@atomicpoet Our next challenge is to make #ActivityPub cool, not by imitating proprietary services that already exist, but by inventing brand new experiences that are compelling enough to attract a whole new cohort of users.
I'm very glad to announce the release of version 2.27 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C. It includes some interesting new features (that I announced some days ago):
Started Mastodon API support, so you can use Mastodon-compatible apps to access #snac accounts. What works so far: login, private and public timelines, full post information (replies and ancestors), liking and boosting posts. Things that don't work yet but eventually will: following accounts, posting and replying to messages (I still have to figure out how some things work, like posting images), notifications (needs some internal support), the instance timeline (snac does not have one, but it can be simulated with not much effort) and probably many other things. Things that will never work: bookmarks, pinning, a federated timeline, many other things that I don't remember right now. Please note that if you want to use this API in your instance, you must add some lines to your HTTP proxy configuration, see the snac(8) (administrator documentation) manual page. I'm doing my tests using the #Tusky (which sometimes crashes, surely my fault), #AndStatus, #Fedilab and #Husky Android apps. Success or failure reports will be appreciated.
Fixed some buffer overflows (contributed by Saagar Jha).
I'm pretty sure that the #Fediverse is one of the first social networks I've been on that didn't ever ask me to betray any of the people in my address book.
I started the #delightful project. It's similar to Awesome project on #Github by Sindre Sorhus, but only curates lists related to #FOSS, #OpenScience and #OpenData resources. If @abundance wants that, they might maintain their own sublist and be part of https://delightful.club that is steadily growing.
"... there’s a growing set of people who will tell you the future isn’t #Mastodon but what it represents: a scaled #ActivityPub-based social platform." Indeed, nicely stated by The Verge.
@J12t there's an interesting idea, that is not unique to this article, that I've heard elsewhere: your social activity graph follows you around from app to app when using activity pub. It's like the email protocol. Your contacts an email follow you around regardless of which provider you use. They never constrained inside of a walled garden. #activitypub#fedeverse
👋 Are there any #activitypub engineers out there who’d be down to chat with me (a federated eng newbie) about best practices for setting up a lightweight federated server to achieve this new StreetPass UI (see prev posts in thread)? #mastodev
Bitte diesen Tröt teilen/retröten, falls Ihr Mastodon noch nutzt. 🦣❤️ Hintergrund: Möchte gerne mal ein aktuelles Lagebild. 🚀 Ziel ist es, perspektivisch herauszufinden, wie wir als Mastodon-User:innen hier in Zukunft weitermachen können. 🙏 Besten Dank im Voraus! 🥰
@ajsadauskas Across the internet, there's a host of niche communities on message boards and web forums, using platforms such as phpBB and its various competitors.
Is there scope to get these communities on the Fediverse?
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been trying out Lemmy (lemmy.ml ), which is basically a Reddit-like platform on the Fediverse. (For those reading this on Mastodon, this post is actually a reply to a post on Lemmy, meaning you can read it on Lemmy, on Mastodon, or elsewhere!)
It's shown me that the concept of a Fediverse -connected discussion forum certainly can work.
So is there scope to either add ActivityPub to any existing message board software platforms?
Alternatively, is there scope to develop a fediverse-connected general purpose message board platform?
If we want the network of apps to grow, developers needs to talk together and find consensus. This initiative looks like it's moving in the right direction!
「 In an attempt to self-host a low-cost fediverse node, I started with GoToSocial, but later decided to switch to Mastodon for better compatibility. This transition presented some challenges and got me thinking about whether existing web frameworks are well designed for linked data services 」
So #bluesky is on #Android, but it's still just one server? And they claim to be so much better at decentralization than #ActivityPub? More and more evidence to me that they are just trying to slow down the #fediverse.
Fun guide on creating an alias domain for your Mastodon account. That is, if you happened to be @alis and wanted (say) @me to redirect to that account, this is how you’d do it.
(It works, incidentally, and takes about two minutes to set up. Try it!)
I'm working on Vervis, the ForgeFed reference implementation written in Haskell. Refactoring the codebase into an actor model architecture, i.e. a system of objects that communicate by sending messages to each other's message queues.
Progress so far: I created a simple library that implements a local actor system, and plugged Vervis's #ActivityPub implementation into it, to add the network part. Started porting the Person actor to the new system.
Good read on the importance of #ActivityPub and its potential to reshape the web
Can ActivityPub save the internet?
"if ActivityPub really takes off, there might not need to be a next big thing at all. A couple of dominant platforms would be replaced by millions of interoperable smaller ones"
Lots of news items this week. The major milestone is the 1 billion posts across the entire fediverse per month! Lots of new interesting tools as well, it won’t be long before that will turn into an entirely separate post each week.
I’m also fascinated by the speed with which PixelFed is developing. So far, Mastodon has been the centre piece of the fediverse, it’s where all the app development goes, and what everyone talks about. But PixelFed is quickly becoming a big contender as well. The release of Stories will certainly contribute to that. There is a new third party iOS app, Vernissage, and a new easy friend-finding tool. Curious to see how this will develop.
FindMyFriends is a new tool to find your Mastodon friends on PixelFed.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber did a poll on iPhone case usage on both Twitter and Mastodon. Even though his Twitter account has almost 10 times the amount of followers, the poll on Mastodon got more engagement in absolute terms.
Twitter alternative Post.News confirms that they are still planning to support ActivityPub, even though it will not be in 2023. News here, commentary here.
Mastometrics, an analytics tool for your personal data, has an update to easily see the people who you interact with the most.
FediMeister is a new Mastodon desktop client for all operating systems with a focus on content creators. It can automatically break up large bodies of text into threads, supports the scheduling of posts as well as hashtag research. Hashtag research gives you an overview on which days which hashtags are used the most.
Hyperspace, a desktop app for most operating systems, is winding down. In a blog post, the creator reflects: “Apps like Elk, Ice Cubes, and Ivory are providing great user experiences that would feel like a dream to have back in 2019.” (h/t @liaizon )
A fascinating thread on the transition from Twitter to Mastodon for Ethiopian journalists.
Verifiedjournalist.org, a directory of journalists on the fediverse, now allows for full keyword search of accounts who have signed up and verified with the service.
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A shorter roundup this week, as it feels like we´re transitioning to a different news cycle. Last month has focused mainly on current organisations joining the fediverse. Medium, Flipboard, Vivaldi and Mozilla have all set up their own Mastodon servers, and WordPress acquired the ActivityPub plugin. The next phase is now to experience the new users that will slowly start to join via these new types of servers, and how this will change fediverse culture. Meanwhile, the current weeks are more themed around community meetups. Last week was MozFest, with three sessions about the fediverse, and the coming week will be Fediforum.
Matthias Pfefferle, the developer of the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, did an interview (in German about this. Important takeaway: Automattic is actively looking to make this plugin a Canonical Plugin, with the suggestion coming from the CEO.
Bookwyrm, the federated platform for book reading and tracking, is used to maintain a list of all books being banned from public schools in the US. Bookwyrm is explicit about their involvement in social causes, so this fits right in.
The Mastodon organisation will release Mastodon merchandise soon.
Debirdify, a tool to find your Twitter followers on Mastodon, has been suspended from Twitter.
A full list of all the demos at Fediform this week.
Macstodon is a new Mastodon client for MacOS with an incredible vintage look. Worth checking out for the visuals. (edit, thanks to @liaizon: Macstodon is for very old computers only. it runs on 68020+ or PPC Mac and System 7.1 through 9.2.2 so saying its for MacOS is sorta correct but not really since it only runs on 20 year old operating systems)
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"I was there in the early days of the web, and this whole thing with ActivityPub is as big a deal as HTML was back then. This is the single biggest opportunity I’ve seen for the web since the dawn of the web." 100% agree with @mike.
Hi, everyone. I've just released version 2.26 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C. This is a low profile maintenance version that includes just the following minor changes:
The OpenSSL code has been refactored to avoid using deprecated functions.
Added more aggressive filtering on unwanted Announce (boost) messages.
One of the most exciting tech developments at the moment is the advent of the #Solid web standard, which lets people "store their data securely in decentralized data stores called Pods. Pods are like secure personal web servers for your data."
Is it technically possible for #ActivityPub to support the Solid standard? Or this would be something apps like #Mastodon should implement?
If #activitypub is implemented on #tumblr I wonder if subblogs will be part of the #fediverse in addition to the main blog. I know I'm ignorant on the technical side of things, but it would be great if subblogs could be part of the Fediverse as well...
Welcome to another episode of the round-up. There’s been a big unconference this week, FediForum, which was interesting. Talking to other people who are excited about the fediverse is infectious, and gives me energy to keep working on this.
Friday was Trans Day of Visibility, and a good reminder of how influential trans people have been in shaping the fediverse. Thank you!
The links
The University of Warwick hosts a research symposium on Mastodon on 22nd and 23rd of June. The deadline for the submission of papers is until April 14th.
Flipboard releases their Mastodon integration for Android. Evan’s Promodou’s review here, he’s a fan.
Martin Holland, editor of the German tech news outlet @heiseonline has consistently keeping track of their traffic, comparing the fediverse to Twitter. He just published another update.
(for developers) The case for a native handling of fediverse actions.
The interview
Only one interview link this week, but its a major one: The Verge’s Decoder podcast did an interview with Mastodon’s Eugen Rochko. It’s an in-depth talk, Nilay Patel knows how to ask good questions. A lot is focused on how the organisation Mastodon makes money. Eugen Rochko’s answers are great, but also jarring in a way: Decoder usually interviews big-shot CEOs that manage billions and billions of dollars. The contrast with Eugen talking about funding spanning half a million over the entire lifespan of the organisation is a stark contrast to that. It shows the incredible power of decentralized software, with how little money things can actually be build. Absolutely recommended listen.
The Poll
Stefan Bohacek has created ‘A netizen’s guide to Mastodon and the fediverse‘, a site with an overview of polls about how people behave on the fediverse. This is a project I find absolutely fascinating, and as a small contribution I’ll try and regularly add a poll to the round-up for you.
This week’s poll:
If you want to get this weekly roundup of news in your mailbox, consider subscribing to my newsletter. You can do this directly via fediversereport.com. Every week you’ll get the weeks biggest news stories as well as the roundup of shorter news bits. Thank you for reading!
Lemmy shows how Fediverse-connected message boards can work. So is it time for a Fediverse-connected general purpose message board platform (like phpBB)? Is anyone working on this?
I'll elaborate on my thoughts further in my reply below, but I'm keen to hear what everyone thinks of this concept