I’ve been on Lemmy and Mastodon for a little while but still not super active on either, and haven’t really kept up with fediverse stuff as a whole....
Flipboard has recently begun federation, starting with 25 accounts. These accounts can be viewed from Kbin with their posts showing up as microblog posts....
Glad Flipboard is expanding in the Fediverse, I've been following their various news accounts on Mastodon for a while now. It especially helps the fediverse feel more complete as a social media platform.
Sure, these don't really matter for Lemmy and Kbin, but they are a huge deal for microblogging platforms like mastodon or misskey.
It’s been quite a week for news in the fediverse, with the news that Threads has started their process of incrementally adding federation to Threads taking most of the attention. But lots of other great stuff happened in the fediverse as well:
Threads
Threads has started their implementation process of federation and adding ActivityPub to Threads. The first careful step is that a few Threads profiles are now visible in the fediverse, and that posts made by them can be viewed from fediverse servers. For now only the accounts for the profiles of Threads head Adam Mosseri and 2 Threads engineers are visible. Replies to their post made by a fediverse account does not federate back yet. Mosseri says that the process of adding federation will be done gradually in steps, and that he expects that this process will take most of the year. In another post, Mosseri also notes that federation will likely be opt-in for Threads accounts. This is in contrast with most fediverse software, which federates with all other fediverse servers by default, and federation is opt-out (blocking).
PeerTube
Framasoft announced their plans for PeerTube for the next year, in an extensive blog. I also hosted a livestreamed AMA with Framasoft for the community to ask all their questions about PeerTube, and it turned out amazing, with lots of great information. The entire AMA can be rewatched here. I’ll do a larger writeup on all the PeerTube news next week, but for now already the highlights: PeerTube is doubling their dev team, creating a mobile app, and will work on better moderation tools, and a review and redesign of the user interface. Stay tuned!
In other news
Lemmy has released their latest big update, v0.19. In this blog post they go over all the changes they’ve made. Two major new features are improved post ranking and instance blocking for individual accounts. With the new feed sorting of scaled sort, the community size where the post is made gets taken into account. This allows for smaller communities to have better visibility, and should increase their reach. People can now block entire instances as well, which should provide a significant increase in the ability for people to curate their digital spaces.
Discourse has been working on joining the fediverse for a while, and their latest update shows how far along they are. A Discourse category can now follow any actor in the fediverse. Check out their video to show this in practice, with federation between both different Discourses as well as Mastodon. This is a major step in expanding the fediverse, and worth keeping your eyes on.
The links
FediForum, the online unconference about the fediverse, has opened registrations for the third edition, on March 19-20, 2024. More information and registration on the website.
Mozilla.social, the fediverse server by Mozilla, is slowly opening up the server, and have added the first group of people from the waitlist.
Mastodon is experimenting with a new recommendation algorithm for finding interesting accounts to follow. The experiment is only available on the mastodon.online server.
Event Federation is a project that aims to federate WordPress events with the rest of the fediverse, and make it interoperable with programs like Mobilizon and Gancio. They just showed a sneak peak on the interoperability between WordPress Events and Mobilizon.
Bonfire has released documentation on their framework, that further explains how it is both a social network as well as a toolkit for communities to (re)design their digital spaces.
IFTAS has announced a sandbox server intended for moderators to practice moderation in a safe environment.
Owncast has started their own monthly newsletter, the first edition is available here.
Other articles
I wrote other articles as well this week, check it out!
Using the word “server” is super confusing to me. My kid has a rack of servers in his room. Can I join one of those? No. They’re not Mastodon or Lemmy servers. But I’m not joining the specific piece of hardware in some storage locker owned by Lemmy or Mastodon, either. Everything on the Internet is on a server. So what’s different, here?
I think your analogy is a good one, well, a better one. If you’re reading a newspaper, I think people have a better, inherent, understanding that the news might be different from paper to paper. But that’s less the case on TV or the Internet. It’s just news, regardless of source – it’s so monopolized.
Lemmy and Mastodon are “just the internet” to most people. A lot of them don’t even distinguish social media as a separate category. They only see the presentation format of, say, Facebook or Twitter as different, and that’s less and less the case all the time, as companies compete for each other’s users. They don’t really see them as different services, just different brands.
Source: I’m the person who teaches them to reset their passwords, how to print their paystubs, and how to get on Facebook.
If it happened in a vacuum, probably not. But traffic jams don’t happen in a vacuum. They ripple out and cause effects that hit millions of other people. Such as this news article, this lemmy post, and all of the people here discussing it.
I agree, but only with the amendment that links to reddit only be text posts and comment chains, or otherwise reddit-exclusive things such as /r/place.
Images and links should bypass reddit altogether and just link to the first source link (ie, the news article or w/e), or be posted as a lemmy image post with a credit citation in the description.
Nobody wants to have to click through 3 different pages to learn who’s winning what war or to see a picture of a cat.
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
Defederation is about what an instance allows in, not what an instance allows out. Defederation stops you seeing the defederated instance's content, but it does not stop them seeing your instance's content.
Threads poses some danger to the fediverse, in particular the portion of it centered around microblogging (mostly Mastodon, but also Pleroma, parts of /kbin, etc.), but very little risk to the threadiverse.
The worst thing about the fediverse is all the fondue, but you don't have to eat it.
Emphasis from the original post.
This is a detailed summary, thank you for linking.
I have also read some other POVs here; my fears are not totally allayed and I still think Meta is only engaing with Activity Pub to prevent new, potential competitors arising from it.
I hope the OP is right about it being very little risk to the Threadiverse. The good news is that Threads is focused enitrely on microblogging and not the Threadiverse. Perhaps that means Kbin and Lemmy users will be able to sit on the sidelines and see how it plays out for a bit, idk. Mastodon users will be seeing the most change.
It's kind of funny how many 1:1 clones of popular subreddits were created on kbin after the big Reddit api debacle earlier this year that were posted in by like one or two people for a month or so, then just completely died. Some with hundreds or 1k + users subscribed.
Just seeing all of them in the abandoned magazine section.
But even among the few who are here, there's little posting outside of the big news and meme magazines (though that also goes for Lemmy communities). Not unique to the #fediverse by any means — there will always be way more lurkers than posters — but I really wish more people would contribute to the communities that they're active in. #kbinmeta
I know that this instance is nominally in Finland, but as far as I know this is the most active Ukrainian-news on Lemmy. I’m expecting that a fair number of US Citizens are here....
When I was trying to subscribe to a news community from another instance of lemmy, the button read “Subscribe Pending” What does this mean? Does it mean that they have to approve me before I subscribe, or does it mean that the two instances have to communicate with each other, or something else?
tl;dr: to reduce federation api calls and to reduce issues with defederation, maybe some instances should only be for communities with no user signups, and some instances should be only for user signups with no communities (you would have to make a post or PM to request the admin to make a community for you)...
It’s been a busy week for fediverse news, with a long update. Three articles this week, as well as quite some other news and interesting links.
Next week I’ll be hosting a livestream together with Framasoft, to ask them questions about PeerTube. The event will be livestreamed on PeerTube, on Wednesday, Dec. 13th, 6-8 pm (CET). You can already send in your questions now, simply by posting them with the #PeerTubeAMA on the fediverse. See you there!
5 years of Mobilizon
An end, as well as a new beginning for Mobilizon. With the latest update, Framasoft adds a variety of new features, and hands the project over to a new team. Read the update below
The bridging between the different decentralised social networks remains one of the more interesting developments, as they point towards a future of the fediverse that is more complex than just a single platform ‘winning’. In this piece, I take a look at Mostr, the bridge that connects the fediverse to Nostr, and the complex questions about culture and safety that arise.
A blog post by Lickability, the design agency that works on the official Mastodon apps, that explains the design process behind Mastodon’s reply safety features. It explains the thought process behind the design, and compares it to how Instagram, Twitter and Youtube are handling somewhat similar features.
SocialInbox is a new feature of Distributed.Press which integrates a website’s comment section with federated social media platforms like Mastodon. Distributed.Press is an open source publishing tool that can help send out your website content to the decentralized web. With SocialInbox, websites can now become part of the fediverse, in a similar way to how the ActivityPub plugin makes WordPress websites part of the fediverse. With the Social Inbox, your website becomes an account on the fediverse that can be followed, and posts can be interacted with as with any Mastodon post, which gets send back to your own website.
Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi have announced that they will be running a new project, titled Fediverse Governance Successes & Gaps. The project looks to find more information about the current governance models in the fediverse, as well as the gaps in infrastructure that are present for the governance of the new generation of social networks. The goal is to create a practical handbook as well as whitepaper on governance.
SURF, the Dutch IT cooperative for education and research, has extended their Mastodon pilot for another year. I spoke to them this spring about the pilot, here. For the next year they will be focusing on adoption of the fediverse by participation organisations, as well as working on taking the next organisational steps of going from pilot to a regular service that SURF offers to their members. More information in their interview with PublicSpaces, in Dutch.
Social network Spoutible is adding cross-posting to different networks. They have added Bluesky, and are now in the process of adding support for Mastodon. This is not full federation, as likes and comments are not carried over. Neither is Mastodon fully supported yet. It does however provide an indication of where social networks are headed, with more and more connections between networks. WeDistribute has more info, here.
Catodon is an new and upcoming fediverse platform, based on Firefish, that is currently in development. It is being worked on by some of the team that used to contribute to Firefish. As the firefish.social flagship server continues to struggle with serious technical issues, more forks of the project (such as Sharkey) are springing up.
The links
IFTAS, the non-profit organisation that helps support the fediverse moderator community, and has a Moderator Advisory Council to help guide the organisation. They are looking for someone with moderation experience who can contribute, with stipend available.
The ActivityPub Community Group held a meeting together with the Community Group for the Solid protocol, looking for ways to join forces. The notes of the entire meeting can be found here.
Pixelfed is working on making their Collections feature directly accessible and followable via Activitypub.
The third episode of Flipboard’s Dot Social podcast is out, this time with Ian Forrester, about the BBC’s experiment in the fediverse.
Another German government has joined the fediverse, this time the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.
Kbin app Artemis has shut down after the developer disappeared, WeDistribute reports.
The Mastodon.nl server has a blog post that discusses server size, and the tradeoffs that come with it. In Dutch.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading. You can subscribe via email below, or [email protected] if you want to follow this blog with your fediverse account.
I used to look to Reddit when big news broke because it was always on the front page within minutes. This past year there have been a few times that big news stories weren’t even on the top few pages. I gave Lemmy a try, and it feels just like reddit from 2013. I love it. I’m home.
I still go to Reddit for American politics, my cities sub, and /r/nfl.
But I haven’t made a single comment and treat it more as a news aggregator than a proper community. And even that is happening less and less as I get more comfortable with the pacing of the community here.
On Reddit you can make a clever comment at the right time and get thousands of upvotes and sidebar conversations. It’s great for a shot of that sweet, sweet dopamine.
On Lemmy, I rarely get more than 5-10 upvotes, but the conversations are meaningful and nuanced.
People are realizing that Lemmy is not a 1:1 drop-in replacement and are adjusting their expectations and behavior accordingly. Hopefully we’ll hit a critical mass soon.
A large number of subs were forceful reopened, and the mods replaced with trash people who just wanted to have mod powers. The purge of people who gave a fuck, is done. I’m starting to see posts and news show up here on Lemmy before reddit. Which kinda makes sense, all the most active posters were forced out or quit and moved here.
If you believe that all news reporting exists only to inform, and never has any other purpose, you need to work on your media literacy.
Even if this is being reported in good faith, which it most likely is, the administration is still pursuing an agenda by putting this story out there to be reported. No one is under an obligation to support that agenda by remaining neutral about the information. People absolutely have a right to say “Please don’t spread this” for various reasons up to and including “It enables genocide” and on platforms like Lemmy the downvote button is basically the “Please don’t spread this” button.
Da die Tage danach gefragt wurde und es mich auch nervt: Hier ist das Ich iel Zangendeutsch Wörterbuch. Hier findet ihr sämtliche Zengendeutsche Begriffe Alphabetisch sortiert. Wenn ihr Ergänzungen habt schreibt die bitte in die Kommentare bzw. Erwähnt mich bei Beiträgen/Kommentaren wo ihr denkt dass diese hinzugefügt...
The good news is that if you completed it, you’d just be presented with another. Archive is in a pissing match with CloudFlare nameservers and simply will never let you go to the link (and probably should be banned from lemmy linking). The only way I can see them is to fire up the VPN and use my VPNs nameservice.
"NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump declined to rule out abusing power if he wins the presidency again after Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity asked him Tuesday to respond to growing Democratic criticism of his rhetoric....
What’s different about Lemmy compared to other sites? The Palestine/Israel conflict is the main topic point today. Everyone is talking about it everywhere, whether it be Reddit or Twitter. Are you up to date on the news?
World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it’s just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there....
And if you’re not following server news, even if you know the very basics of federation, it’s easy to miss defederations and subsequently never know you’re not seeing content you wanted to see.
Personally, I’m very interested in seeing a true representation of top posts. I’ll need a client that can let me login to multiple instances or a server that’s never the federated from anybody. One risk here is I could recommend Lemmy to someone, they could register on a different instance, and assume I like content I in fact don’t.
Tip: just learned I can see federated and blocked instances at /instances (e.g. sh.itjust.works/instances ).
What's your wider fediverse setup?
I’ve been on Lemmy and Mastodon for a little while but still not super active on either, and haven’t really kept up with fediverse stuff as a whole....
How do we feel about Flipboard federating? (kbin.social)
Flipboard has recently begun federation, starting with 25 accounts. These accounts can be viewed from Kbin with their posts showing up as microblog posts....
What sites would you recommend for space news?
I mean more like space tech and launches, not astronomy (though I wouldn’t mind a bit of that)....
A new Type of Mastodon Signup that gives people a sense of Agency (fungiverse.wordpress.com)
cross-posted from: feddit.de/post/6792877...
Protesters Shut Down Los Angeles Highway to Demand Ceasefire in Gaza (truthout.org)
No more business as usual," the organization leading the protest said on social media....
Does anyone else resent the links to Reddit?
I keep seeing communities which seem to consist of nothing but a bot that reposts stuff from Reddit....
A case for preemptively defederating with Threads (kbin.social)
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
Waiting (lemmy.world)
Urgent: US Congressional action needed before Thursday this week for USA to support Ukraine. Contact Representatives now
I know that this instance is nominally in Finland, but as far as I know this is the most active Ukrainian-news on Lemmy. I’m expecting that a fair number of US Citizens are here....
deleted_by_author
What is a "subscribe pending"? (backdatassup.com)
When I was trying to subscribe to a news community from another instance of lemmy, the button read “Subscribe Pending” What does this mean? Does it mean that they have to approve me before I subscribe, or does it mean that the two instances have to communicate with each other, or something else?
On how the Threadiverse should work
tl;dr: to reduce federation api calls and to reduce issues with defederation, maybe some instances should only be for communities with no user signups, and some instances should be only for user signups with no communities (you would have to make a post or PM to request the admin to make a community for you)...
Lemmy's active users are up again for the first time since the exodus (lemmy.ml)
from lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
Biden says Hamas raped, mutilated women during Israel assault (www.reuters.com)
Wörterbuch_iel German
Da die Tage danach gefragt wurde und es mich auch nervt: Hier ist das Ich iel Zangendeutsch Wörterbuch. Hier findet ihr sämtliche Zengendeutsche Begriffe Alphabetisch sortiert. Wenn ihr Ergänzungen habt schreibt die bitte in die Kommentare bzw. Erwähnt mich bei Beiträgen/Kommentaren wo ihr denkt dass diese hinzugefügt...
Ukrainian Sniper Breaks Cover to Claim World-Record Hit of More Than 2 Miles (archive.ph)
Trump declines to rule out abusing power or seeking retribution if he returns to the White House | AP News (VOTE!) (apnews.com)
"NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump declined to rule out abusing power if he wins the presidency again after Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity asked him Tuesday to respond to growing Democratic criticism of his rhetoric....
Why is *all* of Lemmy filled with Anti Israel content? (fedia.io)
I hope I will not get downvoted because I'm genuinely wondering...
How did Lemmy World become the default instance?
World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it’s just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there....