In case someone wants possibly the longest thread on the fediverse for testing purposes, here you go: https://mastodon.social/@brownpau/112322747861701800
With the way I store replies in #Smithereen, this will soon exceed my limit of 256 levels ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Reposts are now done in #Smithereen. You can only make "quote-posts", not Announce reposts because Announce is too confusing and doesn't fit my vision. However, Announce reposts are no longer this half-assed thing like they were before. They now show up in people's profiles and use a different icon from my native reposts.
I want an opinion. If you have a rule to not allow signups with some email domain, would you expect it to also apply to signup requests, when your server is in manual-approval mode?
Is there an #ActivityPub server where I need to parse HTML for <link type="application/activity+json" href="..."/> to get to the JSON representation of an object? I want to add support for this in #Smithereen but I need something to test against.
I like my approach with deactivation period better than what others do. For example, @pixelfed deletes accounts immediately and it turns out people change their minds on this stuff sometimes.
A question for those who might want to run a #Smithereen server in the future — is support for S3-compatible object storage for storing media files a desirable feature? I'm refactoring media file storage anyway so could as well add an abstraction layer that would allow this sort of thing.
While I'm currently working on many (and I mean many) New And Improved™ moderation tools in #Smithereen, I also added a tiny user-facing thing because clicking CWs one by one was tedious to say the least.
Working on private messages in #Smithereen and I'm wondering how much sense CWs make for them. From Mastodon's PoV, "private messages" are just posts. They thus share all the same properties. In my implementation, however, messages are distinct from posts, both in the UI and in the database. In my UI I don't have anywhere to display that content warning as a spoiler without it being super awkward. I can use it as a subject line however 🤔
One thing the #Fediverse is missing is a #Groups functionality. Public groups, private groups.
So many people have told me: "I can't leave Facebook because my [knitting/school/yoga/…] group only uses #Facebook to communicate. Sub-#Reddits are groups. #Discord are groups. Group chat on #WhatsApp or #FacebookMessenger. We need groups on the Fediverse!
Well, good news: people are working on them! And it's apparently fucking difficult. But they are making progress!
@narF@leighms oh, and we also need more Fedi projects using EVENTS! They are in the ActivityPub protocol but used by only a few Fedi projects at this stage.
Oh, one Fedi project that is doing BOTH of these but it's looking like it's still just in testing, is #Smithereen which is being developed by a former VKontacte & Telegram employee, definitely one to watch.
Rewrote the database connection management in #Smithereen. Used to be one connection per thread, now it's a global connection pool that grows and shrinks in response to load. What's more, it feels like pages load faster now! Didn't expect that.
#Smithereen update: collection sync, something no one has done before, again. Collections are fetched automatically on first follow, and there also are admin buttons to force fetch them at any time.
Yes, you can now see mutual friends for Mastodon users!