Ada reshared this.
I'm an Australian woman, based in #Meanjin / #Brisbane, but my heart lives in #Argentina. I'm a #runner, a #cyclist, a board game and #TTRPG geek, and I'm fascinated with the #fediverse.
I'm an admin on blahaj.zone and embers.social
Estoy aprendiendo #español y a veces mi toots estará en mal español!
I have an alt account at @Ada, which is focused more on queer and trans community and activism.
#introduction #BoardGames
I'm an admin on blahaj.zone and embers.social
Estoy aprendiendo #español y a veces mi toots estará en mal español!
I have an alt account at @Ada, which is focused more on queer and trans community and activism.
#introduction #BoardGames
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
like this
reshared this
Ada reshared this.
the framing of mastodon having attrition problems bafflingly misses what's interesting here
mastodon's new user retention rate being as high as it is, despite there being no UX team designing shady psychological tricks into the service/apps to keep you coming back, is a pretty big deal
like, let's be honest, there's very little about mastodon that's making us want to return here compulsively or addictively the way so many for-profit services implicitly aim for
it's pretty much just the people
mastodon's new user retention rate being as high as it is, despite there being no UX team designing shady psychological tricks into the service/apps to keep you coming back, is a pretty big deal
like, let's be honest, there's very little about mastodon that's making us want to return here compulsively or addictively the way so many for-profit services implicitly aim for
it's pretty much just the people
like this
reshared this
all I know is, nearly every time I post something different, seemingly down to earth humans reply. Compared to #twitter in which rarely would I get a response, even from friends. #Mastodon is being used by actual people. Twitter is used by a few to post, and everyone else to listen/watch a daily train wreck.
I find being on this platform very relaxing, the opposite of twitter. I spend less time on here, but enjoy it far more.
It actually doesn't matter how many people are joining or leaving various instances, because it's not run for profit, no one's getting fat off trying to get you to stay.
Our society has so few ways of measuring success, other than wealth/greed or status/power, so I suspect that this is what is happening in the media, simply put, they just don't understand what is happening unless it's in terms of something/someone beating someone/something else, or someone getting rich off the backs of exploiting others.
Sad, but this is the world we live in.
It actually doesn't matter how many people are joining or leaving various instances, because it's not run for profit, no one's getting fat off trying to get you to stay.
Our society has so few ways of measuring success, other than wealth/greed or status/power, so I suspect that this is what is happening in the media, simply put, they just don't understand what is happening unless it's in terms of something/someone beating someone/something else, or someone getting rich off the backs of exploiting others.
Sad, but this is the world we live in.
Ada reshared this.
Okay, people need to understand that just because search works a certain way on Mastodon doesn't mean it works the same way across the Fediverse.
Here's three examples from:
1. Calckey
2. Pleroma
3. Friendica
I did a search for "cow".
Notice this search term has no hashtag.
Also I'm getting results from people that I don't follow.
Just because you post FROM Mastodon doesn't mean that your posts are not discoverable elsewhere.
Here's three examples from:
1. Calckey
2. Pleroma
3. Friendica
I did a search for "cow".
Notice this search term has no hashtag.
Also I'm getting results from people that I don't follow.
Just because you post FROM Mastodon doesn't mean that your posts are not discoverable elsewhere.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
ThatOneCalculator likes this.
reshared this
On the Pleroma screenshot, I see posts with the Unlisted post privacy setting, while Friendica and Calckey don't show the post privacy settings like that. Do they also come from people you don't follow as well?
@Hawlucha @Chris Trottier Calckey shows icons for posts that aren't public. So a DM, an unlisted post or a followers only post will show custom icons. The majority of posts are public though and they don't show special icons
And yes, Calckey (and Misskey) search return results from all public posts that have federated to your server
And yes, Calckey (and Misskey) search return results from all public posts that have federated to your server
like this
Fediverse reshared this.
Friendica timelines are compelling
There's something about the method that Friendica uses to generate timelines that I find really compelling, and that doesn't seem to be talked about much.
Friendica's timelines are "post" centred, with replies appearing as a tree attached to that post, in a similar way to Facebook. It's distinct from the more Twitter like method common on most of the #microfedi platforms, in which there is no real difference between a post and a reply.
The reason that I find this framework so compelling is that it means you always have context and full conversations in view. If someone you follow replies to someone else you follow, the whole post and all of the replies appear in your timeline again, with full context at a glance.
Similarly, when you're reading your timeline, everything is grouped together. Everyone in your timeline that replied to a post is there on that post with full context. And if you're not interested, it's trivial to just scroll past.
Compare this to Mastodon, Misskey etc and their forks, where you tend to only see one branch of a conversation, and often have the same conversation showing up in your timeline multiple times depending on who is involved.
It's an option for interacting with timelines that I'd love to see implemented in other FediVerse platforms!
#friendica #Fediverse #Fedivangelism
@Friendica @Fediverse
Friendica's timelines are "post" centred, with replies appearing as a tree attached to that post, in a similar way to Facebook. It's distinct from the more Twitter like method common on most of the #microfedi platforms, in which there is no real difference between a post and a reply.
The reason that I find this framework so compelling is that it means you always have context and full conversations in view. If someone you follow replies to someone else you follow, the whole post and all of the replies appear in your timeline again, with full context at a glance.
Similarly, when you're reading your timeline, everything is grouped together. Everyone in your timeline that replied to a post is there on that post with full context. And if you're not interested, it's trivial to just scroll past.
Compare this to Mastodon, Misskey etc and their forks, where you tend to only see one branch of a conversation, and often have the same conversation showing up in your timeline multiple times depending on who is involved.
It's an option for interacting with timelines that I'd love to see implemented in other FediVerse platforms!
#friendica #Fediverse #Fedivangelism
@Friendica @Fediverse
like this
reshared this
Ada reshared this.
I put together a list of essays on the fediverse and Mastodon that includes great pieces by (among others): @atomicpoet @mmasnick @deadsuperhero @drmegkrausch@projectmushroom.social @elipariser @judell
I'd be grateful for suggested additions that you find valuable!
https://bit.ly/fediverse-essays
I'd be grateful for suggested additions that you find valuable!
https://bit.ly/fediverse-essays
Fediverse & Mastodon Essays
Essays Fediverse & Mastodon Essays Compiled by David Slifka, @davidslifka@mastodon.social / david@slifka.com Submit additions at https://forms.gle/FzhFnJp1ajiwn3cV7 List is unsorted.Google Docs
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
reshared this
Here's one of mine: https://medium.com/whither-news/hope-for-a-post-musk-net-f156d0cdf431
Hope for a Post-Musk Net - Whither news? - Medium
Maybe we’ll look back and see that Elon Musk did us, the civilized citizens of the net, a favor by forcing us off our cozy if centralized, corporatized, and corrupted internet to find and build an…Jeff Jarvis (Whither news?)
Please consider adding Jennifer Forestal to your beautiful list, she writes good papers and books, often refering to Mastodon.
http://www.jenniferforestal.com/research
http://www.jenniferforestal.com/research
Ada reshared this.
_Update: the admin has been located, which may change your calculus (or not!)_
If you have a mstdn.party account, you should migrate it and back it up now (https://mstdn.party/settings/export, archive and any relevant CSV's) and also maybe say something on the public TL because apparently not all users are able to get external messages right now (queues are failing, possibly because of a full disk, and admin is unavailable) and may not know they need to migrate until it's too late.
https://freeside.cafe/@daevien/109809427105674067
If you have a mstdn.party account, you should migrate it and back it up now (https://mstdn.party/settings/export, archive and any relevant CSV's) and also maybe say something on the public TL because apparently not all users are able to get external messages right now (queues are failing, possibly because of a full disk, and admin is unavailable) and may not know they need to migrate until it's too late.
https://freeside.cafe/@daevien/109809427105674067
Last I knew, admin is awol on mastodon & email and site is slowly crashing, queues in/out are mostly broken, etc.
Invite only registration currently and can't send people there messages. So a lot of users there just get confused for a while until they check other servers or figure it out on their own.
Mastodon Party
Mastodon Party is a general-purpose Mastodon instance, welcome to the fediverse! NEW: We've opened a second, SFW instance at: mstdn.plusMastodon hosted on mstdn.party
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
reshared this
Ada reshared this.
iOS devs, you should follow the progress of @tootsdk.
It not only gives you a library for Mastodon but much of the greater Fediverse, including Pleroma, Pixelfed, and Writefreely.
How might this work with your app? Check out this chart!
https://github.com/tootsdk/tootsdk
It not only gives you a library for Mastodon but much of the greater Fediverse, including Pleroma, Pixelfed, and Writefreely.
How might this work with your app? Check out this chart!
https://github.com/tootsdk/tootsdk
GitHub - TootSDK/TootSDK
Contribute to TootSDK/TootSDK development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
reshared this
@junior To answer your questions:
1. It is highly unlikely that one instance can access the whole Fediverse because not every instance will want to federate with you
2. The experience will never be uniform because different services offer different experiences. Just like Twitter will never be Instagram, Pixelfed will never be Mastodon. However, unlike Twitter and Instagram, Pixelfed and Mastodon talk to each other.
1. It is highly unlikely that one instance can access the whole Fediverse because not every instance will want to federate with you
2. The experience will never be uniform because different services offer different experiences. Just like Twitter will never be Instagram, Pixelfed will never be Mastodon. However, unlike Twitter and Instagram, Pixelfed and Mastodon talk to each other.
Ada reshared this.
Okay that's enough dev for 1 day. My weather bot is now up and running at @weather so give it a follow if you want #Brisbane weather updates every hour or so. Weather data is from https://openweathermap.org and I'll release the source code a bit later so anyone can contribute to future development. Boosts welcome. Thanks all!
Сurrent weather and forecast - OpenWeatherMap
Get current weather, hourly forecast, daily forecast for 16 days, and 3-hourly forecast 5 days for your city. Historical weather data for 40 years back for any coordinate.openweathermap.org
reshared this
Here's the source code as promised. Any help anyone can give developing this bot is appreciated. Issues and pull requests always welcome.
https://github.com/phocks/bne-weather-bot 🌞
https://github.com/phocks/bne-weather-bot 🌞
GitHub - phocks/bne-weather-bot
Contribute to phocks/bne-weather-bot development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
reshared this
this is cool! Could you send it a toot a location and it reply with the weather? Is it set up with one location or can you set that somehow?
@cjerrington Yep I thought of that. It could be done. Right now it looks up a latlon and seems to pick the most recent closest weather station. Tooting a location would require geocoding the location into lat and long numbers
@cjerrington oh and it would also require listening to toot replies so hooking up to the Mastodon Streaming API probably
@cjerrington or you could do it just with more frequent polling of the endpoint I guess. It just wouldn't be real time. Not sure if Deno Deploy could handle a persistent streaming http connection anyway. But yes, good features to think about 😀
the code has a fixed lat lon location but the name of the location seems to change. Is that a “feature” of the weather API?
Maybe a bit too “smart” but what if the bot looked at a profile field for bne.social members that had a lat lon or suburb, it’d select a member at random until it finds a valid profile field, with fallback to current?
I can derive the pseudocode but I’m not proficient with TS 😕
Maybe a bit too “smart” but what if the bot looked at a profile field for bne.social members that had a lat lon or suburb, it’d select a member at random until it finds a valid profile field, with fallback to current?
I can derive the pseudocode but I’m not proficient with TS 😕
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Ada reshared this.
Last Week in the Fediverse, ep 4: ⚡
Welcome to another episode of Last Week in the Fediverse! The major theme of this week is news around technical infrastructure. Mastodon.social experiences a DDoS attack, Twitter shuts down free access to the API, Stanford is called on by the community to start their own Mastodon server, and new tools get released with some interesting implications on the capabilities of the fediverse.
Before we start: I prefer to write little about Twitter. Its already enough in the news as it is, with other publications covering it very well. Today I do cover it, but only the implications that this has on the fediverse, which turn out to be pretty significant. Lets get started!
A significant part of Mastodon experienced a DDoS attack on January 31st, as confirmed by lead developer Eugen Rochko. The attack targeted the instances mastodon.social, mastodon.online, and joinmastodon.org. The services experienced some downtime for a few hours, and the experience on mastodon was noticable slower the next day, but no major disruption happened. This was also partially due to the timing, it happened deep in the night for European users and late evenings for Americans.
DDoS attacks might feel like an unfortunate annoyance of modern life, and an attack like this with minor impact not a big deal. However, it did lead to some interesting community responses and discussion that are worth highlighting.
Because of the attack, Eugen Rochko decided to move the two instances (that are hosted by the Mastodon non-profit organization) behind an online firewall by Fastly. This cloud service helps prevent DDoS attacks by routing the traffic through their own services. Companies like CloudFlare and Fastly provide services that are very effective at preventing such attacks. The downside is however, that this requires the use of private, for-profit companies that can see all your traffic.
This trade-off creates tension: on one hand, using advanced firewall services is basic security practices for platforms as large as Mastodon.social. On the other hand, Mastodon prides itself on its ideological grounds, which seem to be in conflict here. Mastodon is supposed to be a move away from surveillance and Big Tech. But with the use of such a firewall, a big private company can read all the traffic’s metadata.
The argument is not only an anti-capitalist and surveillance argument, but also an anti-centralization argument. CloudFlare has massive influence on the internet, providing valuable protection services to a large number of sites. While they have been careful in using that power, CloudFlare did decide to use its gatekeeping power by cutting their service to social network 8chan in 2019. Without the protection from Cloudflare, 8chan got immedialely knocked offline. There is certainly no lost love for 8chan within the Mastodon community, and the internet is certainly better off without them.
But the fediverse also promises to decentralize the internet. Centralizing under the power of a few companies such as Fastly and CloudFlare runs counter to that ideal. The fact that they provide such valuable services makes this an interesting clash of ideas.
The reason that a DDoS is feasible in the first place, is the large size of Mastodon.social. With almost a million users, it dwarfs all other instances in size. This also runs somewhat counter to the idea of decentralization in the first place: the idea behind federation and decentralization is to have people spread out over a large number of different services. In practice, mastodon.social turns out to have significant appeal to people, especially when they come from Twitter and see Mastodon as a Twitter replacement, not as it’s own unique thing.
This DDoS attack brings this discussion to the foreground again, and illustrates a practical drawback of centralization: it creates vulnerability. For the people who were not on mastodon.social, the DDoS attack had barely any impact; the only problem is that they could not load posts from people on mastodon.social that they follow. Otherwise, for them the fediverse continued along just like normal.
I’m interested to see how this develops further, especially the conversation about people spreading out to smaller servers and instances. Large name instances do provide a helpful service with onboarding new users. This is visible in how projects like Mammoth, but also Vivaldi, create specific new servers to on-board people. But I am curious to see if it will lead to further conversation about having people move away from mastodon.social.
On Februari 1st, Twitter announced that it will shut down free access to their API next week. Other publications have covered this news well, and it has been a major source of chatter on the timelines in the last few days. I will not go over the impact this has on Twitter, but it does affect the fediverse as well in multiple ways:
Tools like Movetodon and Fedifinder allow you to scan your Twitter friend list for people who also have a Mastodon account. They do this by reading the bios of your friends, and scanning for Mastodon handles.
Your social graph is the most valuable aspect of a social network. In the earlier days of Big Tech, you could easily export and import your social graph to a new social network. Famously this is how Instagram could grow quickly in its early days, by allowing you to import your friends from Twitter. Companies have grown wise to this immense power, and have since by-and-large moved to walled gardens to prevent competitors to grow and compete.
Twitter also does allow a direct import/export of your social graph to Mastodon, but these tools provided a work-around. Losing this ability is a major blow for a competing social network such as Mastodon to grow.
These are all the friend-finding tools that you might want to try and use before the deadline, courtesy of the Awesome-Mastodon list by @huey@kopiti.am">huey.
Cross-posting
People have been using cross-posting tools such as Moa to automatically cross post their Twitter messages to Mastodon. Moa has announced it will shut down in response to the switch to paid API access. Considering that Elon Musk floated a price of around 100 dollars per month, it seems likely that this will relegate cross-posting to a very marginal group of people, and most likely kill it completely.
Cross-posting is somewhat controversial. On one hand, it fills Mastodon with content where it could feel empty, and allows you to follow people without actually having to log in to Twitter. But a social network thrives by it’s ability to engage with people. Content that is cross posted does not allow for others to engage with you, because you signal that you will not respond to interactions.
It seems to me that cross-posting impedes the growth of Mastodon in the long term. It allows you to pretend that you’ve switched, while not actually doing so. Instead, you kept the real network alive on Twitter instead, because a social network is where you interact.
That said, a large group of people do enjoy cross posting, as it allows them to see posts they otherwise would not see. In the short time its unlikely that people suddenly would start posting on Mastodon, if they did not have the interest to do so before. This will create a bigger distance between Twitter and Mastodon, which will certainly be painful for people. Losing your connection to friends simply sucks.
Bots
Twitter’s API has been an invaluable source for people creating bots on Twitter. Ranging from useful weather-services, delightful animal-picture posts, indispensable blocking services to just outright dumb. It has been the go-to place if you want to share something automatically with the world.
The fediverse is an obvious replacement for this use case. It’s been painful for developers to have the API that they trusted on be suddenly taken away by an owner who does not understand the value that developers and creators provide. Mastodon is in stark contrast with this: the open-source nature makes it trustworthy to build upon.
The instance botsin.space is an ideal starting point for creators looking to make new bots. The new service Cheap Bots Toot Sweet by @BooDoo helps with that as well.
If this expected inflow of developers creating bots does indeed pan out, this should turn into a huge boon for the fediverse. Twitter under older ownership was very aware of the value that 3rd party creators added to it’s product. Inheriting even part of that value from Twitter is an exciting potential
API scraping
Twitter’s cultural values (and the ToS) allow people to scrape the API for the content of the messages on Twitter. The practical applications of this range from extensive academic research on extremist content to more nefarious usecases and harrasment.
This approach to API access clashes with the undocumented values and expectations that a significant user base of the fediverse has. Even though the fediverse cán be scraped, it is strongly looked down upon. People use the fediverse expecting to be able to own their data, and not have it tracked and registered via other parties.
One of the difficulties is that this cultural value is not documented in a ToS, and differs per group of users. Especially for early adopters, not being indexed is an important cultural value of why they joined the fediverse. For journalists and other high-profile individuals on the fediverse, the lack of search an indexing proves to be a barrier.
This friction has played out for a while in the fediverse, and unless a solution is found where people can make sure that their data is not scraped if they do not want to, it seems like it will continue for a while. The new influx of API users that are accustomed to a different value set with regards to content scraping will only reinforce this debate.
One of the first signs I’ve seen of a fracturing of community standards is this announcement by the admin of the Universeodon server, offering free total API access to developers.
While the phrase ‘community fracturing’ is often associated as something negative, in this context it can be interpreted as positive. People who are okay having their posts scraped/indexed via APIs can use the Universeodon server, while people who do not want such a thing use different servers. Keeping my eyes on how the Universeodon community reacts to this, and if other servers also implement such understandings.
The Stanford Daily, a newspaper dedicated to Stanford University, published an opinion article ‘from the community’ about how Stanford should run their own Mastodon server. It explains in detail the problems with the current Twitter-centered communication as well as the benefits of a university owning their own content platform.
The article is well written in a way that feels strongly applicable to other universities as well: just replace Stanford with your own university’s name.
I would not be surprised to see a wider call on universities to own their communications channels. Worth keeping eyes on to see where the discourse goes.
StreetPass is a newly launched extension for Chrome and Firefox, created by @tvler, that makes clever use of the authentification system that the fediverse provides.
Users of Mastodon can verify themselves by proving they own a website. If they do, a link appears green in their bio:
You do this by adding a small piece of code to your website. StreetPass makes use of this same system, by checking this validation if you visit a website. So anytime you visit any website that has this validation enabled, you get a tiny notification that shows you who the owner of the website is.
Here is how I used it this morning when visiting Movetodon: I got a notification that it registered it’s owner. So with one click I could visit their Mastodon profile, and see if they had posted anything about the service not working.
I’m intrigued by new efforts like this that use the fediverse’s authentification system in wholly new ways. Expect a more in-depth article on this soon.
As a warning note: only install this extension if you know exactly what you are doing. The extension asks for full read permissions on all websites. You can check the source code, but always be very careful when anything asks for these sorts of permissions.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone offered his help to advise on Mastodon. One of the recurring themes on this blog is the cultural value clash between big tech and user-run federated software. And now one of the co-founders of a big tech company is working together with the main fediverse software.
I don’t want to write much more about this right now, until I have more information on this. Worth watching for sure, both the actual cooperation as well as the community response to it.
There have been a signficant number of launches and updates to projects on the fediverse. I will not cover them all here, just note a few that stood out to me.
That is all for this week. If you enjoy this weekly update, don’t forget to subscribe! You can follow here at fediversereport.com or follow my Mastodon account.
Before we start: I prefer to write little about Twitter. Its already enough in the news as it is, with other publications covering it very well. Today I do cover it, but only the implications that this has on the fediverse, which turn out to be pretty significant. Lets get started!
Mastodon.social experiences a DDoS attack
A significant part of Mastodon experienced a DDoS attack on January 31st, as confirmed by lead developer Eugen Rochko. The attack targeted the instances mastodon.social, mastodon.online, and joinmastodon.org. The services experienced some downtime for a few hours, and the experience on mastodon was noticable slower the next day, but no major disruption happened. This was also partially due to the timing, it happened deep in the night for European users and late evenings for Americans.
DDoS attacks might feel like an unfortunate annoyance of modern life, and an attack like this with minor impact not a big deal. However, it did lead to some interesting community responses and discussion that are worth highlighting.
Adding a firewall
Because of the attack, Eugen Rochko decided to move the two instances (that are hosted by the Mastodon non-profit organization) behind an online firewall by Fastly. This cloud service helps prevent DDoS attacks by routing the traffic through their own services. Companies like CloudFlare and Fastly provide services that are very effective at preventing such attacks. The downside is however, that this requires the use of private, for-profit companies that can see all your traffic.
This trade-off creates tension: on one hand, using advanced firewall services is basic security practices for platforms as large as Mastodon.social. On the other hand, Mastodon prides itself on its ideological grounds, which seem to be in conflict here. Mastodon is supposed to be a move away from surveillance and Big Tech. But with the use of such a firewall, a big private company can read all the traffic’s metadata.
The argument is not only an anti-capitalist and surveillance argument, but also an anti-centralization argument. CloudFlare has massive influence on the internet, providing valuable protection services to a large number of sites. While they have been careful in using that power, CloudFlare did decide to use its gatekeeping power by cutting their service to social network 8chan in 2019. Without the protection from Cloudflare, 8chan got immedialely knocked offline. There is certainly no lost love for 8chan within the Mastodon community, and the internet is certainly better off without them.
But the fediverse also promises to decentralize the internet. Centralizing under the power of a few companies such as Fastly and CloudFlare runs counter to that ideal. The fact that they provide such valuable services makes this an interesting clash of ideas.
Server size
The reason that a DDoS is feasible in the first place, is the large size of Mastodon.social. With almost a million users, it dwarfs all other instances in size. This also runs somewhat counter to the idea of decentralization in the first place: the idea behind federation and decentralization is to have people spread out over a large number of different services. In practice, mastodon.social turns out to have significant appeal to people, especially when they come from Twitter and see Mastodon as a Twitter replacement, not as it’s own unique thing.
This DDoS attack brings this discussion to the foreground again, and illustrates a practical drawback of centralization: it creates vulnerability. For the people who were not on mastodon.social, the DDoS attack had barely any impact; the only problem is that they could not load posts from people on mastodon.social that they follow. Otherwise, for them the fediverse continued along just like normal.
I’m interested to see how this develops further, especially the conversation about people spreading out to smaller servers and instances. Large name instances do provide a helpful service with onboarding new users. This is visible in how projects like Mammoth, but also Vivaldi, create specific new servers to on-board people. But I am curious to see if it will lead to further conversation about having people move away from mastodon.social.
Twitter shuts down free access to their API
On Februari 1st, Twitter announced that it will shut down free access to their API next week. Other publications have covered this news well, and it has been a major source of chatter on the timelines in the last few days. I will not go over the impact this has on Twitter, but it does affect the fediverse as well in multiple ways:
- Friend finding services
- Cross-posting
- Bots
- API analyzers
Tools like Movetodon and Fedifinder allow you to scan your Twitter friend list for people who also have a Mastodon account. They do this by reading the bios of your friends, and scanning for Mastodon handles.
Your social graph is the most valuable aspect of a social network. In the earlier days of Big Tech, you could easily export and import your social graph to a new social network. Famously this is how Instagram could grow quickly in its early days, by allowing you to import your friends from Twitter. Companies have grown wise to this immense power, and have since by-and-large moved to walled gardens to prevent competitors to grow and compete.
Twitter also does allow a direct import/export of your social graph to Mastodon, but these tools provided a work-around. Losing this ability is a major blow for a competing social network such as Mastodon to grow.
These are all the friend-finding tools that you might want to try and use before the deadline, courtesy of the Awesome-Mastodon list by @huey@kopiti.am">huey.
- Movetodon – helps you locate the users you follow on Twitter who have Mastodon handles in their bios and allows you to follow them directly; no exporting and importing of CSVs required
- Twitodon – helps you locate the users you follow on Twitter who have Mastodon handles in their bios; exports a CSV that you can import into Mastodon
- Fedifinder – helps you locate the users you follow on Twitter who have Mastodon handles in their bios; exports a CSV that you can import into Mastodon
- Debirdify – searches across the users you follow and your Twitter lists to locate users who have Fediverse handles; helps you identify instances relevant to your interests; exports a CSV that you can import into Mastodon
Cross-posting
People have been using cross-posting tools such as Moa to automatically cross post their Twitter messages to Mastodon. Moa has announced it will shut down in response to the switch to paid API access. Considering that Elon Musk floated a price of around 100 dollars per month, it seems likely that this will relegate cross-posting to a very marginal group of people, and most likely kill it completely.
Cross-posting is somewhat controversial. On one hand, it fills Mastodon with content where it could feel empty, and allows you to follow people without actually having to log in to Twitter. But a social network thrives by it’s ability to engage with people. Content that is cross posted does not allow for others to engage with you, because you signal that you will not respond to interactions.
It seems to me that cross-posting impedes the growth of Mastodon in the long term. It allows you to pretend that you’ve switched, while not actually doing so. Instead, you kept the real network alive on Twitter instead, because a social network is where you interact.
That said, a large group of people do enjoy cross posting, as it allows them to see posts they otherwise would not see. In the short time its unlikely that people suddenly would start posting on Mastodon, if they did not have the interest to do so before. This will create a bigger distance between Twitter and Mastodon, which will certainly be painful for people. Losing your connection to friends simply sucks.
Bots
Twitter’s API has been an invaluable source for people creating bots on Twitter. Ranging from useful weather-services, delightful animal-picture posts, indispensable blocking services to just outright dumb. It has been the go-to place if you want to share something automatically with the world.
The fediverse is an obvious replacement for this use case. It’s been painful for developers to have the API that they trusted on be suddenly taken away by an owner who does not understand the value that developers and creators provide. Mastodon is in stark contrast with this: the open-source nature makes it trustworthy to build upon.
The instance botsin.space is an ideal starting point for creators looking to make new bots. The new service Cheap Bots Toot Sweet by @BooDoo helps with that as well.
If this expected inflow of developers creating bots does indeed pan out, this should turn into a huge boon for the fediverse. Twitter under older ownership was very aware of the value that 3rd party creators added to it’s product. Inheriting even part of that value from Twitter is an exciting potential
API scraping
Twitter’s cultural values (and the ToS) allow people to scrape the API for the content of the messages on Twitter. The practical applications of this range from extensive academic research on extremist content to more nefarious usecases and harrasment.
This approach to API access clashes with the undocumented values and expectations that a significant user base of the fediverse has. Even though the fediverse cán be scraped, it is strongly looked down upon. People use the fediverse expecting to be able to own their data, and not have it tracked and registered via other parties.
One of the difficulties is that this cultural value is not documented in a ToS, and differs per group of users. Especially for early adopters, not being indexed is an important cultural value of why they joined the fediverse. For journalists and other high-profile individuals on the fediverse, the lack of search an indexing proves to be a barrier.
This friction has played out for a while in the fediverse, and unless a solution is found where people can make sure that their data is not scraped if they do not want to, it seems like it will continue for a while. The new influx of API users that are accustomed to a different value set with regards to content scraping will only reinforce this debate.
One of the first signs I’ve seen of a fracturing of community standards is this announcement by the admin of the Universeodon server, offering free total API access to developers.
While the phrase ‘community fracturing’ is often associated as something negative, in this context it can be interpreted as positive. People who are okay having their posts scraped/indexed via APIs can use the Universeodon server, while people who do not want such a thing use different servers. Keeping my eyes on how the Universeodon community reacts to this, and if other servers also implement such understandings.
Universities and Mastodon
The Stanford Daily, a newspaper dedicated to Stanford University, published an opinion article ‘from the community’ about how Stanford should run their own Mastodon server. It explains in detail the problems with the current Twitter-centered communication as well as the benefits of a university owning their own content platform.
The article is well written in a way that feels strongly applicable to other universities as well: just replace Stanford with your own university’s name.
I would not be surprised to see a wider call on universities to own their communications channels. Worth keeping eyes on to see where the discourse goes.
StreetPass
StreetPass is a newly launched extension for Chrome and Firefox, created by @tvler, that makes clever use of the authentification system that the fediverse provides.
Users of Mastodon can verify themselves by proving they own a website. If they do, a link appears green in their bio:
You do this by adding a small piece of code to your website. StreetPass makes use of this same system, by checking this validation if you visit a website. So anytime you visit any website that has this validation enabled, you get a tiny notification that shows you who the owner of the website is.
Here is how I used it this morning when visiting Movetodon: I got a notification that it registered it’s owner. So with one click I could visit their Mastodon profile, and see if they had posted anything about the service not working.
I’m intrigued by new efforts like this that use the fediverse’s authentification system in wholly new ways. Expect a more in-depth article on this soon.
As a warning note: only install this extension if you know exactly what you are doing. The extension asks for full read permissions on all websites. You can check the source code, but always be very careful when anything asks for these sorts of permissions.
Twitter co-founder advises on Mastodon
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone offered his help to advise on Mastodon. One of the recurring themes on this blog is the cultural value clash between big tech and user-run federated software. And now one of the co-founders of a big tech company is working together with the main fediverse software.
I don’t want to write much more about this right now, until I have more information on this. Worth watching for sure, both the actual cooperation as well as the community response to it.
Project launches and updates
There have been a signficant number of launches and updates to projects on the fediverse. I will not cover them all here, just note a few that stood out to me.
- Relatica is a new Friendica client for mobile and desktop.
- The latest update to Elk adds lists.
- Lemmy releases a new software update, v0.17. It allows you to tag a Lemmy group in a post made on other services, which will then automatically get posted in the Lemmy group as well. @Ada provides a cool demonstration of it here.
- CalcKey released a new update. To coincide with that, Chris Trottier launched a new general-use server for Calckey: calckey.social. I’ve been using it for my personal account, and I’m really impressed. It has speed, great utility, whimsy, and a ton of cool features that core Mastodon does not have. Will do an extensive write-up on it soon. I can recommend checking it out.
That is all for this week. If you enjoy this weekly update, don’t forget to subscribe! You can follow here at fediversereport.com or follow my Mastodon account.
So you may have noticed that the Twitter login of https://movetodon.org/ is not working at the moment.
According to twitter, the app “has violated Twitter Rules and policies”. I can’t tell much more at the moment since the email they mention never arrived in my inbox.
From the Community | Stanford needs an official Mastodon server
The Twitter/Mastodon saga "might seem like drama that concerns mostly our Silicon Valley neighbors," writes Tomás Guarna, "but it very much concerns us all."From the Community (The Stanford Daily)
like this
reshared this
Ada reshared this.
To sum up where the Fediverse is right now:
1. @EU_Commission backs it
2. The @w3c backs it
3. @fsf backs it
4. @eff backs it
5. Twitter Co-Founders @ev and @biz back it
7. Web browsers like @mozilla and @Vivaldi back it
8. Prominent 3rd party client devs like @paul backs it
9. @gruber and @davew back it
10. @georgetakei backs it
Am I missing anyone?
Oh yeah, YOU back it!
1. @EU_Commission backs it
2. The @w3c backs it
3. @fsf backs it
4. @eff backs it
5. Twitter Co-Founders @ev and @biz back it
7. Web browsers like @mozilla and @Vivaldi back it
8. Prominent 3rd party client devs like @paul backs it
9. @gruber and @davew back it
10. @georgetakei backs it
Am I missing anyone?
Oh yeah, YOU back it!
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
reshared this
Calckey reshared this.
New Calckey flagship instance and new Calckey release
Calckey just released version 13.1, but far more interestingly, it coincides with a new flagship instance for Calckey, calckey.social!
https://i.calckey.cloud/notes/9aprzaeiec
#Calckey #Fediverse #Microfedi
@Calckey
https://i.calckey.cloud/notes/9aprzaeiec
#Calckey #Fediverse #Microfedi
@Calckey
On top of this, I'd like to announce TWO new instances! calckey.social -- A general purpose instance for all Fedizens! calckey.art -- An art focused instance for all you creatives out there~ These will be managed by the lovely @atomicpoet@mastodon.social !
♲ @calckey@i.calckey.cloud: New #Calckey
release!
Welcome to the looooong awaited first update of 2023!!!
Notable changes:
- New package, lint, and build system powered by pnpm and rome
- New post/thread layout
- Admin customizable default reactions
- OTA release notes
- Many, MANY bug fixes, performance improvements, and stylistic enhancements.
To upgrade from previous versions:And yes, Docker is fixed 🥳git pull --ff corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate pnpm i NODE_ENV=production pnpm run build && pnpm run migrate
like this
Ada reshared this.
New #Calckey
release!
Welcome to the looooong awaited first update of 2023!!!
Notable changes:
- New package, lint, and build system powered by pnpm and rome
- New post/thread layout
- Admin customizable default reactions
- OTA release notes
- Many, MANY bug fixes, performance improvements, and stylistic enhancements.
To upgrade from previous versions:
New #Calckeyrelease!Welcome to the looooong awaited first update of 2023!!!
Notable changes:
- New package, lint, and build system powered by pnpm and rome
- New post/thread layout
- Admin customizable default reactions
- OTA release notes
- Many, MANY bug fixes, performance improvements, and stylistic enhancements.
To upgrade from previous versions:
git pull --ff
corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate
pnpm i
NODE_ENV=production pnpm run build && pnpm run migratecalckey
A greatly enhanced fork of Misskey with better UI/UX, security, features, and more!Codeberg.org
like this
reshared this
Ada reshared this.
🧵 For #BlackHistoryMonth I want to recognize contributions made by Black people to some of the things I care about. I'm gonna kick things off by shining the spotlight on #MikePondsmith, best known as the creator of the #Cyberpunk tabletop RPG. Pondsmith enjoyed playing traditional games as a kid, went to school for graphic design and behavioral psychology, and ended up working in publishing. [continued]
reshared this
Ada reshared this.
Lemmy Release v0.17.0
Its been a long time coming 🥳 .
Excerpt from the link:
Content can now be tagged to indicate the language it is written in. These tags can be used to filter content, so that you only see posts in languages which you actually understand. Instances and communities can also specify which languages are allowed, and prevent posting in other languages.
In the future this will also allow for integrated translation tools.
Lemmy has changed the way it stores comments, in order to be able to properly limit the comments shown to a maximum depth.
Included are proper comment links (
Admins and mods can now "feature" (this used to be called "sticky" ala reddit) posts to the top of either a community, or the top of the front page. This makes possible announcement and bulletin-type posts.
Special thanks to @makotech for adding this feature.
Lemmy users can now be followed. Just visit a user profile from another platform like Mastodon, and click the follow button, then you will receive new posts and comments in the timeline.
Votes are now federated as private. This prevents other platforms from showing who voted on a given post, and it also means that Lemmy now counts votes from Mastodon.
This release also improves compatibility with Pleroma. If you previously had trouble interacting between Pleroma and Lemmy, give it another try.
We've extracted the main federation logic into its own library, activitypub-federation-rust. It is open source and can be used by other projects to implement Activitypub federation, without having to reinvent the wheel. The library helps with handling HTTP signatures, sending and receiving activities, fetching remote objects and more.
Excerpt from the link:
Major Changes
Language Tags
Content can now be tagged to indicate the language it is written in. These tags can be used to filter content, so that you only see posts in languages which you actually understand. Instances and communities can also specify which languages are allowed, and prevent posting in other languages.
In the future this will also allow for integrated translation tools.
Comment trees
Lemmy has changed the way it stores comments, in order to be able to properly limit the comments shown to a maximum depth.
Included are proper comment links (
/comment/id), where you can see its children, a count of its hidden children, and a context button to view its parents, or the post.Featured posts
Admins and mods can now "feature" (this used to be called "sticky" ala reddit) posts to the top of either a community, or the top of the front page. This makes possible announcement and bulletin-type posts.
Special thanks to @makotech for adding this feature.
Federation
Lemmy users can now be followed. Just visit a user profile from another platform like Mastodon, and click the follow button, then you will receive new posts and comments in the timeline.
Votes are now federated as private. This prevents other platforms from showing who voted on a given post, and it also means that Lemmy now counts votes from Mastodon.
This release also improves compatibility with Pleroma. If you previously had trouble interacting between Pleroma and Lemmy, give it another try.
We've extracted the main federation logic into its own library, activitypub-federation-rust. It is open source and can be used by other projects to implement Activitypub federation, without having to reinvent the wheel. The library helps with handling HTTP signatures, sending and receiving activities, fetching remote objects and more.
Other changes
- Admins can now purge content and pictures from the database.
- Mods can distinguish a comment, "stickying" it to the top of a post. Useful for mod messages and announcements.
- Number of new / unread comments are now shown for each post.
- Lemmy now automatically embeds videos from Peertube, Youtube and other sites which provide an embed link via Opengraph attribute.
- You can give your site "taglines", short markdown messages, which are shown at the top of your front page. Thanks to @makotech for adding this.
- You can now report private messages.
- Most settings have been moved from the config file into the database. This means they can be updated much easier, and apply immediately without a restart.
- When setting up a new Lemmy instance, it doesn't create a default community anymore. Instead this needs to be done manually.
- Admins can choose to receive emails for new registration applications.
- An upgrade of diesel to v2.0, our rust -> postgres layer.
GitHub - LemmyNet/activitypub-federation-rust: High-level Rust library for the Activitypub protocol
High-level Rust library for the Activitypub protocol - GitHub - LemmyNet/activitypub-federation-rust: High-level Rust library for the Activitypub protocolGitHub
like this
Amazing! this release fixed some federation issues between Friendica and Lemmy.
@nutomic@lemmy.ml here on THIS comment, i can not create a comment, using "Deutsch". I get the error
Now i create it with "English" (look at the screenshot), and it works.
Now i create it with "English" (look at the screenshot), and it works.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml
And here, i tried to answer with setting "Deutsch" too, the same as just before:
and i geht this:
@dessalines@lemmy.ml
And here, i tried to answer with setting "Deutsch" too, the same as just before:
(i changed now to English, that i can post this comment now)
And here, i tried to answer with setting "Deutsch" too, the same as just before:
and i geht this:
@dessalines@lemmy.ml
And here, i tried to answer with setting "Deutsch" too, the same as just before:
(i changed now to English, that i can post this comment now)
And i tested federation with pleroma.
This is a Posting in Pleroma in my lemmys testcommunity
and this comes in lemmy
It works, but not very good.
"TEST von pleroma" is set as "Subject" in Pleroma, but it ist not recognized in Lemmy.
Pleroma has a Subject. Mastodon not.
This is a Posting in Pleroma in my lemmys testcommunity
and this comes in lemmy
It works, but not very good.
"TEST von pleroma" is set as "Subject" in Pleroma, but it ist not recognized in Lemmy.
Pleroma has a Subject. Mastodon not.
This is posted from Friendica
@test I know you didn't ask for a test, but I saw your mastodon test post and thought it can't hurt if you have another platform involved
Ada reshared this.
I just want to take a moment to talk about how awesome this post here is. Not the content, but what it represents. When I made the post, I was seeking some assistance on some backend admin settings for our new Friendica instance. Using Friendica, I posted my question in to the fediverse as I would on Calckey or Mastodon or any other #microfedi platform. But due to the way Friendica handles ActivityPub groups, I was able to tag the friendica lemmy group (think federated reddit) and post was published there too! All from the one post! It's not perfect. Calckey or Mastodon don't work well with ActivityPub groups yet, so this wouldn't have been possible from them, but that will come with time as the platforms mature and the kinks get ironed out. But even this, just working on Friendica, this is a taste of what the future can look like. This is a platform agnostic internet. This is what the fediverse is built for! Fuck it's exciting! #FediVerse @activitypub@a.gup.pe #lemmy #Friendica #CalcKey #Mastodon #ActivityPub #MicroFedi
Friendica contact discovery question
A question for the Friendica admins out there on the fediverse.
What do you normally set your contact directory discovery to? Our is set to "local contacts" but when the importer workers hit profiles with 10's of thousands of apps, the workers just seem to hit a wall. I'm assuming they will get through the process eventually, but something like SignalApp, with 30K followers has been sitting at the front of the queue for nearly 3 hours now
I could turn of contact discovery, but I'm not sure what impact that would have? Would turning it off lower the quality of contact suggestions, or is that information still available via the external directory server?
#friendica #FediAdmin
@Friendica @Fediverse
Laurens Hof likes this.
reshared this
activitypub group reshared this.
I didn't realize that my mind was reloadable, but you have blown it multiple times!
activitypub group reshared this.
I think I have at least enough FB friends interested well enough to set something up. It'll probably be Frendica (private communities are a *must*) but how to actually do it without all the admins be techies is a bit of a head scratcher
(I've the skills, even ran a diaspora* for a couple years)
#activitypub #Mastodon #calckey #friendica #lemmy #Fediverse #microfedi
(I've the skills, even ran a diaspora* for a couple years)
#activitypub #Mastodon #calckey #friendica #lemmy #Fediverse #microfedi
Friendica reshared this.
Friendica contact discovery question
A question for the Friendica admins out there on the fediverse.
What do you normally set your contact directory discovery to? Our is set to "local contacts" but when the importer workers hit profiles with 10's of thousands of apps, the workers just seem to hit a wall. I'm assuming they will get through the process eventually, but something like SignalApp, with 30K followers has been sitting at the front of the queue for nearly 3 hours now
I could turn of contact discovery, but I'm not sure what impact that would have? Would turning it off lower the quality of contact suggestions, or is that information still available via the external directory server?
#friendica #FediAdmin
@Friendica @Fediverse
What do you normally set your contact directory discovery to? Our is set to "local contacts" but when the importer workers hit profiles with 10's of thousands of apps, the workers just seem to hit a wall. I'm assuming they will get through the process eventually, but something like SignalApp, with 30K followers has been sitting at the front of the queue for nearly 3 hours now
I could turn of contact discovery, but I'm not sure what impact that would have? Would turning it off lower the quality of contact suggestions, or is that information still available via the external directory server?
#friendica #FediAdmin
@Friendica @Fediverse
like this
reshared this
geekgirl :mastodon:
•Ada
I played Flamme Rouge for the first time recently, and really enjoyed it!
like this
Hteph and geekgirl :mastodon: like this.
⭐️ nova (she/her)
•Ada likes this.
Qhispikay
•Ada likes this.
Ada