I just cleared all the posts from my bot going crazy and posting non stop. Again the Twitter API was having issues and my bot posted to mastodon and twitter, and errored out causing a loop. Apologies for spamming people's feeds unintentionally. That will teach me for developing on Twitter. #mastodon#mastodonadmin
Ok I have almost cleared up all the bot messages. Again I am so sorry to everyone's feeds. I had a bot that's supposed to only post once per twitch stream when I am live. Twitter's API had issues and errored out my bot and caused it to loop. I was notified by my followers of the issue mid stream and yanked the offending raspberry Pi off. It's never done this before, and that was my amateur developer mistake. I have cleared about 2/3 of the posts so far #Mastodon#Mastodonadmin#infosec
I’m pleasantly surprised my #Mastodon server hasn’t had performance issues even with hitting over 1,000 followers and a half dozen or so relays on the @mastohost star plan. I have a feeling I’ll need to upgrade resources by the end of the year though at my current growth rate
It’s been a hectic week in the fediverse, with lots of attention going to Lemmy and Kbin. The Reddit blackout focuses the spotlight both on other services (such as Lemmy and Kbin), as well as indicating the vulnerability of communities that are run by centralised for-profit service companies. As this situation is currently rapidly evolving, I’m bundling all news and development in another article later this week.
Meta has shown of more from their upcoming microblogging platform, that they’ve positioned as a response to Twitter. The Verge has the information. It confirms indeed support for ActivityPub, not just Mastodon. Earlier leaks were not 100% clear if their would be full interoperability with the entire fediverse or just some connection with Mastodon, but this latest information confirms that the upcoming app will indeed use ActivityPub. A potential name for the service seems to be ‘Threads’, which would interfere with current movements by people on the fediverse to call the Lemmy/Kbin side of the fediverse the ‘threadiverse’. The release date is ‘as soon as we can’.
Standardised block lists got some discussion again this week on the feed. A post went viral where Linux creator Linus Torvald told a user off for calling the New York Times communist woke propaganda. While people appreciated Linus formulating (among other things) his support for trans rights in his own words, it also raised questions about why Linus could interact with that user in the first place. It turned out that Linus’ server did not defederate yet from Poast, one of the biggest right-wing extremist servers in the fediverse, noted for extremely bad behaviour (as well as links to Truth Social, as discussed last week). @mekkaokereke raised the point, asking the question why blocking the worst of the worst servers is not a default setting for new server admins in the first place. He also offered a several suggestions about standard opt-in block lists for new servers. This got picked up by Mike Connor, engineering lead for Mozilla, who offered capacity of his Mozilla engineers to help implement such features. Mastodon’s infrastructure engineer @renchap in response to this offer that such changes are on the list for Mastodon, but that their resources are very thin. It is interesting to see multiple actors getting aligned on important safety and moderation issues. With Mozilla getting more actively involved with Mastodon, it’ll be interesting to see how Mike Connor’s offer will translate to actual features for Mastodon.
PixelFed news
PixelFed has been on a roll lately, with a significant amount of updates and changes:
The main new feature is Instagram Import, allowing you to import all your Instagram photos directly into PixelFed.
PixelFed is accepting and soliciting corporate sponsorships. So far a significant amount of funding for PixelFed came from NGIZero grants, as well as a lot of dedication and volunteer work by creator @dansup. Corporate sponsorships indicate that the project is reaching a new stage in its growth.
A new (beta preview) website for the API documentation. The fediverse loves to advertise itself with interoperability between services, but putting this in practice can be surprisingly hard sometimes. Clear API documentation is of great help with this.
A new project @dansup is embarking on is ModDB, which is described as ‘Community Federation Moderation’. Details are scarce, but it seems to be a new way to share block lists between server admins.
The links
Bonfire (a federated microblogging platform, in alpha) continues to be worked on. A recent dev diary blog post goes into more detail about how federated groups work in Bonfire.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is working on a microblogging platform that centres around trust-based algorithm. He confirmed that ActivityPub support is on the todo-list, but not the first priority.
@box464 has a new tutorial out for working with Calckey plugins, this time to create snippets. Calckey plugins are one of it’s most under-utilised features, due to a lack of documentation, among other reasons. Creating snippets of text is also helpful with MFM art, another powerful Calckey feature that can be hard to use. For context, MFM is a markup that is specific to Misskey and Calckey, and can be used to create quite intricate imagery. Here are some examples, that can be reused much easier with such a plugin.
Jetpack, a plugin for WordPress, has made it easier to share posts directly to Mastodon. In the announcement post, the creator says that Automattic is approaching the fediverse from both sides: either native support with the ActivityPub plugin, or easier sharing with Jetpack. Support for other microblogging platforms beyond Mastodon is being worked on as well.
Hello together! I am the Lady of Ashes and I am looking forward to meeting you here!
This is my second account. My last one is on a server that is struggling so badly right now that I created a new one here. Thanks to @KleinerWuuki and @Schdadia <3
I write mainly in English to become more confident with the language. But you are also welcome to write with me in German.
I like to boost messages and am happy about every boost from your side <3
Following @fba makes you realize how easily admins block other servers, mostly without even specifying any reason. It's truly disappointing. #Fediverse#Mastodon#Fediblock