up a few times; while we can migrate your followers and your favorites and other things… the biggest platforms don’t include ways of importing your Post History from the last instance. Right now, this is a roadmap feature for Mastodon; FireFish has added support for this, so at least there, you can migrate your post history from your previous ActivityPub instance.

AT Protocol

Basic Functionality Feedback

Based on the data from the feedback, users are currently happy with AT Protocol. With the balance being reasonably high in the ease of use, the only areas looking like they could improve solely based on the polling data around Notifications, Moderation, and Finding people to Follow. However, their metrics are slightly better than those of the ActivityPub protocol. However, we must also keep in mind since we didn’t get as much data as we did for ActivityPub, these results must be taken at their current face value.

Very Early: A lot of the feedback points to the feelings of the platform still being in the Alpha stages of its development. That tons of polish is missing, and right now, a good bit of “Feels like Twitter 2.0” statements. However, most of the feedback is positive on that front, and people look forward to seeing it continue to polish over time.

Content Tagging: As there is no way to tag your content on AT Protocol now, people feel the moderation tooling is alright… but a bit too undefined as it relies primarily on A.I. to categorize the content. This leads to the content sliders for blocking certain types of content from not working as intended, as a lot of furry content wasn’t known to the A.I. until recently. This should improve with time.

How Users Use It

There isn’t much to say here, as there aren’t many third-party tools and such out for it just yet as it is still in early alpha stages, and they are still dealing with invite-only, preventing many people from getting involved. That said, there are still some third-party tools like Skybridge and Graysky. Many users are playing around with it, and developers are poking at it.

Overall Feedback

There was a good bit of feedback from respondents on this one, including some from users who haven’t been invited to test out the platform yet, weighing in on some of their thoughts, feelings, and concerns. I have pulled out the key takeaways and listed them below.

Functionality Lacking: A big key takeaway was a lot of people pointing out how no gif, video, or other type of media support is there yet. Also lack of ability to post DMs or features like hashtags for categorizing things. However, they pointed out that the custom feeds compensate for the lack of hashtags.

Privacy Concerns: Some people have pointed out some privacy concerns around how mute lists and block lists are public. This isn’t a massive deal right now, as you would have to use an invite to circumvent this. However, could be issues going forward. Also, some have voiced concerns about those on the board, such as Jack Dorsey, one of the former CEO of Twitter. That said, who is on the board is good or bad is opinion based but felt should be included as it was brought up.

Not Fully Decentralized: As some users have pointed out, the current design isn’t fully decentralized, as there are two main components. The BGS(Big Graph Services) hosts the interchange as it lets the PDS(Personal Data Servers) connect to it. This means while you could run your own BGS only other PDS servers pointed at your BGS could see what is going on. Hopefully, you can subscribe your PDS to multiple BGSs as they continue to develop.

Easier Portability: Once the federation is turned on, you can switch what PDS you connect to and use your same login. There is even the ability if the PDS you use goes offline or shuts down without telling you; whatever is cached in your client when you switch PDS will be re-imported to the new PDS.

Nostr

Feedback

Last but not least, we also have Nostr. At the same time, this platform got the most minor feedback in my survey. I do want to bring it up as one of the platforms. While I haven’t seen a bunch of furries on it… has been getting some tracking in tech-savvy communities. There is some stigmatism around how there is some Bitcoin integration with it, which is not what it is built on. Some users have added something to the protocol as a NIP(Nostr Implementation Possibilities), allowing those who implement it to efficiently send “zaps,” which are Bitcoin Lighting network payments to someone when they like their posts.

Most effortless Registration: No username or password is needed, you generate your public and private keys, and you are done. However, that does lead to new user confusion and usage… where now users have to save their public key as a username and their private key as their password. It also makes finding users based on their public key a nerdy endeavor and not great for new users.

Lots of Crypto Bros: This protocol operates off relays instead of centralized servers. You subscribe to relays you want to get and post data from. These are primarily set up and run by crypto bros at this time. There are a few Linux ones; some people host their own relay to own their post feed.

Very Extensible: While this protocol is developed in the open with tons of people contributing against it, it is early days. The system is built around the NIPs, where people have already started building functionality for things like custom handles based on domains you own similar to how AT Protocol does it.

Overall Feedback

Right now, it is even earlier days for AT Protocol and seems more developed around the nerdy and computer-savvy folks. Based on the feedback, there is some interest, but much of it is put off by the crypto bros, who seem to have some heavy influence. This one has some potential out of all three in the distant future. However, it looks like it might be segregated to those who are nerdier till more simplistic and easier-to-understand and operate systems come into play.

Demographics

Mammals

• Wolf (wolf)
• Squirrel
• Fox
• Cat
• Husky
• Dog
• Deer
• Lion
• Folf
• Jaguar
• rabbit
• Fennec Fox
• Raccoon
• Snow leopard
• Roofox
• Arctic Fox
• Anthro Green and black Bunny with green glasses
• Skink
• Fossa
• Raccoon
• Cougar
• Lepthoda (bunny/snake hybrid)
• cat, but this is probably going change.
• Deerpup
• skunk
• Dingo
• Fisher (mustelid)
• Cat
• Dog (Dalmatian)
• Arctic fox
• lynx
• Capybara
• Pallas cat

Reptiles

• Bug possum or nardodragon
• Nardoragon
• Shark
• Mizutsune
• Snep
• Drox (Dragon/Fox)
• Phoenix

Mythical Creatures

• Dragon
• gryphon
• 9-tailed myōbu kitsune
• goo dragon
• Cabbit
• fox, cat
• tigerbee
• Dragon
• wusky
• Phasefox
• Jolteon

Other

• No primary fursona species.
• It’s not important
• multiple fursonas because we’re a system
• Hybrid
• Canid, no specific breed or species
• Avail
• I have to make one still ._.

Closing Commentary

There is a lot to be said here, and a lot to still be seen. I feel this survey was skewed a bit more in favor of ActivityPub because that is where most of the respondents were from. That said, we did get some good feedback on both ends, and I think it is important to now take a look at the closing commentary from people. Unlike earlier sections, I want to just embed some of the responses raw and let them speak for themselves much like I have done with the demographics data.

Bluesky rules, mastodon drools.

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The people on the platform matter far more than the platform itself. If the majority of people I know migrate to one place, that’s where I’ll want to go.

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I’m fine with advertisements provided that those advertisements promote real people, do not come with major privacy concerns, are non-intrusive, and help fund the owners/maintainers of the service I am using. Think simple banner ads paid for by people.

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For anyone on the fence about joining a Masto instance, don’t think too much about it, just join one that clicks with you because you’ll still be able to interact with anyone even if they’re on a completely different instance than yourself. Plus if the instance you’re on doesn’t work out for you then you’re free to swap to another instance as moving accounts is super easy.

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Moderatrion, Hosting and Contents are all done by you, the community. There isn’t a need for a third party corporation to do it.

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I wouldn’t mind “community ads” or whatever. I think Misskey does those? Make adverts specifically for a specific community i.e. “comissions open”, or a product that would make sense to a particular community, or whatever makes sense.

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Bluesky will be more fun than Twitter within a month. Mastodon still feels clunky and it’s hard to find my friends there. I just started a comic and I’m keen to not have my stuff plundered by AI. But Mastodon has been running longer and hasn’t caved to ads yet; I fear Bluesky will take on the toxic elements of Twitter once it progresses past the beta stage.

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I think that a better onboarding experience would help the fediverse grow quite a bit. I think that it also is important to make sure that more people know about the fediverse since all the people I know have no idea what it is.

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Ultimately finding the place where the largest portion of the furry community can gather together is most important to me. I really like the concept behind activitypub however.

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On the subject of ads - I would love to have no ads, ever. But I also realize the reality of needing to support a platform that millions of people use. Yes, even mastodon technically has ads, even if it’s just instance owners soliciting donations. And that’s fine, its just the reality of the corporate capitalist hellhole we occupy.

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The furry fediverse seems to contain some groups of niche fetish that others can find morally distasteful. While everyone uses content warnings wonderfully it will probably help endear people to the system if a nice tutorial on options to prune what you personally see without losing wider connections! The ability to personally blacklist is a number 1 requested feature for most furry content locations.

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I just love the fact that i am not on a platform that’s controlled by another billionaire and the fact that our feedback is being listened to is great I also love the fact that I can follow somebody on pure tube like @\veronicaexplains@\tilvids.com I find it so cool that when they upload a video I get it in my Mastodon feed despite them being two completely different platforms and the fact that my friends can go anywhere in the fediverse and I can follow them is really nice and also when somebody moves there account you automatically follow them again so when they post another thing it is seamless I love the fediverse it feels like everybody are going back to how the Internet should be small independent websites I love it here

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I spent time learning mastodon and eventually came around to using it over bluesky. Though I feel like there definitely needs to be expansion outside of mastodon and use other platforms like misskey

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I don’t feel like it’s fair to compare Mastodon and Bluesky directly when Bluesky is still in beta. I trust Mastodon more and feel like it will be a much more powerful tool, but the clunky UX and Linux mentality of the userbase are turn-offs.

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Visual guides.. I harped on this earlier. But visual guides like how to communicate with other people on other ActivityPub based Fediverse software like Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, Pixelfed, WordPress, and any others that would come up down the line would be really helpful so it doesn’t feel like the fediverse is entirely fragmented like Centralized services are.

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Bluesky has felt like a breath of fresh air. I’ve been on Mastodon for a few weeks now and it still feels like a tiny clique of evangelists on a barren platform interspersed mostly with toots in the live feed from extremely niche or strange people who constantly complain about other platforms instead of just posting cool stuff.

In Closing

Finally, I wanna thank you all for giving me a chance to collect this information so we can no matter what protocol you use or how you wish to be. Just use the platform you are happiest with and have your friends on; we will have people like myself and others who are willing to put in the effort to make bridges and tools to let us keep in communication with everyone across platforms.

Then finally, for those artists and commission folks, who are these platforms for trying to earn a living off the work they do. Please don’t like yourself to AcitivityPub or AT Protocol, please leverage tools like PostyBirb and bridges like the one I am working on to cross-post at a minimum so that if something happens to one or the other, you have another place to run to, and a whole secondary community engaging and sharing your content.