Anyone else having issues with #mastodon? Super glitchy, extremely slow, crashing etc?

https://codeberg.org/ihabunek/tooi

Tooi is the successor to 'toot'. It is /way/ nicer so far.

In addition to being 'keyboard-driven' it also responds to the mouse pointer. This is efficient when using a keyboard with a touchpad.

#Fediverse #TUI #tooi #Mastodon #FreeSoftware

On Elon Musk's disinformation platform, you can create a Russian propaganda account and get to 163,000 followers in just five months.

This account falsely claims that Ukraine wants to destroy Europe in a nuclear apocalypse, and the money financing weapons to Ukraine is actually used for sports cars.

Stay in reality. Choose #Mastodon.

Alt...

Disinformation post claiming that the Russian Ozon warehouses bombed by Ukraine, are actually Ukrainian warehouses burning.

Alt...

Disinformation post claiming Ukraine is about to destroy Europe in a nuclear apocalypse. Ukraine is itself in Europe, so no.

Alt...

Disinformation post claiming Ukraine is attacking NATO. In reality Ukraine disabled a ship transporting oil for Russia.

Alt...

Disinformation post insinuating that Ukraine is using foreign aid to finance expensive sports cars. There is zero evidence of this.

Most irritating #mastodon feature after the update. When you reply or post (on mobile) the compose doesn't go back. So I keep having to do yet another action. Looks like every update increases the interaction with things I have to do. That's not great #ux 😬

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/117117221397911074

Oooh, I still remember the early days of 2022, when hordes of twitterers flocked to the #Fediverse for the first time and those remaining behind proclaimed to the world #Mastodon would be pretty much dead in a year or two ... So funny! 😝

In the meantime, Mastodon ... 🤘🏻😎 👇🏻

B̷̻̠͊͛̀̽e̷͈̪̮̙͋͌̈́n̵̢̲̥̳̔ boosted

Mastodon » 🌐 2026-08-18
@Mastodon@mastodon.social

After publishing the results of Discovery Week, we can now give you a first sneak peak at Mastodon 5.0, our next big version. It will bring a new visual look to your screens, a refreshed and calmer layout, as well as a new composer.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/08/5.0-laying-the-foundation/

#mastodon #mastodon5.0

What do you like the most about the Fediverse and Mastodon? 👀

#Fediverse #Mastodon #AskFedi

Honest Question: 🤔 ❓

I've been religiously doing ALT text since I landed here as a Twitter refugee.
For those that use ALT text, should I spell out the years, like two thousand seventeen, or is it OK to type numbers, as in 2017? For example, I'm citing the year of a specific movie title's release.
I post a lot, so this would really help me understand how to keep people in the loop without excluding anyone because of typos.

#ALTtext
#Mastodon
#Fediverse

These spam accounts are getting VERY Random, just to avoid filters. Here's the latest one (already suspended)

#Mastodon #MastodonAU

Alt...

Screenshot of spammer profile, with the description 'Driver who studies fish behavior for fun and iterates on posse for work.' and the only post being 'Build roots before branches.'

Here is a #FeaturedServer for 🌎 Earth, 🦎 Earthlings, and their ⚖️ Advocates...

https://earth.law/about

Earth.Law is for:
📜 Environmental lawyers & policy-makers
🦋 Conservationists & ecologists
🔬 Scientists in related fields
📚 Educators and students of environmental studies
🎤 Activists & advocates

♻️ Hosted on a dedicated server in 🇫🇮 Helsinki and recognised by the Green Web Foundation for using renewable energy.

#CommunitySpotlight #Fediverse #Mastodon #SocialWeb

No enclosed threaded conversations. Very limited HTML rendering. No formatting the text of your own messages. No emoji reactions. No images embedded in messages. No more than four images dangling below a message as file attachments.

If anything, someone who is not a Mastodon dev and not even daily-driving Mastodon should soft-fork Mastodon's Web UI and modify it so that it can adjust to the backend and offer all the features of the backend.

If you use it with snac2, you have the full set of snac2's features available.

If you use it with Akkoma, you have the full set of Akkoma's features available.

If you somehow manage to use it with Friendica, you have the full set of Friendica's features available.

Maybe there could be some options in the configuration that can (but don't by default) limit certain features to Mastodon's standard for those who really need the Mastodon UX with a non-Mastodon backend.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #snac2 #Akkoma #Friendica #WebInterface

Adding another #sketching / #drawing to my #mastodon timeline

Alt...

Abstract black and white illustration featuring swirling lines and circular shapes, creating a sense of movement and depth. The composition features varying thicknesses of ink and an interplay of light and shadow.

#flock #deflock #mastodon #fediverse #surveillance

https://noalprs.com/

@deflocktheusa

Alt...

A. Parody of the the pre-standardized USA flag called "Don't tread on me" with the same yellow background, but with the words "don't spy on me" instead and it is a outline of Jimothy who is a weirdly shaped raccoon standing on grass using a saw to topple a pole that has an array of flock surveillance cameras on top of it.

What are other #NVDAsr users using for a #Mastodon client on #Windows these days? I'd heard development stopped on FastSMRW. I've been using Fedra, but I'm having some issues in my home, local, and federated timelines with focus jumping off posts I'm trying to read, so I'm curious what my other options are.
#blind #ScreenReader #accessibility #NVDA @mastoblind @main

I saw this posted on yt, & liked it, so wanted to post it on #mastodon

by John Pavlovitz

bc it reminded me of one i post about #DrFauci who they villainize for a lifetime of helping others
while they worship #DrOz a grifter & scam artist that sold fake "medicine" to people. the maga hero who now runs our healthcare is a sociopath

the magaverse is so upside down they confuse heroes & villains

Alt...

ANTHONY FAUCI DARED TO COMMIT THE ONE MORTAL SIN FOR WHICH THERE CAN NEVER BE ANY MAGA FORGIVENESS: HE STOOD IN THE FACE OF THEIR BLOVIATING, BELLIGERENT SPRAY- TANNED SAVIOR, AND HE SPOKE TRUTH THAT COULD ACTUALLY HELP GUIDE US THROUGH THE GREATEST PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS WE HAVE EVER FACED. ANTHONY FAUCI SINNED AGAINST DOTARD TUMOR by telling THE TRUTH. and that is something HIS FEAR-ADDLED CONGREGATION OF IGNORANT ACOLYTES WILL SIMPLY NEVER ALLOW. John Pavlovitz There are images of Dr Fauci above and Dotard Tumor below. over Dotard Tumor's face has been printed his bio: RACIST RAPIST FASCIST FELON FRAUD TRAITOR so people can still see who he is without having to post his grotesque face everywhere and make everyone look at it while also giving him what he wants - his face printed everywhere i very, VERY much wish someone, anyone else, would do this. so far, no one.

Using Mastodon
and the Fediverse is an act of rebellion in itself.

By being here,
you are contributing to grow an alternative system that is led by the people and for the people, not for profits.

By being here,
you are encouraging a solution to a deteriorating social climate that thrives on outrage and the monetization of hate.

By being here,
you are participating to the development of a new system that can slowly build a better world.

Thank you for being here 💚

#Mastodon #Fediverse

#mastodon #fediverse

https://mastodon.social/users/Mastodon/statuses/117117221397911074

After publishing the results of Discovery Week, we can now give you a first sneak peak at Mastodon 5.0, our next big version. It will bring a new visual look to your screens, a refreshed and calmer layout, as well as a new composer.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/08/5.0-laying-the-foundation/

#mastodon #mastodon5.0

It hurts to think that miserable platform is partly build on #Mastodon code..

In theory they /should/ release the source code: https://help.truthsocial.com/legal/open-source/

@bebadefabo I was personally looking for a deeper reply (I understand some might not be worth replying on)

but seems the worse situation is THE:

1 post
+ 1 reply
+ then people banning others

Doesn't seem useful - Again I accept no reply is perfect, but I feel like we're not even able to get some good out before quick-blocking (which might be also normal) but mute and block seems too quick & echo-chamber-y.

At least you both can reply #shrug Seems like a dying art mostly 1-way #Mastodon.

The reason Mastodon (and the wider Fediverse that it is part of) doesn't go down is because all its servers are totally independent. One Fedi server might go down, but that doesn't affect the other servers at all.

That's one of the many advantages of decentralisation, that there is no central point of failure.

Centralised networks go down because they depend on one central organisation's infrastructure.

#Mastodon #Fediverse

RE: https://mastodon.social/@riverbirchtree/117099674446276439

You made it possible for @joynewacc to leave Gaza and study in Milan. Now you have the chance to reunite her with her sister.

What do you say, Fediverse?

#Gaza #Palestine #GazaVerified #fediverse #mastodon

Can anyone recommend a desktop client for scheduling posts on #Mastodon?
I can do it through #trunks on my phone, but I prefer to work on a desktop, really.

I often see that question about the way I use #E2EE over #ActivityPub.
#FediHood and #HolosSocial do not use the end-to-end encryption #Mastodon is working on. They are going for MLS over ActivityPub. I use the Signal Protocol, already working between Holos and FediHood, which I both maintain. Once MLS is available, I'll happily switch.
But to be clear: it works perfectly with the Signal Protocol. The switch would only be for compatibility.

If I could have just one feature implemented on #Mastodon it is this:

Whenever we create a multipost thread, Mastodon should display, that each post is part of this thread by adding thread numbers to each post, e.g 1/3, 2/3, 3/3.

I am a bit frustrated by having to add these manually, and if I don't, I get questions from my fellow Mastodonians, indicating they overlook that a post is part of a larger context.

It is not good that Metas commercial product Threads has this feature, and we don't.

@therealitynetwork

Now we have #Mastodon / #Fediverse platform (mostly as mass *media* pushed around), we need to help #Mastodon etc push social (us with real passions) & snowball more people like this online by doing more events and backing us / broadcasting time schedules!

Right now, quit stagnant and it's material / software-based it seems /

-I've asked years back (#Eugene / #Mastodon) but #HAPPY to revisit the idea = do much #MORE / better than less.

Happy to revisit 'people contact'.

If you add the "indexable" flag in your ActivityPub actor profile, which content search engines can index your content and show it in search results?

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/activitypub/#indexable

#EvanPoll #poll #ActivityPub #Mastodon #ContentSearch #Search

I created Sup because Mastodon and Pixelfed never really focused on Direct Messages/Group Chats, and now my vision of making this a first class feature is taking shape with Loops.

I understand though, both Mastodon and Pixelfed were created in 2016/2018 and it was a very different time.

People want more intimate 3rd spaces, and so we will adapt ✨

#Sup #DirectMessages #GroupChats #Mastodon #Pixelfed #Loops

What would happen to your timeline if mastodon.social went away?

(Reposting my tool that helps you figure this out.)

mastodon.social is the biggest server on the #fediverse , with over 21% of accounts, and an even higher percentage of #Mastodon accounts.

But what does that mean to you, personally? Let's say it went away tomorrow - (assuming you aren't on it yourself), how much of your timeline would vanish?

In my case, it turns out - not a lot, actually! The biggest sources of posts that I see are (1) a very small instance that doesn't even federate with much of the Fediverse, but many of my friends are there, (2) my own instance, (3) a large tech-focused instance that is still much smaller than mastodon.social. The big guy is only 5% of the post I've seen recently.

But this might be different for you!

Find out for yourself at https://moderation-explorer.online/ . Use 'advanced mode' to see this analysis, since you need to log into see your actual feed.

You might even decide to try moving to an instance that you're more connected to?

(It's explained more on the site, but all the work happens in your browser, I don't see your identity, auth tokens, posts that get loaded, none of it.)

Alt...

Image summarizing the last 800 messages on my Mastodon feed. types.pl is the top one, with 17%. Mastodon.social is fourth, at 5% of posts.

Just to update you all, this is the reply we just got.

Apologies again for any messages you might have received in the past couple of days.

#GazaVerified #Gaza #Palestine #fediverse #mastodon

Alt...

Sorry for the late reply, and I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. To answer your question directly: yes, I will delete all of my other accounts by the end of today. I stopped messaging people directly yesterday, and I understand now that keeping multiple accounts, even when linked to the same verified campaign, undermines the purpose of verification and creates confusion. That was not my intention, and I take your concerns seriously.

Hi everyone,

We are aware of a Gaza Verified member who has made multiple other accounts and is sending what appear to be automated direct messages.

We have spoken to him and asked him to delete these accounts and stop the automated messages by end of today and to confirm that he understands that this behaviour damages the reputation of the hundreds of other Palestinians on Gaza Verified and Gaza Verified itself and to promise not to do so in the future.

We apologise if you’ve been contacted in this way. Our verification verifies that someone is a Palestinian from Gaza. It is not a character reference (we can no more vouch for the character of every Palestinian than we can for the character of every USian). However, we have rules clearly set in our guide (https://gaza-verified.org/guide) and these are there to protect the accounts of our friends from Gaza from being reported and thus limited/suspended.

So, please, if you need to mute or block an account, do so. If you’re a server admin and you notice mass automated messages, you’re well within your rights to limit or suspend an account but if it’s not automated, please contact us so we can talk to them and explain why what they’re doing isn’t in their long term interests. Many of you already do and I thank you for it.

Please also realise that there are hundreds of Palestinians who are Gaza verified and they are all suffering through genocide and many are watching their families starve or die due to lack of access to modern medicine (again, because Israel has bombed all the hospitals and doesn’t let aid through as part of its ongoing genocide).

In many Western countries, our governments are directly complicit and, many times, profiting from Israel’s genocide.

Whatever you do, please don’t judge the entirety of something by the actions of a few and please try and keep things – namely Internet etiquette and genocide – in perspective and ask yourselves what you would do if you were in their shoes.

#Gaza #Palestine #GazaVerified #mastodon #fediverse

@me

Mastodon has always done what is best for #Mastodon. Over the years it has received lots and lots of criticism for that. I think the criticism was unwarranted. After all any #FOSS project is totally free to do what is best for it.

The problem is more that the 'fediverse community' if you can speak of that, and esp. the #ActivityPub developer community has let Mastodon get to where it is today, and insufficiently took its own path towards maturing the open standards and technology landscape. Leaving Mastodon forever in the driver's seat. Fediverse is now shaped in Mastodon's image, as a microblogging environment.

To this day #fediverse devs are super scared to break precious "Mastodon-compatibility", not showing the way to "Fediverse-compatibility". It is even unclear what "being part of the fediverse" even means, there's no consensus here.

Anyway, this is just a rant, but my rallying cry for making consolidation impossible is:

Back to open standards! 💪

https://coding.social/blog/grassroots-evolution

We have to save each other from falling into the "Social" *Media* #loop...

(just #Media mostly without the actually building social or individual #trust between us etc etc)

We are just pushing #bad posts and #boosting without actually building on top of #Mastodon?

#software #mastodon #movement #movements #progressive #trust #people #progress

Today we're sharing additional guidelines about our Trade Mark Policy based on community feedback that we received.

The new guidelines, and more background about these changes, are available on our blog:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/08/sharing-guidelines-about-mastodons-trade-mark-policy/

#Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialWeb #FediDev #MastoDev #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin

@mistersql I also mute monsterdon, for similar reasons.

But I love the fact that Mastodon is basically dozens/hundreds of passionate special interest groups, all jostling to be heard in the same space.

I think if there was a way to shuffle each little hashtag or group off into its own private enclave, we'd all end up the poorer for it.

#Mastodon #Fediverse

On November 30, 2022, I tooted for the first time on Mastodon.

“Hello world!”

Then I began tooting my #music and a ton of #puns #jokes, and #memes. Everyone here responded so genuinely, and with such positivity, that I was very quickly made to feel at home.

My deepest gratitude goes out to the #Mastodon community, a #community that has literally improved the quality of my time on this spinning rock as it hurtles through space, towards a future that seems more uncertain every day. You have been my friends, my therapists, my critics and fans, as well as an inspiration and reliable sounding board. Mastodon really is unlike any other “social media platform” out there.

Today, I celebrate the arbitrary milestone of twelve thousand followers, and I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for the favourites, the boosts, the follows, and the comments.

Thank you for your conversations, discussions, and corrections.

Thank you for listening to my music and sharing your thoughts, and for following along on your chosen streaming service. Your support has been amazing.

But, above all, I’d like to thank you all for making Mastodon the friendly and welcoming place that it is. My experience here has predominantly been one of acceptance and support, and it has been truly humbling. There is nowhere else quite like it.

Massive huge love and big gigantic hugs to you all,

- Jon
#Dgar #DgarLore

#Heart / #Infinite #Love Combination

A #Symbol for the way to #peace...?

#Mastodon as a group of #loving #individuals that #connect #members & #fans of #groups together?

#Talking to #machines all day doesn't work.

We need better humans?

We have enough #Tech / #SmallTech?

A lighter AND deeper #human #relationship towards solving all #wars & arguments?

#Passion together to build back warmth, then #freedom?

(Not sex / romance, true #passion together)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycule

Alt...

heart / infinity combination symbol

THEODORE ROOSEVELT SHOT BY CRANK IN MILWAUKEE STREET

#content_review #unix_surrealism #fediverse #loops #mastodon #lemmy #art #mastoart

Alt...

Funhole Content Review FEDIVERSE I HAVE A DREAM 'you need to enable javascript to run this this app.' How to make it big? You don't @mmtmm pls sponsor me How to get more boosts? Cats. so many rabbits LOOPY CONSPIRACY - Who is behind the manufactured fame of a tiktok clone nobody asked for? THE C BANSHEE: What is snac and should you be worried? FEDIVERSE MENACE: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? hackers.town: Is nowhere safe? ONE FREE ANTI-SLOP KITTO THE LIST: 50.000 mastodon addresses to avoid if you don't like illegal content.

#Mastodon / #Fediverse idea: allow posts to be flagged as an “announcement”, which will appear in all followers' notifications, not just their home feeds.

People could use this to inform followers of a major event that they mustn't miss, like migrating to a different instance.

Only thing is, this feature sounds like it'd be easy to abuse…

Also, it would need a different name. “Announce” is what ActivityPub calls boosts.

What is your favorite hashtag to follow on Mastodon? #️⃣👀

Reply with something like:

"My favorite hashtag to follow on Mastodon is ____________"

So that others can boost it!

#Mastodon

RE: https://mstdn.party/@zed/117067814902609663

#Mastodon #fediverse question, if I write a toot in French, selecting French as the language of the post, then write alt-text in English, will that mess up people who use #screenreaders ?

Since I’m still trying to learn French, if I already know how to say something in French, and it makes more sense to write in French (like my meeting friends post, including the Eiffel Tower pic), I want to use French. But I also wrote the alt-text in French thinking I had to.

What’s best practice here ?

@shimon1024 tackles vertical Mongolian script in #Mastodon at SCUP2026 #COSCUP

Alt...

presenter at dais and slideshow on wall

Your Mastodon account only lets you sign in on one server. However, because the servers talk to each other you can follow and interact with people from other servers.

It's a bit like mobile phone SIM cards: you can only use a SIM card to get service from one phone provider, but because phone providers talk to each other you can still call people who use totally different providers.

More info and questions answered in this guide:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/can-i-use-my-account-to-log-in-on-other-servers

#FediTips #Mastodon

Adding morning anxiety (probably from lack of nicotine) #sketching / #drawing to #Mastodon timeline

Alt...

A black ink abstract drawing featuring overlapping geometric shapes with varying line patterns, set against a white background. The artwork has a dynamic composition with triangles, lines, and shaded areas, with “NOY” at the bottom right.

introducing mastodon-cli!
launch right in your command line.
note: right now, this is an experiment and will have bugs.
i'll be working on this more in the future.
if you would like to contribute to #mastodon cli, it is open source under a gpl v3 license.
in edition, it can be (apparnelty) installed with #pip / #uv with pip install mastodon_cli or uv add mastodon_cli .
note: by default , the project uses uv.
https://github.com/averlice/mclient .

Adding late night edition undiagnosed #ADHD #neurodivergent #sketching / #drawing to #Mastodon account

Alt...

Black ink abstract drawing of intersecting rectangles, each filled with distinct crosshatch and parallel line patterns, on white paper

Quick reminder to boost the posts you like and add alt-text to your images!

This is important on the Fediverse! 🤘🚀

#Fediverse #Mastodon

You can't spell "Fediverse" without "diverse"!

#mastodon #fediverse #people

@Codeberg I just received this email, titled “Your recent Mastodon post” from @dpk on behalf of the Codeberg “Presidium”:

***
Dear Aral Balkan

In your Mastodon post at <https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/117041803584140945> you publically criticized a repository that was hosted on Codeberg, despite linking to an issue thread in which it was made clear that the content should be reported through our usual internal channels for moderation. The repository in question was reviewed by the moderation team and removed. We understand that you suffered reputational damage as a result of this repository’s content, but this does not justify damaging the reputation of Codeberg e.V. in turn. The moderation team is still a volunteer operation and sometimes it takes a few hours for someone to be available to deal with reports or to ensure that consensus exists.

We therefore warn you not to make posts of this kind that could damage the association’s reputation in future. Acting against the interests of the association can be grounds for exclusion from the membership (§5 (5) of the by-laws). If you have issues with content posted on our site in future, please report it to our moderation team at abuse@codeberg.org. In general, reports sent to that email address will usually receive a reply describing what action was taken once the moderation team has considered how to deal with the reported content.

Kind regards
Presidium
***

So, I have a problem with this.

My post in no way damaged the reputation of Codeberg. It publicly asked them to do something about it and to state, publicly, where they stand on an issue. An issue, may I add, that has to do with real people facing actual genocide as we speak. Not to mention I thanked them for making the right decision (https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/117043586669877395). If anything, until this email, it made the organisation look better. Unless, of course, opposing certain genocides is something that damages reputations in Germany.

I do not agree with the public issue being closed either. An issue was reported and the response was not “oh, this is serious, we’ll look into it”. It was, rather, “you reported it wrong. Report the same thing at this other place instead.”

And that other place is an entirely opaque internal system where no one gets to see what decision-making process is employed.

This is not the transparency that should exist in a member-run organisation.

So at the end of the day, I am the one being threatened with being removed from membership while the person who is actively trying to harm genocide victims (https://codeberg.org/Linux-Is-Best/) is still welcome on Codeberg?

This is a very insidious form of bothsidesism and, I can only imagine, is to ensure that I keep quiet in the future and to create a chilling effect where we cannot discuss certain things publicly for fear of reprisals.

Well, that won’t be happening.

I am sick and tired of people who cannot provide a proportional response when asked to choose between people harming genocide victims on the one hand and those trying to protect them on the other.

If this means I cannot be a member of Codeberg, so be it.

Let me know if I’m not welcome there and I will leave.

And you can show the world that Linux-Is-Best is welcome and I am not. If that’s who you are.

#codeberg #israel #germany #zionism #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #fediverse #mastodon #transparency #ethics #morals

Disposable and custom-domain email addresses can be really tricky to deal with as an admin of Mustard, because sometimes you simply can't tell them apart.

We've had plenty of spam accounts that randomly mention users, as well as AI bot accounts that appear to be scraping data from the server. At first, you can usually spot the suspicious ones pretty easily. But after a while, you start seeing accounts using all kinds of unusual email domains, and it becomes much harder to tell who's legitimate.

Sometimes I've ended up suspending accounts simply because their email domains looked suspicious—even when their profiles, including their profile pictures, looked like they belonged to real people.

It's one of those #moderation problems where you don't really have enough information to make a confident decision.

#selfhosting #community #mastodon #mastoadmin

@sturmsucht #Mastodon Quote
+ #Comment after:

1/ " No ads, no AI, no forced recommendations. "

(fun but true reply...)

Add to list: "Near-0 social interaction or development!"

2/ "boredom is the death of the project."

YES it is - same for ANY social project dying / stagnating / not progressing the mind socially.

What you wrote in "Personal Summary" is great but people-powered Mastodon has to put time into it's people in order to deep-dive needs / win better social goals from it.

Yes/OK?

@canderson #Quote + comment after:

"...like Joan Westenberg said, in the end it comes down to two things:

keep optimizing for reach, or start optimizing for resonance."

#Mastodon could do this:

1/ more personally #cultivate from it's own #team.

2/ #Add voice messages / #WebRTC / #Jitsi live voice rooms (with slightly anonymizing voice mask option to deter recording) BUT still allow the #human #contact and practices to balance out our #principles & practices in 2-way #voice #conversations.

@canderson

#1 reason why we came here on #Mastodon (or top 5 reasonsprobably ) are so we:

- find real community AND do our dreams with others

- find what is useful / mutually discover more

- use each other for the win against dark forces...

AND IF NOT THEN WE FAIL / DIE AS "REAL" LIFE DIGS IT'S HEALS INTO US DEEPER EACH DAY.

This means we fall in to the same bad #news / #mainstream "media" #LOOP: #fatigue / #media #depression / #feel useless / no chance to shine, serve ourself/ves...

@canderson About fatigue on Mastodon also:

I think there is more *media* here than actual social progress / socialising and that's why it can be the same media fatigue / bad news loop over and over. We are not yet developed as a positive dynamic as "social".

#Mastodon = lot of good stuff but is still 1-way / non-deep, this fails social.

By slightly more people pioneering us mutually AND the #admins #devs #caring about people #design: developing #trust / cohesion etc - we'd not only do media.

@canderson This post merges with what I think is missing in social on #Mastodon:

Developing people.

Some good is still missing here which is *critical* if Mastodon is a movement to move past jut "media" fatigue side (the software) and develop "social" (not just alone, 1-way posts).

I have "pioneered" the term somewhat to try summarise:

- Develop people not just tech.

- Not just develop software only (as part of Mastodon's efforts).

Develop people now we have excellent tech / software ? ...

adding another #sketching / #drawing to #Mastodon timeline

Alt...

Abstract black ink drawing with bold, intersecting lines and shapes, creating a dynamic, textured composition on a white background

We're excited to share the results from Mastodon's first #DiscoveryWeek!

In case you missed it, earlier this year our Head of Design @imanijoy arranged a week of workshops and surveys to get to know you, learn about your needs and wants, and discover how you're using (and want to use) Mastodon.

This week was tremendously helpful for us, and we're grateful to everyone who participated.

Here's what we learned:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/08/discovery-week-2026-what-we-learned-and-what-were-doing-next/

#Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialWeb #OpenSocial

It appears that Linux-Is-Best’s libellous blocklist of “Gaza Verified scam accounts” has been removed from Codeberg.

I appreciate your taking action @Codeberg; thank you.

#Gaza #GazaVerified #genocide #libel #LinuxIsBest #fediverse #mastodon #Codeberg

A single garden egg seed can help change a life. Growing garden eggs is more than farming—it's fighting hunger, improving nutrition, and giving families hope. Every harvest feeds a home, saves money, and can create income. Let's plant today, share tomorrow, and build communities where no one goes to bed hungry. Every seed is a promise of a better future.
#gardening #sustainability #MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #agriculture #eggplant #food #Mastodon #Climate #solarpunksunday #environment #farming

Alt...

🌱 One Garden Egg Plant Can Change a Life Hunger doesn't always begin with empty fields—it begins when we stop believing that small actions can make a big difference. A single garden egg seed may seem insignificant, but when it grows, it becomes food on a family's table, hope in a parent's heart, and a healthier future for children. Every plant reminds us that we have the power to fight hunger with our own hands. Imagine every home with a small garden. Imagine children eating nutritious meals every day. Imagine families no longer worrying about where their next meal will come from because they chose to plant instead of waiting. Growing garden eggs is not just farming—it's an act of love, responsibility, and hope. It is a simple step that can reduce hunger, improve nutrition, and even create income by selling surplus harvests. The battle against hunger is not won by governments alone. It is won by ordinary people who decide to plant a seed, care for it, and share its harvest with others. Today, don't just admire the land—use it. Don't just talk about hunger—fight it. Plant a garden egg seed and become part of the solution. Every seed planted is a promise that someone will eat tomorrow. Every harvest is proof that hope can grow. 🌿 Let's grow garden eggs. Let's feed families. Let's build communities where no one goes to bed hungry.

A farmer is the true hero of our daily lives. We may go a whole day without needing a lawyer, teacher, or engineer, but not without a farmer. Every grain of rice, loaf of bread, and fruit on our table begins with a farmer's hard work. Without farmers, life itself cannot continue.
#food #agriculture #garden #sustainability #gardening #permaculture #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateDiary #climateemergency #ClimateCrisis #environment #Mastodon #USA #Photography #Fediverse #linux #permaculture #soil

for projects that have a presence here in the fediverse quite often people think it is a good idea to mention them when wanting to refer to them instead of using their hastag, ex. mentioning @arcanechat instead of using #ArcaneChat hastag to refer to the app

this makes it very hard for people interested in following the topic, since appealing to common sense is too much to ask from the masses it would be nice if #mastodon allowed to follow also mentions, that is, besides following #hastags to also be able to follow any post containing a certain mention

#fediverse #masto #development #dev #fedi #fedihelp

RE: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/117036096486689894

Dear @Codeberg,

According to the anonymous Linux-Is-Best account, I am a scammer and Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org), which I made and help run, is a scam, and every person from Gaza we verified using video calls – all 303 of them, by last count¹ – is also a scammer.

(Please see: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/2971)

This presents a problem because I am also a part of the Codeberg organisation as an active member with voting rights.

And the Gaza Verified source code is hosted on Codeberg:
https://codeberg.org/small-web/gaza-verified.org

(We’re clearly a very transparent scam operation that believes in FOSS, etc.)

So, if Linux-Is-Best is right, you are harbouring a known scammer in your organisation. Furthermore, by allowing the source code of the scam on your site, you could be held liable if you know of the scam but do nothing about it.

So, please:

1. Either remove me as an active member (and give me notice so I can cancel my direct debit and have time to migrate my account and projects elsewhere), or

2. Take down the libellous claims by this anonymous troll who is causing real harm to people facing genocide in Gaza (and who is thus, himself, complicit in genocide).

So I’m either a scammer and I should not be allowed to be part of the Codeberg organisation or the anonymous Linux-Is-Best is a libellous, genocide-complicit troll and should not be welcome at Codeberg. Because both of these cannot be true at the same time.

I’ll leave it to you to decide who you would rather want associated with Codeberg.

It shouldn’t be a very difficult decision to make.

¹ https://gaza-verified.org/people/

#Gaza #GazaVerified #genocide #libel #LinuxIsBest #fediverse #mastodon #Codeberg

soapdog boosted

Aral Balkan » 🌐 2026-08-04
@aral@mastodon.ar.al

Dear @Codeberg,

As an active member, I’d like to know what action will be taken against LinuxIsBest – the person mentioned below – and his account.

He is using Codeberg to spread Zionist lies about Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org) and attempting to get people to mass block verified accounts of people on the fediverse facing genocide in Gaza at the hands of Israel.

As an anti-fascist organisation, I can only assume this goes against what we hold to be acceptable behaviour on our platform.

Thank you.

#genocide #Israel #zionism #hasbara #Gaza #GazaVerified #codeberg @katzenberger https://tldr.nettime.org/@katzenberger/117032929588578289

#mastodon #fediverse

https://mastodon.cloud/@TheAdmin/116880479865941905

Seeking beta testers for a new opt-in Fediverse service - FediAdhan
https://fediadhan.org/

Have you ever felt your #Mastodon timeline was missing something? You get regular updates about the weather, the bongs of Big Ben on the hour; perhaps even that one account that toots like a chicken. But you've been missing timely updates about the Islamic call to prayer.

No longer: with FediAdhan, simply pick your location on the map and you'll get an account you can follow from your #ActivityPub client, which will drop a toot in your timeline when any of the five Islamic prayer times rolls around (and optionally for sunrise as well). And you get a neat pie chart of daylight/twilight for your location, as a bonus.

Explicitly opt-in, privacy focused, #HumanMade with no LLMs used at any stage in development. Try it out, let me know if you have thoughts, feedback, issues you run into.

@briankrebs

Hahaha, my friend keeps telling me about this "tweet" which keeps making rounds around on #socialmedia mostly #reddit and now I am seeing it on #mastodon and he's available on #fediverse #bluesky 😎

https://bsky.app/profile/theselongwars.bsky.social

Please help boost this if you can.

Thanks!

#mastodon #fediverse #fediblock @katzenberger https://tldr.nettime.org/@katzenberger/117032355562237286

"Starting Sunday in #EU, #AI #chatbots, receptionists, #media must reveal they are not human"

https://nltimes.nl/2026/08/02/starting-sunday-eu-ai-chatbots-receptionists-media-must-reveal-human

This is excellent

But:

Laws require enforcement

Or they are just feel-good declarations that rot the rule of law: a corpus of laws without bite means the law has no meaning. A dangerous precedent

So *how* do we fight AI. Especially on #socialMedia

You have to understand it's an existential threat. Not to #Mastodon/ #Fediverse, but *all* social media... all media

1/2

Alt...

an abstract image of "AI"

Anyone know a decent Mastodon hosting biz where both the company and the servers are run in a reasonably privacy conscious country?

Bonus points for: being a collective or social purpose company, a bus factor of >1 and payment without Paypal.

#Mastodon #Hosting

Hmmm... it looks like @Stuxhost may fit the bill. https://Stuxhost.com says they're based in the Netherlands 👍 and that you can choose servers in Germany / Finland 👍 and @stux is here on the Fedi 👍 . (Sidenote, when I've talked to Stux, they've been lovely 👍 👍 )

The only thing I'm wondering about is if there's any easy way to install / upgrade / maintain Mastodon? 🤔 If I need to I can install Yunohost like on my other servers, but I'd really like to avoid having to maintain yet another server for a service that sounds trickier than most to maintain...

#Mastodon #Hosting #Selfhosting #StuxHost #Yunohost

BTW I had account on identi.ca, which was StatusNet powered (I believe).

Yes, and it should not be implemented in Ruby or PHP or something like that. I have seen one online discussion forum being rewritten from PHP to Rust few years ago, and the improvement in responsiveness of the web platform was amazing. (I do C, not Rust, but C is too oldschool now, and the performance penalty of Rust is minor, probably not noticeable at all)

Friendica and its descendants are written in PHP. They may not be the fastest (even though what bogged down early Friendica were its heavyweight federation connectors to everywhere, especially the one for Facebook that came in 2011). Mike either discarded or rewrote these when he rewrote Red. But they happily run on a run-of-the-mill LAMP stack.

Mastodon is written in Ruby on Rails. Hubzilla runs circles around it in terms of performance per account/channel, and that has to say something. The only thing that managed to top this was early diaspora*, written in Ruby on Rails for Mac with MongoDB as the database system.

The *omas are built in Elixir. Granted, they're utter featherweights, especially considering their features. They're legendary for their low server impact. Then again, Pleroma apparently is spaghetti code straight from hell. Its own devs often don't have a clue where to go look for bugs, much less how to fix them. (Miraculously, the Akkoma devs do manage to get ride of quite a number of them.)

The *keys are built in TypeScript and Vue.js. I guess one reason why Misskey is infamous for having so many forks and forks of forks is because there are tons of people who can code in JavaScript, the primary mobile programming language.

Iceshrimp.NET is a still very incomplete "rewrite" of old Iceshrimp in C#. It was largely tackled to get rid of all those nasty bugs inherited from Misskey that even Misskey doesn't manage to get rid of. I've heard quite some outcry: Iceshrimp.NET is a sell-out to Microsoft. I guess whoever uttered that didn't go check who owns TypeScript.

PieFed is a dead giveaway: Python. And PieFed makes more headlines in the Threadiverse for server politics than for its underlying technology, except that Lemmy pales in comparison.

GoToSocial is a dead giveaway, too: Go. And it was one of the first Fediverse server applications to not come with a Web UI. Those who use it for a single-user server often don't even bother installing one and use some Mastodon app or other instead. Besides, why drag around a Web UI if there are much better third-party Web UIs than whatever you could whip up?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #IceshrimpJS #Iceshrimp.NET #PieFed #GoToSocial #PHP #RubyOnRails #Elixir #JavaScript #TypeScript #VueJS #C# #Python #Go

I believe there was always the best interest of Mastodon developers to enable their users to engage with content like PeerTube videos, WordPress blog posts, and so on.

On the one hand, there was the promise to be able to follow WordPress blogs from Mastodon without resorting to RSS or Atom. And there was the promise to WordPress users to increase their subscribers by the folks in the Fediverse.

On the other hand, there was Mastodon's refusal to render Article-type objects such as those that WordPress sent. And I'm not even talking about rendering them without utterly defacing them. AFAIR, Automattic wasn't really pleased to see Mastodon only linking to WordPress blog posts. (By the way, the *omas and *keys show WordPress blog posts with no problems, even though they consider themselves microblogging apps, too.)

You also mention, that Hubzilla was first application ready to deliberately block other platforms... and then accuse Mastodon of doing the same

All that Hubzilla has is ActivityPub being optional. And even that comes from ActivityPub still being an add-on plus the potential desire of Hubzilla users to have a 100% nomadic channel with nothing non-nomadic interfering. Mario and Harald do see it as a potential drawbridge. But it's mostly a historical relic from the times when Mike dreamt of the Grid. In fact, Hubzilla still has Friendica's "federate with everything that moves" attitude deep inside its DNA.

Also, if anyone is interested in blocking the non-Mastodon Fediverse, or large parts of it, from Mastodon, it's individual Mastodon users who have never gotten over their first message from Calckey or Friendica or whatever. The Mastodon devs, well, probably not so much. They want to make the non-Mastodon Fediverse look as bad as they can get away with, but they can't afford locking it out entirely.

I mean, I've actually taken into consideration submitting a feature request in Mastodon's GitHub repository for one or various means of excluding the non-Mastodon Fediverse from individual accounts or even entire servers, if only to see the comments. But I don't think the devs would even only take building that option into consideration, also because it might anger certain other actors like Ghost, Flipboard, Automattic...

But there is no reason to block entire platforms.

In fact, almost everyone will disagree with you if you tell them that one of the platforms that can be blocked is Threads.

Myself, I would like to learn Rust and perhaps join some ActivityPub project in Rust, which would not be so strictly focused on being Xitter clone and would support more media options, would display more than 4 image attachments, would be very user configurable, be aware of status size limits of platforms of mentioned users, etc.

Maybe they can use an additional main dev who can forward the project (along their plans anyway), merge 3rd-party pull requests and such. It'd be a shame to see it go to waste.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #WordPress #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Plume

The wiki reveals even different timeline:

To me, it seems, that Gargon simply was not as colossal nerd, as others, and somehow managed to create cult following of sufficient number of users, which were not really techies.

I think it was in 2016 already that German tech media got interested in decentralised alternatives to corporate silos. Mastodon caught their interest, being developed in Germany and all. Pleroma didn't, in spite of being developed in Germany, too, not to mention more feature-rich than Mastodon. Friendica was developed in Germany back then already, too, but it seemed like either tech media weren't interested in alternatives to something that needed alternatives much more than Twitter, or Friendica managed to continue to fly under the radar even then.

Anyway, Mastodon got media coverage, and nothing else did.

In 2017, right-wingers started attacking furries and queers on Twitter. They had to escape somewhere. Tumblr wasn't it, having been pretty much killed by being bought out and G-rated. But someone happened to know Mastodon due to the media coverage whereas nobody happened to know Pleroma due to no media coverage at all. So those furries and queers escaped to Mastodon. "Awoo" was briefly part of Mastodon's culture in the late 2010s due to the high furry-to-non-furry rate.

From then on, Mastodon had the two advantages of past media coverage and more users. The rest was like a snowball, essentially. The more users something has, the more users something gains by inviting them.

I guess Friendica and Hubzilla, both of which already existed back then, suffered from the same choice of mindsets: "If you build it, they will come," "We'll first need to get this and that fixed before we're ready for prime time," "Can't someone else take care of that? I'm bad at advertising stuff!" Plus, of course, people who really were bad at advertising stuff to anyone who's neither a developer nor a server admin.

I was thinking about need for decentralized social media since at least 2009, as I was watching the old web to slowly loose any relevance. (My Facebook account was canceled without any explanations as soon as perhaps sometimes like 2010?).

By the way, what killed StatusNet was when Identi.ca changed its backend from StatusNet to pump.io and its protocol from OStatus to ActivityPump, thus becoming incompatible with the rest of StatusNet. What remained was largely unable to stand alone. What kind of helped Identi.ca (OStatus as a profile sucked so badly that Evan and Erin themselves had to whip up ActivityPump) did the opposite to StatusNet. A bit later, the FSF scooped it up, forked it to GNU social and eventually merged what was left of StatusNet into GNU social. It got ActivityPub support later on, but it's gone now, too.

Also, in 2010, Mistpark was around, and so was diaspora* (or what already existed of it at that time). diaspora* had tons of advance publicity due to its crowdfunding stunt, but then the four devs didn't manage to deliver before public interest had faded away, even with Mike's help on the protocol (not even kidding here). And speaking of Mike, he built Mistpark, but almost nobody came because he did nothing in terms of advertising. Even though Mistpark of May, 2010 was more powerful than diaspora* is today. Even though Mistpark took two months for a public alpha and four for a stable point release whereas it took diaspora* years to go beyond alpha, not to mention the entire development team being replaced.

I guess you would have been a prime Friendica user candidate. Particularly, you would have been one of those who were happy on a Friendica node without the performance-hogging Facebook connector in times when everyone was seeking out and piling onto the nodes with that connector, just to see them close registration at not even 150 accounts.

I was thinking about basing it on bunch of combined RSS feeds, the publicly compatible vs. the activity stream, which is not so different from from like ActivityPub is made today, except that signing of content with public keys is more advanced concept, that what I was able to imagine.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Pleroma #StatusNet #Identi.ca #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #OStatus #ActivityPump #ActivityPub

Friendica is missing polls altogether and the stunt with language auto-detection is damaging built-in translation feature in Mastodon.

This is the very reason why Mike Macgirvin (creator of Friendica and Hubzilla and still maintainer of (streams) and Forte) has introduced yet another server-wide anti-Mastodon countermeasure named FedUp to both (streams) and Forte. Its effect is that it blocks all Fediverse server software that doesn't understand enclosed, one-post-several-comments conversations and the principle of all comments always going directly to the original poster who then forwards them to all other participants in the conversation.

(streams) and Forte already have the server-wide User Agent Filter that can block entire Fediverse server applications by their user channel. It was created and mostly marketed as a way of blocking Threads without a URL list, without constantly having to add new URLs to a list because Threads changed its URLs. But it's just as capable at entirely blocking all present and future Mastodon servers, and Mike even describes it as such.

Also, want to know the reason why Mike still keeps Nomad-based (streams) alive in spite of also having ActivityPub-based Forte with almost feature parity? It's because ActivityPub is optional on (streams) at channel level. The ActivityPub switch can be used as a last-resort anti-Mastodon countermeasure even though its side-effects are tremendous. The most important (streams) group, a support group, by the way, used to have ActivityPub off with the very purpose of keeping obnoxious Mastodon users out. It only turned ActivityPub on when it also became the unofficial support group for Forte.

As I've said elsewhere: It isn't Mastodon that's the ActivityPub reference implementation of ActivityPub with everything that's different being broken. Mike Macgirvin has built all his ActivityPub implementations by the book, and so have Hubzilla developers Mario Vavti and Harald Eilertsen, two months before Mastodon itself had ActivityPub support. In the meantime, Mastodon's developers deliberately and intentionally break compatibility with the rest of the Fediverse to fool Mastodon users like you into considering the non-Mastodon Fediverse broken.

I would also appreciate longer HTML files as kind of "media attachments" and not body of the post. The main problem is perhaps that Mastodon chose to ignore the post title field altogether and does not allow markup in post body (but there is entire huge fork called Glitch, which supports markup, but perhaps markup is what you want in longer texts, kind of attachments - but not short on-wall posts?)

Mastodon supports both in a way. But it only renders Note-type objects. Even then, it still throws away the title and all attached images except for the first four. Its HTML sanitiser removes half of the text formatting, including embedded images. As for Article-type objects, it shows them as a small "toot" with the title and a link to the original. Only recently, probably also under pressure from commercial players like Ghost, Mastodon added the summary which it otherwise uses as the CW field.

But this is highly inconvenient. Hardly any Mastodon user can be bothered to click or tap the link to the original. They don't understand that there's a Fediverse post behind that link, much less that if they comment on the "toot" with the link, they comment on the post behind the link itself. Besides, what's behind the link won't show up on their Mastodon interface. Instead, if they're on a phone, their browser will open.

From this stems a debate that's as old as Mastodon's participation in the Fediverse. A prime example of culture clash.

The developers and users of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte want Mastodon as well as all its apps to fully render all their contents in the timeline. Including the title, including all text formatting, including as many embedded images as there are, as images actually embedded within the text, of course. The very same thing happens where they are. It's normal for them. It's the standard for them. It's part of their culture. What Mastodon does on their Note-type objects is crippling and defacing, and what Mastodon does on their Article-type objects is silencing to the point of wholesale censorship of several competitors.

On the other hand, the Mastodon devs refuse to add full HTML rich text rendering to Mastodon, and the Mastodon users don't want it anyway. In fact, many Mastodon users are highly disturbed by there being "toots" that are longer than 500 characters, and some are disturbed by there being any text formatting (displaying support for which was only introduced in October, 2022 with Mastodon 4.0, by the way). Their culture is that of purist microblogging in plain text with no more than 500 characters. It's already too much what Mastodon and its apps show already now. Thousands upon thousands of Mastodon users would go and block each and every server that sends anything over 500 characters if they knew that this is an option.

At the same time, hardly anyone on Mastodon even takes into consideration that whatever "long posts" come from has something like a culture of its own in the first place. It can't be culture if it isn't Mastodon's.

As I mentioned in the previous answer, Hubzilla just does too many things differently and focuses on experience of local users of instance - not on federated interoperability.

Hubzilla has had full-blown nomadic identity since almost four years before Mastodon came out.

Hubzilla is almost as much an omni-federational monster as Friendica.

• It has optional ActivityPub support, unlike Mastodon almost strictly by the official W3C specification, and it has had ActivityPub support before Mastodon had it.
• It used to have optional StatusNet support which is how Mastodon federated with it immediately.
• It can optionally federate with diaspora*; Mastodon can't do that.
• It can optionally federate via ActivityPump, the protocol that replaced StatusNet on Identi.ca; Mastodon can't do that.
• It can optionally cross-post to Dreamwidth, Libertree, LiveJournal and WordPress. It has been able to do either years before WordPress got its ActivityPub plug-in. Mastodon can't do either.
• It still has the optional technology to bidirectionally connect to 𝕏; Mastodon doesn't have that.
• It still has an optional built-in XMPP client; Mastodon doesn't have that.

Mastodon is simply lights years ahead.

If the latter, I'll gladly prove you wrong.

I would prefer moderation to be more collective responsibility, so posts can receive perhaps kind of negative points, and people can choose to join shared blocklists and so, instead of relying of some superhero capabilites of moderators (which I don't have).

Big blocklists tend to be automatically generated from smaller blocklists, letting everything from each one of these blocklists in, only weeding out double entries, if at all. Single persons have unlimited power over who is allowed to interact with thousands upon thousands of Mastodon servers and who isn't.

Now imagine that someone who maintains a popular blocklist is too disturbed by non-Mastodon content. It's too long, it doesn't follow Mastodon guidelines, it goes against Mastodon's culture, so it has to go. And then they start adding every single server URL from which obvious non-Mastodon content comes to their blocklist. Or they even use a script to harvest FediDB and Fediverse Observer for URLs of servers of certain non-Mastodon Fediverse applications and automatically add them to their blocklist.

And all of a sudden, almost entire non-Mastodon Fediverse server applications are completely blocked from thousands upon thousands of Mastodon servers just because they aren't Mastodon, just because they don't act like Mastodon. Essentially, just because one individual wants the Fediverse to be only Mastodon "again" (which it never was).

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Conversations #FEP_171b #ConversationContainers #Blocklist #Blocklists #BlocklistMeta #CWBlocklistMeta

Also, ALT text translates with the rest of the post, which can be helpful for images which contain only foreign language text.

Hubzilla is the most incompatible ActivityPub software in Fediverse. You do just lot of things wrong, to put it mildly.

Here are the facts:

Mastodon was launched in January, 2016.

Hubzilla was launched in March, 2015. Counting an earlier incarnation named Red, it was created in May, 2012, when Friendica's creator re-wrote his own fork of a Friendica fork of his own.

Mastodon implemented ActivityPub in September, 2017, when the spec wasn't finalised yet.

Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub in July, 2017. Two months before Mastodon. Hubzilla was the first software to ever implement ActivityPub.

Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub strictly by the book. It has always tried to stick as close to the official W3C ActivityPub spec as possible.

Mastodon, in stark contrast, has always been stretching the ActivityPub spec until it broke. Not only that, but it has always been adding stuff outside the spec. First it did so to take over certain features from StatusNet which was its original protocol. More recently, it did so with the very intention to break compatibility with the rest of the Fediverse and make everything that isn't Mastodon look broken. And people like you keep falling for it because they think they know for a fact that Mastodon is the ActivityPub reference implementation.

The whole Fediverse has to break the ActivityPub spec just to be able to federate with Mastodon.

yes, the Hubzilla author is writing Streams, with nomadic identity, but it also means, that he understands, that Hubzilla approach is kind of dead-end.

Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte created his post-Hubzilla server applications because he kept advancing the Zot protocol. And he couldn't implement these advancements into Hubzilla because they bore the chance of breaking compatibility with what already existed.

(streams) is not a completely new development, nor is it a straight Hubzilla fork.

(streams) is a 2022 fork of Roadhouse.
Which was a 2022 fork of either the third Osada or Mistpark 2020 or Redmatrix 2020.
Which were 2020 forks of Zap (or each other, but at least one of them was forked from Zap).
Which was a 2018 fork of either Hubzilla itself or the first Osada, which was a 2018 fork of Hubzilla.

Osada and Zap were created to develop Zot6. In its early stages of concept, Mike expected Zot6 to be incompatible with everything else. Mind you, he didn't see that as something bad. Advancing Zot was necessary because the then-current version of Zot was less than optimal. And Mike's vision was a decentralised, nomadic network named the "Grid", entirely based on Zot. The Grid would have been vastly superior to the existing Fediverse in every way possible.

So the issue with his early draft of Zot6 was that it was quite incompatible with non-nomadic protocols. Nomadic Zot6 content could not be translated into non-nomadic protocols like the diaspora* protocol or ActivityPub.

Thus, developing Zot6 on Hubzilla was out of question. Zot6 would have broken too much on Hubzilla. Besides, Hubzilla was bad as a platform to experiment on due to its wealth of supported protocols and other features, all of which would have had to be made compatible with Zot6.

And this is the real reason why Mike created Osada and Zap. From how I see it, and how I remember what he talked about back in the day (I was there, yes), he first forked Osada from Hubzilla. Then he ripped everything out that he didn't need, including support for all protocols except for Zot itself, ActivityPub, RSS and Atom, including the CMS stuff like articles, planning cards, notes, wikis and webpages, etc. Then he modified what was left against his early version of Zot6.

Then he discovered that a cloned Osada channel couldn't properly send content via ActivityPub.

Then, shortly afterwards, he forked Osada into Zap. He removed nomadic identity from Osada which kept ActivityPub and ActivityPub support from Zap which stayed nomadic.

The idea was to have a nomadic, cloned channel on Zap as your main channel that would only connect to Hubzilla, Osada and Zap, and to have an additional, non-nomadic channel on Osada that would serve as a "gateway" between nomadic Zap and the non-nomadic ActivityPub Fediverse.

Of course, this was highly impractical. But by 2019, Mike found a way to make Zot6 compatible with non-nomadic protocols. So, in early 2019, Mike discontinued Osada and forked a new Osada from Zap which only differred from Zap by having ActivityPub support while still being nomadic. This enabled Mike to have one development platform for Zot6 in conjunction with non-nomadic protocols and another one on which ActivityPub did not stand in the way.

Later in 2019, both Osada and Zap got stable releases. At that point, Osada and Zap were identical in code. Both had ActivityPub support. It was included into their cores now and no longer an add-on like on Hubzilla. They only had two differences. One was the branding. The other one was that Osada servers had ActivityPub activated by default, and Zap servers had ActivityPub disabled by default. Keeping Osada around was unnecessary now, so ActivityPub was activated by default on Zap, and Osada was discontinued. Zot6 was so stable that it was soon backported to Hubzilla.

Mike wasn't done yet, though. He now wanted to develop Zot8. Again, he did not want to develop protocol changes on stable production software that people potentially daily-drove.

Thus, three new forks emerged in 2020: another Osada, Mistpark 2020 (a.k.a. Misty) and Redmatrix 2020 (named after the Red Matrix, the name that Hubzilla bore from late 2012 to early 2015 between being created as Red and being re-branded into Hubzilla). Mike used them to develop Zot8. They were identical in all but brand identity.

This was fully intentional on Mike's part to confuse the hell out of the brand fetishists that were growing more and more numerous in the Fediverse. His goal was for people to declare Osada or Misty or Redmatrix the best Fediverse software and superior to everything else, just for him to tell them that Osada, Misty and Redmatrix are absolutely identical. In fact, the three remained identical to Zap in features.

Zot8 never got stable because Mike kept advancing it further and further. In early 2022, he was at Zot11. But Zot11 was so incompatible with everything else, including previous Zot versions, that Mike declared it a new protocol of its own and renamed it Nomad. In order to test-drive it, he forked Osada or Misty or Redmatrix into Roadhouse. After all, there were people who were daring enough to daily-drive production channels on Osada, Misty and Redmatrix, albeit only few. Roadhouse was still identical in features to Zap, Osada, Misty and Redmatrix.

It was now possible to crossgrade between Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse by simply rebasing the server code.

Later in 2022, he created a new fork of Roadhouse itself. The reason for this was not further protocol advancement. No, this time, it mostly had branding and licensing reasons.

First of all, he wanted to make that fork as easy for others to fork and adopt as possible. Everything he had developed so far was under the MIT license (he himself had relicensed Friendica under the AGPLv3 in 2011, but he didn't actually develop on Friendica; he developed on a fork named Free-Friendika that was still MIT-licensed and then backported the changes to the Friendica repository, and Red was a Free-Friendika fork). This new repository was released into the public domain. At first, the whole thing was never primarily intended to be installed on servers as it was, but rather to be forked as the base of something new.

At least the core and Mike's own add-ons were. What third-party add-ons from Hubzilla times were still there got to keep their maze of licenses. This was intentional on Mike's part, too. It would make it impossible for commercial players to scoop up the whole thing and relicense it into something non-free and commercial without breaking any licenses, or without pumping tons of money into their legal department to work around that maze of licenses.

Also, Mike removed any and all naming and branding from the software. He absolutely intentionally made it nameless. You've read that right. He did this for two reasons. One, whoever wanted to fork it would have to give the fork an individual name and an individual branding. Two, this was to mess with brand fanbois and brand fetishists even more: This thing had no brand to gush over to begin with.

Furthermore, Mike removed all nodeinfo code that he could possibly get away with removing. Again, this was intentional. One intention was to stop this software from automatically joining the "my Fediverse project is bigger than yours" and "my server is bigger than yours" rat races. He intentionally did everything he could to keep this software away from The Federation, Fediverse Observer, FediDB and the like.

The other intention was for the case of commercial players looking for free code to steal. If this software had really taken off and left its stats proving its popularity everywhere, some big commercial player would have been likely to try and steal this software, make it commercial and non-free and release it as their own original creation. So his intention was for them to not even be able to find it in this case. (This, by the way, was the reason why he relicensed Friendica under the AGPLv3, and why he hardly ever spoke about Free-Friendika: Now that Friendica was growing popular, he didn't want big commercial players to scoop up code of his under a license that they could change to non-free.)

This server application became the first and only one in the Fediverse with no fixed server type identifier, in fact, with none at all by default. It has one text field for the server name, just like Mastodon and Friendica and Hubzilla and the like. But it has an additional field where the server type, i.e. the identifier for the software, can be entered. If none is entered, it's derived from the server name. Mike used to have a server that identified as "Y" because, as he said, "Y is not X."

While the application itself is nameless (for it still is), the code repository did require a name of sorts. Mike named the repository "streams".

Now, the community needed something to call that nameless software when they spoke about it. So they unofficially established "(streams)", complete with parentheses that make sure that this is not actually the name of this software. Those who say, "Streams," with a capital S and no parentheses, and who use that term as if it's an official name, usually sincerely believe that this is the official name.

Mike himself uses "streams" without the parentheses because even he needs something to call his own software by. Before Forte was made, he preferred talking about the streams repository without directly mentioning the software. And he himself denied that (streams) is even a project. It's just a bunch of code that runs.

As far as I know, it was now possible to freely crossgrade between six different server applications because they were still identical in features. Only that Mike also had six server applications to take care of now.

So on December 31st, 2022, Mike discontinued Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse. Admins who ran either of these on their servers were recommended to rebase their servers to the streams repository. In this case, by the way, the old branding was kept. I've seen a server that still had "zap" as its subdomain which indicated that it was set up as a Zap server, that had Misty branding, but that actually ran (streams).

From then on, Mike dedicated his time to maintaining and developing only the streams repository. He still occasionally helped Hubzilla out, though.

In 2023, the Mitra creator and developer silverpill approached Mike. The goal was to make Mitra nomadic. I guess earlier attempts using a blockchain and crypto technology didn't come to fruition, so it had to be Mike's way which had proven itself stable for more than a decade. However, Mitra was to remain based on ActivityPub.

It was in this exchange that Mike realised that ActivityPub could indeed be used for nomadic identity if a few things were added to it. One outcome was FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" which introduced decentralised IDs (DIDs) that would not be bound to any one server domain.

Instead of creating a whole new server application to play with, Mike simply made a "nomadic" branch in the streams repository (even though the software was already nomadic) in which he implemented support for nomadic identity via ActivityPub. Support as in (streams) understanding it while internally still using Nomad for nomadicity.

In June, 2024, Mike considered the "nomadic" branch reliable enough and merged it into the "dev" branch.

In July, 2024, Mike merged the "dev" branch into the "release" branch which caused DIDs as per FEP-ef61 to be rolled out to existing production servers. On accounts created on this new version, channels would have a DID internally. On accounts greated on any previous version, even new channels would keep the old ID system for the time being. This way, existing accounts and channels weren't messed with.

However, what had worked under supervised and restricted lab conditions completely blew up under real-life conditions. Again, I was there on (streams) with a pre-DID account and two channels on it. I still have them. (streams) channels wouldn't federate with anything anymore. It had become impossible to send anything anywhere. What Mike was facing was nothing short of an enigma because not even he knew what was going in.

So he started tinkering. In mid-August, Mike forked the streams repository into something named and branded Forte. He did so so he could rip the Nomad protocol out while still keeping the entire functionality. He had to get rid of Nomad because he had discovered that (streams) got confused juggling all the many IDs it had to deal with, so he had to weed out the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to make things easier. But he couldn't possibly have done that on (streams) proper.

This way, Mike created the very first Fediverse server software that uses ActivityPub for full nomadicity, including cloning.

By the end of August, things got back to normal. But Mike, having spent every free minute in the last few weeks to get (streams) back into working condition, was burned out. He sent an open message around in which he declared that he would completely retire from Fediverse development, and both the streams repository and Forte were up for grabs.

But nobody was found who could take over either. (streams) and Forte probably had way fewer than 100 users combined. Those few who would have been able to maintain either didn't have time. One did have time and was willing to do so, but he didn't know how to code. He eventually did start teaching himself, and he occasionally contributes merge requests, but there was no way he could take over as the only dev for either, much less both. So Mike had to go on, whether he wanted or not, albeit at a somewhat slower pace.

This is why Mike is still developing (streams) and Forte to this day.

By the way: The reason why Mike "abandoned" his old software was because he needed to invest all his time into protocol development and advancement. Mike isn't the one to constantly maintain stable server software unless he absolutely has to.

In 2011, he handed Friendica over to two new developers so that he had time to create the Zot protocol.

In 2015 already, he handed Hubzilla over to two new developers so that he had time to explore the advancement of the Zot protocol. He still contributed to Hubzilla's development.

In 2019, he wanted to hand Osada and Zap over to the community, now that they were stable, so he had time to develop Zot8. But the Osada/Zap community was so tiny that he couldn't get a new dedicated developer team together.

In 2024, he wanted to hand (streams) and Forte over to the community because fixing (streams)' huge identity bug, which led to Forte's creation, had burnt him out. He wanted to quit. But, again, he couldn't because (streams) didn't have a single user who had both the time and the knowledge to take over as the new main dev.

Consider this: Gargron was a young man when he made Mastodon. I think he was still at university. Mike Macgirvin made Friendica, he had some three decades of professional work in IT and software under his belly. Gargron was at the beginning of his career. Mike had quit and moved from the USA to the western Australian outback where he has been living as a farmer ever since. He might actually be older than Gargron's parents.

while nomadic identitity would be cool thing, currently it does not exist

Nomadic identity does exist. Not as a vague idea, not as a concept on paper, but as a stable, production-grade feature that has been used to its full extent for well over a decade now. Just because Mastodon doesn't have it, doesn't mean the Fediverse doesn't have it. And just because Mastodon doesn't recognise it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The Fediverse has loads of features which Mastodon users want "the Fediverse" to have. It has features which many Mastodon users have never wanted "the Fediverse" to have such as quote-posts, introduced by Mike Macgirvin on Mistpark in 2010. It even has features that are completely and utterly unimaginable for Mastodon users, and it has had even these since as early as 2010, 2012 or 2015.

Nomadic identity was invented by Mike Macgirvin in 2011 with the Zot protocol.

It was first implemented by him in mid-2012 when he rewrote Red against Zot. This means that Hubzilla itself has been offering full-blown nomadic identity since 2012, almost four years longer than Mastodon has existed.

This very Hubzilla channel that I'm commenting from right here, right now, is actually nomadic. It is cloned across two servers: hub.netzgemeinde.eu and hub.hubzilla.de. And it has been since before Elon Musk announced to take over Twitter in early 2022. When I sent you this comment, it was automatically sync'd over to hub.hubzilla.de. When you sent the comment that I'm replying to, it was automatically sync'd over to hub.hubzilla.de. The clone has actually been of great help at least once.

Unfortunately, non-nomadic software identifies cloned channels as fully separate accounts with fully separate identities. But rest assured: @Jupiter Rowland on hub.hubzilla.de is my clone. It's the live, hot, real-time, bidirectional backup of the main instance of my channel, @Jupiter Rowland on hub.netzgemeinde.eu that you're following now. They're both one and the same channel with one and the same identity, jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu, even though Mastodon is unable to see it as such. Go check both. You'll see they've got all the same content in them, including comments from others. Including your comment. How else can jupiter_rowland@hub.hubzilla.de possibly have one of your comments under a post if you've only sent that comment to jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu if it weren't for nomadic identity?

Even nomadic identity via ActivityPub is available as a stable, production-grade feature in stable, production-grade software right now as we speak. Forte was the first to be fully nomadic via nothing but ActivityPub, as of mid-August, 2024. Tootik, based on Gemini instead of the World Wide Web, is fully nomadic at server level, too. Mitra is fully nomadic by means of the Minimitra client.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #Friendica #Red #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Mistpark #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Redmatrix2020 #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Tootik #Mitra #Minimitra #NomadicIdentity

People know, that there are alternatives, and explore them.

Every single Mastodon newbie is being implied to or outright told that Mastodon is the only thing in the Fediverse. They don't choose Mastodon because it suits them the best. I mean, most of them by far already have problems choosing a Mastodon server. In fact, they don't choose Mastodon within the Fediverse at all. They don't even know they have a choice. If they did, Sharkey and Friendica would be much bigger.

I think it can replace also Facebook and Instagram.

Pixelfed was created as an Instagram clone and a drop-in replacement for Instagram. You can literally import entire Instagram accounts into Pixelfed.

Friendica was created as early as 2010 as an alternative to Facebook. It has all the features a social network needs. Bidirectional contacts like Facebook friends. Dedicated profile fields as opposed to only a small handful of multi-purpose profile fields. Contact suggestions based on your and their profile. Contact suggestions based on how many contacts you have in common. What everyone believes Google+ has invented with its circles (Mastodon lists on 'roids). Discussion groups. Moderated discussion groups. Private discussion groups. No ridiculously low arbitrary character limit.

I challenge you to use Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte as your only daily driver for a year. Not just dip a toe in, but take off the Mastodon glasses and exclusively daily-drive it. Use it for everything that you use Mastodon for right now without ever falling back to your Mastodon account for that time. And then I want to hear from you whether Mastodon really is a full-blown, fully-featured Facebook alternative and better at being that than Friendica and its family.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Facebook #FacebookAlternative #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte