tuckerm

I’m always torn about what kinds of features should be put behind a paywall. Like, if it’s just little customizations, that’s much better than saying, “pay us a monthly fee to make more people see your posts.” It seems silly to make UI customization a pro feature, but that also seems like a non-evil way of monetizing a social media app.

I’m liking it so far. One thing that I noticed is that, by default, when you add a new source (person, Youtube channel, etc.), it asks you what category that source should go it. Mastodon’s web UI has the multi-column layout, and you can use that to categorize people you follow, but I always end up forgetting to do that. Seems like Surf makes categories the first thing you do, rather than an optional thing you do later. I think I’m going to like this more organized feed based around topics.

From what I can see, this means I need to exit the app to take some action with my mastodon account.

I haven’t tried posting anything yet, but just liking and boosting has been doing it through my Mastodon account. If I’m interacting with a bluesky post, then it uses the bluesky account that it automatically created for me. But since I signed in with my Mastodon account, all of those actions have been done by my Mastodon account.

Unfortunately, I’m not familiar enough with Iroh to understand what exactly this is, but point #3 sounds interesting. Does this mean that, if a user has linked their identity to this service (and the other special media sites they are using support it), would I be able to see all of a user’s posts across multiple social media sites? E.g. filtering the feed by a certain user, and it shows all of that users’ posts on Mastodon and Pixelfed?

Great list! I’ve been wanting to start using a smaller search engine with its own index, just for the sake of making sure there’s an alternative to GBY. (Also, there’s a new and useful acronym, haha.) Mojeek was the only one I was aware of before today.

BTW, exalead.com doesn’t seem to be a search engine anymore. I recognized that one because I remember discovering it a while ago…in 2007, maybe? But it looks like it’s not available as a regular search engine now.

edit: Also, this is the first really useful page I’ve read via the Gemini protocol, so thanks for that!