#Mastodon tip: There is a way to use only part of a word as a hashtag!

For example, you might want to say the word “toots”, but use the hashtag “toot”.

To do this, place a U+2060 WORD JOINER before the “s” in “toots”. Example: #toot⁠s.

If you're using #X11 or #Wayland (i.e. #Linux or #BSD desktop), you can add the following line to ~/.XCompose to give yourself a keyboard shortcut:

<Multi_key> <w> <j> : "⁠" U2060 # WORD JOINER

Then just type Compose, then W, then J.

To reassure followers, let me state clearly:

there will be no posts about the FIFA World Cup here (other than this one, obviously)...

I will leave aside the price gouging of dynamic pricing, the denial of entry to footballers & officials to the USA and the general political character of the event (and the role of ICE in its 'policing').

This is a football-free Mastodon account; you can follow/read posts in safety (if you are a footie-phobe)

#Mastodon

This week in #FDroid (TWIF) is live:

* 2.0 is as ready as possible, test now!
* #Google spreading FUD about #Android #FLOSS apps
* #Fedilab #Mastodon 'Collections'
* more #ReFra gallery goodies
* more categories
+ 34 new apps
& 293 updates

Grab all your devices from the drawers: https://f-droid.org/2026/06/12/twif.html

#KeepAndroidOpen

For #Mastodon app developers and fellow #fediverse platform developers, with the approaching Mastodon 4.6 release we've put together an overview of new and changed APIs that you may want to look at! Collections, profile editing, #Wrapstodon, and more:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/06/mastodon-4-6-for-devs/

⚠️ Word is from Admins and Mods, Russian bot farm accounts are becoming a real problem so the advice I'm hearing is, carefully vet new accounts following you and any you might want to follow.

#Fediverse #Mastodon

edit # 2
Thanks to
@crapaud for providing this resource specific to the aforementioned Russian bot farm

https://about.iftas.org/2025/10/05/coordinated-pro-russian-propaganda-network-targeting-activitypub-and-atproto-services/

edit: Look below this post--I will add a couple articles about how to spot a bot account

How does Write Freely compare to Mastodon? Do you get any sort of user interaction? As a series of interconnected platforms, is it growing?

#askfedi #fediverse #writefreely #mastodon #activitypub

@TerryHancock

I agree. I actually like a lot of things about Mastodon, but it's too big a player in this space, and all the various fedi server projects need to be better at interoperability.

For example, you can't reply to a #GoToSocial comment from #Pixelfed, because the #GtS user won't get any context, and won't know what you're replying to. This was a bug reported a good while back, and AFAIK there still hasn't been a fix, although they've done many other things to improve Pixelfed since then.

That's... unfortunate and unneccesary. Implicitly saying "as long as it works with #Mastodon, it's fine" isn't the way to a healthy #fediverse.

It’s absurd

People are paying for AI tokens to create bot accounts on #Mastodon to post nonsense, increasing the costs for servers, storage and emails all while making the #AI hype even bigger so our servers are gonna costs a lot more

And some wonder why I hate pointless LLMs (AI) so much🤔

@aral Wish you would do more people work - #p2p /circle groups in #Jitsi / #WebRTC

Worst is people not improving amongst the good and just pointing the bad stuff (you're doing GREAT but not transferring / developing other people).

#Mastodon / #SmallTech without good people sharpening / helping others up are low-level communicative users 1-way posting here and using better soft.

*** Develop people also ! ***
**********************
(Would love to help / just need a bit of #trust in a few)

0. The first line of moderation should not be the instance admin. Each user account should be able to moderate mentions of their ID, or replies to their comments.

1. The top poster of a comment thread should be able to moderate all reply comments under that thread.

2. Instance admins should only delete posts that are clearly designed to offend, hurt, or viciously attack, bully, harass, gaslight, annoy etc. but should never delete a post simply on ideological grounds or heated but honest disagreement or debate. Telling the difference is very simple in almost all cases: tone and mindless repetition being the biggest giveaways of the respondent's intent. If it becomes an unwanted or unproductive argument the top poster should be able to quash replies.

3. Users should be able to click a button to block and entire thread regardless of who posts to it.

These things are not a major problem for me since I'm on a simple instance and I can add users to my personal blacklist via CLI. It would be nice to see this kind of stuff as standard, basic button functions in activitypub and fediverse since not everyone wants to run an instance and use CLI scripts to moderate.

#mastodon #fediverse #moderation #postDeletion #activitypub #social

So I hasn’t realised that Mastodon GmbH (mastodon.social) also runs mastodon.online.

This is troubling, to say the least.

#mastodon #fediverse #federation #censorship #mastodonOnline #mastodonSocial #mastodonGmbH

Right, fediverse, let me know what you think. Long-form comments also welcome.

Mastodon instance moderators should…

#mastodon #fediverse #moderation #postDeletion

…Not least of all because the same company that runs the largest Mastodon instance runs more than one instance (why?)

But also the moderation policy that allows for the deletion of people’s posts. (Not even limiting the account or suspending it and asking the person who wrote the post to delete it but moderators outright deleting other people’s posts themselves. That sets a very dangerous precedent.)

#mastodon #fediverse #federation #censorship #mastodonOnline #mastodonSocial #mastodonGmbH

RE: https://veganism.social/@Geri/116537676967800066

Folks, just a quick warning: If you’re against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, avoid mastodon.online.

They deleted two of Geri’s posts.

Geri is a wonderful activist and an inspiration from the UK who has braved arrest to shine a light on Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Do give her a follow on her new account as she lost quite a few followers during the migration.

Also, to our friends in Gaza, please don’t create accounts on this server.

#mastodon #fediverse #moderation #censorship #mastodonOnline #israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #Gaza #GazaVerified #StopIsrael #FreePalestine

Another pro-genocide Zionist reply-then-block bot to report:

@crumpet99@troet.cafe

This one was sent in reply to https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116119104805754025

#ZionistReplyBots #hasbara #fediverse #mastodon #fediblock #israel #genocide #Palestine #Gaza #StopIsrael #FreePalestine

Alt...

known @crumpet99@troet.cafe 23/02/2026, 23:23 @aral 3/8 The Colonizer Libel [noun] A detamatory claim rooted in Nazi portrayals of Jews as alien interlopers and Soviet depictions of Jews as "chauvinists" and "imperialists." It denies Jewish continuity in the land, the return of Jewish refugees from Europe, and the arrival of Jews expelled from MENA, asserting instead-against history and archaeology-that Israeli Jews are "white European settler-colonizers," a label deployed to project moral evil and render Jewish presence uniquely immoral and illegitimate. ... Tap to Retry Server mastodon.ar.al encountered a problem: Not Found (404)

I did not know that. So they borked a good feature to generate a self-censorship-oriented culture.

Thanks, #Mastodon!

I notice that the /people/ section of snac gives broken links to follower and followee profiles.

For instance entries for mastodon users are like this:

https://mastodon.social/ap/users/253190229248136435

Which appears to be an API endpoint rather than a web link. Links like this lead to a not found page.

#snac2 #mastodon #fediverse

#Mastodon #UX #GUI #Productivity #Interfaces

For the people that think #Mastodon and other social web sites are “ healthier” would love to know your thoughts on this https://www.davideaversa.it/blog/problem-mastodon-fediverse/ #fediverse #fedi #opensocialweb

Why on earth was the #ActivityPub protocol even let out the door without a well-specified and mandatory graceful, non-destructive key rotation scheme?

Yes I know the privacy issues. Those are not valid reasons to not have such a mechanism; it's a valid reason to not enable or use one.

What we're stuck with now is a ton of instances with absurdly long, legacy-algorithm keys (RSA-4096) with no way to replace them with shorter/better keys without effectively losing everything ever posted on the instance.

The protocol is only 7 years old! EC crypto was well-established at the time, and should have been the default.

And what happens once everyone has to replace the keys, because RSA is broken by quantum computers (I know, probably 100 years to go)? The #Fediverse will be a wasteland, with no instances trusting anything from any other instance, so all #Federation breaks down.

Sorry if I got some details wrong about what the protocol says. If I get flamed to death for being wrong, then I'll consider that a Good Thing(TM). I've been trying to find a way to rotate/replace keys for a while and all my searching turns up is either 1) confirmation that most people don't know or care about cryptography, or 2) https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/key-rotation-notification/562 - which really isn't helpful.

If it is possible to gracefully rotate the key(s) of an instance/user, there really has to exist some documentation that explains clearly how to implement this in a server and how to exercise it as a server operator.

#Cryptography #Rant #Mastodon