panos

evan, 5 days ago (edited 4 days ago) to random

Has the Trump campaign coordinated with the Netanyahu government to keep the war in Gaza going because it hurts President Biden's re-election prospects?

#EvanPoll #poll

fraying, 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago) to random

I wonder if the tech solutioneers trying to create* a single fediverse identity ever talk to real people. In the real world, we maintain many identities, and they're separate on purpose. Sometimes our lives literally depend on it.

(Edited to change “force” to “create” because, no, no one is forcing anyone to do this. I meant “forcing into existence” but don’t wanna get off track about it.)

https://thenewstack.io/one-login-towards-a-single-fediverse-identity-on-activitypub/

panos, 24 days ago to dotnet

I promised I'd be giving updates on #Iceshrimp's #dotnet C# rewrite -a brand new fedi platform really- so here's where we're at at the moment! The backend's basic functionality is more or less finished, although there will undoubtedly be stuff to fix and improve during beta. So theoretically you could use it, but we don't have a frontend yet so you could use it only with masto apps atm. However, the frontend is where the focus is going now, and we plan to have a basic/working frontend soon so that we can release our first beta in a couple of weeks or so!

We expect performance and server requirements to be comparable to #Akkoma. Things are about to get exciting!

panos, 1 month ago to random

Some news from the #Firefish front! Kainoa (former lead dev who has been absent for several months now) finally passed control of the donations platform to naskya, the new owner of the project. I'm happy to report that Firefish is becoming a healthy project again, and that members of the community have stepped up to get the development going. For those who didn't migrate to other platforms during the project's crisis: You're safe and in good hands.

RE: info.firefish.dev/notes/9s1n283sb10rh869

panos, 1 month ago to random

sorry for this

wernie, 1 month ago to random

@panos Will you commit to letting us hide the checkmark after forcegifting Catodon Premium on us?

RE: threads.net/ap/users/17841400273630004/post/18047307643597215/

panos, 1 month ago to random

Alright, I know I haven't given many updates on #Catodon, because frankly there's not a lot to say. We're reorganizing, reprioritizing etc. Things are going slow. I haven't given up on the project, I think we have an interesting approach which is worth exploring, but we're short on human resources atm. Hopefully this will change and things will get exciting again, but we're not there yet. I'll let you know.

However, I wanna talk about another project I'm also sort of involved in lately - #Iceshrimp! So Iceshrimp also started as a #Firefish fork but they are currently rewriting the whole thing on .net/C#! Both the backend and frontend are being rewritten in C# - the frontend on Blazor. AFAIK this is the only fedi project written on .net and I'm really curious for the result!

This has been announced many months before, and Iceshrimp-js is in feature freeze, to allow all efforts to concentrate in the rewrite. Many people were skeptical because it's a huge project - which is true. So let me tell you that finally #Iceshrimp's rewrite will be entering beta soon - meaning, probably before the month is through!

This will practically be a brand new fedi platform, with a UX similar to Firefish (at least initially), with great Mastodon API support for compatibility with existing apps, hopefully with much better performance and a cleaner codebase. I'll keep you posted on how things progress!

panos, 1 month ago to mastodon

Small rant about small character limits in fedi, like #Mastodon's 500 limit, just because I had this discussion recently.

I think it makes no sense for the #fediverse. This is a criticism towards #ActivityPub as well, which defines notes as short posts, around a paragraph.

How did "microblogging" came to be? In the early internet we had no limitations like this. If you wanted to post something (say in a forum), you could usually just write what you wanted, as long as it needed to be (there might be technical limitations, but not a conscious limit of "you should express yourself in under xxx characters". How did this become a thing?

#Twitter started as a platform where you could post via SMS, hence the initial character limit was 140. But nowadays we don't have technical limitations like that. So why do software designers still feel the need to restrict users in such a way? I believe it is a failed concept, one that has been surpassed in practice. If people want to write 1000 or 5000 characters, they will. And they do. That's how "threads" are born. OK, sometimes a person consciously wants to split a post in parts, but most of the times it is just to go around the platform's character limit. So if the goal is to have a platform where people express themselves in 500 characters or less, then this design fails hard, because you can't force people to do that if they don't want to. If I want my posts to be short, I will make them short, no need to restrict me. If I want to make a longer post once in a while, I will also post it, I will just have to hit reply as many times as needed for all of my text to reach my followers.

The problem with this, besides that it's impractical and gets in the users' way, is that it actually does the opposite of what might be expected: Instead of not serving long texts to users, you serve them in multiple posts, creating clutter in the timeline. And this way they can't avoid getting the whole text in their timelines, even if it's something they are not interested in!

The simplest and most obvious way to handle this is letting users write their posts, however long they want to make them, and only show the first xxx characters in the timeline, with a "Show more" button. This way users can express themselves in the way they prefer (it's their wall/social feed after all!), and their followers are not served several consequential posts about something they might not care about. It's one opinion, one post, it should come to my timeline once, and then I can decide if I want to click on it and read all of it.

It's funny, but my early fediverse experience was vastly improved when @atomicpoet moved from mastodon.social to calckey.social. I loved reading his posts, but they tended to be long, so I would be online and a new post by Chris would come, and I'd be like "oh here we go again". Because it would fill up my timeline, and it wasn't practical either, because I would read the first paragraph, then wait until Chris typed the next paragraph, and in the meantime I might have seen other things and I had to go back to what I was reading 5 minutes ago and then wait 5 more minutes for the rest of his train of thought. This is not how any of this should work! A person should take their time and write down their thoughts, and then post them on their account. And I should be able to see the start of that post, and click on it and read it at its entirety if it seems interesting to me.

Why are we keeping up with an unnecessary limit, when there is no technical reason for it any more? Plain text takes practically zero disk space (and will take up the same space -basically more- if split in different posts). We post photos that take up kilobytes or megabytes.

When users are forced to go around your design in order to communicate their thoughts, this means there's something wrong with your design. There are people who prefer writing shorter posts. There are people who sometimes want to post something longer for their followers to read. It's still a post, it serves the exact same purpose, it's not like "posts MUST be short, anything over a paragraph is a blog post". I regularly write longer posts, because I want to expand on my thoughts. It doesn't mean I care about keeping a personal blog, or that I think anything longer I write is blog-worthy. I might be talking about whatever, and it can be as significant (or insignificant) as my one paragraph posts. It's even more futile to try to enforce a limit like that in an open network as the Fediverse. People will just build tools to overcome it, as has happened, and many platforms offer much longer character limits. Many Mastodon servers have also manually changed that limit, kolektiva.social for example is a Mastodon server with a 10K character limit. It comes from an actual need, people might also want to post an announcement or whatever longer text.

Basically, the only real reason I can think of for limits like that to exist in today's platforms, it's because short content is more easily "consumable". So I get it as a choice for #X or #Threads, they want addictive, fast-to-read content, witty responses etc to keep their users in their platforms for longer, to show them more ads and keep tracking their interactions for longer. And this is probably how they found out that this restriction is good for them and makes their platform more addictive. It's easier for them to "sell" easily digestable content. It makes sense as a design choice, for their corporate targets.

But why on fedi? If you don't care about longer posts, you can ignore them and not open them. If you prefer following people who only write short posts, then do that. If you don't like that I write longer posts, feel free to unfollow me, and customize your fedi experience to your needs. But why have made-up restrictions like that forced upon users? Are we building something for easily digestible content, trying to make it as addictive as possible, or are we here for communication, according to the users' needs?

panos, 1 month ago to random

President Biden posting in fedi would be news worthy if he also had misskey cat ears. I refuse to follow until his posts are nyanified.

evan, 1 month ago to fediverse

OK, I put up a proposal on #SummerOfProtocols for an #ActivityPub extension to implement end-to-end encryption of private messages.

https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/pig-end-to-end-encryption-in-activitypub/440

panos, 1 month ago to random

Soooo... I've always been transparent about the project, so I have to give you all an update, as we're in a somewhat tough spot. A few weeks ago we made this public call for a co-lead dev, but we didn't get much interest. In the meantime, our lead dev got tangled up more and more in other obligations irl and now has close to zero time, which means development on #Catodon has practically halted at this point. We had made and announced a lot of plans, but at the moment things have been put on ice until we figure out what to do next. We will make an official announcement, I just wanted to give this another shot - we are looking for someone to work together as equals on this. If interested in leading an ambitious fedi project as a developer, just drop me a line, let's chat to see if this could work.

I really want to apologize to anyone who might be affected by this. In the meantime, Catodon code will be kept up-to-date with upstream Iceshrimp, and catodon.social will be taken care of and will keep running, so even if you're running a pre-release Catodon installation you're safe - it's basically Iceshrimp with a few changes at this point. I'm trying to make the best out of this situation, I'm trying to consider our options, and hopefully we'll have some (better) news soon.

RE: catodon.social/notes/9qqowcuygslkanui

panos, 1 month ago to threads

The idea that everyone should defederate #Threads is basically the idea that everyone who uses #ActivityPub chose a completely and perpetually surveillance-capitalists-free web space, so that's what we should ensure. This is a false assumption - and if it was true, then this wouldn't be possible in the first place. We chose to use an open protocol, knowing that anyone could also use it and reach us. And that's why we have blocking. You can't control the #fediverse, it's an exercise in futility. But you control your account and your server. You can choose what reaches your screen or your users' screens, but that's it. Other people will do what they want, no matter how angry you get. You can't force people to federate with Threads, but you also can't force them not to. Even if every known server blocked them, if people want to follow accounts from Threads, they will just make a new server that federates. No point in getting angry with reality. Maybe ActivityPub wasn't exactly what you thought. But a social network that can control who enters is definitely not a network built on open federation. To make sure Meta or Tumblr or whoever stays out of your network, create a centralized network. This is the only network you can control.

dansup, 1 month ago to Pixelfed

Did you know @pixelfed has Stories, and they even federate?

#pixelfed #stories #mobileApp #activitypub

panos, 1 month ago to random

I have to say I'm a little skeptical about people who are consciously on fedi, making public accounts on Threads. I'm not against federating, as long as it doesn't create an unmoderatable/unsafe environment for fedi servers. But I am against using Meta's server and wouldn't want to promote using it. People who are important to fedi legitimize Threads itself (and not "federation with Threads") by making an account there. It only makes sense to me if there is some sort of compensation from Meta. Because it mostly sends the message that "it's ok -and safe- to use a Meta service", by the very same people who are trying to build a surveillance-free alternative (and to convince the world that it's needed).

sara, 1 month ago to random

Ok I’m doin the thread I said I wanted to do last week. (feel free to mute unless you enjoy a little second-hand drama as a Monday morning treat)

Attn #devrel people! Are you job hunting? Does this pic of search results look familiar? Have you ever seen a bunch of job postings like this from Canonical and thought “gee I should apply to one of these”?

I’m here to tell you:

IT’S A TRAP! 🧵