Happy Birthday to the oldest fediverse server project that is still actively maintained. This marks the beginning of development of the Mistpark decentralised social network. We decided not to wait for "quit Facebook Day" in 2010 (May 31). We hit the ground running and haven't looked back. (Mike Macgirvin) 14th Birthday #Friendica!
So far, I’m not liking how Threads posts render on my Akkoma server.
Too much of it is no text – just a big ginormous paperclip.
And what is that paperclip? Well, when I click on it, it opens up a new tab to reveal… a screenshot of a Tweet.
All of this could be bloody avoided if Threads people put the contents of the tweet in their posts. Or even better, if Threads actually rendered these pictures in the post and put in alt-text as well.
I’d tell these Threads people how bad these posts look on the Fediverse, but none of them can see my replies. Thanks, @zuck!
(Also, if the link to the post doesn’t show up, don’t blame me. Blame Threads. You don’t need to click it anyway since I’m providing a screenshot of what I’m seeing.)
A few influencers, active both on the “regular” Fediverse and Threads, have noted that having a Threads account hasn’t given them a bigger audience even though Threads has a bigger userbase than (for example) Mastodon.
Quite the opposite. There’s more visibility here. People are more likely to interact with your posts. It’s easier to gain followers as well.
None of this surprises me. There’s always been two types of people who build content for social media: those who engage with people, and those who game algorithms.
@damon That's super cool that you're working on something on that topic, Damon!
Have I ever shown you this blog post by @maya? https://maya.land/responses/2022/11/28/we-live-in-a-society.html It's been hugely influential on my thinking regarding this matter, and it does a great job highlighting consequences of algorithms and algorithm choice that aren't often talked about. Would recommend taking these thoughts into account as you clarify your own.
@atomicpoet Yes, Sora does algorithms very well. Memory will use a similar model but more user driven. I agree with your point about gaming the system bur I believe those people that attempt to do that on fedi would be blocked far and wide. Plus, of there’s algorithmic choice it’s not like everyone would come into contact with that persons posts
A Fediverse service someone should build: daily digest emails that summarizes what happened across the Fediverse, and interesting things that popped up in your feed.
Why make it? Because if you’re away from the Fediverse for a period of time, emails are a nice way to get caught up.
So far, only 2,800 Threads accounts have turned on Federation. Of the ones I see, they’re quite active.
I suspect the reason for the minuscule federated accounts is because Threads users can’t see replies from the Fediverse yet. Why would you turn on federation if you’re oblivious to interactions from the Fediverse?
Nevertheless, we’ll see what happens once communication becomes two-way.
@atomicpoet That table isn't the official #Fedipact site. It's run by @nm If you check their feed, you'll see they've been offline for the past few weeks due to health issues. There are problably some updates that haven't been applied.
@me@fediversenews I’ve been running this server since 2022, and it’s time to use it for my main account as well. Plus, it’s nice to just run things from my own server.
If you want to know why Truth Social looks like so much like other Fediverse software, it’s because it runs Mastodon with a Soapbox front-end. In fact, the creator of Soapbox, Alex Gleason, used to serve as Truth Social’s Head of Engineering.
So why did Alex Gleason leave? Because Soapbox received a grant from…
Now why did Alex Gleason receive a grant from Jack Dorsey?
To build the Ditto project for Nostr.
Oh yeah, and who builds the Mostr bridge that connects ActivityPub with Nostr? Alex Gleason.
Now I’ll tell you something funny. When Jack Dorsey was more active on Bluesky, he tried his damnedest to ignore all mentions of Mastodon, the Fediverse, and ActivityPub. Instead, he referred to it all collectively as other protocols and services.
Since migrating my old #Firefish account to atomicpoet.org, which is an Akkoma+Mangane server, this is the first post of mine to go viral.
With 13.5K followers with this account (@atomicpoet), it’s been an eye-opening experience!
You see, I’m running this entire server with 1 vCPU and 2GB of RAM. With certain Fediverse software, this wouldn’t be feasible. With Akkoma+Mangane, it definitely is!
Now that’s not to say there aren’t drawbacks. There’s been genuine hiccups today with my server going down a few times. But after these momentary hiccups, my server rises to the challenge, and it’s business as usual.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that, post-migration, engagement might be going up. I can’t say precisely why this is the case, but I suspect one factor is that my domain (atomicpoet.org) is pretty memorable and a nice form of self-verification.
I currently have 13.5K followers on atomicpoet.org, and I’m running this server on 2GB of RAM. Despite, this, everything is clearly operational and running smoothly.
And if you want to know why this is a big deal, the more followers you have on the Fediverse, the more resources your server needs.
When I was running servers that weren’t Akkoma+Mangane, using this little RAM with this many followers was unthinkable. Mind you, this is one day after my migration happened – so there’s lots more to test!
@Andres@atomicpoet@fediversenews
I've been maintaining a misskey server (here) and it's connected to ~10,000 instances with 2.6 million post records. It likes to expand into 16GB of ram then relaxes into about ~8GB. I am fairly certain it would be ok with fewer memories.
My biggest gripe about fediverse is the storage. I have to cull data so i don't have to monkeypatch drive size increases on the hypervisor. median storage is about 300GB give or take.
What's wild is that it was only about 2700 instances in november, but a large mastodon instance imploded and the userbase went everywhere, so as people posted "here i am" i added them, and that ballooned the connected instances.
Here’s a table of which Fediverse servers are federating or de-federating Threads.
Of the top 10 most active servers it lists, eight of them are federating, one is offering limited federation (infosec.exchange), and one is de-federating Threads (mas.to).
Of course, there’s some notable large servers missing from this list. For example, is misskey.io federating with Threads?
@atomicpoet@fediversenews Is it possible to block the threads.net domain, but not all fedi accounts that are linked to threads? If there is a way to do that, I'd like to know it myself.
On Mastodon, if you server block threads, you will not see any content from threads.net, including any boosts from those who are on the fedi of posts from threads.net. You will, however, see anything from instances that do federate with threads.net.
Stated another way, hypothetically, if we follow each other and you block the threads server, you will see me and I will see you but you won’t see any threads content that I boost.
@SparkIT @Chris Trottier In this regard, should Threads users be treated differently from Hubzilla or (streams) users?
Both aren't based on ActivityPub. Hubzilla is based on Zot6, (streams) is based on Nomad. Both support ActivityPub through an optional add-on which is off by default on Hubzilla and on by default on (streams).
This means anyone on (streams) can decide to turn ActivityPub off entirely, and anyone on Hubzilla can decide against turning it on in the first place.
Federation with anything else, e.g. within Hubzilla or (streams), between Hubzilla and (streams) mutually, between Hubzilla and Diaspora* or between Hubzilla and Friendica or GoToSocial using the Diaspora* add-on, is not affected by this, so technically, these users stay federated. They just can't connect themselves to Mastodon and everything else that only speaks ActivityPub.
Are you part of the Fediverse if you can connect to anything or anyone else that's part of the Fediverse? Or are you only part of the Fediverse if you can connect directly to Mastodon?
Release banner for Hubzilla 9.0 Hubzilla 9.0 is here and delivers many improvements under the hood and at the UI level. Two of the most asked features have been implemented: repeats a.k.a. boosts and adjustable theme colors at the channel and site level. Hubmins can also customize other components via the bootstrap sass variables.
Under the hood we implemented a short term object cash which will improve performance when fetching objects. The internal use of ActivityStreams1 has been deprecated in favor of ActivityStreams2. Object integrity proofs (EddsaSignatures) according to fep-8b32 have been implemented. Interesting for developers: CI and the test environment have been vastly improved.
Other notable changes are: refactored browser to browser encryption using the modern sodium crypto library and support for custom emojis with configurable emoji sets.
For a complete list of changes in Hubzilla 9.0 please refer to the changelog.
A big THANK YOU! to all contributors and everybody who supports Hubzilla and its development.
Breaking changes
The .htaccess file has been updated to fix an issue with recent Apache versions
Require sodium PHP extension
Require bcmath or gmp PHP extension
Require intl PHP extension
Versions < 9.0 will not be able to decrypt encrypted messages composed in version 9.0 in the UI
Poke and Mood apps removed
Removed smiley button addon
Removed smiley_pack addon
Removed emojione addon (use the emoji addon instead)
Removed fediwordle addon (use the fediquest addon instead)
Individual connection filters need manual intervention (e.g. replace http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/share with Announce when filtering repeats)
Update
Backup your data
Make sure that the sodium PHP extension is installed and enabled
Make sure that either the bcmath or gmp PHP extension is installed and enabled
Make sure that the intl PHP extension is installed and enabled
#Hubzilla is a powerful platform for creating interconnected websites featuring a decentralized identity, communications, and permissions framework built using common webserver technology.
@mario do you think there is any chance we'll see a #docker image for #Hubzilla as I had to give up my hub after moving away from cPanel hosting? I now keep all my services segmented in their own Docker containers.
@PlasticParagraph you can look at my video overview I did on Hubzilla at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nCAOM5V1g. It is most similar to Friendica, and has quite a bit of what Facebook has. It is full length blogs and also connects to Diaspora and other networks. Right now the full nomadic ID is only on Hubzilla, until maybe ActivityPub and Mastodon expand later to include that. Mastodon is 500 chars max microblogging without all the bells and whistles Hubzilla and Friendica have. All post to Fediverse tho.
Since Mangane is unknown to most of you here’s an explainer.
There are three main microblogging flavours of the Fediverse:
Mastodon, Glitch, Hometown, etc.
Misskey, Firefish, Sharkey, etc.
Pleroma, Akkoma, etc.
For atomicpoet.org. I used to use Pleroma but I’ve migrated to Akkoma. The Pleroma/Akkoma flavour is quite unique in that, not only is it perhaps the most resource efficient—it allows you to use different front-ends.
This is where Mangane becomes interesting because it is an incredibly user-friendly and attractive front-end developed by @clovis. And, in fact, I think it provides the most user-friendly and attractive UI/UX on the Fediverse.
Why am I so enthusiastic about Mangane? Because not only is it good-looking and user-friendly, it provides excellent rendering for text-formatting. And its management of reposts (both regular and quoted) is spectacular.
Anyway, I’ve been testing Mangane for months. I’ve been using it on a live server for two weeks. I’m pleased with the results.
@atomicpoet@clovis@limepeep@fediversenews I'm using Mangane on my little personal Pleroma instance. As far as I know it's a fork of the Soapbox front end, and basically is very similar in many respects. I previously was using Soapbox FE with some misgivings due to its dubious pedigree. Very happy that Mangane is available 😍
So all questions about whether or not they will federate have been answered. More to the point, Threads is federating with my personal server.
There were doubts about whether Threads would allow federation with single-user and small user servers. There were also questions about whether they’d allow federation with non-Mastodon servers.
Well, I’m running an Akkoma+Mangane server that has two active users on it. And federation with Threads is indeed working.
@Johannab@fediversenews On your Mastodon server, do a search for @zuck and see if a Threads profile shows up. If it does, your server has successfully federated with Threads.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews and now users can use any emoji (even custom ones from your instance) without any extra configuration from the admin (well except updating mangane^^)
Though i kinda need the feature you presented but at user level : pick my X most used emojis to be the default ones 👀
After months of testing, and then migrating my Pleroma server to Akkoma, I can now say for certain that Mangane is a viable front-end for the Fediverse.
I am very pleased with the results, and feel like most people would find this to be an easy and approachable UI/UX. In fact, Mangane solves a big problem for me.
When it comes to Fediverse server software, Akkoma has always been efficient. In fact, I’m running atomicpoet.org with 2GB of RAM, and it’s rock solid. Unfortunately, Akkoma’s default UI doesn’t seem to be all that inviting. I’ve tested it with folks who are new to the Fediverse, and to put it politely, they find it very confusing.
Mangane, on the other hand, is very inviting. Most people like it because it’s similar to Twitter but has lots of quality of life improvements over it. For example, the ability to react to a post with multiple emoji reactions seems to be a big hit.
Power users also have plenty to love about Mangane. Not only does it offer textual formatting (through Markdown), it offers post scheduling as well. That’s a big deal!
If you’re looking for rock solid Fediverse server software that combines resource efficiency with a beautiful UI, the combination of Akkoma + Mangage is a solid choice!
Here's what my new Akkomane (a.k.a., Akkoma + Mangane) server looks like.
I'm quite pleased with the results. Both desktop and mobile views look tremendous. The default colours are so good, I'm not changing them.
The compose box is elegant and has wonderful options, including scheduled posts. I can also do quoted boosts (a.k.a. quoted retweets) if I want.
I really have to express my appreciation to @reiver and @spacehost for making this happen. I know they put a lot of hours into making Akkomane an option, and it's paying off handsomely.
