You've Heard of Misskey, Now Get Ready for Sharks

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For the longest time, I’ve spent most of my fediverse posting hours on the Mastodon software. It’s basically almost all I know. You know, aside from those times I launched a GNU Social instance, and then a very short-lived Pleroma instance. GNU Social is a lot like if someone made an open source Facebook, and Pleroma is okay, but it was originally made by a terrible person (not that this should stop you from doing whatever you want, with your time, and servers).

Then there was Misskey. Something I never really explored all that much, because the flagship instance, based in Japan, outright bans western users from even so much as registering on the instance. I tried to look up reasons as to why this is so, and all I could really find were reactionary Americans saying, “It’s because woke bad, and Japan don’t not no like that, bro?”

But, like other pieces of fediverse/activitypub software, Misskey’s got some forks. A lot of forks.

I’m not exactly sure why this is, but that’s the beauty of open source software. You can jack a piece of it for yourself, and then completely rework it to fit your wants and needs.

Enter: Sharkey.

I was trying to find a comprehensive reason as to why Misskey was forked, and then transformed into Sharkey, but mostly all I could really find was this general statement:

Sharkey is a Misskey fork following upstream changes when possible, with added features. Like any other ActivityPub software Sharkey can interface with the thousands of servers that form the fediverse, an interconnected social network, working in tandem with software such as Akkoma, Mastodon, Pixelfed and many more.

Which is fine! I’ll also note that Sharkey seems to be centered around trans-feminine users and themes, which is also cool.

The fediverse, at least on the Mastodon side, kind of has this reputation that it’s full of, and made for tech geek dude type people. Which, I’ve detailed before, was really only the case back in like, 2016. I’d say now, as in 2024, the fediverse overall is very populated by the LGBTQ+ community, and all sorts of people and walks-of-life, in-general.

But what’s it like?

Oh, it’s cool. It’s pretty cool.

Names in the notification tab blurred in order to preserve privacy.

Right away, you can see that this is a hell of a lot not like Mastodon at all. You’ve got the ability to post, of course, but you have full control over the UI, everything can be customized, trending topics update live, all of your files are able to be seen in an account-based “drive,” and did I mention you could have all the links you want on your profile page?

And, I feel like one of the main draws of Misskey and its forks, are the many, many emoji reactions you can use on posts that readily replace the tired old fave button.

So, basically, it’s kind of like Mastodon, but it’s more fun, and heavily customizable.

In fact, I feel Misskey is really aiming for self expression, and appealing to creative types.

My dilemma, is that I like this so much that I kind of want to use it more than my own instance, and I’ve even considered halting payments on a Mastodon server, and just migrating everything I do to the Sharkey instance I’m on, because … why not!?

But, at the same time, my Mastodon instance has a really sweet domain (the same one this website uses), and I’ve been using it for about a year now. I just don’t know for sure if I want to abandon that. Even if I decided to move the domain to my own hosted Sharkey instance, I’d still lose some data in that process. Not my posts though. Every single thing I’ve ever posted on my instance is copied and backed-up in a Google drive document.

Whatever I end up choosing to do with my time and my posting, you should check out Sharkey for yourself! Here are some instances to check out:

• blahaj.zone
• transfem.social
• mk.absturztau.be
• kitsunes.club

You can check out more instances, here, but I highly recommend investigating them before face-planting your keyboard and hitting that join button. Like with all fediverse software, it’s all run by regular people. And some regular people are … not using fediverse software for good things (I don’t want to be the reason you accidentally join a server for Nazis that everyone, their Mom, and admin have blocked, suspended, and silenced).

Otherwise, thanks for reading! I look forward to exploring even more of the fediverse, eight years on!