It's probably less of a problem now that the fediverse is much bigger (than it was 5 years ago). But one of the things I've heard puts newbies off alternative social apps/ networks is too much meta-discussion about development and deployment of the apps/ networks themselves.
Maybe we could agree on a standard way of tagging this stuff (eg #DevMeta)? Then the DevMeta tag could be filtered out by default for newbies.
Decentralized Dominance: The Unbribed Power of Webmentions
I've been a vocal advocate for Webmentions for a while - and I'm here to tell you that this game-changing technology is not just a nicety, but a necessity.
The fundamentals are crystal clear: take control of your online presence, ditch the middlemen, and shatter the shackles of Big Tech's stranglehold. It's time to rewrite the rules and reclaim your digital sovereignty.
Let's cut to the chase with an example that'll leave you breathless: imagine Asuka stumbling upon a scorching article on Shinji's site at https://Shinji.com/article. She fires off a comment that'd make a thousand lesser bloggers green with envy - but instead of relying on some soulless commenting system, she takes it to the next level by sending a Webmention directly to Shinji's site.
The implications are staggering: when both parties support Webmentions, they're essentially saying, "You can have my comment, right now." The source URL (https://Asuka.com/comment) and target URL (https://Shinji.com/article) are etched in stone - no more third-party intermediaries, no more social media login hoops to jump through. Just the raw power of the Web.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "But isn't this just a fancy alternative to ActivityPub?" Ah, friend, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. #ActivityPub is a Byzantine nightmare that'll leave your head spinning with concepts like actors, relays, followers, and more. Webmentions, on the other hand, are a elegant, peer-to-peer solution that doesn't require any of that mumbo-jumbo.
And let's not forget the sheer flexibility of Microformats - you can use Webmentions to share anything from likes to RSVPs, media, locations, and even events. The possibilities are endless.
Don't be held hostage by the status quo. Join the Indieweb and take control of your online destiny once and for all.
I'm thinking in adding #ONI proxyUrl support in the frontend. :goose_hacker:
Currently if a request to a remote #ActivityPub object fails - either due to CORS, or because of authorized fetch - I just display a fallback link to it.
I'm wondering if I can do a two step approach, if the request to the resource fails with 401-403 (for secure fetch) or 400 (for CORS failures) I try to redirect the request through the proxyUrl mechanism.
Only if that fails too, I fallback to something else.
I can say the #Fediverse is a different place than any other social media platform I have been on. I've been here since 2022. When my self-hosted instance went down for a couple days, I didn't yearn for social media like a drug. I wondered how certain people's cats were, one person had a mother in the hospital, someone was getting a new job, one had the blues, etc, etc. I missed people more than viralness of a platform. #Mastodon#ActivityPub Thank you for being my Old Friends.
🚌 🚌 Surf builds are like buses — you don't see one for ages, then two come along at once. This week's second release, version 1.0.358, has an eye-catching new wave icon in the sidebar so you can discover other surfers' feeds more easily, plus bug fixes and performance improvements.
Recently, there was a question by
@taylorlorenz about how you explain the Fediverse to someone who doesn't use it.
And usually, what we tend to do is we talk about servers and decentralisation and federation and ActivityPub and all these highly technical concepts.
I've been thinking about it, and all that technical stuff is really impressive work by people far more clever than I'll ever be.
But for me, that technology is a facilitating thing. It's like trying to describe how a bicycle works, rather than why you ride it.
Instead, what the Fediverse is, is a place to have conversations online without algorithms, AI, and ads getting in the way.
Which is increasingly a rare thing online.
Almost the entirety of the internet, from SEO on the web to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to Instagram and X and Facebook, has been turned into a race to game an algorithm designed to sell ads.
What makes the Fedi unique is that it's not that.
And I suspect if you're trying to persuade someone to try Mastodon (or Lemmy, or Pixelfed, or GtS, etc), you'll get a lot further explaining it as algorithm-free, ad-free, AI-free conversations, rather than trying to describe a decentralised protocol.
@strypey suggested that I put this out there to anyone who's thinking about it. We could probably rebuild most of Discord's features as an #Emissary inbox without doing a lot of back end code.
I'm too swamped to start on this right now. But if you're a great HTML+CSS designer, I'm able to give some time to a team who wants to take this on.
With #HolosDiscover we checked multiple criteria before indexing: "indexable" enabled, account not locked, no #nobot or #noindex in bio, not in opted-out list, only public posts. Every deletion, edit or block was processed instantly via #ActivityPub.
Google uses that same "indexable" flag but ignores everything else, keeps deleted content cached for weeks.
We shut it down after pushback. Was that the right call? Don't hesitate to share, this concerns the whole Fediverse.
These days I have seed and flavorful vegetables on my mind. I'm grateful to be part of an international community with that passion. One of the places on the internet I learn the most these days is a #Discourse#forum dedicated to that topic and I wish it could federate with Mastodon and similar networks, so the conversations could take place here too. Atm you need a 500$ business plan to integrate #ActivityPub plugin.
After shutting down #HolosDiscover, we're rethinking the approach with #HolosIndex: users explicitly opt in by adding #HolosIndex to their bio with interest tags, then submit their profile. No assumptions, no default settings.
This will power interest-based discovery across the #Fediverse, helping people find each other through shared interests. Still all through #ActivityPub of course, with real-time deletions and updates.
are there any fediverse projects using more than one type of federation?
what are some good resources for implementing activitypub validly?
what languages should i learn?
what are good ways to test web application security on the cheap before deployment?
anything more i should be worried about?
can anyone help me find some graphics for social media alternatives that show the big social media logos and then the logo and name of the activitypub equivalent?
I know I have seen a few but suddenly can't find them.
This morning I promoted nolto.social, a platform that was made - at least I thought so, to be a Fediverse based alternative to LinkedIn. As I'm getting more and more annoyed by LinkedIn and all the useless posts over there, I was happy to find an independent alternative.
nolto.social still worked this morning, but when I came back later; i found the project deleted and at least when you are viewing the website from your smartphone, you see a message from the developer of nolto.social where he states that this project was never meant to grow. Obviously this was just a one person project who became overwhelmed by the success of the platform and by the fact, that companies started creating profiles and nearly 1000 people joined within a short time period. But now it seems that this project ran out of control and the maintainer decided to pull the emergency break. He is also talking about negative feedback he received for the platform and even personal harrassment.
It is sad that a promising project like this had been terminated, but I can understand what made the maintainer doing so. Managing a business platform can become a fulltime job quite fast and it also requires technical ressources and money to run these resources.
I firmly believe that we need an alternative to LinkedIn. I believe that people don't want all this bullshit posts just created to please the algorithm and to generate likes and feedback. And I believe that people would like a business network which is nothing else than a business network - no space for bursting egos and self promotion, but a space for connection and serious discussion.
Fediverse would be the ideal space for this. But as we know, if business networks are successful, they require more and more attention, more ressources, more money. And at this is the problem. When you need money to run your social network, it's tempting to ask yourself how you could generate money by using the ressources you already have, which are user data...
I don't see a solution for this now, just sharing some thoughts.
For inclusion of #ActivityPub information resources on the delightful-fediverse-development curated list there is this (now expired) #IETF draft exploring #MIMI / #MLS versus AP. I find this draft to be well-written and informative, and thus the draft possibly a candidate for inclusion for people as additional background reading to the #SocialCG work on MLS. Unless there are so many changes since the creation of the draft that it may raise confusion, and should not be included. What is your opinion here?
@pfefferle Ich dachte, die eigene Formatierung der Postings mit ActivityPub wäre Legacy, da das Plugin Postings "automatisch" raushauen soll und die Plattform über Formatierung entscheidet. Also wollte ich das ausschalten. Aber irgendwie sehe ich nirgendwo eine Möglichkeit in den Settings. Übersehe ich da was?
I would like to suggest that folks in #Canada who appreciate the #fediverse and #activitypub learn about and thank
@dansup, who invented, developed & maintained
@pixelfed for YEARS even while the user base was like in the few hundreds.
His dedication to the open web is so criminally underrated in our country, even though he has been on the global cutting edge of the #digitalsovereignty movement we're seeing in #cdnpoli for the better part of a decade.
For now, the ActivityPub implementation for the fediverse is 100% complete. I'm not currently interested in ATProto, and what I find most interesting is the Nostr protocol, for which I've already built a relay server in Rust that works perfectly. #activitypub#atproto#fediverse#rust
It’s really surprising to me that the #fediverse hasn’t agreed on a standardized way to open cross-instance #activitypub objects and instead relies on links that open in the browser. #urischeme
An affinity group is not just “a group of people who agree”
A practical bridge-building approach for the #openweb / #OMN – for grassroots organisers, Fediverse communities, and sceptical #FOSS engineers. ...