A bit of a slower news week, where everyone’s feeds turned purple with pictures of the aurora borealis. Still, work on (and interest in) bridges, curated content and new products in development show that things are dynamic all the same.
Fediverse Bridges
Ryan Barrett, the creator of Bridgy Fed and the new bridge between the fediverse and Bluesky, has given another update on the Bluesky-fediverse bridge that recently was quietly launched. He says that now more than 2500 accounts have bridged now. Barrett also explains that there are still many bugs with the bridge, and that he is busy working on it.
A week after Threads launched their beta version of federation, Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput said that mastodon.social knew about 2800 federated Threads accounts. While the total number of federated Threads account will have been higher, it will likely not have been that much higher either. Comparing this to the 2500 bridged account for a service that is still in active testing and development, indicates that there is significant interest in connections between the fediverse and Bluesky. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber also bridged her account this week.
The bridge between Bluesky and the fediverse also allows Nostr to connect to Bluesky, with a case here where a post is made on Bluesky, replied to from Nostr, and then replied to again from Mastodon.
Bridge Finder is a new tool to help people with using the bridges between the networks, providing an easy visual interface with an explanation on how to use the bridges, as well as the requirements for opting into using them.
The News
Ghost recently announced their major push for ActivityPub support, and published their first update this week. Ghost explains the history and background of why they are working on the project, and why now specifically, saying: “In 2024, for the first time, it finally feels like we have a critical mass of people and platforms who are interested in rewilding the internet to bring back what we lost, and create something new.” Molly White’s response, saying “is this feeling… hope?” captures the sentiment well. Ghost also shared a first screenshot of their new ActivityPub powered reader app:
Ghost reader app that showcases activitypub powering the app.Recently Mastodon announced their new U.S.-based non-profit board members. People had quite some questions about it, and Mastodon has updated the blog with a detailed FAQ. One point of contention was why Biz Stone and Amir Ghavi are on the board. The FAQ explains that Ghavi has provided pro-bono legal council to Mastodon over the last year, with specific knowledge about open-source licensing and further connections to the tech industry. About Biz Stone Mastodon says that “as a Twitter co-founder [Stone] has invaluable experience scaling a social media platform to its first few million users and many connections to experts who are familiar with the problems Mastodon is facing”.
Flipboard announces that they have enabled federation for another 100 curators this week, briding the total of federated Flipboard magazines over 2500. Flipboard also announces that they have had over 100k social interactions on all the federated magazines in the last month.
Forgejo has set their first step towards federation, with the ability for federated likes. What makes this stand out is that Forgejo is a self-hosted software forge. While the fediverse is predominantly understood as a (microblogging) social network, Forgejo shows that federation can also be used for very different types of software products.
Fedihosting Foundation is a non-profit that was recently founded by the admins of the .world (lemmy.world, mastodon.world) cluster and mstn.social has expanded to include the toot.community server as well.
The Links
Trunk & Tidbits is a new series by the Mastodon engineering team. This edition shows what they’ve been working on in April 2024.
Last week I wrote about some conversations about a hard fork for Mastodon. WeDistribute wrote about the trouble forking Mastodon, going into more detail about previous attempts that place it into a historical context.
Upcoming short video platform Loops has started to roll out the first invites for a closed beta test.
ActivityPub server framework Fedify has some more updates.
Documentation to get starting on a plugin for Lemmy.
PieFed gives an overview of their work of the last few weeks.
Ghost explains the history and background of why they are working on the project, and why now specifically, saying: “In 2024, for the first time, it finally feels like we have a critical mass of people and platforms who are interested in rewilding the internet to bring back what we lost, and create something new.” Molly White’s response, saying “is this feeling… hope?” captures the sentiment well. https://mastodon.social/users/fediversereport/statuses/112429154113383333
Several of the major social media platforms - Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter - have effectively declared war on linking to things and I absolutely hate it
"Link in my bio" / "Link in thread" / "Link in first comment"... or increasingly no link at all, just an unsourced screenshot of a page
A couple of things there Simon. How do you know this? Are you still using the deprecated, privacy mining, monolithic silos to which you refer, or are you just taking this on the word of good, 3rd party information sources?
If it's the former, why?
If it's the latter, then yippie kai yay! The demise of these platforms is underway and in full swing - just as Steve Ballmer once called Linux "Cancer", the fact that these silos aren't simply ignoring links to particular resources, especially those in the #Fediverse, and have taken up with the practice of actively blocking them, is a good thing; and you, as a #Fedizen, should be proud.
Yet again, if it is the former, and you really insist on validating and monetizing those privacy mining silos via your subjugation as inventoried chattel there, consider pinning something akin to the following to the top of your profile (make sure to read the alt-text for the image):
The fediverse won’t succeed at putting up a #Stackoverflow substitute and that’s a problem?
Just an impression: All the pieces seem to be there. But what’s required is a team, with devs, PMs and coordinators, dedicated to making a particular place in the #fediverse .
That’s resources and decently sized financial and organisational demands, especially to get a critical mass of users.
Is the fediverse up to that challenge? If not, is it an issue worth addressing?
Hmm, only 26 followers after being on Mastodon since November 2022? Ok, here is my intro again: (ex) Full stack web developer with Bread and Roses Creative, full time artist (now) and food critic (currently) with Chuck Eats KC. Kansas City-based web dev since the dawn of browsers (1995). Focus these days is one creative stuff: writing, food criticism, photography, streaming, art, and making fun videos.#Artists#Intros#Writers#FoodCritics#Fediverse#WebDev
Ah, it finally hit me. When some of the folks here seemed to have been perplexed by people wanting to both post publicly, but still have some control over who can read/interact with their posts?
That's robots.txt. We just need a way to set robots.txt for each of our accounts.
"In 2024, for the first time, it finally feels like we have a critical mass of people and platforms who are interested in rewilding the internet to bring back what we lost, and create something new. ... There's a palpable feeling that this just might be the year of the open web."
It is pretty cool to see all the different forks of major fediverse platforms. Just learning about Chuckya, a "soft fork" of glitch-soc, which itself is a fork of Mastodon.
I followed @auschwitzmuseum even before I switched to the #Fediverse It posts pictures of people (a lot of which children) that where murdered in concentration camps every day, to let us not forget.
I have need of a #Aleppomuseum and #Gazamuseum and #Ukrainamuseum account that posts daily pictures of people (a lot of which children) that where killed in the last few days.
Auch deswegen nutze ich YouTube nicht direkt, sondern Links über @invidious* oder nutze es mobil via @newpipe*, um Videos zu sehen und so weit frei vom Tracking zu sein. Leider sind noch nicht sehr viele anregende Videoproduktionen im Fediverse zB auf @peertube vertreten.
»Skandal um Anni The Duck Die #Influencer-Branche hat ein Problem mit #Mobbing und Machtmissbrauch:
Anni The Duck wird vorgeworfen, sich jenseits der Kamera toxisch verhalten zu haben – die #Stream'erin antwortet. Der Fall wirft ein Schlaglicht auf ein größeres Problem in der Welt von #YouTube und #Twitch.«
Conseil : lors de la rédaction de vos posts, utilisez avec précaution les astérisques, en particulier quand vous en mettez 3 ou plus à la suite, comme ceci.
Beaucoup de services du Fediverse sont compatibles avec la mise en page Markdown, y compris certaines instances Mastodon. Or, les astérisques sont utilisés dans la convention Markdown pour mettre le texte en forme : du texte écrit comme ceci entre deux astérisques sera affiché en italique, et du texte placé entre deux paires d'astérisques sera affiché en gras.
Déjà, là, ça peut avoir un effet qui n'est pas celui que vous recherchez. Mais c'est pire si vous placez du texte entre trois astérisques, puisqu'il sera alors affiché avec une animation qui le fera grossir et rapetisser rapidement avec un tremblement, quand il sera affiché dans Misskey ou l'un de ses forks (et il y en a un paquet, des forks, maintenant). Si c'est juste un mot ou deux, ou même une courte phrase, ça va. En revanche si vous mettez un paragraphe entier entre triples astérisques (ou quadruples ou quintuples), ça risque de le rendre illisible.
Die unvollständige Geschichte des Fediverse - GNU/Linux.ch
Gestern lief eine Aufstellung der "historischen" Schritte, die zum Entstehen des Fediverse geführt haben, durch meine Timeline. Lest selbst, wie es sich in den letzten 15 Jahren entwickelt hat.
Ah, Meta is thinking about adding advertising to the #Fediverse ...
"You could imagine an extension to the protocol eventually — of saying like, ‘I want to support micropayments,’ or … like, ‘hey, feel free to show me ads'"
Das vermutlich unbekannteste Fediverse Projekt. Audon, der Audiochat. Zu Unrecht wie ich finde. Probiert es selbst aus.
Auch wenn (mal wieder) for Mastodon drauf steht, funktioniert es natürlich auch mit den weiteren Projekten. Das mit dem Markennamen scheint so ein Marketingtick zu sein ;)