Flipboard is making good on a major fediverse promise. Late last year, at the same time it announced it would be switching user accounts to ActivityPub, Flipboard said it planned to let users follow users on federated platforms that used ActivityPub from the Flipboard app. Starting Tuesday, that feature is here, meaning that you can follow people from places like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed right inside Flipboard.
What is Flipboard?
Seriously, 4 to 6 words is all it would take.
Flipboard, a social media aggregate app, is making good on a major fediverse promise.
Is that what it is? Did I guess right?
Before podcasts, there used to be RSS readers. They let you quickly subscribe and scan a lot of blogs and catch up on latest posts. Flipboard started as a fancy mobile app version, with access to articles from mainstream news providers.
It’s grown and changed a lot, but it’s essentially a quick way to scan for interesting daily news.
They’ve now added ways to subscribe and catch up on Fediverse sources like Mastodon (and soon, Lemmy).
The CEO has a podcast called Dot Social where he talks to people about how this Fediverse stuff all fits together: https://dot-social.simplecast.com/
I downloaded and registered for a Flipboard account way back when it was first created. At that time, it was just a news aggregator that felt more like a magazine because of how the page turn animations worked. It was nice because at that time there were no issues with entire articles getting fed into the reader, and it was a dream come true for iPad users in the early days.
These days, you can only read the first few sentences of an from the app and then you have to tap a link to go to the actual, often cookie-walled, website to read any more of the article.
On top of that, people who post comments in Flipboard tend to get insanely toxic. Like facebook-levels of insane hot takes.
For those reason, I don’t really interact with it as much and I’ve considered removing it from time to time. The reason I don’t is because I’m curious about how this fediverse thing will work out for it.
you have to tap a link to go to the actual, often cookie-walled, website
Kind of like how RSS/Atom is not useful anymore. Most feeds don’t contain the actual articles, in an attempt to increase clicks and ad revenue. That’s just sad, I miss the old internet.
There are some RSS readers that will download the actual URL and apply “reader mode” on the page to present the full article. I think FreshRSS has such a plugin.
It does! I haven’t configured mine yet but I use Feedme’s mobilizer to do the same thing at the moment.
Also many RSS reader apps provide the same functionality. ReadYou on Android and Reeder5 on iOS for example.
Flipboard is one of the biggest Fediverse platforms out there, second only to Threads I believe (unless you count WordPress, maybe?). 145 million active users. I think it’s mostly used by younger gen X/older millenials.
It didn’t have ActivityPub integration originally but promised to add it a while back, kind of like how Tumblr is joining the Fediverse, although Tumblr doestnd seem to implement ActivityPub just yet.
Is Tumblr still planning on joining? That would be huge
They said they would two years ago, and indicated they still intend to last December. I don’t think it’s much of a priority (they could’ve implemented basic functionality in a couple of months if it were), but I do believe they’re working on it.
I vaguely remember using it like 10 years ago when it got pre-loaded on a Samsung Tablet I bought… fun times…
It seemed to me like a combination of a news app and a social network
How do people like Flipboard? I need to find something to get news now that I’m off Reddit. Is it pretty decent at giving different perspectives in articles or is it pretty much algorithm based on what you’ll prefer?
RSS reader is how I’ve gone tbh.
I dont want my news being chosen by a social media algorithm
How did you go about setting your RSS feed up? I want to get into it, but am unsure how to generate a reliable full-coverage feed. Any decent setup guides out there?
Use an app like inoreader to discover feeds.
I personally have programmed my own and host it on web, this is what it looks like: https://me-cfs.github.io/yann/personalhost/newsrssfeed/
Here’s the list (in js but readable) of all my feeds, gives you an idea of what a well rounded rss feed looks like: https://me-cfs.github.io/yann/personalhost/newsrssfeed/feedlist.js
It’s fancy. Sync for Lemmy really lets you customize things, but I do like the default Flipoard flip actions, font sizes, layout. You can make custom groupings of content you want to view. I forget what the branded term is, but it’s like you can make your own magazine and flip through it.
I am confused. Are you referring to Sync or Flipboard?
I was referring to both to say you can get similar functionality on Sync, but Flipboard has its own charm.
I kinda like it. It’s sort of a self-curated magazine. It takes a while to get it tweaked for my personal preferences.
So, in my opinion, it’s a little like Lemmy, but focused more on the links than the conversation around them. Also, much more glossy and polished than Lemmy.
It’s worth checking out, and I’m quite happy that they seem to be gradually adding Fediverse support.
Ty! Will have to look into it some! My problem is I don’t have any specific preferred news sites already so I guess I’ll be just spamming big ones til it gets sorted out a bit? I’d also like to keep it as balanced as possible, if not just to be prepared for potential points of conflict to be knowledgeable on.
I’ve been using Flipboard since 2012 and with the ebb and flow of how news is consumed over the last 12 years I think Flipboard has stayed true to its original goal, a simple news aggregator app . I remember when they first introduced ads into the app I was almost turned off, but the ads ended up being formatted similar to the news article so they weren’t intrusive to my experience.
There’s been a few news sources that are garbage but I just mute them and never see them in my feed. I think after 12 years the app has figured out my interests xD
I also read a lot of news in Spanish and the app does a good job of including non-US publications
I just use Lemmy. Follow the right communities and I don’t feel like I’m in the dark in any way.
Haven’t gotten to that point yet; I’ve followed/unfollowed a few just due to general spam or some pretty clear biases (whether I agree with them or not).
I still remember flipboard being forcefully installed as the action button app for an old phone. My rage continues to smolder a decade later.
An app that couldn’t be uninstalled and took up precious resources. That’s all they’ll ever be to me.
Neat!
