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Items tagged with: Fediverse


A (hopefully good) comparison of decentralised video sharing platforms like @loops, @peertube and @owncast to centralised platforms like Youtube and Tiktok went online yesterday.

blog.gelbphoenix.de/the-rise-o…

#blog #fediverse #Loops #Peertube #Owncast #Youtube #Tiktok


#MastoAdmin folks who weren't around the #Fediverse and #Mastodon back in 2018 may not know (or those who were, may have forgotten) how unpopular trending tags were when the project leader forced it despite extensive criticism about creating abuse vectors and clawing back promises of creating an algorithm-free network.

(1/7)

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…



We're still $76k away from our stretch goal to establish a non-profit.

We're already working on it, and can't wait to build a sustainable, long term home for our ecosystem of projects!

That being said, if you could help us reach $200k, we can hire more team members.

Please spread the word, we need ethical and safe alternative platforms more than ever!

kickstarter.com/projects/pixel…

#pixelfed #loops #kickstarter #fediverse


Fediverse Report – #104

Mastodon has announced it will add quote posts to the platform, and some more news.

The News


Mastodon has announced it is adding quote posts to the platform, a long-awaited feature. Mastodon got a grant by NLnet in 2024 to add quote posts, and they are now sharing an update on their work. Mastodon is adding a variety of features to quote posts, such as giving people the ability to opt out of being quote posted. They will publish the technical work to support quote posts as Fediverse Enhancement Proposals, and Mastodon is currently in the process of writing these proposals. The organisation does not say when quote posts will be added, only noting that it ‘will still take more time to develop.’

For a long time, Mastodon had not implemented quote posts because CEO Eugen Rochko saw them as bad. His main concern is that quote posts lead to ‘dunking’ and toxic behaviour. Dunking refers to the behaviour where people use quote posts to ‘dunk’ on other people’s post, often with the intent that this mocking will lead to their followers to also mock and harass the original poster. Dunking was a visible part of Twitter’s culture, and in popular belief dunking and toxicity became linked together. Research showed a more complicated picture. Hilda Bastian analysed over 30 studies on quote tweeting, and concludes: “There’s conflicting evidence on whether QTs [quote Tweets] increase or decrease incivility, and whatever effect there is, it doesn’t seem to be major.

In 2023 Mastodon changed their opinion, and first started saying that the organisation was open to implementing quote posts. Still, toxic behaviour via dunking continued to be a main concern. This is visible in the accompanying design research that Mastodon has done in their work on quote posts. Mastodon’s view seems to be that quote posts are toxic at it’s core, saying that “the team started out with a shared view that Quote Posts can be misused.”

Mastodon takes a technical approach to dealing to the purported problem of toxicity of quote posts, and the blog posts lists three features to mitigate it: people can choose if their posts are able to be quoted, people get notified if they are quoted, and there will be the ability to withdraw your post from the quoted context. Bluesky also has these features for quote posts, and they’re generally received well. What I find missing here is a take by Mastodon on the effect of these features on Bluesky. Mastodon sees quote posts as being dangerous, and that is why they will implement some features to mitigate the risk. But do they think that quote posts are being used well on Bluesky? Is Bluesky’s behaviour and culture around quote posts something that Mastodon is striving towards? I’m not clear to me what Mastodon’s answer is here.

Mastodon’s design research also says that they will display quotes in a different way to ‘steer away from dunk culture”‘, a feature not mentioned in Mastodon’s announcement blog post. Mastodon is planning to display a quote post by first showing the quote, and showing the reply below it. This is similar to how Tumblr does quote posts. But it differs from how all other platforms that interoperate with Mastodon display quote posts: fediverse native platforms like Misskey, Akkoma and Streams, as well as connected networks like Bluesky and Threads, all display quote posts by showing the reply at the top, and the quoted post below.

Mastodon’s position is that quote posts are a risky feature invite misuse, and thus need a variety of safety features. But Mastodon is not an isolated platform, it is connected to various other platforms that all have their own ideas about quote posts. If displaying quote posts Tumblr-style (quote above, comment below) is preferred over displaying them Twitter-style (comment above, quote below), what is the expectation on how other platforms should interact with Mastodon quotes? Is Misskey expected to display Mastodon’s quote post differently? Meanwhile, Mastodon is planning to display quotes that originate from Misskey not in the way that Misskey does (Twitter-style), but in their own manner (Tumblr-style), saying that it has “very little impact on the semantics”.

I find these statements hard to square: on the one hand, Mastodon says it how quote posts are displayed has little impact on the semantics of a post, but at the same time it is assumed to have enough of an impact in that it can reduce “dunking culture”. But if the manner a quote post is displayed can impact people’s behaviour, it automatically follows that the manner a quote post is displayed impacts its semantics, as otherwise there would be no impact on people’s behaviour either. But if the semantics of a post are altered by using a different display method for quote posts, than it means that Mastodon is taking an active decision to alter the semantics of posts made on other networks like Misskey and Bluesky.

Mastodon’s choice to use a different way of displaying quote posts than the other platforms in their network opens up a new interesting avenue for federated diplomacy. We’ve seen both ways of displaying quote posts be successful, the way posts are quoted is a significant part of how conversations flow on Tumblr. But what is new here is Mastodon is part of a federated network, and that means that their decisions impact other players, and their decisions have impact on Mastodon as well. This interaction between different display types of quote posts is something we have not really seen before, leading to some interesting new types of negotiations: how Mastodon expect Misskey to display Mastodon quote posts on Misskey? How does Threads feel about having their quote posts being displayed differently on Mastodon? What is the expected behaviour of Bridgy Fed, the bridge that connects Bluesky with Mastodon? All those questions are still open, and I’m curious what the answer will turn out to be.


Tumblr is still planning to join the fediverse. I reported this recently, and now TechCrunch got a followup and a confirmation from Automattic, saying that ‘Automattic declined to share a time frame as to when the migration would be complete, given its scale, but a rep for the company called the progress so far “exciting.”’

The Social Web Foundation (SWF) has announced they are now a formal member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C tends to favour institutional membership, but the W3C Social Community Group that concerns itself with ActivityPub is open to everyone. The SWF is working on various improvements to ActivityPub, such as adding end-to-end encryption and supporting data portability.

Event Federation is a WordPress plugin that extends the ActivityPub support plugin for WordPress by adding support for WordPress events. The plugin is now officially released as a 1.0 version.

Hexbear is a controversial Lemmy server that let domain expire. The Hexbear domain is now for sale, and an avid bidding war has driven up the price for the domain to over 2300 dollar at time of writing.

ForgeFed is an ActivityPub extension that adds federation support to software forges such as Forgejo. It has gotten a new NLnet grant, with the project now focusing on user research and documentation.

A few weeks ago, Fedidb removed fediverse platfrom GoToSocial from the database after refusing to honor robots.txt, and the GoToSocial developer spoofed data as retaliation. Fedidb developer Daniel Supernault later decided to properly add support for robots.txt, but stopped crawling for the entire fediverse in the meantime while it was implemented. Supernault now confirms that Fedidb honors robots.txt and has added GoToSocial back to the data set.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne has set up their own Mastodon server for all community members, including students.

The Links


#fediverse

fediversereport.com/fediverse-…


@Peter Vágner @Dieguito 🦝🧑🏻‍💻🍕 How conversations work is not unified all across the Fediverse. Even how connections work is not unified.

Mastodon has taken over the follower/followed principle from Twitter which is always illustrated with arrows with one point. A following B is illustrated with an arrow from A to B. A being followed by B is illustrated with an arrow from B to A. A and B following each other mutually is illustrated with one arrow from A to B and one arrow from B to A.

It appears to me that Friendica has adopted this to become more compatible with Mastodon. But its several descendants, created by Friendica's own creator, starting with Hubzilla, haven't.

Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte still have the bidirectional "connection" or "contact" as the default. It's illustrated with one arrow, but with one point on each end.

Also, all three understand a threaded conversation as an enclosed contruct entirely owned by the conversation starter. Everyone on these three who has the start post on their stream always actually has the whole thread on their stream.

In fact, all three have Conversation Containers implemented. This feature was originally created in the streams repository in 2022. Forte has had it from the get-go as it started out as a fork of (streams). It was eventually turned into FEP-171b and backported to Hubzilla last year.

All three make sure that everyone who has a post on their stream also always has all comments on that post, at least those that are made after they have received the post.

This works on two basic principles:

  • All comments go directly to the original poster because the original poster owns the thread.
  • Those who have the post automatically receive all comments from the original poster.

In a pure Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte system, your above example would look like this:

  • User 1 and User 2 are connected.
  • User 1 and User 3 are connected. (This doesn't even matter.)
  • User 2 and User 3 are connected.
  • User 2 and User 4 are connected.


Much simpler than explaining everything with "following" and "being followed", isn't it?

Now, the conversation works like this.

  • User 2 sends a public post, thus creating a Conversation Container of which they are the owner.
    User 1, User 3 and User 4 receive the post.
  • User 3 comments on User 2's post.
    The comment goes from User 3 to User 2, who is the owner of the conversation, and it is automatically forwarded to User 1 and User 4 who already have User 2's post on their streams.
  • User 4 comments on User 3's comment.
    The comment goes from User 4 past User 3 straight to User 2, who is the owner of the conversation, and it is automatically forwarded to User 1 and User 3 who already have User 2's post on their streams.


The only mentioning that occurs here, if any, is User 4 mentioning User 3. This is not necessary for User 4's post to reach anyone. This is only necessary to make sure on Hubzilla (which doesn't have a tree view) that User 4 is replying to User 3's comment and not to User 2's post.

On Mastodon, for comparison, everything depends on who follows whom, who mentions whom and whose instance knows whose instance.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Conversations #FEP_171b #ConversationContainers



@matrix has gone from $0 to $561K in recurring revenue in just 2 years. But our expenses run $1.2M/yr.

We've burned through reserves and are at a crossroads.

It's the classic FOSS funding problem: use and adoption are at an all-time high, wealthy companies and countries use it, and secure decentralized comms have never been more important. And yet we can't pay our bills.

YOU have a role to play in shaping what comes next: matrix.org/blog/2025/02/crossr…

#Matrix #FOSS #OpenSource #IndieWeb #Fediverse


#dobréRáno #fediverse
Trošku závidím. Kde je doba, kdy jsem kolem Kutné Hory jel na celodřevěných běžkách a bylo " -18".



Attention #Fediverse!

The government of the state of Tamil Nadu in India is offering an enormous cash prize to anyone who can crack the code of an ancient script used in the Indus Valley civilization.

I'm just posting this because I figure if there's some big brain who can decipher the script, and that person needs money right now, there's a decent chance they are posting cat pictures on #Mastodon.

smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/…


I dieci comandamenti di Friendica. Cosa fare con l’account che abbiamo aperto su Poliverso?

Ecco una sorta di decalogo su Friendica. Ci sono molti link che possono appesantire la lettura, ma speriamo che vi piaccia e soprattutto ci auguriamo che lo troviate utile!

informapirata.it/2025/02/02/i-…

#Fediverse #Fediverso #Friendica

[ap_content



Nice. How to leave #X / #Twitter and #Instagram? In the edition of tomorrow‘s newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine offers valuable tips and highlights alternatives in the #Fediverse, such as #Mastodon and #Pixelfed.

A must-read especially for @Gargron from @Mastodon and @dansup from @PixelFed and of course @helpers / @admins

📖 Read more here in german language: augsburger-allgemeine.de/geld-…

#SocialMedia #Privacy #Alternatives #Mastodon #Pixelfed #Fediverse


Nice. How to leave #X / #Twitter and #Instagram? In the edition of tomorrow‘s newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine offers valuable tips and highlights alternatives in the #Fediverse, such as #Mastodon and #Pixelfed. A must-read especially for @Gargron from @Mastodon and @dansup from @PixelFed and of course @helpers / @admins

📖 Read more here in german language: augsburger-allgemeine.de/geld-…

#SocialMedia #Privacy #Alternatives #Mastodon #Pixelfed #Fediverse



Two projects we love are currently running a crowdsource campaign. The modular Open Hardware laptop MNT Reform Next is up on Crowdsupply where you can support them by buying a T-shirt or treat yourself to an OH laptop in pre-sale.
[1]And the Pixelfed and Loops team is seeking backers to support the development of these federated social networks with no ads, no algorithms and no tracking.

[2][1] crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform…
[2] kickstarter.com/projects/pixel…
#OpenHardware #FOSS #Fediverse #NGI #NGI0


DJs.social is a Mastodon server for DJs (and related fields) of any kind, including club DJs, radio, mobile sound-systems, livestreaming etc.

:Fediverse: djs.social

Find out more at djs.social/about or contact the admin @luka

#FeaturedServer #DJ #DJs #Music #Radio #SoundSystems #ClubDJs #Mastodon #Fediverse #FreeFediverse



Happy 7th anniversary of becoming an official W3C standard, ActivityPub!

w3.org/news/2018/activitypub-i…

We're creating something truly special here with the fediverse, and I am so thankful for everyone who contributes to it, whether with your time, money, or just by sharing your thoughts, your creations, your silly little jokes. Keep it up!

#fediverse #activitypub #standards #OpenWeb #anniversary



For those migrating to the #fediverse from #Facebook, the experience can be a bit overwhelming.
Choosing an instance/server can be daunting, not to mention trying to match basic need with feature set. One thing I can recommend when inviting folks to the fedi is to gently get across that it's not exactly what they're used to. They have to be a bit more hands-on, since there is, for the most part, no algorithm.

From working in tech support for about 13 years, I learned that when introducing something new to the user, it's best to take one aspect and focus on teaching that to them. Get them a foundation, help them get comfortable, then move on to the next aspect. Education = empowerment.

Here's a list of the protocols I use/have used and my experience with them. I've done a little footwork, and made a list of servers by protocol for users to peruse. Courtesy of FediDB! I recommend going to each instance's about page and reading up on such info as character limit, location, instance focus, blocklists, and who they federate with.

One thing I can say for sure: My interactions in the fediverse - with a couple of exceptions - have been pleasant and rewarding. Fedi is truly a breath of fresh air when compared to the mainstream platforms.

Mastodon fedidb.org/software/mastodonOf course, the most widely known of the protocols. I've had more experience on it than any other. Mastodon instances usually have a 500 character limit. If one is particularly verbose, it may not be ideal, as you have to create a thread in order to have a longer post. There are other mastodon instances with larger character limits. Again, best to look at an instance's about page to get the lowdown.

Sharkey fedidb.org/software/sharkeyProbably my favorite thus far. Sharkey is a fork of the MisKey protocol, and has a rich feature set. It has a selection of reaction emojis, so you can do more than just "like" a post. If you're versed in MFM formatting language, Sharkey also has you covered. Character limits are usually higher. Sharkey.world (the instance I'm on) has a 5000 character limit.

Friendica fedidb.org/software/friendicaFor a more Facebook-like experience, and a practically unlimited character limit, Friendica offers a bit more familiarity to a fediverse newcomer's experience. It has events, calendars, and you can create groups, though you actually create a new page to act as a group. In all honesty, I find Friendica a bit clunky, but that's just personal opinion.

And that's my offering. I hope this is useful, and as always, if what I presented needs correction anywhere, please feel free to let me know, just be constructive.

#Facebook #Mastodon #Sharkey #Friendica




In einer Welt, die von rechtspopulistischen Figuren und Tech-Giganten beherrscht wird, stellt das #Fediverse (#Mastodon) eine essentielle Alternative dar. Es bietet einen Raum für dezentrale Kommunikation, der frei von kommerziellen Interessen und der Manipulation durch zentrale Plattformen ist, und fördert eine digitale Kultur, die Unabhängigkeit, Vielfalt und respektvollen Austausch anstelle von Hass und Desinformation in den Mittelpunkt stellt. ✊



🎉 Když jsem 28. října 2021 zakládal Pixelfed, kdo by si pomyslel, kam až to dojde? 🤯
Dnes tu máme 1 000 registrovaných uživatelů a 130 aktivních! 💪
Děkujeme všem, kdo tvoříte tuto komunitu, Jste úžasní!
#Pixelfed #Komunita #fediverse



Are These Accounts Monitored ???


!Friendica Developers !Friendica Support As of right now I am not sure if my #Friendica instance is working across the #fediverse as I am not seeing much engagement at all, and more than half of who I am following, I am not receiving their #feeds at all, and at this point I am clueless as to what is going on or how to deal with, because I dont know what is wrong, or if anything is wrong.

VersionFriendica 'Interrupted Fern' 2025.02-dev - 1576
Server Settings
PHP
version 8.1.31
php.ini /opt/alt/php81/etc/php.ini
upload_max_filesize 256M
post_max_size 256M
memory_limit 512M
MySQL / MariaDB
max_allowed_packet 268435456

I am not seeing much engagement, more so I am not seeing posts of those I follow across the fediveres, and I know several post a few times a day, but I am not seeing much activity at all, any ideas on what may be going on would be great, and please any directions please make very simple to understand, brain issues, sometimes I struggle grasping things that should be easy. If it matters, I am in cPanel on shared hosting, so not root access to anything.

social.2ndshot.photos/profile/… pasjrwoctx@social.2ndshot.photos


Společnost #Meta maže příspěvky, když se uživatelé zmíní o #Pixelfed.
Ale to nás nezastaví! Dnes se registrovalo dalších 6 nových uživatelů a už brzy nás bude na pixelfed.cz skoro 1000!
#opensource #fediverse




TIL that on #Meta platforms now one can write terrible, offensive slurs against LGBTQIA+ folks and immigrants… with zero repercussions. But the second one mentions a #Fediverse project like #Pixelfed, the post is automatically removed.

Meta “moderation” policies in 2025: racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia and sexism are allowed; mention of competition is strictly forbidden.

Source: mastodon.social/@dansup/113813…

#BigTech #dystopia #QuitMeta


Friendica Installation

Ich versuche gerade die #Fediverse Anwendung #Friendica auf meinem #Raspberry Pi 5 in einem #Podman #Container zu installieren. Aber bei der Datenbank ist Schluss. da bleibt es hängen. Weiß jemand Rat? @Friendica Support zum Beispiel?

Hardcopy Friendica Installation

Hardcopy Friendica Installation

version: "3.7"

services:

  mariadb:
    image: docker.io/library/mariadb:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - mydb:/var/lib/mysql
    ports:
      - "6033:3306"
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: *****
      MYSQL_DATABASE: friendica
      MYSQL_USER: friendica
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: *****

  phpmyadmin:
    container_name: phpmyadmin_9092
    image: docker.io/library/phpmyadmin:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "9092:80"
    environment:
      - PMA_ARBITRARY=1
      - PMA_HOST=mariadb
    depends_on:
      - mariadb

  app:
    image: docker.io/library/friendica
    container_name: friendica_9093
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - friendica:/var/www/html    
    ports:
      - "9093:80"
    environment:
      - MYSQL_HOST=mydb
      - MYSQL_USER=friendica
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=*****
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=friendica
      - FRIENDICA_ADMIN_MAIL=*****
    depends_on:
      - mariadb

volumes:
  mydb:
  friendica:

networks:
  proxy-tier:


This is NOT Meta's Facebook/Instagram/Threads.

This is MUCH better :mastodon:

Take the time to familiarize yourself with this new way of life.

Interact with others genuinely,
let go of the numbers.

Discover new features,
let go of the old ways.

Read about the culture here.
Listen, learn, and make it your Home 💚

infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon…
#Mastodon #Fediverse #Meta #Facebook #Instagram #Threads


Was ist denn aktuell die go-to #Fediverse-Software für Facebook-Flüchtige, die mit dem Mastodon Interface nicht warmwerden? Firefish wurde iirc eingestellt. Was gibt's da noch? Wieder Misskey? (Frage für ein paar liebe Autoren-Kolleg:innen, die mit Mastodon nicht gut klarkommen.)

Gerne RT.

(Nicht völlig unrelated zu literatur.social/@viennawriter… )


Thx for your link and efforts @Seirdy !

All this said, being part of a decentralized web, as pointed out in this toot, our publicly visible interaction lands on other instances and servers of the #fediVerse and can be scrapped there. I wonder if this situation actually might lead, or should lead, to a federation of servers that share the same robots.txt "ideals".

As @Matthias pointed out in his short investigation of the AI matter, this has (in my eyes) already unimagined levels of criminal and without any doubt unethical behavior, not to mention the range of options rouge actors have at hand.

It's evident why for example the elongated immediately closed down access to X's public tweets and I guess other companies did the same for the same reasons. Obviously the very first reason was to protect their advantage about the hoarded data sets to train their AI in the first place. Yet, considering the latest behavior of the new owner of #twitter, nothing less than at least the creation of #AI driven lists of "political" enemies, and not only from all the collected data on his platform, is to be expected. A international political nightmare of epical proportions. Enough material for dystopian books and articles for people like @Cory Doctorow, @Mike Masnick ✅, @Eva Wolfangel, @Taylor Lorenz, @Jeff Jarvis, @Elena Matera, @Gustavo Antúnez 🇺🇾🇦🇷, to mention a few of the #journalim community, more than one #podcast episode by @Tim Pritlove and @linuzifer, or some lifetime legal cases for @Max Schrems are at hand.

What we are facing now is the fact that we need to protect our and our users data and privacy because of the advanced capabilities of #LLM. We basically are forced to consider to change to private/restricted posts and close down our servers as not only the legal jurisdictions are way to scattered over the different countries and ICANN details, but legislation and comprehension by the legislators is simply none existent, as @Anke Domscheit-Berg could probably agree to.

Like to say, it looks like we need to go dark, a fact that will drive us even more into disappearing as people will have less chance to see what we are all about, advancing further the advantages off the already established players in the social web space.
Just like Prof. Dr. Peter Kruse stated in his take about on YT The network is challenging us min 2:42 more than 14 years ago:
"With semantic understanding we'll have the real big brother. Someone is getting the best out of it and the rest will suffer."


I'm really happy we can finally announce some #lemmy#accessibility work myself, @MostlyBlindGamer, @dhamlinmusic, and the other Rblind admins have been working on for a while. We've just released two open-source themes, light and dark, for Lemmy that should be more accessible and usable for #blind and low vision folks. You can read the details, and please provide feedback, here: www.rblind.com/post/3476242#a11y#fediverse#opensource