New users of federated social networks may, at first, be a bit confused about simple things that seem so obvious on Facebook and Twitter. People coming from another Federated network to pump.io may find it hard to locate people, etc.

How do you find people to interact with? What programs should you use to post, reply, etc.? This little guide will help general users - people who just want to talk and share - get going.

You can find me over at https://hub.polari.us/steve

In reality, pump.io and other federated social networks are not that hard to use. They seem hard because established corporate social networks like Twitter and Facebook are what are known as “Walled Gardens” (or, more precisely, “tyrranical states”) - you trade freedom, privacy, and independence for what seems like a bargain: it's easy to find people and have people find you. Read that “User Agreement” sometime and see what rights and freedoms you are giving up for that ease - you might need a moment to go read a document outlining human liberty, like the UN Human Rights Declaration, the US Declaration of Independence, etc. (choose your personal favorite), just to wash the taste of the Facebook/Twitter police state out of your mouth. How many accounts on Facebook and Twitter have been shut down merely because neither entity found the speech on those accounts “preferable”?

So, think of pump.io and other federated networks as a constitution. A constitution defines your freedoms and rights and enables a society without _dictating_ that society. Take the example of the United States, a country with which I am most familiar. The Constitution defines the basic rights of the society and defines the interaction between independent states and the rights of the states vs. those of the whole country. Like the United States, federated social networks allow for a country to be formed from independent states with internal borders that can be traversed without papers. You can communicate freely and without trading liberty and privacy in weird ways. They also define protocols, open ones, for communicating BETWEEN such federated networks, allowing for “inter-network” communication (or “bridging”).

People that come from tyrranical states find open societies to be hard at first, but they soon realize that life is better in an open state than in a tyrranical one. You just make different trades.

In this document, I'll explain how you manage life in an open, federated society. Welcome. It's better here.

First, you need an account on a pump.io server (think of a single server as a state in the nation). You can choose one randomly merely by visiting:

http://pump.io/tryit.html

This link sends you to a random, known pump.io server with open registration. Make an account. Upload your avatar image. Describe yourself so that when others find your profile, they find you interesting enough to want to follow. Don't be an avatar-less, descriptionless nobody. C'mon, commit to openness!

Need inspiration or, at least, an example of what NOT to do? Check out my profile: https://hub.polari.us/steve

If you have a specific server you want to join, contact the site administrator for an account (in case registration is closed). Are you a member or friend of the Cooley and Sekula families? Contact admin+NOSPAM@polari.us for an account on “The Hub”, https://hub.polari.us.

There are a few ways to find people on pump.io:

• Randomly finding people who seem interesting: visit a “Hubub” instance. Hubub is a way of spam-filtering the open “firehose” of public posts from pump.io. There are a few of these: https://hubub.polari.us, http://hubub.jpope.org/. You can also just visit the open firehose, but it's not pretty. Hubub makes it pretty, mostly spam-free, and easy to go back in the history a few hours.
  • https://ofirehose.com
  • RSS feeds of the open firehose: http://ppump.redaustral.tk/rss.php, https://pump.mamalibre.com.ar/
• Specifically finding friends already on open, federated social networks: there are servers in place that let you link accounts on pump.io with accounts on GNU Social/Statusnet and find existing friends who also have accounts on both.
  • https://pump2status.net/: find friends with accounts linked to both GNU Social/Statusnet and Pump.io!
• Take recommendations from others about whom to follow. Here is my biased list, in no particular order:
  • Evan Prodromou: founder of the pump.io network and overall cool guy. Check out HIS list of followers and find out who he's following:
    • https://e14n.com/evan
    • Who is following Evan? https://e14n.com/evan/followers
    • More importantly, whom is Evan following? https://e14n.com/evan/following
  • Laura Arjona: passionate about many things, including a more active role for women in science, technology, engineering, and math.
    • https://identi.ca/larjona
  • Christopher Allan Webber: founder of the MediaGoblin project (https://mediagoblin.org), you'll learn all sorts of cool things about this neat open media sharing platform!
    • https://identi.ca/cwebber
  • Jessica Tallon (Tsyesika): now a developer on the MediaGoblin project working on pump.io federated networking integration. Developer of PyPump (http://pypump.org/en/latest/), the python library for interfacing with pump.io, and “p,” a command line client that lets you interact with your pump.io account(s) (https://github.com/xray7224/p/).
    • https://microca.st/Tsyesika
  • Mats Sjöberg (“sazius”): Sazius is the writer of the “Pumpa” desktop client for using the Pump.io network, and is a computer science researcher.
    • https://pump.saz.im/sazius
  • Jeremy Pope: dude likes coffee and software. Enough said.
    • https://io.jpope.org/jpope

You, my friend, need a CLIENT. Pump.io is just a network protocol - you need something that speaks the language. Here are my suggestions:

• Quick-and-effective: just use the web UI that came with your pump.io server account. It works in mobile and desktop browsers and should let you do most things you want, like post, reply, and even upload images.
• Desktop Clients:
  • I use Linux and sometimes Mac, so I like Pumpa (https://pumpa.branchable.com/) and Dianara (http://jancoding.wordpress.com/dianara/). You can even get clients in Windows. Check out the full list of desktop clients at https://github.com/e14n/pump.io/wiki/Clients
• Mobile Clients:
  • I use Android most of the time, so I recommend getting either Impeller (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.e43.impeller) or Puma. Both are available from the F-Droid store. Impeller is also available on Google Play.
  • For iOS, there is “Social Monkeys” - it's not free, but it's worth the small amount of money it costs: http://www.roguemonkey.in/

Many people mistake the Web UI Client that comes bundled with a pump.io server with pump.io. They are not the same thing. The Web UI is a demonstrator client utilizing the vastly more flexible pump.io network underneath. Don't mistake the client for the protocol. For instance, https://identi.ca, the old flagship Statusnet instance, has a web UI that only supports English translations.

The above misconception has led many to think that pump.io only speaks English. It does not. Pump.io transmits Unicode - it can speak what you speak, and transmit what you type. I have friends on Pump.io that write in Chinese, German, Swedish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. You only need a client that handles that kind of thing, and which has its own interface supporting your language (that's up to the client developer and their community of support, and has NOTHING to do with pump.io itself). There are many available. Checkout the clients list over on the Pump.io wiki.

https://github.com/e14n/pump.io/wiki/Clients

Also, there ARE pump.io web UIs that have been specially altered to speak other languages than English. For instance, https://io.intevation.de/ speaks German in its Web UI.

For more proof that pump.io and human languages in general get along just fine, check out this public post on Pump.io: https://hub.polari.us/steve/note/R9NzwuOZSx2nQNc89oc1-g

Different clients implement privacy in different ways, but pump.io supports total lockdown of your posts if you choose - you can direct message people, message a few people, a group of people (you design the group), all of your followers, or the “Public” (that makes your post visible on the firehose - LITERALLY PUBLIC).

You can define groups most easily using the Web Interface. Go to your account settings and play with your groups. You can then set your default posting choices in many clients (e.g. only post by default to your “Family” or “Friends” group). You can also set, on a post-by-post basis, who gets to see it. If a feature is missing from a client, complain politely but firmly to the client author. It will get fixed.

There is. There really is. Thank you, David Marsden: https://soundcloud.com/dmarsd/pump-dot-io