https://soc.octade.net/sysop/

A fediverse group for discussing topics and tools related to #sysop.

#groups #fedigroups #fediverse #retro

https://soc.octade.net/cypherpunk/

A fediverse group for discussing topics and tools related to #cypherpunks.

#groups #fedigroups #fediverse #retro #cypherpunk #crypto #cryptography #encryption

@cryptography@soc.octade.net @cypherpunk@soc.octade.net

Alt...

Glowing green-lined skull on black background with digital circuit board lines and one eye a glowing bitcoin symbol and the other eye a glowing hashtag with the tagline 'CYPHERPUNK REVOLT'.

Permissions meet groups

• You can control who can see the profile of the forum, i.e. what it is all about. For example, you can only allow confirmed members to see it. Or, in fact, you can only allow certain members to see it by assigning a specific contact role to them. Or you could make it Fediverse-specific: Only those who can be recognised as logged-in Fediverse users can see the profile. Or you can hide it altogether.
• You can control who can see the contacts, i.e. the forum members, all the same. Like, for example, only a chosen inner circle may be allowed to see the list of forum members, but Joe Average Forum Member is not.
• Likewise, you can control who can see what has already happened in the forum when visiting the group profile.
• You can choose to hide the whole forum from the directory, the place where people go to find new contacts (the mastodon.social equivalent is https://mastodon.social/directory), to keep the forum secret altogether by keeping people from finding it accidentally or by searching.

• Normal: public, group members may upload media to the group's file storage
• Limited: public, but group members may not upload media to the group's file storage
• Moderated: like Limited, but by default, posts and comments by new group members have to be approved by the admins; members may have their permissions upgraded and post and comment without approval once they've proven themselves worthy
• Restricted: private, profile is only visible to group members, stream of posts and comments is only visible to group members, posts and comments are only sent to group members, but group members may upload media to the group's file storage

As I've already said, you can grant individual permissions to your contacts on your personal channel. But you can grant individual permissions to forum users on a forum channel just the same. You can have regular users. You can have users with certain extra privileges. You can use the permissions system to silence users without kicking and blocking them.

And you can use the permissions system to appoint extra forum admins/mods. You can grant contacts permission to administer your forum. Now, this requires for your channel to recognise visitors and their identities to see what permissions they shall have and to grant them these permissions. And this requires OpenWebAuth. So right now, you can only make forum members from Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, Friendica, Mitra and Tootik additional admins/mods. But you can.

(9/9)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Privacy #Security #Permission #Permissions #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #PrivateGroups

Groups, part 3: Replying to a thread, and how conversations work

Even if you reply to Carol who has replied to Bob who has replied to Alice who has started a thread in the group.

Within Mastodon, you'd have to mention Carol so she receives and sees your reply, you'd have to mention Bob so he receives and sees your reply, you'd have to mention Alice so she receives and sees your reply.

Conversations on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte work much more like on Facebook: Your reply will go past Carol. Past Bob. Past Alice. Straight to the group account/channel. From there to Alice because she has started the conversation. And to Bob and Carol because they have received the quote-post of Alice's post. And to everyone else who has received the quote-post of Alice's post.

Now, how does everyone see your reply?

At this point, it's important to say that a Friendica feed or a Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte stream looks vastly different from a Twitter feed or a Mastodon timeline and much more like a Facebook feed. Again, that's because Friendica was a Facebook alternative long before Twitter clones became the default. And Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are direct descendants of Friendica with largely the same purpose. So no mimicking Twitter's behaviour here.

What does your Mastodon timeline look like? Single posts with no context. And more single posts with no context. You receive a new post, it immediately shows up at the top of your timeline as a single post with no context. You have no idea how many unread messages you have. You want to see the context of a post, you have to click and click and click.

Facebook doesn't show you single-post-with-no-context piecemeal. Neither do Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. They always show you entire conversations with the top post and with all comments.

Imagine your Mastodon timeline. But instead of single posts with no context, you always see entire conversations with the top post and all replies; that is, you actually only see the last three replies, but you can easily unfold the thread view and see everything.

Imagine whenever someone replies to a post that you already have in your timeline, you automatically receive that reply.

Imagine that you have a little counter of unread messages somewhere. When you receive a new post, the counter goes up by one. When you receive a new reply, the counter goes up by one. But neither that new post nor that new reply is automatically added to the top of your timeline.

Now you click the counter of unread messages. Out comes a list of unread messages. Not the messages proper. A list, including who sent them and, if that's the case, whom they reply to (not as in whom they directly reply to, as in Carol in the above example, but who wrote the top post, as in Alice in the above example).

You can click on any item in the list. Imagine you do. You will leave the timeline view. You will be shown only that one conversation with the top post and the comments. And the view will focus on the new comment and flag it as seen, and the counter of unread messages will go down by one. You can scroll through the conversation and see the entire context in which that reply was posted.

This is what Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups and Forte groups are geared towards. They aren't group add-ons to Mastodon, and they aren't geared towards integrating perfectly into Mastodon. Remember that Friendica groups are almost six years older than Mastodon itself.

I'm not sure how exactly Mastodon users receive replies from Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups or Forte groups. One thing is certain: They will not visibly mention you. Another thing is certain: They will send you replies regardless.

I can only guess what happens: You do get replies. But you get them as new posts in your timeline. And you have to scroll down your timeline until you stumble upon them. If you really want to participate in groups, if you really want to see everything that happens there, you'll have to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll down your timeline until you hit posts which you know you've seen before. You probably won't be notified about these replies.

(3/9)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Conversation #Conversations

Groups, part 2: Starting a thread

If you want to start a new thread in that group, you have to be a member of the group account. Connected to the group account. In Mastospeak, mutually follow the group account.

Then, if you send a new post that mentions the group account, and it is not a reply to another post, then the group account will automatically quote your post and send the quote-post with your post in it to all its connections (followers).

You know quotes? Quote-posts? Like, quote-tweets? What half of Mastodon is so afraid of because it's used on Twitter only to harass and dogpile people? That's what I'm talking about. Friendica has had these quote-posts for almost 16 years, and never have they been used for harassment and dogpiling, for never has anyone used Friendica as a drop-in replacement for Twitter. Friendica calls them "shares". And Friendica has used these quote-posts in groups for almost 16 years.

That is, within Friendica (and its descendants), one thing is a wee bit different: If you're on Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte, you have to send a DM with a special mention (!group instead of @group on Friendica, @!group on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte) to the group account for this to happen. This automatically activates what's "mentioned only" on Mastodon and makes your post a DM.

But from Mastodon accounts and the like, it accepts public posts with @group mentions. That's because Mastodon & Co. don't know !group and @!group mentions.

(2/9)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups

I'd like to see more of that in the fediverse features like events, groups, moderation, different roles, permissions etc. complemented by secure communication!

Friendica

• federating events
• groups (which are special accounts)
• private groups
• hidden groups
• moderated groups
• groups with multiple moderators on the same server
• a permissions system
• DMs that are actually private because they're covered by the permissions system rather than just handling who receives a message
• etc.

It was made as an alternative for Facebook right away. It was not meant to be a Facebook clone, though, but better than Facebook while also covering all long-form blogging features.

And Friendica is fully federated with Mastodon. You can follow Friendica accounts from Mastodon, and Friendica users can connect to your Mastodon account from Friendica.

Hubzilla

• federating events (in addition to a non-federating CalDAV calendar server)
• groups (which are special channels; Hubzilla calls them "forums")
• various independent options of making groups private that can be combined
• hidden groups, groups with multiple admins/moderators anywhere on Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte
• the second-most advanced permissions system in the Fediverse on three levels (entire channel, individual contacts, content) with 17 different permissions and seven or eight channel-wide permission levels for each
• DMs that are actually private because they're covered by the permissions system rather than just handling who receives a message
• optional additional encryption (only works within Hubzilla)
• optional non-federating articles
• optional planning cards
• optional webpages
• optional wikis
• nomadic (fully portable, decentralised, distributed) identity
• etc. etc.

It is considered a "decentralised social content management system" that can be just about anything you want it to be because it's so modular. Basically, what's incomplete and unstable at best and an unfulfilled promise at worst on Bonfire has been readily available and rock-solid stable for over 10 years on Hubzilla. And even more on top of that.

Red, the Hubzilla precursor, was the first software to establish nomadic identity, something that Bluesky claims to be in the process of inventing from scratch. And that was as early as 2012.

Hubzilla was the very first software to implement ActivityPub. And unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub by the book and largely still does so.

And Hubzilla is optionally fully federated with Mastodon. In fact, this comment that you're reading right now comes from Hubzilla. Like, you're directly speaking with someone on something that has absolutely everything you wish for the Fediverse to have, and that has had all of it for longer than Mastodon has existed.

(streams), Forte

• federating events (in addition to a non-federating CalDAV calendar server)
• groups (which are special channels)
• private groups
• hidden groups
• groups with multiple admins/moderators anywhere on Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte
• groups with moderated posting and commenting (as in posts and comments from new members will have to be confirmed by the moderators in order to be visible)
• the most advanced permissions system in the Fediverse on three levels (entire channel, individual contacts, content) with 15 different permissions and three or four channel-wide permission levels for each
• DMs that are actually private because they're covered by the permissions system rather than just handling who receives a message
• nomadic (fully portable, decentralised, distributed) identity
• etc.

Forte is from August, 2024. It was created by Friendica's creator as a fork of (streams).

Forte was the first software to establish nomadic identity via ActivityPub.

And both are fully federated with Mastodon; (streams) optionally so, but it is by default.

I've made a document with a series of tables which directly compare the features of Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte:

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392

In fact, this document is on the very same Hubzilla channel that I'm commenting from right now.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Calendar #Events #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #PrivateGroups #Permission #Permissions

Groups, part 1: Membership

However, Friendica is not a Twitter clone. It's a Facebook replacement, and it has been one long before cloning Twitter was considered the one thing the Fediverse does.

Now, Twitter has followers and followed. As does Mastodon because Mastodon is a Twitter clone.

But Facebook doesn't have followers and followed. It has "friends" which in Twitterspeak and Mastospeak are mutual followers. Thus, it's the same on Friendica.

Friendica doesn't have followers and followed as two fully separate things and mutuals as the state when you follow someone and they follow you back. It has connections which are always mutual.

So in order to really join a Friendica group, you must connect to it (Mastodon: follow it), and the group account must confirm the connection (Mastodon: follow you back).

It's basically the same on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. Only that on these three, much unlike on Mastodon and Friendica, the account, the login and the identity are not tied together into one thing. Imagine you could have as many Mastodon-accounts-as-in-identities on one Mastodon-account-as-in-login. Imagine you could switch back and forth between fully independent identities on the same server without having to log out and back in again. Only that Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte refer to a Mastodon-account-as-in-identity as a "channel" and to a Mastodon-account-as-in-login as an "account".

This means that on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, a group (Hubzilla: forum) is a channel with special settings. As a group owner, you have one account/login, and on that one account/login, you have your personal channel, and you have your group/forum channel, and you can switch between them while staying logged in.

(1/9)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups

[for your address book]

https://soc.octade.net/usenet/

A #Fediverse group for discussing topics and tools related to #Usenet and #NNTP or #NetworkNews.

#groups #fedigroups #fediverse #retro

Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en). Image attribution: Benjamin D. Esham / Wikimedia Commons.

Alt...

A graphical interpretation of the "Big Nine" hierarchies on Usenet. The image shows a grid with the name of each hierarchy in a square cell. image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en). Image attribution: Benjamin D. Esham / Wikimedia Commons.

I tried: https://a.gup.pe/u/opensource

And instead of the group page I got the page shown in the attached image.

#MemoryHole #GuppeGroups #Fediverse #Groups