Sensitive content Click to open/close

Recent events have spurred some great discussion of fediverse safety and the ways that we can improve it. I'm thrilled to see the growing interest in this problem, but there's one specific angle that concerns me. Specifically, the push for allow-list federation.

First, some background information. Federation between instances is usually controlled by restricting which remote instances (identified by domain name) can send or receive messages from the local instance. In the majority of fedi servers, this is implemented with a "deny list" - a list of instance domains that should be blocked. When using a deny list, all unlisted domains can communicate by default.

This is in contrast with an "allow list", which specifies the domains that should not be blocked. When using an allow list, all unlisted domains are blocked and can not communicate. Deny-list federation is open except for specific routes, and allow-list federation is closed except for specific routes. There are other approaches, but these are by far the most common.

Now, moving on to my actual point. I've recently seen some discussion of using allow-list federation as means to improve user safety. This idea, while very well-intended, is unfortunately flawed and could easily cause more harm than it prevents.

This idea suggests that by limiting federation to known, approved domains, then it becomes easier to block sources of abuse, hate, and illegal content. This is actually quite effective, and some instances are already using allow lists to great effect. They experience minimal contact with dangerous instances, and those that slip through are easy to identify and block. It's a great strategy for specific communities. Unfortunately, however, this approach cannot scale.

Allow-list federation works well for a minority of instances, but only because the majority do not use it. This is due to the network effect. Just as a centralized social network can collapse if there are too few connections between users, a federated social network can collapse if there are too few connections between nodes (instances).

With open or deny-list federation, all nodes are connected to all others. This forms a very strong network - so strong that small and even single-user nodes are possible. The open federation ensures that there are always sufficient connections to keep the network useful.

The same is not true of allow-list federation. In this mode, the network nodes are only connected to a limited subset of others. As the percentage of allow-list nodes increases, the number of connections decreases exponentially. The resulting network is weak and unstable enough to collapse under pressure. A bigger problem, however, is not the network weakness but rather the loss of small instances.

In my experience, it's rare to see a federation allow-list with more than 1,000 entries. Fediverse index websites currently show around 25,000 active instances, which means that most allow-list instances are connected with only 4% of others. We can assume that the 4% is biased towards medium-to-large instances because of their increased visibility. After all, an instance cannot allow-list another node until they've encountered it through a mutual. Larger instances have more mutuals, and thus a greater chance to be discovered.

Over time, this creates an imbalance where larger instances benefit from a richer and broader network than smaller nodes, who have limited reach and reduced federation. Any new instance must somehow maintain a user base while faced with network isolation. This becomes a significant barrier to entry for the fediverse.
This barrier effect is bad enough, but there's another angle to consider. Fedi is large enough to have a constant churn of small instances starting up and shutting down. Currently, more instances are forming than closing, which leads to positive growth in the number of nodes - a good thing for network health. But if it was harder to start a new instance? That ratio would drop or even reverse, causing the network to shrink instead of grow. Reduced network size increases the network effect, which expands the inequality, which strengthens the barrier, which decreases the growth, which reduces the network size. A classic feedback loop.

This process would be devastating for fedi. The cycle would continue until there's no new instances at all, by which point we'd have lost the rich ecosystem of tiny communities that make fedi unique. Large instances can never provide a truly safe space, and often foster a community much like Twitter - problems included. The small, diverse instances are what make this network special. If we lose that, then we lose the fediverse.

I can't bear to see that happen.

#Fedi #FediVerse #FediMeta #Federation

Cascading collapse of online social networks - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Cascading collapse of online social networks

^Nature

#FediGov is an initiative by the he Swiss local group with GNU/Linux.ch to encourage public institutions to use federated free software solutions to communicate with their people.

fedigov.eu/

#softwarefreedom #decentralized #fediverse

Facebook gave Netflix all of your private messages in exchange for all your watch history.

#fediverse rocks.

Edit: Source: arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/0…

Zkouknul jsem podcast s
Johannou Nejedlovou, kandidátkou do Evropského parlamentu.
V rozhovoru štrejchli o téma "Evropská sociální síť" jako protiváha čínského TikToku a amerického Facebooku.

👩 Odpověděla že by jí spíš zajímala nějaká decentralizovaná forma sociální sítě.
🧔 Moderátor skoro až posměšně odpověděl "Že bych jako odešel z X a vzal s sebou všechno v batůžku a šel jinam..."

Chce to víc popularizovat #fediverse, aby nemuseli jen snít o věcech co už máme...
talktv.cz/video/johanna-nejedl…

Johanna Nejedlová: jak se chtějí zelení dostat do europarlamentu, Green Deal, kvóty na ženy, Elon Musk, SPD, piráti...

Odstartovali jsme minisérii předvolebních rozhovorů s kandidáty do Evropského parlamentu. Jako první do studia dorazila Johanna Nejedlová, kandidátka Strany zelených. Příjemný poslech :)

^{www.talktv.cz}

Threads is the largest player so far to adopt #ActivityPub, and as @mike says, “The implications are huge.”

Why is Threads doing this? How is the team working with the community? How are they thinking about moderation, monetization and privacy in these early days and going forward?
In the newest episode of @dot_social, Mike digs in with @rklambo, Director of Product Management, and @pcottle, Software Engineer. Check it out in the fediverse on PeerTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. More details here:

about.flipboard.com/inside-fli…

#DotSocial #Podcast #Fediverse #Federation #MastodonMigration #Threads #Meta #ActivityPub #Flipboard

Threads Has Entered the Building (and the Dot Social Podcast) - Flipboard

Threads is the largest player so far to adopt ActivityPub, which is needed for the open social web to scale. Why is Threads doing this?

^{Mia Quagliarello (Flipboard)}

Mastodon server for musicians of all levels, instruments, regions, languages, and genres. You don’t have to be a professional musician to join, but you should at least play an instrument or sing as a hobby.

musicians.today

More info at musicians.today/about or contact the admin @cambraca

#FeaturedServer #Music #Musician #Musicians #Mastodon #Fediverse #FreeFediverse

Musicians Today

Fediverse community for musicians of all levels, instruments, regions, languages, and genres.

^{Mastodon hosted on musicians.today}

Happy *seventh* anniversary of "Six reasons Mastodon won't survive" to all who celebrate:
mashable.com/article/mastodon-…

#Fediverse #Mastodon

If you’re on mastodon.social, I would highly recommend that you switch to a different server that protects its people instead of exposing them to a well-known bad actor like Facebook/Meta via Threads.

For alternatives, see: fedipact.veganism.social

And remember that Mastodon is not the fediverse. The fediverse is much more than just Mastodon and definitely more so than mastodon.social and Mastodon gGmbH.

#mastodonSocial #mastodonGGMBH #mastodon #fediverse #threads #facebook #meta

blog.commune.sh/federated-webr…

In the glory days of web 1.0, social websites would prominently link out to their digital neighbors via lists known as webrings; magical doorways to an expansive hinterland of digital villages.

Let's envision what a truly federated chat like #Matrix could do to improve the cross-connectivity of chat channels. Most of these features are already possible, they just haven't been implemented yet in a community-oriented client experience.

#CommuneApp #fediverse #community

Federated Webrings

^{Erlend Sogge Heggen (Commune Blog)}

Fediverse | Probleme bei der Federation

Es gibt im Fediverse einige Newsbots deren 'Anrisse' bei mir scheinbar ohne Link zum Orginalbeitrag sind. Nehmen wir zum Beispiel diesen Beitrag. Bei mir (Friendica) sieht er so aus:

Sprich es gibt nur einen kurzen Textanriss und ansonsten gar nichts. Gehe ich dann auf den Orginalbeitrag (ebenfalls Friendica), so sieht es so aus:

Nun stellt sich die Frage wo unterwegs das Bild als auch der Link auf der Strecke geblieben sind. Liegt es daran das ich die Vorschau für Links deaktiviert habe? Wenn ja, dann müsste ja doch trotzdem irgendwo der entsprechende Link im Beitrag sein, oder sehe ich das falsch?

Achso, der Vollständigkeit halber findet man hier auch noch die verlinkte Seite bei DW.

#Frage #Fediverse #Friendica #News #LInks #Sascha #2024-03-24 @Friendica Support

Sensitive content Click to open/close

Takže #NSFW kanál @Nepříliš oblečená děvčata by teď měl být otevřený i jako forum, takže kromě toho, že tam najdete automatizovaný fotky z kanálů po #Fediverse, tak tam můžete vkládat i svoje

Funguje to tak, že budete sledovat @Nepříliš oblečená děvčata a potom ho stačí jen tagnout do příspěvku, on vám to přesdílí.

Aspoň teoreticky :)

It looks like you can now view anyone’s Threads profile from Mastodon and Pixelfed instances that federate with them.

If you’re a Mastodon user wanting to block Threads, or a Mastodon server admin looking not only to block Threads from federating to your server but also block all inbound and outbound traffic (data scrapers, loads of traffic overwhelming small servers) from all their IP addresses, I wrote a guide that can help:

mastodon.moule.world/users/MOU…

#Threads #Fediverse #Mastodon #PixelFed

Hoera 🎉! Sinds vorige week zijn onze collega’s van Logius actief op Mastodon in de #fediverse.

Volg @Logius voor nieuws over DigiD, MijnOverheid, Digitoegankelijk, Digikoppeling, API-standaarden en nog veel meer!

#digitaleoverheid @minbzk @avhuffelen
@belastingdienst
@ministerieezk
@minienw

Weil ich das Projekt FediBuzz von @astro vorhin in meinem Talk erwähnt habe:

Bei den letzten #Datenspuren hat er auch einen Talk dazu gehalten:

#FediBuzz: Globale Hashtags fürs #Fediverse

▶️media.ccc.de/v/ds23-215--fedib…

#FediBuzz: Globale Hashtags fürs Fediverse

https://fedi.buzz Hashtags sind ein hilfreiches Mittel um Menschen in sozialen Netzwerken in Kontakt zu bringen. Obwohl wird Dezentralis...

^media.ccc.de

Assalamu alaikum, #Muslim #Fediverse. Friendly reminder that we have a muslim friendly space at absolutelyhar.am for people looking for Muslims and Muslim-adjacent peoples. We'd love to have you join and support us.

Sign-up: absolutelyhar.am/auth/sign_up
Server funds: ko-fi.com/itstariq

Absolutely Har.am

Sign up on Mastodon today! With an account, you will be able to follow people, post updates and exchange messages with users from any Mastodon server and more!

^{Mastodon hosted on absolutelyhar.am}

Week in Fediverse 2024-03-15

Servers

- GoToSocial v0.14.2
- Castopod v1.10.5
- Mitra v2.13.0
- tootik v0.9.4
- Announcing Ibis, the federated Wikipedia Alternative
- Apas: ActivityPub via email

Clients

- Sengi v1.7.0
- Elk v0.13.0
- Jerboa v0.0.63
- toot v0.42.0
- Mastonaut v1.9.0
- Voyager v1.47.0
- Photon v1.28.3
- Shitter v3.5.6

Tools and Plugins

- PeerTube Livechat Plugin v8.4.0
- FediFetcher v7.0.4
- Fediverse Redirect v1.13.0
- Fedify: A fediverse server framework in Deno
- LemmyAutomod: A tool for Lemmy that allows instance admins to set rules that will take action in certain scenarios

Protocol

- FEP-6481: Specifying ActivityPub extension support with NodeInfo
- FEP-9fde: Mechanism for servers to expose supported operations

Articles

- The playground schematic analogy for designing a fediverse service
- Owncast Newsletter, March 2024
- Tiktok and the Fediverse
- How updates work in ActivityPub / Mastodon
- Last Week in Fediverse – ep 59

-----

#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub

Previous edition: mitra.social/objects/018e1f65-…

Tiktok and the Fediverse

Today, the United States House of Representatives voted to require the Chinese company Bytedance to sell its stake in the popular service Tiktok. If the company does not comply, the bill would ban …

^{Evan Prodromou's Blog}

Ce JEUDI 14 MARS sur #NANTES

ATELIER #MATRIX - #MOBILIZON par @lafediversenantaise
au #BouillonduCoin, café associatif du quartier #Dervallières-Zola

Venez découvrir ou partager vos connaissances,
y rencontrer les groupes locaux qui se développent sur ces réseaux,
Y FAIRE GRANDIR ENSEMBLE LA COMMUNAUTÉ NANTAISE.

Entrée libre et gratuite..

N'hésitez pas à passer : mobilizon.fr/events/9753a03b-2…

Et merci d'avance à celleux qui pourront relayer l'info ! 🙂

#Fediverse
#Contributopia @Framasoft

Keep the momentum going for free open source projects in this week's Follow Friday by giving your support with contributions, boosts and follows.

adamsdesk.com/posts/discover-f…

- LÖVR @lovr
A framework for rapidly building immersive 3D experiences.
- NV Access @NVAccess
A screen reader.
- BiznisBox @biznisbox
A web app for managing invoices, clients, & payments.
- BookStack @bookstack
Documentation system.

#FollowFriday #fediverse #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #ff #oss #foss #floss

The #ContentNation situation is a dumpster fire for the #Fediverse. What would you do if you were building something, people misunderstood what it was, and things escalated to a point that someone loaded CSAM onto your server for the sake of reporting it?

wedistribute.org/2024/03/conte…

Content Nation Backlash Highlights Mastodon’s Toxicity

Yesterday, Mastodon was abuzz regarding a strange new scraper that seemed to be pulling people's profiles and content streams into a platform designed around monetization. Dubbed Content Nation, the s

^{Sean Tilley (We Distribute)}

I made a thing to help me find RSS feeds, and I really liked it. So I made it prettier so you can use it too, if RSS feeds are your thing.

As it turns out, in my corner of the fediverse there’s a ton of them…

rss-is-dead.lol

#rss #fediverse

Good morning #Fediverse!

Hope the day is well for everyone. Let’s start it off with our #KoffeeWithKyle chat and see what’s on the agenda.

For me, it’s just the usual day job stuff. I also am having to up the resources for the #AllThingsTech blog as it is currently down because we underestimated the interest we’d get.

Later today will be relaxing and working on week 3 of school.

#GoodMorning #HappyWednesday #AIArt

Just realized one of my favorite place is the perfect Fediverse IRL café

• Lofi hip hop music
• Multicultural
• Random mismatched furniture
• A copy of “Das Kapital” on display
• Library with free to take books
• Gender neutral bathroom
• "Barista antifascista" stickers

#Fediverse #Mastodon #Berlin

Friends of the #BSDCafe and the #Fediverse,
Good morning and have a great week!

#Photography #Photo #Sunrise #Picture #Pic #PhotoMonday #FotoMontag #Sea

Good morning and happy Sunday #Fediverse

How is everyone doing today and what do we all have planned for today?

It's very possible the wife and I might head to the mall today, but not sure. We definitely need to catch up on some TV shows that we are behind on, so maybe that too will happen today as we keep putting it off.

Other than, just a relaxing day hopefully.

#MorningMoments #GoodMorning #HappySunday

Regular Fediverse federation check.

According to @fedidb (fedidb.org) 22,37% of monthly active Fediverse users are currently on mastodon.social.

I very much welcome the upcoming Mastodon feature that closes registrations if the mods and admins abandon the server (no activity for a week), but when do we finally close servers automatically that have 10k active users?

I'll post about this somewhat regularly under #FederationCheck, but if someone wants to automate that with a bot feel free.

#Fediverse #FediverseMeta #federation #MastodonSocial #Mastodon

Are you seeing spam? A poll

The fediverse is dealing with a major spam attack -- Heise has some coverage (in German).

But not everybody is seeing spam. Are you? If so how much?

@fediversenews #fediverse #spam

PS: if you are seeing spam, there's also afollowon poll asking where

Mastodon: Spamwelle zeigt Schwächen auf und weckt Sorge vor schlimmerer Methode

Seit Tagen klagen einige User auf Mastodon über eine Spamwelle. Der liegen automatisierte Angriffe auf unzureichend geschützte Teile des Fediverse zugrunde.

^{Martin Holland (heise online)}

• No spam -- lucky me! (83%, 10 votes)
• Just a bit (16%, 2 votes)
• A lot (0%, 0 votes)
• So much that I'm almost ready to log off (0%, 0 votes)

Internationalise The Fediverse
shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/inter…

We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere.

It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use English letters at all!!!

A decade ago, I was miffed that GitHub only supported some ASCII characters in its project names. There's no technical reason why your repo can't be called "ഹലോ വേൾഡ്".

Similarly, I'm frustrated that Mastodon (the largest ActivityPub service) doesn't allow Unicode usernames and has resisted efforts to change.

So I built a small ActivityPub server which publishes content from an Actor called @你好@i18n.viii.fi - it is only a demo account, but it works!

Some ActivityPub clients report that they are able to follow it and receive messages from it. Others - like Mastodon - simply can't see anything from it. Take a look at the replies on Mastodon to see which services work. You can also see some of its posts on the Fediverse.

What Does The Fox Spec Say?

The ActivityPub specification says:

Building an international base of users is important in a federated network.
Internationalization

I can't find anything in the specifications which limits what languages a username can be written in. But there are a few clues scattered about.

The user's @ name is defined by preferredUsername which is:

A short username which may be used to refer to the actor, with no uniqueness guarantees.
4.1 Actor objects

There's nothing in there about what scripts it can contain. However, later on, the spec says:

Properties containing natural language values, such as name, preferredUsername, or summary, make use of natural language support defined in ActivityStreams.
4. Actors

So it is expected that a preferred username could be written in multiple scripts. Which implies that the default need not be limited to A-Z0-9.

The ActivityStreams specification talks about language mapping.

Finally, the ActivityPub specification has some examples on non-Latin text in names.

So, I think that it is acceptable for usernames to be written in a variety of non-Latin scripts.

But What About...?

There are usually a few objections to "Unicode Everywhere" zealots like me. I'd like to forestall any arguments.

What about homograph attacks?

Well, what about them? ASCII has plenty of similar looking characters. I doubt most people would notice when a capital i is replaced by a lower L - and vice-versa. Similarly the kerning issue of an r and n looking like an m is well known. Are mixed language homographs more dangerous? I don't think so.

What if people make names that can't be typed?

Well, what if they do? Maybe not being found by people who can't type your language is a feature, not a bug. But, anyway, clients can let users search for other people, or copy and paste their names.

What about weird "Zalgo" text?

It is up to a client to decide how they want to render text input. The "problems" of strange Unicode combinations are well known. This is not a hard computer-science problem.

What about bi-directional text?

The spec makes clear this is allowed.

Do people even want a username in their own script?

I have no evidence for this. But I bet you'd get pretty frustrated if you had to switch keyboard just to type your own name, wouldn't you? In any case, why can't I have a username of @😉

What's Next?

If you build ActivityPub software, give some thought to the billions of people who don't have names which easily fit into ASCII.

If your software can see @你好@i18n.viii.fi and its posts, please let me know.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/inter…

#ActivityPub #fediverse #i18n #mastodon #unicode

I'd like to run an instance with non-ASCII usernames · Issue #8417 · mastodon/mastodon

Mastodon usernames are currently restricted to Latin characters. I'd like to have the option to run an instance which allows usernames like "莎士比亚". I'm not saying that it should be mandatory that e...

^GitHub

#ILoveFreeSoftware, you love #FreeSoftware. Let's get that down. Most of the time you don't even notice that you're using a device running a #Linux kernel, #GNUtils or services like #ApacheWebserver, #Matrix etc. as they just work and don't get in your way; don't bother you reading ancient 📜 #EULA; don't track you ...

But have you ever said thank you to all the contributors supporting the projects and sustaining #SoftwareFreedom?! If not, then today's your lucky day.

Create a sharepic via @fsfe's sharepic.fsfe.org/#ilovefs tool and use the #ILoveFS hashtag to show your appreciation. Additionally, spend some time looking up the #Fediverse handle of your favorite projects and mentioned them.

Happy I 🧡 Free Software Day!

Rebuilding FourSquare for ActivityPub using OpenStreetMap
shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/rebui…

I used to like the original FourSquare. The "mayor" stuff was a bit silly, and my friends never left that many reviews, but I loved being able to signal to my friends "I am at this cool museum" or "We're at this pub if you want to meet" or "Spending the day at the park".

So, is there a way to recreate that early Web 2.0 experience with open data and ActivityPub? Let's find out!

This quest is divided into two parts.

1. Get nearby "Points of Interest" (POI) from OpenStreetMap.
2. Share a location on the Fediverse.

OpenStreetMap API

OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps. It is a freely available resource which anyone can edit (if they're skilled enough).

It also comes with a pretty decent API for querying things. For example, nw["amenity"]({{bbox}}); finds all "amenities" near a specific location.

As you can see, it has highlighted some useful areas - a pharmacy and a pub. But it has ignored other useful locations - the train station and the park. It has also included some things that we may not want - bike parking and a taxi rank.

What API call is needed to get useful locations of of OverPass?

It's possible to specify the type of thing to find using nw["amenity"="restaurant"]; - but adding every single type of thing would quickly end up with a very large query containing hundreds of types.

It is also possible to exclude specific types of places. This retrieves all amenities except for fast food joints:

nw["amenity"]({{bbox}});-nw["amenity"="fast_food"]({{bbox}});

Perhaps one solution is just to return everything and let the user decide if they want to check in to a telephone kiosk or a fire hydrant? That's a bit user-hostile.

Instead, this query returns everything which has a name nw["name"]({{bbox}});

That cuts out any unnamed things - like park benches and car-sharing spots. But it does add named roads and train lines.

It is possible to use filters to exclude results from OverPass. The best that I can come up with is: nw["name"][!"highway"][!"railway"][!"waterway"][!"power"]({{bbox}});

That gets everything which has a name, but isn't a highway or railway or waterway or powerline. It isn't perfect - but it will do!

This is the query which will retrieve the 25 nearest things within 100 metres of a specific latitude and longitude. It includes the name and any other tags, the location, and the OSM ID.

;nw%5B%22name%22%5D%5B%21%22highway%22%5D%5B%21%22railway%22%5D%5B%21%22waterway%22%5D%5B%21%22power%22%5D(around:100,51.5202,-0.1040);out%20center%20qt%2025;]overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=[out:json];nw["name"][!"highway"][!"railway"][!"waterway"][!"power"](around:100,51.5202,-0.1040);out center qt 25;

ActivityPub

There's good news and bad news here. Firstly, ActivityStreams (which are subscribed to in ActivityPub) supports the concept of "Place" and "Location".

Once the user has a latitude and longitude, the can share it - along with a message, photo, or anything else.

Something like:

{    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",    "type": "Note",    "content": "Here in NYC! <a href=\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/958999496\">John Lennon's Imagine Mosaic</a>.",    "attachment": [        {            "type": "Image",            "mediaType": "image\/jpeg",            "url": "https:\/\/fastly.4sqi.net\/img\/general\/590x786\/56367_9pxuZJD7d1hgPdaMFcFq1pipvTTMynBJsYcpHH-b8mU.jpg",            "name": "A photo of a mosaic which says 'Imagine'."        }    ],    "location": {        "name": "John Lennon's Imagine",        "type": "Place",        "longitude": 40.77563,        "latitude": -73.97474    }}

It is worth noting that Mastodon doesn't (natively) support location - if you view my repost of that PixelFed post you'll see there's no location metadata attached. That's OK! It just means that the status needs to include human-readable data.

Similarly, Mastodon doesn't support the arrive vocabulary. So this will be limited to a message with a location attached.

Other ActivityPub services do support location.

Putting it all together

Well… that's a job for next week. Probably!

• Building a web site which gets the user's location is easy.
• Getting the data from OverPass should be straightforward.
• Creating an ActivityPub server which can post geotagged notes into the Fediverse might be a little beyond my skillset! Some testing with Darius Kazemi's AP Glitch suggests this should work.

If you'd like to help, please leave a comment.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/rebui…

#ActivityPub #fediverse #FOURSQUARE #geolocation #OpenStreetMap