I think it's going to be more important than ever that #Mastodon and the #fediverse are not centrally operated out of the US unlike almost every other social media platform out there.
Edited 93d ago
fediverse
Mastodon 4.3 released
Takahe has limited support for this type: See Original Page
My #Fediverse experiments as of November 23, 2024:
https://bsky.app/profile/cuthrell.com = Bluesky ( was @fudge.org previously ) is bridged as @cuthrell.com
@jay = Mastodon
Edited 75d ago
Friends of the #BSDCafe and the entire #Fediverse, have a great day!
And remember that today is #MeerMittwoch - #SeaWednesday - the day of the Sea!
Luister de #podcast van De Technoloog van @bnrnieuwsradio terug.
Over de toekomst van Bluesky en de #Fediverse.
"In deze aflevering bespreken Mark en Ben samen met hun gast Laurens Hof (@laurenshof) van Fediverse Report de toekomst van sociale netwerken. En dan in het bijzonder decentrale sociale netwerken."
Ok, so the #Maven team states that they deleted the posts they INGESTED WITHOUT CONSENT after the huge negative response from the #fediverse #community.
But yet, the question remains, don't 'The Rules' of each server include the fact that #UserContent is not to be stolen (taken without consent) ?
I mean one of the #MainReason to switch from #bigTech, is the idea that my #content is #notForSale, especially without my explicit say so.
Edited 237d ago
Happy #NewstodonFriday! Once again, the many newsrooms who have an active presence in the #fediverse have produced inspiring, informative, interesting stories, and we’re highlighting their work in the thread below. If you like what you see, follow the profiles and boost their stories. If you’re a journo or newsroom that we don’t know about or if there’s a newsroom you’d love to put on our radar, please let us know in the comments.
⤵️
Last Week in Fediverse – ep 83
Bluesky and Brazil continues to be a great match, and lots of other smaller news items.
Programming note: I’m switching the release day for this weekly newsletter to a Wednesday. Over the last year and a half I’ve spend my free Sundays writing this, and this is not sustainable in the long term. So look for the next edition to arrive on Wednesday the 18th.
Bluesky and Brazil
Bluesky remains highly popular among Brazilians as an alternative to X, that got banned in the country last week. Bluesky has added 3 million accounts since the ban went into effect just over a week ago. When I reported on it last week Bluesky had added 1 million accounts. Of these new accounts, around 85% are from Brazil. The popularity of Bluesky in Brazil also shows up in both politics and the media: President Lula, his party PT Brazil, the Supreme Court, and House of Representatives all have their accounts validated by using their domain as their handle. The media is also paying attention, one of the most popular news programs in Brazil, Jornal Nacional, showed their Bluesky handle during the show. Some of the biggest newspapers such as Folha de S.Paulo and Correio Braziliense covered Bluesky as well.
What stands out to me about both articles is that they do not mention Threads. Threads have not made any data available regarding the impact of the Brazilian ban on X on the platform. While Threads is likely to still get a large number of signups simply due to its massive size, it is not part of the conversation in the way that Bluesky is for Brazil.
The inflow of new people also shows up for the Trust and Safety team. In an update Bluesky’s head of Trust and Safety, Aaron Rodericks, shares that the team normally receives about 20k reports per week, a number that skyrocketed to 270k reports, predominantly in Portugese.
The News
Firefish has died another death. This February, the original creator of Firefish Kainoa transferred ownership to the maintainer naskya, without naskya being informed beforehand. Naskya has been maintaining Firefish alone for the last 7 months, while noting that this them taking over the project as unwillingly. Naskya says that this is unsustainable, putting the project in maintanance mode. IceShrimp provides migration instructions for server admins who want to transfer from Firefish to IceShrimp. I’ve got fond memories of the time period during which Firefish worked well, which is sadly a while ago now. It enabled me to build a community in a way that I’ve found much more difficult to do on Mastodon, and the community that I’ve build during the Firefish period is still one that feels like my closest community on Mastodon.
Truefans is a podcasting app that is building ActivityPub integration. It gives you the possibility to create a fediverse account as well (truefans.social), and activities that you take in the Truefans app (listen/comment/follow) are broadcasted into the fediverse.
The IFTAS Moderator Survey for 2024 is live. Last year’s survey led to an extensive report on the actual needs that fediverse moderators have.
Forgejo’s monthly update: “Federation is getting useful. There is now more than preliminary background work, and the first exciting things could be tried out by users. The work is not near the goal yet.”
The SocialCG held their monthly meeting, and decided on two new Task Forces: a task force to update the website activitypub.rocks, and a Trust and Safety Task Force. The goal for the website task force is to make sure that the activitypub.rocks website is a better entry point, as it is badly out of date, with the last post from January 2021. The Trust and Safety team from Threads has already expressed interest in participating in the task force.
Trending topics are a feature that is highly sought after by the Brazilian community, and the community has build two versions themselves: as a browser extension and as a separate site.
EDIT: Another unaffiliated developer has brought to my attention that the browser extension might not be completely safe. I have not been able to verify this information yet, but for now I’d recommend against using the extension until more information is known.
Peertube continues to make inroads with livestreaming, especially via the livechat plugin, which got a significant upgrade again.
Bluesky continues the tradition of 3rd party clients implementing features before the official clients does: this time the Skeets app already supports displaying videos, even though the feature is not released yet and only the developers can post (otherwise invisible) videos.
The developer’s site atproto.com got a major overhaul, including a Quick Start guide that showcases how to build a complete and different type of application on atproto, an extensive article ‘ATProto for distributed systems engineers‘ and more.
A research paper – An evidence-based and critical analysis of the Fediverse decentralization promises – provides a critical analysis of the extend that the fediverse can deliver on the promises of decentralisation. Worth checking out, I also find the framing of ‘techno-romanticism’ as to explain the gap between what is promised and what is actually happening in the fediverse.
The Dutch coalition of public organisations PublicSpaces is starting PeerTube Spaces to promote the usage of Peertube as as suitable alternative for public organisations.
The (unofficial) atprotocol.dev community held a talk with the creator of event planner Smoke Signal, the video recording is available here. The recording from the previous talk, by the creator of frontpage.fyi is available as well. This Thursday is the next event, ‘From Feeds to Labelers with Ændra Rininsland’
The Links
WeDistribute – A Brief History of the Fediverse Symbol
Making a Mastodon bot with Google Sheets and Apps Scripts.
Email platform Buttondown has added the option to automatically cross-post to Bluesky.
Hachyderm’s Introduction to Mastodon Moderation: The Report Feature and Moderator Actions.
Thoughts on the 📰 News Feed – by XBlock and News feed developer Ændra Rininsland.
This week’s ActivityPub software updates.
Fediverse for government organisations, a follow-up.
Nostr somehow managed to get a billboard advertising Nostr close to where I live.
A Bluesky client that makes Bluesky look like the old phpBB forums.
Brazil, Bluesky & the Fediverse, by Newsmast’s Michael Foster.
Brazilian Tech YouTuber Gabs Ferreira did a long interview with Bluesky CTO Paul Frazee.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!
Edited 151d ago
The Website League shared their December update, with some exciting news about ongoing projects, which include forks of GoToSocial and Akkoma, a "cohost-inspired frontend", and a "best practices for moderation" guide.
https://buttondown.com/websiteleague/archive/website-league-update-for-december/
More about the League: https://websiteleague.org
#Fediverse-Workshop im @kursif
Ihr kennt Leute, die überlegen, ob sie sich im Fediverse anmelden wollen, aber ihr habt sie noch nicht ganz überzeugen können? Oder ihr seid selbst schon im Fediverse, aber wünscht euch nochmal einen Überblick, was es hier alles zu entdecken gibt?
Dann ist vielleicht unser Fediverse-Workshop am Montag den 2. Dezember im #KuRSiF genau das Richtige!
Es wird über Social Media im Allgemeinen, das Fediverse im Speziellen und verschiedene Dienste im Fediverse gehen und genug Raum für Fragen und gemeinsames Entdecken gibt es auch.
Wer: ich in Koop mit dem KuRSiF
Wo: KuRSiF (Oskarstr. 1 #Dresden)
Wann: 02.12.2024, ab 19:00 Uhr
Anmeldung: Bitte per Mail oder Nachricht beim KuRSiF oder bei mir anmelden
Edited 71d ago
The #Fediverse is not just posts from people who can confidently install Linux. It's full of posts on art, politics, cats, photography, activism, history, gaming, humor, cartoons, creativity and community from people who can confidently install Linux.
Threads takes another step forward today and allows you to follow fediverse accounts...with some major stipulations.
There's no search capability. Instead, you have to find a reply or like that a federated account created, view their profile, and follow from there.
So sure, you can follow fediverse accounts, but this greatly reduces the scope of discovery.
Curious if fediverse accounts can be included in their upcoming public lists feature (starter kits)?
Ückück und das #Fediverse: Wo sind die Behörden?
Ich durfte mit @ulrichkelber und den Pressestellen von @bfdi und @sdtb über #Behörden-Server im Fediverse schriftliche Interviews führen. Heraus kam ein neuer Beitrag in meiner Kolumne für @gnulinux #ÜckückUndDasFediverse
Today, we announced that we have federated the Flipboard accounts of nine more trusted publishers. Read more about this in the blogpost by managing editor @csullivan, and check out the "Media Organizations & Brands" tab of our spreadsheet to discover the other 100 federated Flipboard publishers.
Bloomberg, @bloomberg
Bloomberg Law, @BloombergLaw
Bloomberg CityLab, @citylab
The Kyiv Independent, @KyivIndependent
Politico, @politico
Quartz, @quartz
Salon, @Salon
Time, @time
Vox, @Vox
https://about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/flipboard-brings-more-news-to-the-fediverse/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUFTo6rPvhqzCReLaM1c6-xUKRuBVqlZVStZl9Al-EU
#Flipboard #Federation #Mastodon #MastodonMigration #Fediverse #OpenSocialWeb #News #Media #Publishers
As part of our mission to bring more high-quality journalism to the fediverse, we’re federating today the profiles of nine U.S. media sites, bringing their content to Mastodon and other platforms. We think this is especially important now as the world faces serious crises like Ukraine, Gaza and climate change — not to mention pivotal elections coming up this year in several countries.
We’re delighted to welcome this next wave of trusted publishers:
Bloomberg: @bloomberg
Bloomberg Law: @BloombergLaw
Bloomberg CityLab: @citylab
The Kyiv Independent: @KyivIndependent
Politico: @politico
Quartz: @quartz
Salon: @Salon
Time: @time
Vox: @Vox
Here are just a few of the amazing Magazines you’ll be able to follow:
Business News by Quartz, @business-news-quartz
Congress by Politico, @congress-politico
Markets by Bloomberg, @markets-bloomberg
News & Politics by Salon, @news-politics-Salon
Supreme Court by Vox, @supreme-court-Vox
Urban Planning by Bloomberg City Lab, @urban-planning-citylab
World News by Time, @world-time
More details on today's announcement: https://about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/flipboard-brings-more-news-to-the-fediverse/
#Journalism #News #Media #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonMigration #Flipboard #Federation
We are very close to reaching 100k followers on @Mastodon.
Can you help us get there?
I'm trying to convince the last friends I have left on Facebook, X, Threads, or BlueSky to join the Fediverse. Some have tried but felt a sense of loneliness. Nowadays, many people are so used to doing what algorithms suggest that they can no longer make independent choices.
My timeline here, on the other hand, is beautiful.
I see what I want, I follow people who post what I like, and no one tells me what I should do. Freedom may come with a "cost," but whatever it is, it's worth the effort. Always.
#Fediverse #Mastodon #SocialNetworks
My timeline here, on the other hand, is beautiful.
I see what I want, I follow people who post what I like, and no one tells me what I should do. Freedom may come with a "cost," but whatever it is, it's worth the effort. Always.
#Fediverse #Mastodon #SocialNetworks
So the #FOSS #Fediverse non-profit I manage @fedihosting_foundation needs some help.
We're at the point where we need more moderators for @LemmyWorld due to the growth of our communities (a good thing!).
We have a very kind and inclusive team from all over the world! Likewise, we also try to respect everyone's work-life balance and are flexible with scheduling (EST & CEST timezones).
Interested? DM me or apply online via
https://fedihosting.foundation/positions/#-site-moderator
New: Why is Meta adding fediverse interoperability to Threads?
Threads' most recent update allows people on Threads to follow people on the #fediverse, albeit with some significant caveats.
But one simple question has bugging me for a long while: Why? Why is Meta adding interoperability to their platform?
https://fediversereport.com/why-is-meta-adding-fediverse-interoperability-to-threads/
Reminder that "sometime not long after December 15th", the botsin.space server, a home to many of your favorite creative bots, will be entering a read-only mode, before its planned shutdown.
(The server will run until at least March 2025.)
https://botwiki.org/blog/botsin-space-server-closing-down/
Hope most of you bot admins managed to migrate by now!
Quite some tech journalists and "influencers" out there keep on telling us that #Mastodon (and the whole #fediverse, because they typically don't know that there is more than just one service ;) is losing users after the last wave of newcomers.
Weird thing is: I keep on getting more followers and my timeline is getting better and more diverse with a lot of inspiring content and respectful discussions.
So, I guess, smaller is better :) Thank you all for being awesome!
Edited 51d ago
Mastodon Now Sends Referer Headers! Hurrah!
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/12/mastodon-now-sends-referer-headers-hurrah/
Back in 2022, I wrote this rather grumpy post on Mastodon, the federated social media platform.
@Edent@mastodon.socialTerence Eden
Mastodon enforces a "noreferrer" on all external links.
I have mixed feelings about that.
As a blogger, I want to see *where* visitors are coming from. I also like to see (and sometimes join in) with the conversations they're having.
But, I get that people want privacy and don't want to "leak" where they're visiting from.
Is it such a bad thing to tell a website "I was referred from this specific server"?
❤️ 61💬 16🔁 2907:09 - Fri 11 November 2022When you click on this link - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news - your browser says "Hey! BBC! Please can I have your /news page? BTW, I was referred here by shkspr.mobi. THANKS!" This is called the "Referer" and, yes, it is mispelt.
One the one hand, sending the referer is good; it lets the linked-to server know who is linking to it. That allows them to see where traffic is coming from. On the other hand, this could be bad for much the same reason.
If you run a server anarcho_terrorists.biz, you probably don't want the FBI knowing that your members are sharing links to their pages. If you run a small personal server, you may not want anyone knowing that you personally linked to them. If you run a server for a marginalised community, you may not want a hate-site to know your members are linking to you.
But if you're a large-ish, general purpose, non-private site - like Mastodon.social - where's the harm in allowing referer headers?
Anyway, for historic reasons, Mastodon blocked the referer header. This, I believe, was sensible for smaller servers but a miss-step for larger servers. As I pointed out last week:
@Edent@mastodon.socialTerence Eden
Two years later.
Want to know one of the major reasons Mastodon didn't catch on with journalists and large website owners?
It is *invisible* in referrer statistics.
Here's my blog from the last month.
BlueSky now sends me more traffic than Bing.
How much traffic does Mastodon send? It is impossible to know due to the "noreferrer" header in all links.
(I'm not saying your privacy isn't important. But you can't grow a community if no-one knows you exist.)
❤️ 305💬 57🔁 24812:48 - Sat 07 December 2024I'm not the only one to make this point - it has been a popular complaint for some time.
A few days ago, Mastodon changed to allow this to be configurable.
This is excellent news. Website owners will be able to (somewhat) accurately see how much traffic Mastodon sends them. That way they can determine if there is a suitably large audience to engage with on the Fediverse.
It is, of course, slightly more complicated than that!
Instance owners can opt-in to allowing Referer headers (it is off by default).
The policy means that only the domain name is sent; not the full page.
Mastodon is federated and there are thousands of sites. Even if they all opted-in, their statistics will be fragmented.
Apps can set their own Referer header - leading to more fragmentation.
Even if they do opt-in, users can set their browsers not to send Referer headers.
Nevertheless, I'm delighted with this change. Hopefully it will allow the Fediverse to grow and attract more users.
🚀 Mastogram Update! 🎉
Here’s what’s new in our latest release:
🔧 Improved overall stability
🐞 Fixed bugs with links posted on the fediverse
🤝 Mastogram now supports Misskey/Sharkey
🎥 Resolved video reposting issues from fediverse to Telegram
🔗 Made connecting your fediverse accounts to Mastogram easier
🛠️ Fixed tag ignoring for #notg and #nofw from Telegram
If you're looking for a modern bridge between your fediverse profiles, Telegram, and even Bluesky 🌌, sign up now 👉 https://mastogr.am
Encountering issues? Don’t hesitate to reach out at @mastogram or @henry ❤️
Now that the #BotsInSpace server is officially in a read-only mode, which still allows account migration, I am curious how things are looking now.
Previous poll: https://mastodon.social/@botwiki/113516513822722706
#fediverse #CreativeBots #bots #BotAlly