Fediverse

Hello all :) I have spent most of today trying to reply to my own comment by making my own AP implementation using node.js.

This is the Note I am trying to reply to: https://social.bvoigtlaender.de/@bjarne/statuses/01KDP1FQNJTTZGB3Q3BMD1JRMX

For that I am sending a POST to my Gts instance over at https://social.bvoigtlaender.de/users/bjarne/inbox with the following body:

{  
    "@context": [  
        "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"  
    ],  
    "actor": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/users/marty_mcfly34",  
    "cc": [  
        "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public",  
        "https://social.bvoigtlaender.de/users/bjarne"  
    ],  
    "id": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/posts/33135fdf-2fd6-4977-94e8-051ce44199fe/activity#Create",  
    "type": "Create",  
    "published": "2025-12-29T22:02:13.423Z",  
    "to": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/users/marty_mcfly34/followers",  
    "object": {  
        "attachment": [],  
        "id": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/posts/33135fdf-2fd6-4977-94e8-051ce44199fe",  
        "actor": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/users/marty_mcfly34",  
        "type": "Note",  
        "cc": [  
            "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public",  
            "https://social.bvoigtlaender.de/users/bjarne"  
        ],  
        "published": "2025-12-29T22:02:13.423Z",  
        "url": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/posts/33135fdf-2fd6-4977-94e8-051ce44199fe",  
        "attributedTo": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/users/marty_mcfly34",  
        "inReplyTo": "https://social.bvoigtlaender.de/users/bjarne/statuses/01KDP1FQNJTTZGB3Q3BMD1JRMX",  
        "content": "<p>Hello from FediBB</p>",  
        "to": "https://fb2-01.bvoigtlaender.de/users/marty_mcfly34/followers"  
    }  
}  

The signature works and GtS is not reporting any errors. Instead it fetches /followers /following /outbox and creates the user on its local db. However the reply will not be created and it only shows up after I fetch it manually using its id. Then it also gets linked the original post correctly. I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

What AP implementations do you normally test against?

I guess this is a me trying to figure out how to grow lemmy or fediverse in general. Just getting frustrated and want to do something constructive and put idea out and have idea come in.

In me head I head this line of "will you after engagement grows will you improve a project or will you improve a project to encourage engage" to me the answer settled on keep doing what you can to improve project and kinda hope it increases engagement.

For lemmy it seems as though the technical side is solid it's just building lemmy communities. Right now I'm thinking of building a Florida c/ but it would come off as a hard endeavor because idk what I'd do with it. Would I post random new stories in Florida would it be politics. Plus I've been told that posting links "clutters the Internet" and people would get confused as to where to find original links. Then there's getting people to a Florida c/, do I just go into discords and tell people about a fledging group

I do want geographical based c/ since they are more personal to people and would increase engagement on lemmy but that small steps that need to be worked out.

I do wonder if it would be worth it do sneak content from reddit to relevant c/. I know they do it for NSFW subreddits, but it might be worth it for hyper specific subreddits just to have that content to engage with, but that could be viewed as an IP infringement

I started working on a script that will take top post from subreddits to post then to corresponding c/ on lemmy with various accounts to give the impression of minimal activity.

The idea comes from a lemmy user etting saying they would never want to support reddit with lemmy content (or in general), and instead just taking the content from there and putting it on lemmy.

It feels like I'm just kinda sewing lemmy into the human centipede that is content filler. I can see why content does get reposted it's entertaining and engaging and they propagate.

It does feel like a Pandora's jar like I'm laying a foundation for a bot army even though I only plan to be small scale

So I stumbled upon this by accident and I'm a noob about how Lemmy works, so sorry if it's a well-known thing.

I opened lemmy.ml (dont have an account there) and one of the posts was from their Linux community about Asahi running on an m2 macbook. I then tried to look it up on my phone on Jerboa and to my surprise - couldn't find it. I then went to lemmy.world and from there go to the community and - I couldn't find it there either. I thought maybe it's a synchronization issue and it will show up eventually. But since then, several posts were made and all showed up immediately. Only that post was skipped. What's going on?

Here's the post in question: https://lemmy.ml/post/40800257

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40697282

This is mostly just word-vomit, but I had a random idea while doing a tonne of Xmas shopping and figured you guys might appreciate possibly chewing on it.

What if there potentially was a Fediverse-style alternative / competitor to Amazon Prime, etc. but instead of being one giant marketplace (a la Flohmarkt, etc.), it was made up of independent websites that federate together?

---

Think something architecturally similar to Lemmy, Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops by Pixelfed, etc, but:

No “instances” in the traditional sense (like Lemmy servers, Mastodon, instances, etc.)

Instead, each shop is its own fully independent website

(e.g.

Gotyka,

Dolls Kill,

Dracula Clothing,

VampireFreaks,

Killstar,

Hot Topic,

Barnes and Noble,

Home Depot,

Everlane,

Kotn,

Pact,

American Giant,

Taylor Stitch,

Outerknown,

plus other shops for books, electronics, home goods, etc.)

---

The federated layer wouldn’t replace their storefronts. It would just:

Aggregate listings / catalogs

Allow discovery, search, wishlists, maybe reviews

Potentially handle things like recommendations without centralizing power

Function kind of like a decentralized “market index” rather than a single store

In other words: a protocol + shared infrastructure, not a mega-store.

---

Some half-baked thoughts:

Users might sign in via each individual shop (or perhaps via a shared fediverse identity like ActivityPub / OAuth / something new)

Each store keeps control of branding, stock, payments, policies

The “platform” just connects them into one large, searchable, decentralized marketplace

No single Amazon-style choke point that can enshittify everything

---

I love this idea in theory, but realistically:

I don’t have the skills, knowledge, or time to build anything like this

I also don’t know if this already exists in some form (OpenBazaar vibes? Solid? Something ActivityPub-adjacent?)

This is more of a conceptual “what if” than a proposal

---

But the idea stuck with me because:

I hate how centralized Amazon is

I like how the Fediverse decentralizes control

And holiday shopping really highlights how fragmented yet monopolized online commerce has become

---

So I’m mostly curious:

Is this technically feasible with existing Fediverse tech?

Has something like this already been attempted?

What would be the biggest blockers — payments, trust, logistics, identity, incentives?

Would independent shops even want this, or would it be more attractive to smaller creators?

Is there a protocol or project adjacent to this idea?

---

This idea honestly came from Xmas shopping fatigue and bouncing between a million tabs, wishing there was a non-Amazon way to do “one stop shopping” without recreating Amazon itself.

Curious to hear thoughts, critiques, or “this already exists and you reinvented the wheel” responses.

---

Also, feel more than welcome to steal the idea.

EDIT:

Would something like Shops

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/shops/5354

work?

good for sharing off-fedi!

This is our biggest release yet, including more finished tasks than any of our previous ones. Below is a summary of the highlights:

What's new

Posts & communities can be labelled as AI-generated and people can choose to hide all posts tagged that way. Very similar to how NSFW works.

Comments can be marked as an Answer, like on StackOverflow.

React to posts and comments with an emoji.

Hide an individual post from yourself, without blocking the author.

PieFed is now in the Yunohost app store, making initial setup easier.

When banned from a remote instance you cannot make local-only posts in their communities.

Honeypot to automatically IP ban badly-behaved crawlers.

https://lemmy-federate.com/ integration, making PieFed communities get more exposure.

"Share on Mastodon" menu item on posts.

Vastly improve docs for new developers, see https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/docs/developer_docs.

Language selection is more visible during post creation.

Tag clouds can also be viewed as a list of tags.

View post/comment markdown.

Bot accounts are not included in community statistics.

Footnote support in markdown.

Polish translation.

Better HTTP caching, which reduces dependence on Cloudflare.

Bugs

Passkey fixes.

Polls can now have up to 15 options.

User profile performance improved.

Don't allow bypassing minimum username length and post title with whitespace.

Polls and Events can no longer be posted into Lemmy communities.

API

Additional user settings can be set through the api, including Extra Fields.

Fetch url metadata.

Sort comments by controversial.

Comment search now works.

Hashtags.

Events.

Polls.

Emoji reactions on posts and comments.

See https://piefed.social/c/piefed_api for more details.

To upgrade

To upgrade from 1.3.x:

git pull  
git checkout v1.4.x  
./deploy.sh or ./deploy-docker.sh  

There is a big database migration that will take a few minutes to run. How long will vary depending on how old your instance is - older instances will have more content to process. It took ~25 minutes on piefed.social so expect it to be less than that.

Donations

PieFed is free and open-source software while operating without any advertising, monetization, or reliance on venture capital. Your donations are vital in supporting the PieFed development effort, allowing us to expand and enhance PieFed with new features.

Donations can be made via Patreon, Liberapay or Ko-fi.

I tried signing up for a pixelfed account. I picked pixelfed.global. the last step of registering is they send you an email. You click the confirm, and your account becomes active.

Except I never got the email. I thought "Maybe I typed the wrong email?"

But no. My email and username was free to register the first time, but now it says that email and username aren't available.

So I'm registered, but can't log in because that username doesn't exist. I can't register that name, because it's now taken.

So I'm in limbo of registration process....but now I can't even figure out how to email the admins.

What do I do now?

I read an old thread documenting the opinions of Lemmy maintainers an the .ml instance. The issue of funding a project with people openly expressing opinions many find distasteful and it being the biggest reddit alternative on the fediverse came up, so here's a topic to discuss it.

What should we do? What are the options?

Answer: No fork necessary, there are Piefed and Mbin.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/57328037

Link: https://survey.fedecan.ca//s/cmjcnqzgd0002th01dh6naqm6

The census will close on January 15th, 2026.

A lot has changed since our last census in 2023! We would like to take another opportunity to learn about our growing community.

Everyone is welcome to fill out this survey. You do not need to be located in Canada, and you do not need to have an account on one of our platforms. If you do have an account on lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, piefed.ca, and/or pixelfed.ca, you can indicate that on the census in order to be included in those separate graphs/visualizations.

No question is mandatory. You may skip any question by either selecting “no answer (skip this question)”, or by leaving the question blank. Some questions will be hidden depending on your selections. For example, the Pixelfed specific questions will be hidden if you don't select that as one of the platforms you use.

Sections:

• Section 1: Location
• Section 2: Demographics
• Section 3a: Instance Usage (Forum/Threadiverse)
• Section 3b: Instance Usage (Pixelfed)
• Section 4: Feedback / Closing questions

When results are ready, we will share them on our website and with posts on:

• !main@lemmy.ca
• !main@sh.itjust.works
• !main@piefed.ca
• A pinned post on pixelfed.ca

The questions were created with help from @Dave@lemmy.nz, based on the questions from their census this year :)

I would like to sign up to PeerTube, and I'm not sure which instance to choose. I'll mostly be commenting (I can't fedi-comment because dbzer0 lemmy throws an error when trying to do so), but I might end up posting videos.

My criteria are:

• Not too small (I want an instance with low shutdown risk and preferably hosted by more than one person)
• Not too big (because signing up to the already big ones is bad for decentralization)
• Federates with most of the network, but blocks bad instances
• Properly moderated
• Good reputation
• Lib-left owners/admins

Which instances fit these criteria the best? Which do you use? Which would you recommend?

This has been in my head for months that one big problem with the fediverse is that you can get linked for a fediverse service but to an instance your not on and you have to find your instance and hope it's federated to the account your looking for.

I did run into this problem when I made a peertube plug in and I wanted to like videos but I had to paste in an instance just to get 404 error.

Plug in already exist, but if not it might be useful to make it

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40568658

I recently came across three separate platforms:

Qortal: https://qortal.org/

ZeroNet: https://zeronet.io/

and

Plebbit: https://plebbit.com/

That all claim to be completely decentralized.

---

There's even talk about how Plebbit is more decentralized than the Fediverse, because the Fediverse is based off of instances.

https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/s/0ynXzrD5H6

---

And I was curious, would such a setup work better for the Fediverse, or is it basically just a huge scam/waste of time and money?

I've tried Mastodon and Sharkey, but both have the problem that the chronological display prioritizes quantity over quality. Interesting posts disappear in the noise of mediocrity. I'm looking for a feature that shows me the best posts of the day/last hour, etc., similar to Lemmy.

Even better would be an open sorting algorithm like Loops or one where I can set the weighting of posts myself.

Or perhaps there is an app that can do this?

Threads' fediverse integration is on maintenance mode, signalling the end to a tumultuous story and period for the fediverse.

I love the Fediverse and Lemmy. But technically, it still lags behind the big platforms in some areas. And there are many things where I believe the Fediverse will eventually be significantly better than centralized platforms, but which are still underdeveloped. Unfortunately, I can't program myself, or at least not very well. So I'm wondering how I can best support development financially.

I would like to start sharing podcast episodes I like on lemmy/threadiverse, but it feels like there is no non-awkward way to do it. Often podcasts don't actually have their own website and it feels obtuse to link to applepodcasts or something...