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Last week in the fediverse, ep 3: 🍎

Welcome to Last Week in the Fediverse, episode 3. The major theme of this week is iOS apps. This week saw the release of three major iOS apps: Ivory, IceCubes and Mammoth. We will dive into how these apps compare, and zoom in on the design issues behind these apps. In other news, websites are searching what the best way of interaction with Mastodon is. And finally, some good posts you might’ve missed that have an interesting perspective.

🍎iOS apps dominate the headlines
🤝Websites are searching for ways to interact with Mastodon
📝Some good posts that you might have missed


🍎iOS apps dominate the headlines

It has all been iOS news in the fediverse this week. There have been three releases of new apps this week, all exclusive to iOS:

Lets dive deeper into the apps, how they compare and how they differ. I’ll mainly focus on their design goals, and their vision on how to interact with the fediverse. For the pros and cons of each app I’ll point you to some reviews.


First of all, Ivory, who hit it big in the news this week: The launch was covered by major tech news outlets, it featured prominently on the front page of the app store and Apple leader Phil Schiller, who joined Mastodon this week, made it one of his first posts to boost the launch message.

The app gets major credits for a well designed and intuitive user interface. Macstories.net has an incredible detailed review of the app itself, concluding:

Ivory is a new app, but it’s got the style and confidence of a veteran of the App Store. It’s a 1.0 that’s been refined for over a decade. Ivory makes Mastodon a joy to use, but more than that, it shows that Tapbots are back.”

The major attention to Ivory seems like the confluence of three major aspects working in its favor:

The third point seems salient in its contrast with the other apps, as well as a large number of other projects on the fediverse. The most notable aspect of Ivory is that it is a paid subscription app, charging 2 USD per month, as well as a closed source app. The UI is recognizable to anyone who has used Twitter, borrowing elements from it’s previous app Tweetbot.


IceCubes is an open-source project, started by it’s designer Thomas Ricouard, also released this week. The open nature (github repo) of this makes it a community project foremost, with already close to 50 contributors to the project. This is visible in the rapid reiteration that the project has: in the 8 days days since its launch the app has released 12 updates.

IceCubes is also opinioned; it wants not only to be just a Mastodon client, it also has its own ideas of how to interact with the fediverse. Notable features for this include:

The community-centered open-source nature of the project makes it likely that IceCubes will also expend beyond Mastodon, and focus more on better integration with the rest of the fediverse.


Mammoth is from a new startup, that first started testing their app for iOS in December 2022, with all 10k spots quickly taken up. Two days ago, Mammoth officially launched in beta.

The main point that Mammoth advertises with, is its design. It’s Mastodon profile describes the main feature as “˖⁺. beautiful .⁺˖”, and the post that advertised the launch of the beta came with an entire blog post of how all the app icons are designed.

The design of Mammoth is certainly sleek, and the blogposts show craftmanship and an eye for detail. Mammoth is up against some serious competition though, with Ivory and IceCubes also showing some real design skills.

Mammoth does sport an entirely different advantage and approach though, and that is it’s focus on user onboarding. Mastodon’s onboarding process is notorious for new users, asking users to choose an instance before signing up leads to serious confusions for new people. For users choosing Mammoth, the sign-up flow is considerably smoother:

In the screenshot showing off the feature of suggested people to follow is Elon Musk’s Jet tracker account, showing that Mammoth is not afraid to be opiniated with their list. Creating a curated list as suggestions for people to follow is intrinsically making political choices, and it will be interesting to see how Mammoth will use this.


The beauty in all of this is that three different iOS apps can launch in the same week, and that there is actually meaningful choices between them all. The apps have their own interpretation of how to actually interact with the fediverse, and pose some meaningful questions about the (implied) design of the fediverse.

IceCubes might be interpreted as staying relatively close to other interpretations of software in the fediverse, in the sense that the software is open source, and that building the software is a community effort. Just like the software Mastodon itself, there is a central maintainer, but the community is explicitly invited to participate and contribute.

Mammoth challenges one of the core design principles that other fediverse projects hold up to, whether that is Mastodon, PixelFed or PeerTube: the idea that a new user should choose the instance that they join. All of these projects ask that the user chooses an instance, and implied in that choice is the idea that new users have the information and understanding to make a proper informed choice. For Mammoth, the assumption that the user has enough understanding to make a solid choice might not hold up, and thus, they provide an instance during the sign-up flow.

Meanwhile, Ivory comes with a vibe that extends beyond just the app itself. For some people, especially users that have been on the fediverse for longer, the move to Mastodon is a choice to escape Big Tech, a move away from Silicon Valley. For his group, Mastodon is not ‘just’ a Twitter clone for people that didn’t want to be on Twitter. The fediverse is supposed to be decentralized, not owned by big corporations. The openness of the fediverse is interpreted as radically anti-capitalist, in contrast with Apple’s walled garden ecosystem.

The environment surrounding Ivory seems in contrast with the anti-capitalist movement within the fediverse: endorsed by the app store and one of the leaders of the richest company in the world, covered by the publications that normally focus on Silicon Valley, and launched as a subscription service exclusively for a platform that is a walled garden.

This is not intended to generate controversy, in fact, it seems likely that there will not be much controversy about this at all. The power of Mastodon and the fediverse is in that it is explicitly not a singular public town square, in the way that Twitter wants itself to be a singular public town square. Instead, it is very many different squares, all having different groups, with different overlaps of people. Instead of forcing radical anti-capitalists in the same square with Apple fans, and telling them they have to come to an agreement on which app to use, the groups can largely separate themselves out in different groups, only interacting with each other when they want to.

It is in this interaction between groups that it will be interesting to see how ideas and conceptualizations about the fediverse will flow. When other new users join, which set of ideas will they pick up? Will they demand an open-source app, or will they prefer to pay a small subscription fee to a dedicated and skilled developer? I do not know the answer, but the Fediverse Report will be watching to see how shared understandings of the fediverse develop.

And let’s not forget one of the other real upgrades that all these great new apps give us:


Websites experimenting with Mastodon

Websites and news outlets are actively experimenting with how to approach Mastodon, and what the best way of interacting is.

FT Alphaville shut down their Mastodon instance this week, after experimenting for a couple of months. They cite high regulatory and legal cost and uncertainty. I wrote about this here, noting that an unclear idea of how to make the best use of their Mastodon instance also likely contributed to the shutdown.

The Verge challengers developers to turn their website into a Mastodon instance. Developer @zemlanin rose to the challenge, creating a website within the same weekend. Our analysis finds an interesting contrast between how The Verge approached their recent website redesign and using Mastodon for news. The Verge tries to get visitors to their website by showing a private, curated newsfeed on their website. Integrating that feed in Mastodon negates a main reason to visit their website however.

Dutch magazine ‘De Groene Amsterdammer’ published an indepth analysis today on how to move on from Twitter as a news institute (in Dutch only). They also set up their own Mastodon instance; social.groene.nl. On a surface level their approach seems similar to that of FT Alphaville, it will be interesting to see how they navigate the challenges that FT Alphaville experienced.


Some good posts

@Spencer Dailey shows that Techmeme has gotten more interaction on Mastodon than on Twitter for the same posts.


As Jesse Baer points out, Mastodon does not seem to have boosting figured out fully, leading to this. Referenced essay by Cory Doctorow here.


Tony Stubblebine is the CEO of Medium, and recently started a public Mastodon instance. They have been open about working together with the community of how to best approach moderation and privacy, as I’ve reported on earlier. He poses an interesting open question about moderation, with no easy answer.


The account FediThings launched a new project fedi.garden, showcasing small instances for people to join. A clear illustration of how different people are taking a different approach to the choice of instances for new users.


Just before the publication deadline I found out that there is actually a fourth app for iOS that got released this week! It’s called Tusker. You can download it here, announcement here. One of the key features of Tusker is its ability to integrate with other projects on the fediverse, such as Pleroma, Hometown and PixelFed. For people unfamiliar with Pleroma, you can check the announcement post to get a feel for it.


That is all for now! This has been a big one, with a major focus on iOS apps. The Fediverse Report will be back this Sunday, with the bi-weekly Sunday Readings report. Thank you so much for reading. You can follow here at fediversereport.com or follow my Mastodon account.