LaurensHof, 4 months ago to fediverse

An update on Bonfire

The upcoming Bonfire project describes itself as a social networking toolkit, that allow communities to create and shape their own digital spaces, and have released some new information about some parts of their upcoming project. Bonfire is a fediverse server project in development, with its own take on the microblogging format, and tools to customise it for your community.

Bonfire Classic has been in development (and available for testing) for a while, and the new information is on the other apps that can be build with Bonfire. The team is working on an Open Science version of Bonfire, as well as a Communities version. For the Open Science version, features like integration with your ORCID (‘Open Researcher and Contributor ID’), and better embedding of scientific papers are a part of it. For the Communities version, the team is collaborating with Radio Free Fedi, and the features centre around public and private groups, and topical discussions.

The Bonfire team is also working towards a cooperative hosting network, to make the hosting of a Bonfire more accessible to communities. In September 2023 the Bonfire team indicated to be working towards a 1.0 release in the upcoming months.

#bonfire #fediblog #fediverse

https://fediversereport.com/an-update-on-bonfire/

LaurensHof, 4 months ago to fediverse

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 52

Welcome to another episode, with quite some news about the fediverse that goes beyond just microblogging; Owncast’s struggles with explaining decentralisation and self-hosting to Apple, and the fediverse is apparently now enough of a buzzword to get metaverse companies interested.

How Bluesky works – the network components

The network design of Bluesky is fairly complicated, and different from how ActivityPub and the fediverse works. The design decisions that Bluesky has made has impact on how content moderation hows, as well as on federation and decentralisation. Many people have thoughts and feelings on Bluesky, but detailed information on how the network functions is hard to come by. In this new short series I explain how it works, take a look at the link below.

How Bluesky works – the network components

Owncast releases app for iOS and tvOS

Gabe Kangas, creator of the fediverse-connected streaming software Owncast, has announced the release of an iOS and tvOS app for Owncast. This comes some months after Kangas said that the development of the app had been halted due to Apple’s App Store policies. Getting the app approved has been a challenge, and Kangas details the wide variety of ‘reasons’ that Apple has given to reject the app. It took help of a legal firm and persistence from Kangas to get the app in the App Store.

The fact that Owncast did manage to publish an app to the App Store is good news for PeerTube, who are in a process of their own to create their own mobile apps for PeerTube. In PeerTube’s roadmap Framasoft said that publishing a PeerTube app might be tricky, citing Owncast’s experiences.

In the blog Kangas also talks about the identity of the platform, coming right out of the gate by reiterating that Owncast is simply server software to run ‘independent, decentralized, completely standalone video streams’. Building social features such as chat, helping with discovery with the Owncast Directory and now building an app, all help with the awareness of the project. But in the end, Kangas sees Owncast as ‘server software. That’s it’.

Open metaverse platform Viverse announces fediverse support

Viverse is the open metaverse platform from HTC, where people can visit virtual worlds. In a blog post, Viverse announced that they are set to join the fediverse as well. Viverse says they are adding ActivityPub support, and that the first step of integration will be interoperability with Mastodon.

What the interoperability will look like is unclear, Viverse says that it will allow ‘everyone to share Worlds, Avatars, and so much more’. Currently, the Viverse website allows you visit different virtual worlds by simply visiting the link, and it is unclear how adding ActivityPub support will meaningfully alter the experience of sharing links. The Mastodon organisation themselves have been clear that they are stretched for resources, making it also uncertain that adding support into the platform for sharing metaverse-worlds will be high on the priority list.

My personal intuition is that this news is an illustration of how the term ‘fediverse’ is starting to trend (another example here) towards a much wider, broader and generic meeting. Now that Meta has solidly put ‘fediverse’ in a wider audience and meaning with Threads, it seems likely that more companies and organisations will experiment with this version of the term ‘fediverse’.

Dutch State Secretary urges Threads to quickly implement federation

Nu.nl is one the largest news sites of The Netherlands, and they published an article on the fediverse. As part of the article, they interviewed Dutch State Secretary Alexandra van Huffelen, who also spearheads the Mastodon server for the Dutch government. In it, she urges Threads to quickly implement ActivityPub so that Mastodon and Threads can fully interoperate. She also states that the comments she gets on posts on Mastodon are differ strongly in a positive way from the comments she gets on X.

Fediverse client Agora launches with For You algorithm and bridges

Agora is a new fediverse client that has some interesting opiniated ideas for what a fediverse client can do. The project is a fork of Phanpy, and adds a ‘For You’ algorithm, integration with bridges to Bluesky, Nostr and X, as well as connections to Lemmy. The For You feed, which is based on the open-source algorithm fedialgo. Fedialgo allows anyone to run their own algorithm and fine tune it on the client side. Another content integration that Agora does, is that if you follow a hashtag, it’ll automatically populate your feed with posts made in the corresponding Lemmy community as well. It also supports natively supports bridges to Bluesky and Nostr, but personally I had trouble to actually get these to properly run.

The links

• Two articles explaining the fediverse; Stephan Bohacek with an article about the fediverse for government agencies, and Ben Werdmuller with an article about the fediverse for media organisations.
• The Decentered Podcast by WeDistribute interviewed Hoshida, who makes the Sora app. Sora is an iOS app for Mastodon, Bluesky and most Misskey forks, with interesting takes on algorithmic feeds.
• Where is all of the fediverse?
• Mastodon Near Me, a way to find Mastodon servers by country, region, and language.
• One year of StreetPass, the browser extension that lets you find people on the fediverse when you visit their website.
• The owners .world fediverse servers (such as Mastodon.world and Lemmy.world) will form a non-profit foundation together with @stux, who owns and operates the mstdn.social servers.
• A detailed explanation by Castopod for their new Castopod podcasting index.
• A paper called ‘Creating a city for all of us: a role for the Fediverse in archiving civic urban memory‘ was published this week.

Thank you for reading! You can subscribe to my email newsletter or follow me on the fediverse below.

#fediblog #fediverse

https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-52/

LaurensHof, 4 months ago to fediverse

Open metaverse platform Viverse announces fediverse support

Viverse is the open metaverse platform from HTC, where people can visit virtual worlds. In a blog post, Viverse announced that they are set to join the fediverse as well. Viverse says they are adding ActivityPub support, and that the first step of integration will be interoperability with Mastodon.

What the interoperability will look like is unclear, Viverse says that it will allow ‘everyone to share Worlds, Avatars, and so much more’. Currently, the Viverse website allows you visit different virtual worlds by simply visiting the link, and it is unclear how adding ActivityPub support will meaningfully alter the experience of sharing links. The Mastodon organisation themselves have been clear that they are stretched for resources, making it also uncertain that adding support into the platform for sharing metaverse-worlds will be high on the priority list.

My personal intuition is that this news is an illustration of how the term ‘fediverse’ is starting to trend (another example here) towards a much wider, broader and generic meeting. Now that Meta has solidly put ‘fediverse’ in a wider audience and meaning with Threads, it seems likely that more companies and organisations will experiment with this version of the term ‘fediverse’.

#activitypub #fediblog #fediverse #metaverse

https://fediversereport.com/open-metaverse-platform-viverse-announces-fediverse-support/

LaurensHof, 4 months ago to bluesky

How Bluesky works – the network components

Welcome to a new short series on Bluesky and how the network works. Bluesky recently released more information on their plans for third party moderation services. While writing about their plans, I realised that to properly explain how it works, I first needed to explain how the network is designed to function.

Most people understand the fediverse in terms of separate instances. Every instance can be a social network in itself, and by connecting with other instances form a larger network, the fediverse. This makes it easier to understand where content moderation happens: every instances has their own content moderation, own moderators and their own rules.

The Bluesky network and the AT Protocol function differently. There are different types of servers; servers for data storage, servers for data aggregation, etc. As such, content moderation happens in different places on the network. To properly explain how it works, the benefits and tradeoffs, as well as the unknowns, I am publishing a short series on Bluesky, how the network functions, and how and where content moderation happens.

In this first episode: the parts that make up the network and allow it to work.

The basic components

The Bluesky network consists of the following parts:

• A Personal Data Server (PDS) that hosts all account data. It contains information about your accounts, and is where all your personal data is stored.
• A Relay looks for all the PDS’s in the network, takes in all their data, and merges it together to outputs one big stream that is used by other parts of the network. The Relay puts out the data in a machine-readable format, which is often called a firehose.
• AppView takes the data from the Relay, and processes it so that it is more meaningful for apps. Examples of the processing that AppView does: counting the amount of likes that a post gets, collecting all replies to a post and organising them into a thread. It also generates your “following” feed, by creating a reverse-chronologically ordered feed of posts made by the accounts that you follow.
• An app, whether that is the official Bluesky mobile app or a third party website like deck.blue. The app takes the data from AppView and presents it in a nice format for people read on their preferred device.

With these four components we can imagine a basic social network:

If you open the official Bluesky app on your phone and look at the “following feed”, the data flows as follows:
All PDS’s => Relay => AppView => App.

If you then create a post and hit send, data goes from your app directly back to the PDS where your account is hosted.

Custom feeds and moderation

There are four more components to the Bluesky network: feed generators, labellers, the moderation service, and the Identity Directory.

• A feed generator creates the custom feeds, using some form of algorithm. These custom feeds can be anything from a feed with the posts with the most likes in the last 24 hours, a feed of posts that contain specific terms, or anything else.
  • A feed generator takes data from a Relay, performs the calculations to take the raw data into a custom feed, and sends it to the AppView. The AppView then performs some final steps and sends it to your app so you can see the custom feed.
• Labellers. Labelling services perform moderation activities by applying labels to a post. People can determine how they want to handle labelled content. An example of a label can be ‘Sexually Suggestive’, and people can determine if they want their app to either show, hide or warn about posts that contain the label.
  • A Labelling service takes data from the AppView, processes it, and then sends it back to the AppView
• The moderation system, called Ozone, that allows moderators to take moderation action, such as taking down posts or accounts. This tool has the least amount of information on it, and it is not visible Federation Architecture documentation. The update this week by the Bluesky organisation shows that the system is called Ozone, and that they are in the process of making it open-source and available for others to use.
  • The tool at least allows moderators to alter data in the PDS, as that is where account data lives.
• Every account on the Bluesky network has a unique identifier, called a DID. A DID is a unique string of random numbers and letters, and cannot change. Every account also has a handle, which is your username. New accounts start with youraccountname.bsky.social as a handle. The network also allows you to change your handle to a domain name that you own, which allows for easy verification. The information about which DID corresponds to which handle is stored in the DID PLC Directory.

Now we have all the components that together make up the Bluesky network. In the next part, I’ll take a look at decentralisation and federation, explaining for every part how it will play a role in decentralisation and federation.

Thanks to Kuba Suder for feedback on a first draft.

#atproto #bluesky #fediblog

https://fediversereport.com/how-bluesky-works-the-network-components/

LaurensHof, 4 months ago to fediverse

Owncast releases app for iOS and tvOS

Gabe Kangas, creator of the fediverse-connected streaming software Owncast, has announced the release of an iOS and tvOS app for Owncast. This comes some months after Kangas said that the development of the app had been halted due to Apple’s App Store policies. Getting the app approved has been a challenge, and Kangas details the wide variety of ‘reasons’ that Apple has given to reject the app. It took help of a legal firm and persistence from Kangas to get the app in the App Store.

The fact that Owncast did manage to publish an app to the App Store is good news for PeerTube, who are in a process of their own to create their own mobile apps for PeerTube. In PeerTube’s roadmap Framasoft said that publishing a PeerTube app might be tricky, citing Owncast’s experiences.

In the blog Kangas also talks about the identity of the platform, coming right out of the gate by reiterating that Owncast is simply server software to run ‘independent, decentralized, completely standalone video streams’. Building social features such as chat, helping with discovery with the Owncast Directory and now building an app, all help with the awareness of the project. But in the end, Kangas sees Owncast as ‘server software. That’s it’.

#fediblog #owncast

https://fediversereport.com/owncast-releases-app-for-ios-and-tvos/

LaurensHof, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to fediverse

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 51

The contours of the fediverse as the open social web, in a vision that goes beyond decentralised microblogging, are starting to become more visible, with more bridges, connections and other types of media getting pulled into the fediverse. It also raises the question of expectations and boundaries, with different visions of the fediverse arising: that of a highly interconnected space, or with many more insular communities and groups that are loosely connected.

WordPress ActivityPub plugin updates to v2.0

The WordPress ActivityPub plugin has been updated to version 2.0. The major feature of the release is better comment federation. Comments are now properly threaded, which makes it much easier to follow and understand threads where people are replying to each other. Comments are now also bidirectionally federated. Creator @pfefferle explains:

“When you respond to comments from the fediverse on your blog, they will now be federated. This allows you to finally engage in (threaded) communication back and forth directly from the comment section of your blog!”

This makes the plugin more valuable for bloggers who do not have another fediverse account for example, allowing them to respond directly from the blog, with their responses now showing up in the fediverse as well.

Comments made by people who use the reply feature on the website itself do not get federated. Pfefferle explains that this is mainly a legal question for GDPR compliance. Work is still continuing on the plugin: Pfefferle mentions working with the Akismet team to make sure that it’s spam detection system also works with ActivityPub, as well as working on a Profile Editor UI.

Podcasting news

Fediverse podcast hosting platform Castopod has released a discovery platform for all the podcasts that are hosted on Castopod. You can find the index at https://index.castopod.org/. It gives a nice visual overview of all the podcasts, which you can filter by category, language, or any search term you want.

In order to build this index, Castopod uses the Podcast Index Database. Incidentally, the Podcast Index is currently working on building a bridge between their database and the fediverse. Developer Dave Jones released the code for the alpha version this week. This bridge allows you to follow podcasts directly in your fediverse client. The bridge is still in active development, but a sneak peek can be seen here.

Some podcast news of my own as well: WeDistribute has launched the new podcast series Decentered. In this first episode, Sean, Damon I and talk about Creation and Discovery. Go check it out!

Bluesky has 3 million accounts

Some news from Bluesky: yesterday the network reached the milestone of 3 million accounts. This milestone comes 2 months after hitting the 2 million mark. While there are no official numbers for Monthly Active Users (MAU), Kuba Suder estimates around 500k MAU, based on the daily and weekly active users. For comparision, Mastodon has between 1 million and 1.5 million MAU, depending on the source.

Bluesky’s growth is far from over, as Bluesky said that that ‘invite codes are going away soon’. This is different from opening up the network for federation, which is also planned for early 2024.

Bluesky is explicitly positioning itself as a place that is welcoming and suitable for news organisations. Bluesky team member Emily published an explainer how newsrooms can use Bluesky for the upcoming election season. Not everyone is convinced the network is ready yet though, as ændra explains some features that the network needs to be fit for purpose.

In other news

Another write-up of the meeting that Meta held last December to discuss the fediverse, by Tom Coates. It contains some more details about the planned roadmap, and how the integration is planned to happen in separate steps. What strikes me is that both this report, and the notes by Johannes Ernst, mention that they feel they have not gotten a clear answer to the most important question: ‘Why is Meta doing this?’. Tom Coates writes: “I’ll be blunt – I didn’t find [Meta’s explanation] enormously convincing but it was interesting and I’m sure there’s some truth to it”. And Johannes Ernst: “Personally I believe this question needs a better answer than has been given publicly so far”.

An OpenAccess article in Cell Press for researchers that are considering to switch their research from X to Mastodon, by Robert W. Gehl and Roel Roscam Abbing. It describes key differences between the fediverse and X, and how Mastodon is quite different from X and Twitter from the perspective of researchers. It focuses on the expectations of privacy that people in the fediverse have, and one of the main recommendations for researchers is to shift from studying individuals to studying instances.

ActivityPods, the project to combine ActivityPub with the Solid protocol to create data ‘pods’, has been updated to version 1.5. With the new version it becomes easier to invite new people to your network, as well as better organisation of your contacts. ActivityPods tries to solve the problem that currently in the fediverse, you need to have a separate account for every fediverse service. With ActivityPods, applications can connect to your own Pod, so that your data and connections all live in one place.

The new link aggregator PieFed ‘emphasise trust, safety and happiness‘, and as part of that they have added extra notifications for commenting on posts made on servers with higher standards of moderation, such as Beehaw.org.

Fediseer, the project that provides a public space to crowd-source approval and disapproval of instances, has added a ‘rebuttals’ feature. Creator db0 noticed that instances were issuing ‘counter-censures’ (a censure is a negative judgement from one instance to another for any reason) just to reply to the original censure. Rebuttals provide an outlet for instances to explain their perspective or reasoning.

Bridgy Fed, the bridging project to connect the indieweb, fediverse (and Bluesky and Nostr in the near future) has expanded support for non-indie websites as well. Similar to RSS-Parrot, you can now follow websites and their RSS-feeds directly in your fediverse account.

The links

• Pixelfed is building their spam filtering feature into a dedicated service, and working on adding parental controls.
• PeerTube is building a mobile app, and is looking for people to help better understand their needs.
• The research project by Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi has kicked off as The Federalist Papers.
• Designing a fediverse application with Bovine.
• Updating your Mastodon status from a Kindle.
• Mastodon client Oliphaunt for MacOS launches in beta.
• radio free fedi is at a crossroads.
• Short update by Write.as, saying they are working on post imports from WordPress and Substack.
• The new Firefish fork Catodon moves towards the other Firefish fork, Iceshrimp. It’ll stay a separate project however.
• A deeper look at one of the stand-out features of Misskey and it’s forks: Pages.

If you want to receive this weekly update directly in your inbox, subscribe below!

You can also follow this blog directly on the fediverse:

#fediblog #fediverse

https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-51/

LaurensHof, 4 months ago to fediverse

WordPress ActivityPub plugin updates to v2.0

The WordPress ActivityPub plugin has been updated to version 2.0. The major feature of the release is better comment federation. Comments are now properly threaded, which makes it much easier to follow and understand threads where people are replying to each other. Comments are now also bidirectionally federated. Creator @pfefferle explains:

“When you respond to comments from the fediverse on your blog, they will now be federated. This allows you to finally engage in (threaded) communication back and forth directly from the comment section of your blog!”

This makes the plugin more valuable for bloggers who do not have another fediverse account for example, allowing them to respond directly from the blog, with their responses now showing up in the fediverse as well.

Comments made by people who use the reply feature on the website itself do not get federated. Pfefferle explains that this is mainly a legal question for GDPR compliance. Work is still continuing on the plugin: Pfefferle mentions working with the Akismet team to make sure that it’s spam detection system also works with ActivityPub, as well as working on a Profile Editor UI.

#activitypub #fediverse #wordpress

https://fediversereport.com/wordpress-activitypub-plugin-updates-to-v2-0/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to fediverse

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 50

Welcome to the second year of Fediverse Report! This edition has: everyone is excited about RSS, a new link-aggregator platform, PieFed, launches in beta, major issues with blocking security in the fediverse, and more!

Everyone loves RSS

RSS Parrot is a new tool that allows you to turn your fediverse feed into a RSS feed. What was intended to be an ‘under-the-rader late night launch’ turned about to be massively popular hit in the fediverse. The tool is simple: mention @birb in a post with the address you want to follow, and the bot replies with an account that you can follow. Every website is one account, and it posts a link every time the website has a new post.

The responses show the demand for RSS feeds that easily integrate into social networking feeds. RSS Parrot is a great workaround for websites that have not set up their own fediverse presence yet. But for people who do own websites and prefer to have direct control over the relationship with their audience, RSS Parrot’s popularity is a great reminder to set up your own fediverse presence.

An uncertain future for Firefish

The Firefish project has been on a decline for a while now, with the flagship server firefish.social experiencing severe technical problems over the last months. Another Firefish server, firefish.tech is now also shutting down, partially due to the problems with Firefish. Panos Damelos, who was the community manager for the Firefish project, explains his perspective on how the project declined here, attributing it to severe technical problems, combined with a lack of attention and communication of the lead developer Kainoa.

Together with Firefish developer Namekuji, Panos Damelos have started the Catodon project, a fork of Firefish. In the announcement blog post Catodon dives deeper into what makes the project stand out, noting the community driven aspect of the project. Catodon joins IceShrimp and Sharkey as recent Misskey fork projects that are all gaining popularity as small-scale fediverse servers.

A new link aggregator platform with PieFed

The link-aggregator part of the fediverse has grown, with the launch of PieFed’s beta test. PieFed joins platforms like Lemmy and Kbin who all have the ability to share links, and comment and vote on them.

PieFed focuses on making the platform easy to manage, maintain and develop for, and uses Python. Developer Rimu is also emphasising Trust and Safety, and healthy community interactions. One way PieFed does this is by adding the ability for authors to add a ‘I’ve changed my mind’ setting. It draws inspiration from Nick Punt’s work on de-escalation on social media. Another feature is adding a warning on posts made by accounts with low reputation, meaning that their posts get downvoted a lot.

PieFed has launched as a beta test, and comes with the warning that there will be ‘probably many bugs’. You can try PieFed for yourself at piefed.social.

Authorized Fetch circumvented

Alex Gleason announced that Authorized Fetch has been circumvented. Authorized Fetch (in-depth explanation here) makes sure that a blocked server is fully blocked, and cannot access posts. Alex Gleason, behind fediverse platform Soapbox and currently working on the bridge Mostr (which connects the fediverse with Nostr), found out that Threads already blocked a few servers, such as Spinster, Poast, and the Mostr bridge, some of which he is involved with.

The Nostr community actively promotes the idea of adverse interoperability. In that spirit Alex Gleason reimplemented a method first used in Pleroma that circumvents Authorized Fetch. The blocked servers can now connect to Threads again. This is accomplished by spoofing the domain name from which the request came from.

There is a lot more to be said about this, and warrants an extensive follow up. I fully agree with WeDistribute’s concluding remarks: “Look, Mastodon has been providing a half-measure to its users for years. Now it’s the time to make things right: going into 2024, I think it’s going to absolutely be a requirement to develop more robust forms of privacy options and access controls to empower users”.

The links

• This week’s award for most esoteric fediverse implementation goes to DiveDB, the online scuba diving blog site, which has recently added ActivityPub support. This allows you to follow scuba divers and their dives directly from fediverse feeds.
• Micro.blog creator Manton Reece is publishing a book Indie Microblogging. The entire book is available as a text site as well, on book.micro.blog.
• The blog Nexus of Privacy has a five-part series about ‘Strategies for the free fediverses’.
• YouTuber MKBHD talks about Threads and the fediverse on his podcast Waveform.
• More RSS: Goblin is a fediverse platform currently in development that is strongly inspired by Tumblr. They showed the ability to follow Tumblr blogs in Goblin via RSS this week.
• Bookwyrm has been updated with full account migration.

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe below to receive the update via email, or follow @LaurensHof in your favourite fediverse app.

#fediverse

https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-50/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to random

RSS feeds in the fediverse a huge hit

RSS Parrot is a new tool that allows you to turn your fediverse feed into a RSS feed. What was intended to be an ‘under-the-rader late night launch’ turned about to be massively popular hit in the fediverse. The tool is simple: mention @birb in a post with the address you want to follow, and the bot replies with an account that you can follow. Every website is one account, and it posts a link every time the website has a new post.

The responses show the demand for RSS feeds that easily integrate into social networking feeds. RSS Parrot is a great workaround for websites that have not set up their own fediverse presence yet. But for people who do own websites and prefer to have direct control over the relationship with their audience, RSS Parrot’s popularity is a great reminder to set up your own fediverse presence.

https://fediversereport.com/rss-feeds-in-the-fediverse-a-huge-hit/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to random

Fediverse link-aggregator PieFed launches in beta test

The link-aggregator part of the fediverse has grown, with the launch of PieFed’s beta test. PieFed joins platforms like Lemmy and Kbin who all have the ability to share links, and comment and vote on them.

PieFed focuses on making the platform easy to manage, maintain and develop for, and uses Python. Developer Rimu is also emphasising Trust and Safety, and healthy community interactions. One way PieFed does this is by adding the ability for authors to add a ‘I’ve changed my mind’ setting. It draws inspiration from Nick Punt’s work on de-escalation on social media. Another feature is adding a warning on posts made by accounts with low reputation, meaning that their posts get downvoted a lot.

PieFed has launched as a beta test, and comes with the warning that there will be ‘probably many bugs’. You can try PieFed for yourself at piefed.social.

https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-link-aggregator-piefed-launches-in-beta-test/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to random

An uncertain future for Firefish

The Firefish project has been on a decline for a while now, with the flagship server firefish.social experiencing severe technical problems over the last months. Another Firefish server, firefish.tech is now also shutting down, partially due to the problems with Firefish. Panos Damelos, who was the community manager for the Firefish project, explains his perspective on how the project declined here, attributing it to severe technical problems, combined with a lack of attention and communication of the lead developer Kainoa.

Together with Firefish developer Namekuji, Panos Damelos have started the Catodon project, a fork of Firefish. In the announcement blog post Catodon dives deeper into what makes the project stand out, noting the community driven aspect of the project. Catodon joins IceShrimp and Sharkey as recent Misskey fork projects that are all gaining popularity as small-scale fediverse servers.

#catodon #firefish

https://fediversereport.com/an-uncertain-future-for-firefish/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to fediverse

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 49

Welcome to the final update of the year. A bit shorter before a break over the holidays, and then Fediverse Report will be back for it’s second year! Stay tuned for more information on how Fediverse Report will evolve over the coming period!

Fediverse Report published two articles published this week:

Flipping the Federation Switch: Flipboard joins the fediverse

Peer into the future: PeerTube’s plans for 2024

The links

• David Pierce wrote a big article for The Verge about the fediverse and Activitypub.
• So did Bloomberg, more from the perspective of Meta.
• On Threads, Erin Kissane wrote an extensive article. If there is one article that you’d want to read regarding Threads, Meta and federation, I highly recommend this one.
• Flipboard’s Dot Social podcast had Mastodon’s Eugen Rochko as a guest this week.
• The Nexus of Privacy wrote an article comparing three safety ininiatives in the fediverse: FIRES, FediSeer and The Bad Space.
• A technical post explaining the technical ActivityPub implementation of Threads.
• The Fediverse Developer Network has posted a survey for fediverse developers.
• MacOS RSS reader NewsNetWire published a blog post about the considerations of adding Mastodon support.
• The Event Federation project published an update how the community is an integral part of developing an interoperable system.
• The Streams project added a plugin that blocks both scraping, as well as all Meta instances.

That’s all for this year, thank you so much for your support! See you in the next year!

#fediverse

https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-49/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

Peer into the future: PeerTube’s plans for 2024

Framasoft has released their plans for PeerTube for 2024, and I hosted the livestreamed AMA to learn more. Framasoft talks about apps, being an alternative, new features, and so much more. Let’s dive right in.

Being an alternative

Framasoft explains that PeerTube is an alternative to YouTube and Twitch, and not a rival. The size of the Big Tech platforms cannot be seen independently from the values that are embedded into the software. To be a rival that can compete in size with YouTube and Twitch would mean abandoning the values of PeerTube. In the blog post they describe how their values such as transparency and autonomy directly influence the features and design of PeerTube.

https://fediversereport.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/sepia-logo-big-1024x576.jpegSepia against the Videoraptor – illustration David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

The massive size difference between the Big Tech platforms and Framasoft is also visible in the size of the teams that work on the products. Up until now, most of the work on PeerTube is done by one paid developer. For the next year, Framasoft is proud to have a second person join the team. It is clear that this means a lot to the team, as they try to balance all PeerTube’s needs with the culture of a small organisation.

During the AMA, Pouhiou talks about the size and growth of PeerTube, and mentions that a sudden burst of growth and attention can be a great risk as well, especially for a platform where not all moderation features are completed. The consistent growth, without moments of intense virality, is a positive for Pouhiou.

New features that got released for PeerTube in the latest update, such as password protection, also benefit the the small groups and creators that Framasoft sees as their audience. During the AMA, Pouhiou said that the team did not realise how impactful the password protection feature can be to creators, until creators told them how important the feature was. This is an indication that PeerTube still has work to do in really growing into the role of being their own product that has their own specific audience.

cute drawing of an orange squid with the peertube logo as a hatSepia – illustration David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

Plans for 2024

PeerTube will build a Mobile App, as mobile has become the main way of watching videos. While there are unofficial apps, having an official app can be helpful for adoption of the platform. The plan is to publish the app for both iOS and Android, with AndroidTV as an extended goal. As Owncast however has found out recently, Apple can be restrictive on publishing apps on iOS. How this works out for PeerTube remains to be seen.

Content moderation is getting another look in 2024. PeerTube will work on a comment moderation system for both instance admins, and video uploaders. Another aspect is the ability for instance admins to scan all video metadata for specific keywords, that present a list that the admins can than decide on whether and how to take action on. Framasoft will also work with designers to rethink the NSFW/SFW labels into more specific tags for sensitive content.

Framasoft is also putting a big focus on the user experience. As the software has grown and developed over the years, features are not always in logical places anymore. They’ll work with designers to rethink the interface from the ground up.

Framasoft is a non-profit organisation funded by donations. You can find out more about their yearly donation drive, and how to support PeerTube, here.

#peertube

https://fediversereport.com/peer-into-the-future-peertubes-plans-for-2024/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to fediverse

Flipping the Federation Switch: Flipboard joins the fediverse

“It’s the future of social media, and the future of the web!” Speaking with Mike McCue makes it immediately clear why Flipboard has joined the fediverse. Monday, the company announced that Flipboard has begun federating, and that people from other parts of the fediverse can now interact and follow with Flipboard accounts.

The plan is to implement federation in three steps. The first step started this week, and allows full interoperability between a selected group of 27 publishers and creators. In January 2024, all Flipboard accounts will federate, with people from the fediverse being able to follow and interact with any public curator. Finally, Flipboard plans for April 2024 for all Flipboard accounts to interact with fediverse accounts as well.

infographic showing the logos of the flipboard accounts currently joining the fediverse, such as The Verge and FastcompanyThe Flipboard accounts that are now available in the fediverse

McCue explains Flipboard’s Magazines, by saying that if you are interested in a subject, for example Mountain biking, you want to see all of the content, and not limit it to only one type: not just posts (microblogs), but also videos, photo’s, articles. Flipboard’s magazines is a collection of all these different types of media. He says that federation presents a great opportunity to introduce people to the concept of Flipboard and its curated magazines.

McCue is also thinking on how Flipboard maps onto the current structure that most fediverse software uses. In Flipboard, one account can maintain multiple magazines, and you ‘flip’ the content into one specific magazine. With the current implementation of federation, you only follow a Flipboard account, and all the posts you see in your feed get the text “Posted Into [Magazine]” added. You cannot follow an individual magazine from an account yet. As Flipboards Magazines do not easily map onto the structure that other fediverse platforms use. The closest analogue might be PeerTube’s Channels, which also don’t federate.

Flipboard is also thinking about how to share their work on content moderation, stating in their announcement post that “we will share [our red/green domain list] with other instance owners in the Fediverse as soon as is practically possible”. McCue explains that the red/green domain list is used by Flipboard to determine if websites are trustworthy, with quality content and fair reporting (green list), or untrustworthy or harmful for the red domain list.

Flipboard uses these list to determine on how to approach accounts and posts in their recommendations. The fediverse has been thinking and working about various initiatives on how to share information about whether other fediverse servers are trustworthy. For more information, The Nexus of Privacy has an extensive look at three major initiatives in the fediverse, FediSeer, FIRES and The Bad Space. There are many open questions on how Flipboard’s work will look, but it does represent an expansion in the thinking of how the fediverse can work together to share information about trust.

The steps by Flipboard to federate represent two trends going on in the fediverse currently;
a transition of the fediverse towards an open social web, where products and organisations can add a social components to their product by adding fediverse integration. The other is in placing an increased focus on content curation. A significant group of people in the fediverse express skepticism about algorithmic discovery. Hand-curated content represents an alternative way of finding new content in the fediverse, and Flipboard makes that easier now, with their federation of magazines.

#fediverse #flipboard

https://fediversereport.com/flipping-the-federation-switch-flipboard-joins-the-fediverse/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to random

Last Week’s links – ep 48

An overview of the interesting links from the previous week.

• 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.

For all of this week’s news, check out Last Week in Fediverse – ep 48.

https://fediversereport.com/last-weeks-links-ep-48/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to fediverse

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 48

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!

Newsmast and news curation in the fediverse

Bluesky – mid December update

Study on the Twitter Migration

Threads and Tumblr on fediverse connections

Thats all for this week, thanks for reading! If you want to receive this update directly in your mailbox, subscribe below:

#fediverse

https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-48/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to fediverse

Newsmast and news curation in the fediverse

Newsmast, a social network committed to thoughtful knowledge sharing and curated communities, has emerged as a notable project within the fediverse. It is backed by the UK Newsmast Foundation Charity, which has set itself as a mission to change social media for the better. I spoke with Michael Foster, co-founder of Newsmast, and Freddie Johnson, Foundation Ambassador for Newsmast.

The main way that Newsmast is working towards their mission is with curated communities. The idea came to the co-founders after he realised how during the Russian invasion of Ukraine an online community of valuable news and commentators emerged online. As this happened mainly on Twitter, the events of the last year necessitated the use of a different place to facilitate these trusted news communities, which they found in Mastodon and the fediverse.

Over the last year, the team has been busy building their own place on the fediverse. Starting with a fork of Mastodon, they have developed their own apps for Android and iOS, as well as their own web interface. The design puts communities at the core, as a way for people to help with discovery on the fediverse, and find valuable content.

Promo image for Newsmast, that says' Newsmast: sharing knowledge in the fediverse. Joining the 2 million social media rebels'

Curated Communities

Newsmast has put quite a bit of work in their curated communities, and it goes beyond just providing a list of accounts to follow. There are communities in a large variety of topics, varying from ‘Government and Policy’ to ‘Biodiversity and Rewilding’, to ‘Ukraine invasion’, to ‘History’. A Newsmast community has some parallels with Bluesky’s custom feed. For creating each community, Newsmast takes a group of hashtags, then apply some strong filters to the posts made with this hashtag. Then it adds some specific hand-picked accounts to the subject as well that are knowledgeable in the field.

Freddie Johnson explains that they have structured the communities around academic or newspaper subjects, and that the focus is groups like academics, news organisations, and non-profit workers. They are thinking about how to provide editorial oversight over communities. The organisation is working on establishing a community based editorial board, that takes inspiration from the academic model for oversight boards.

Newsmast promo: "our communities. Download newsmast and experience them for yourself"

A unique home on the fediverse

Another aspect about Newsmast that stands out is that it is also a hosted fediverse server that anyone can join. While there are many fediverse servers that are available for signup registration, there are not many servers that provide a clear governance structure in the way that Newsmast can. When new people first join the fediverse, the question of which server to join can be a difficult one, for multiple reasons: for people new to decentralised social networks it is often unclear what the question means, what the impact of the choice is. But the differences between the servers can be hard to find as well. Signing up asks you to trust the administrators of the server, with limited info of who they are. Newsmast stands out in a positive way; it presents a clear and extensive vision for what they want their social network to be, and also shows that the server is run by a UK accredited charity. For new people joining the fediverse, Newsmast provides an attractive option to join.

Expanding communities

Newsmast is working on making their curated content more broadly accessible. In the latest update of Mastodon app Mammoth, there are now curated “Smart Lists”, with the Environment and Nature Smart Lists curated by Newsmast. The organisation is also working on an update so you can log into Newsmast with your current Mastodon account, which should make it easier for people to access the Newsmast communities.

Different organisations are thinking about, and working on, curating and helping people discover interesting content. Flipboard is expanding their native integration with the fediverse for their magazines, Mammoth is providing Smart List, and for Bluesky is curated feeds one of their key features. Newsmast takes this concept and moves it further by actively thinking about how to provide oversight to the editorial power that the curators have. It is one of the more interesting projects in the fediverse that I have seen in quite a while, and certainly worth keeping an eye on. You can try Newsmast at newsmast.org.

#fediverse #mastodon

https://fediversereport.com/newsmast-and-news-curation-in-the-fediverse/

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LaurensHof, 5 months ago to bluesky

Bluesky – mid December update

In the last month or so, the Bluesky team has made some updates and changes to the network; adding reply controls, starting to make the network publicly available, and working on the bulk follow spam accounts.

Reply controls

One of the main features recently released is the Thread Reply Controls. When you compose a post, you can now select who is able to comment. You can either select no-one, only accounts who are mentioned in the post, only your followers, or accounts that are on one of your lists.

screenshot of reply controls feature in Bluesky. Allows you to select everybody, nobody, or a combination of users that are mentioned, followed or on a listGiving people control over who can comment is a significant improvement for the safety. It can help cut down on annoying or harmful replies. It should be noted that these reply controls can only be set during the creation of the post, and can not be changed afterwards. This means it is not possible to apply extra limitations on comments in case a post goes unexpectedly viral.

Public visibility of network

Soon, Bluesky will make the entire network publicly visible. Currently it is not possible in the standard web interace to view posts or profiles without an account, giving the impression that the network is private. However, the entire network has always been public, with posts and accounts visible for everyone, if one used 3rd party tools or the API.

As part of the preparation for federation and opening the entire network for everyone, Bluesky will soon be making all posts and profiles publicly visible for people without an account. When the team announced this a few weeks ago, it came with quite a few critiques that people had a need for their profile to be private, and that they did not want their posts to be easily accessible.

In order to accommodate the needs and requests for privacy, Bluesky has added the ability for people to opt out of the public web interface in a new setting. This reintroduces the current friction in viewing peoples profiles and posts: it is currently possible, but requires a certain technical know-how and effort. However, it is not certain that other third party clients will respect the setting. It can also create a false sense of security, where people think their posts are private when they have turned on the feature, when in practice it means that they are obscured instead, and still accessible to those who really want access.

Button on Bluesky to allow you to select 'logged-out visibility'. The button comes with a lot of warning text that explains what it does, and says: "Discourage apps from showing my account to logged-out usersBluesky will not show your profile and posts to logged-out users. Other apps may not honor this request. This does not make your account private.Note: Bluesky is an open and public network. This setting only limits the visibility of your content on the Bluesky app and website, and other apps may not respect this setting. Your content may still be shown to logged-out users by other apps and websites."Bluesky is aware that this opt-out setting is not equal to a full privacy setting, and the language used reflects this: the setting says that it will ‘Discourage apps from showing my account to logged-out users’, and comes with a warning that it does not make your account private.

Bulk following spam

Finally, Bluesky is stepping up enforcement against engagement farming. There are quite a few accounts that try to gain followers by following tens of thousands account at the same time, with the hope that these accounts will follow them back. These accounts will now get labelled as spam. The hope is that this label both deter the behaviour. With Bluesky’s composable moderation, the default value is that posts from accounts labelled as spam are hidden.

#bluesky

https://fediversereport.com/bluesky-mid-december-update/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to TwitterMigration

Study on the Twitter Migration

Last year’s Twitter migration, where a large number of people decided to move to Mastodon, is an example of a giant collective behavioural change that people engaged in voluntarily. A new paper takes a look at how the collective coordination happened, and what can be learned as the drivers of such a collective action.

The authors (Lucia La Cava, Luca Maria Aiello, Andrea Tagarelli) show that Twitter communities migrated more quickly where:

• The social connections in the community are relatively sparse. There is a cost to severing a social connection, and in a tight-knit community the social cost of leaving is higher.
• Community members repeatedly post about their migration plans. The more people post with the #twittermigration hashtag, the more likely people are to follow up on the call.
• Language use that emphasises a shared identity and the exchanges factual knowledge. Cooperation in a community can be facilitated when discussions and conversations create a sense of belonging to the group.

The blog post explaining the research can be found here, the paper here.

#Twittermigration

https://fediversereport.com/study-on-the-twitter-migration/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago to fediverse

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 47

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

5 years of Mobilizon

Nostr bridge Mostr gets an update

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.

Bridging Nostr and the fediverse

Mammoth gets a major update

Mastodon app Mammoth gets a major update

A Mammoth of an update

In other news

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.

• Lemmynade is a new app for Lemmy.

• 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 laurenshof@fediversereport.com if you want to follow this blog with your fediverse account.

#fediverse #PeerTubeAMA

https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-47/

LaurensHof, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to mastodon

A Mammoth of an update

Mastodon app Mammoth has released a new version of their app, Mammoth 2. The app was launched in early 2023 for the iPhone, Mac and iPad, and it is made by startup that is backed by Mozilla. Mammoth has focused on the user experience, especially of new users, and over the summer they launched a For You feed. In the announcement post for Mammoth 2, co-founder Bart Decrem says that ‘Social needs to be an open protocol that anybody can build on’. To illustrate their belief in the value of open software, Mammoth 2 is now open source as well.

One common criticism of the fediverse is that it is hard to get started. Finding interesting people and content to follow is harder than on other platforms, who are more willing to suggest accounts and posts to you. Decrem talks about wanting to make something that takes the values and the passion of FOSS projects, and make them accessible to a larger base of people. With Mammoth, he is actively working on making Mastodon more accessible for new people, in multiple ways.

screenshot of Mammoth, showing the different smart lists you can subscribe to.The standout feature for Mammoth 2 is curated ‘Smart Lists’, where Mammoth has asked people within the community to curate lists around certain topics, from Space to Indieweb to Queertech. The handpicked curation provides a counter to algorithmic feeds, and also provides new accounts with a good place to start. If you have been in the fediverse for a while, you will probably recognise most accounts on the Smart Lists that interest you, but for a new account it can certainly be helpful.

The For You feed is now makes use of the smart lists as well. Mammoth explains how it works in more detail here. You can customise your For You feed as well, selecting which parts you want to be included or excluded into your feed. You can select each smart list you subscribe to, Friends of friends, Trending among follows, and handpicked accounts by Mammoth.

The two algorithms of Trending among follows and Friends of friends are still in the testing phase. Decrem explains that these algorithm are hard to implement well, both from a technological perspective as well as a cultural viewpoint. The entire fediverse network is currently also on the small side to get enough engagement to create a well functioning feed.

a screenshot of Mammoth, showing the different ways you can customize your For You feed.For 2024, Decrem expects that it’ll be the year of social as an open protocol, with many different products being build. For Mammoth, that means making Mastodon and the fediverse accessible to a wider audience, with the following priority they are working on: first of all, making sure that Mammoth provides a great Mastodon experience. Secondly, provide a good experience for interacting with the fediverse at large. Thirdly, they are watching closely what Threads is doing, and making sure that Threads is accessible on day 1 that they launch ActivityPub support.

A large part of the Mammoth 2 update is about content curation. Decrem says however that being a content curator is a not a part of their core business, stating that Mammoth is especially good at thinking about the user experience. For now, that means helping with content curation. That is why other organisations such as Newsmast, and people from the community have been actively involved in taking the role of content creation.

Mammoth is also thinking about how to sustain the project, to which they have introduced Mammoth Gold. This optional subscription (2.99 USD/month) is about supporting the project, and gets you optional features such as more icons, early access and votes on new features, and being present on the quarterly board meetings.

The app will not be just focused on Mastodon forever, and Decrem sees a lot of potential for Threads implementing ActivityPub. This is something he actively hopes to make use of, and provide Threads users with another app that they can use. He sees a lot of options how Mammoth can do things better than Threads, and give users more handpicked and curated content to browse.

#mastodon

https://fediversereport.com/a-mammoth-of-an-update/

LaurensHof, 6 months ago to fediverse

Bridging Nostr and the fediverse

Mostr, the bridge that connects Nostr to the fediverse, has gotten some upgrades recently. With the latest update, the homepage of the bridge, Mostr.pub, allows people to enter a fediverse handle, and open the link in their Nostr client of choice. Here is the Nostr page for my Fediverse Report account as a demonstration. Finding people on the fediverse and connect to them from Nostr has become significantly easier with this update.

For some context to this news, Nostr is another social network based on an open-source protocol. I explain a bit more how it works here. In the context of Mostr, two things are important to know: one of the core values of the network is anti-censorship, and there is no intermediary for creating an account.

In a talk (available on PeerTube here) at the Nostr conference Nostrasia, Mostr.pub creator Alex Gleason about his history with Nostr and the fediverse. He explains how he worked on fediverse software Soapbox, and then got hired as the head of engineering for Trump’s Truth Social, and now has quit that job to work fulltime on Nostr.

The Mostr bridge has been available for a bit, which allows Gleason to present some interesting statistics about it’s usage: 70% of the usage is from people on Nostr following people on the fediverse, with over 10k unique users across the bridge.

One part of Gleason’s presentation that stands out is his claim that Nostr is now part of the fediverse. I wrote about the multiple definitions of the term fediverse here, talking about how fediverse can be defined by protocol, by culture, or by interoperability. Although people can argue about which definition is correct, and whether or not Nostr should be included, Gleason’s remarks do indicate that Mostr makes the boundaries of what the fediverse is fuzzier, and harder to define.

Gleason also talks about content moderation and blocking, saying: “One thing that has been holding the ActivityPub protocol back from achieving even more, is the blocking culture”. But if Mostr wants to see itself as just another server among many in the fediverse, content moderation happens to it in the same way that it happens to other servers: by simply blocking the server you do not feel like connecting with. Any justification for it is only necessary between the admin and their users, and not anyone beyond that.

#fediverse #nostr

https://fediversereport.com/bridging-nostr-and-the-fediverse/

LaurensHof, 6 months ago to fediverse

5 years of Mobilizon

Framasoft, the French non-profit organisation for open source software such as PeerTube, says that after 5 years, Mobilizon has reached maturity. In December 2018 the organisation announced their plans to develop Mobilizon, with the goal of creating an alternative to Facebook Groups and events.

Over the years, they have added multiple updates, such as federation in 2020 and searching across Mobilizon instances in 2020. This month, they are releasing their final update, v4, with a variety of new features.

Event administrators can now send private announcements to attendees, allowing them to contact all people who have registered for an event directly. This announcement is a one-way communications channel, intended for organisers to broadcast information. Besides that, a chat system for attendees is also implemented, which federates with the rest of the fediverse.

Another new feature is the ability to import and synchronise events from other platforms, such as Meetup and EventBrite. Framasoft created an import tool that allows you to import and synchronise event information from these platforms into Mobilizon. iCal event feeds are support too, so this even works with most calendar tools.

The big platform for importing events from is Facebook. Here, Framasoft has done the work to get it to work, and the ball is now in Facebook’s court to approve and validate. Framasoft is clear that they do not have a timeline how long this will take, and that they are unsure if Facebook will do so.

While Framasoft sees Mobilizon has having completed their vision, it is far from over for the project. Framasoft will hand over the keys to the French association Kaihuri, who has been maintaining a Mobilizon presence for a while. Kaihuri recently got funding from NLnet to continue development work on Mobilizon, focusing on the user experience and improving interoperability. Meanwhile, Framasoft is betting big on PeerTube for next year, and is currently organising their yearly donation drive.

#fediverse #mobilizon

https://fediversereport.com/5-years-of-mobilizon/

LaurensHof, 6 months ago to fediverse

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 46

Welcome to another episode of Last Week in Fediverse, where I’m experimenting with a slightly different structure. I’m trying to get more articles out directly into the fediverse with WordPress’ ActivityPub plugin, so you can also follow me laurenshof@fediversereport.com to read it all during the week when it comes out.

NLnet funding the fediverse

The NLnet foundation provides grants to an open information society, and over the years they have provided most projects on the fediverse with funding. This week NLnet announced their latest grant round, with a significant number of fediverse projects being supported. For more background on NLnet, read my interview with them. In this article I take a look at all the different projects that NLnet has funded this round.

A fediverse look at NLnet’s latest grant round

PeerTube released their latest version

The latest version of PeerTube comes with a variety of cool new features. Two of them stand out to me, as they allow PeerTube to be used in ways that Youtube can’t. For content creators that want to give their subscribers exclusive access to content, the ability to password protect your PeerTube videos might just be a game changer. There is a lot more coming up next year with PeerTube as well, stay tuned for the announcement very soon!

PeerTube v6 update, with password protect and more new features

Misskey 2023 recap

Misskey has had a busy year. Developer Syuilo provided an update of the year, describing the new features and how the project went from 500 daily active users in January of the year to 28.000 now. One thing that interests me is how Misskey keeps developing into it’s own unique identity within the fediverse. As it is largely Japanese, there is little overlap with the Western fediverse community.

Misskey 2023 recap

In other news

Last Week in Fediverse – in other news – ep 46

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading. You can subscribe via email below, or laurenshof@fediversereport.com if you want to follow this blog with your fediverse account.

#fediverse

https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-46/

LaurensHof, 6 months ago to fediverse

Misskey 2023 recap

Misskey, the fediverse microblogging platform that’s popular in Japan, has provided a recap of 2023, and it has been a big year for Misskey. The platform saw massive growth, the main server Misskey.io incorporated itself, and a number of new features and performance improvements.

The flagship server Misskey.io grew from 500 daily active users in January to 28k daily active users in December. They grew from around 20k registered accounts at the beginning of the year to over 400k accounts now. As with most social networks, growth happened in bursts, with a major increase in March and July, while the other months grew much slower.

With the growth came other changes as well: the server misskey.io incorporated itself, and main developer Syuilo became a director of the organisation as well. Donations and sponsorships also grew significantly. For the future, Syuilo says that “there are limits to relying solely on donations from everyone, so I would like to find a way to monetize the project.”

Misskey Pages allow users to create custom web pages on the platform that they can share. It can be programmed as well, and Misskey created a custom scripting language AiScript so people can safely add code to their Misskey Pages as well.

Other updates include refactoring of code and performance improvements, more information on that can be found here and here.

Misskey’s vision for fediverse servers is visible in their updates on moderation; every user can be assigned different roles that control permissions of the user in detail. In the update they say that this has greatly affected the operation of the Misskey server. This implies a vision for Misskey of larger servers, with a more complex structure for administration and moderation.

The future plans for Misskey focus heavily on the playful aspect of social communities: two games will be added that can be played on Misskey; Misskey Room as a way to play with other users in 3D space, as well as a chat interface. This puts Misskey further it’s unique place in the fediverse.

#misskey

https://fediversereport.com/misskey-2023-recap/