I'm having an issue when trying to comment on posts (or reply to other comments) on Firefox mobile on Android. Once the top of the text box moves above the confines of the screen, the whole page snaps downward so that the text box is off screen entirely. It makes it nearly impossible to type out longer comments....
@Bicyclejohn My first exposure to the Fediverse was Mastodon in Nov. 2018. After few months I forgot about it, and I returned in 2022 after the takeover of Twitter by Musk. I have to say, that although it motivated me, I was not active in Twitter if was not a necessity of my previous job.
This week I opened my account in #Kbin.
There's lots of talk right now about how #Reddit alternatives such as #Lemmy, #kbin and #Lotide fit into the overall picture of the #Fediverse, with some calling these link-aggregation sites collectively the "Threadiverse". But how does #Pinetta fit into the mix?
Much like a link aggregator, Pinetta allows users to collect and comment on various things like links, text, images, video, and so on. In that sense, it will interact almost seamlessly with federated link aggregators. The main difference, of course, is in the user interface. Pinetta will have a number of modes that users can choose to display content:
As a "feed" chronologically or ranked based on most engaging posts (based on favourites and boosts);
As a "grid" similar to how #Pixelfed displays images in profiles;
As a "masonry" layout - much like how #Pinterest displays pins by default;
As a "mood board", which will allow users to arrange pins visually to their liking in a freeform 2D layout.
Like what you're reading? So do we. Give us a follow and star our repos on Codeberg to keep up with development!
So, is it time now for "spread mastodon/fediverse" to adapt somewhat and spread the "#Threadiverse" (my moniker, fediverse for reddit-like platforms, eg #Lemmy and #kbin)
The growth of our lemmy instance, without any advertising or spruiking. It was spun up as a test more than anything else, but it seems that it has become more than that!
Even though the graph shows the growth spike from April to June, in reality it's even more stark than that. We have gone from 20 users to 100 users in a week!
We'll be spinning up a kbin instance soon too, and when we do, we might shut down registration on the lemmy instance. We'll keep them up for now though, given the load on lemmy.ml from reddit migrations
This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join....
Differentiation in the Fediverse is starting to play out in more and more pronounced ways. For most users in the Western world, it is tightly linked with Mastodon. But the Japanese Fediverse community is growing extremely rapidly, mainly using Misskey. It has grown in less than half a year from 75k accounts to 325k accounts.
I’m at an interesting point I think with #kbin and my testing.
I’m really hoping to try to leverage it to build some community around some topics like certain games ( #apexLegends or #beatSaber for example ) as a potential alternative for the chirp social groups, but at the same time I feel like a few lingering missing federation implementation pieces, particularly the lack of Signed Fetches /Authorized Fetches in kbin would make for a bit of a bumpy experience for non-admins on other platforms since I know a lot of instances do use and require Authorized Fetches to interact with them.
Hmm. I also know that #kbin is seeing a huge amount of attention right now making for a very busy developer so I’m just musing at this point.
Meanwhile, I’m working on an initial draft of the Japanese translation for kbin which I hope will be ready soon. It’s going to be a bit rough in places, but considering how little many Japanese know about Reddit, there won’t be as many conventions of translation as other platforms.
Welcome to another edition of The Roundup! I’ve mentioned this blog post by Signal a few times before, and will do so again. One of the reasons why I think it is so relevant, is that it shows how the same communication platform is used it wildly different ways in different geographical regions, with people often not even realising that this happens. This already happens when everyone uses the same app, Signal. I’ve pointed out before that this effect must therefore be even stronger on the fediverse, where people are not even using the same app.
This differentiation in the fediverse is starting to play out in more and more pronounced ways. For most fediverse users in the Western world, the fediverse is tightly linked with Mastodon. But the Japanese fediverse community is growing extremely rapidly, mainly using Misskey. It has grown in less than half a year from 75k accounts to 325k accounts. Not only that, people on misskey.io love to post. Compared to Mastodon’s biggest server, mastodon.social, people on misskey.io post 12 times as much!
The language barrier between English and Japanese contributes that these groups do not overlap much, with people often not really knowing what happens at the other side. Still, if you want to understand the fediverse, its getting harder and harder to ignore Misskey. We used to have a moment where people referred to Misskey and Calckey as *key, but with Calckey getting a rebranding and name change soon, the field of fediverse microblogging clients keep expanding.
Discussion platforms
Beyond the expanding scene of microblogging services is the field of forums and link aggregators. Reddit’s changes to their API pricing, effectively killing 3rd party apps, has a lot of people upset, and some are looking for new places to go.
Lemmy is one of the main recipients of the new inflow of people. As an illustration, Beehaw.org is a small Lemmy community that is focusing on being a safe and diverse place. They have had to restrict signups after their user base doubled in the last few days. Lemmy has an Android client, and an iOS client that entered TestFlight beta a few weeks ago. Another project to work on a read-only client for Lemmy is underway as well. Lemmy is not without controversy though; the large account FediTips voiced their concern about the politics of the developers, regarding the denial of human rights abuses. As one of the largest Lemmy server explicitly states that they like Stalin, and some developers of Lemmy associate with this server, it is understandable that people are hesitant to recommend Lemmy. For a more in-depth article regarding this, as well as the context where this happens regarding Reddit’s changes, as well as the potential for Kbin in this, I recommend this article by @jayeless.
Forum software Discourse has been working on a plugin to enable federation, and the first version of this is available. As of now, it only publishes a note to the rest of the fediverse when a new topic is created, and does not allow for the federation of comments yet. The ActivityPub Social Hub is one of the first forums to make use of this functionality, so you can now easily see on your fediverse account when new topics are created.
The links
Mastodon is featured on the Apple App Store. It describes Mastodon in fairly good detail, and links to popular client apps such as Ivory and Mona.
Trunks is a Mastodon app for iOS, Android and web client, and after 5 months in beta has now officially been released.
An excellent article that goes into the details of making an app for the fediverse, and the practical complications with interoperability. While in theory all apps should talk with each other via ActivityPub, getting the details correct for the implementation turns out to be quite a bit more complicated.
Web browser Vivaldi has been running their own Mastodon server for a while now. In a new interview, the CEO talks more about federation and running their own server.
An overview of the top 30 most popular servers that relate to the fediverse in some way. This list takes the widest possible interpretation of fediverse. Quite a few people will disagree with including Truth Social on the list for example, as it does not federate. I personally see this list as a good overview of what is out there, even though I hold a narrower definition of fediverse.
Bonfire is a microblogging client that is still in alpha testing, that focuses on circles and boundaries. A new blog post explains their thinking in more detail.
Calckey has the feature to add plugins. This is barely used, as their is little documentation on how to make plugins. Jeff Sikes has been building plugins, and documenting the process on how to make them.
Owncast celebrates its 3 year anniversary with a major update.
PixelFed has updated their onboarding process for new users. One notable thing is that they use the word ‘communities’ to describe servers/instances. Personally I think that is a great term that makes it easier for new users to understand what is going on with federation.
John Gruber might have some mixed feelings on Mastodon (stating last month that Mastodon is doomed to relative obscurity, compared to Bluesky), but still implemented federation for his blog Daring Fireball.
Beyond the fediverse
Quite a lot of news this week that is not directly about the fediverse, but still relates to it in some way.
On Bluesky: This article by The Intercept answers some basic questions about Bluesky in an detailed manner, such as who exactly owns Bluesky. It also reiterates Bluesky’s goal to federate with other servers that run ATproto. If/when that happens, bridging to the ActivityPub fediverse is all but guaranteed. This will complicate the question about what the fediverse entails even further.
Bluesky, continued: Bluesky has a roadmap update. They give a shout out to an extension Skylink, that shows you if a domain that you visit while browsing is used as a domain on Bluesky. This is pretty much the exact thing as the StreetPass extension for Mastodon.
One of the servers in the far-right server cluster that include places like Kiwifarms suffered a databreach, which includes leaked DMs. The Daily Dot reports that the DMs show that Alex Gleason is working closely with Trump’s Truth Social as well. This in itself is not surprising news, as both platforms use the Soapbox front-end, of which Alex Gleason is the creator. Gleason claims that this information was public all along. The story by Daily Dot did bring this connection into the spotlight, with outlets like Yahoo also reporting on it.
WordPress.com has launched paid newsletters in a challenge to Substack. This is not fediverse news, for now, but the impact might be visible in the fediverse later on. WordPress is actively working on further integration into the fediverse with their ActivityPub plugin. Substack has so far not focused on interoperability with other platforms. Their new microblogging platform, Notes, does not interoperate, for example. How this will play out is uncertain, but worth watching.
פתחתי חשבון ב־kbin.social, אלטרנטיבה ל־Reddit ב־Fediverse. אם מישהו רוצה לעקוב אחריי שם, החשבון שלי הוא @kjr.
אין פוסטים בעברית, kbin מכיל (לפחות כרגע) רק פוסטים באנגלית. #kbin
Thought about making an anime magazine on #kbin, but IMO microblogging is a better platform for anime discussion. Outside of a few specific watchalongs, my favorite moments in the anime subreddit came from "free talk Friday" threads where you never knew what topics or series people would bring up.
Kbin is a new Reddit-like content aggregator for the Fediverse, and this is a "magazine" (subreddit) for Apple news and discussions on the kbin.social instance....
Does anyone know if it's possible to create a new Thread on #kbin from an external instance not running kbin? I've heard it is possible(?) on lemmy, but I was wondering if that is available in kbin or not.
the federated / global feed does more than the single reddit server could.
reddit will only tell you what's on its own domain, what it's own users post. It can't automatically pull from, say, hacker news.
#Lemmy / #Kbin will tell you what's on the front page of /other/ servers, that at least one of the people on your server is following.
so it's not overwhelmingly everything, but there's still that serendipity - it's not just your own server, it's your server AND its neighbors' interesting content.
Comment field snapping to above screen on mobile
I'm having an issue when trying to comment on posts (or reply to other comments) on Firefox mobile on Android. Once the top of the text box moves above the confines of the screen, the whole page snaps downward so that the text box is off screen entirely. It makes it nearly impossible to type out longer comments....
what was your first exposure to the fediverse?
Mine was either mastodon or matrix. I got into both at the same time. What are some other fediverse sites for beginners?
lemmy.ml is overloaded, use other instances instead
This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join....
Fediverse Report: The Roundup – episode 21 (fediversereport.com)
Differentiation in the Fediverse is starting to play out in more and more pronounced ways. For most users in the Western world, it is tightly linked with Mastodon. But the Japanese Fediverse community is growing extremely rapidly, mainly using Misskey. It has grown in less than half a year from 75k accounts to 325k accounts.
Welcome to the Apple magazine!
Kbin is a new Reddit-like content aggregator for the Fediverse, and this is a "magazine" (subreddit) for Apple news and discussions on the kbin.social instance....