Fediverse

Bluesky has verified the account of ICE, which was a step too far for many in the fediverse, wanting to disconnect from the bridge between the networks

The presence itself of ICE on Bluesky is a form of harm, and Bluesky is not well equipped to deal with this new challenge. Making things worse, their verification system is set up to delegate responsibility, but instead they made no use of it

Crossposted from https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@lemmy.zip/t/2330341

Crossposting to get more input (on the actual issues)

Fedi folks, I turn to you for advice with a bit of a problem. I co-admin an ActivityPub-enabled Wordpress site with 15+ years worth of blog posts and a couple of long podcast series. When WP announced their "vision" to become a CMS for "AI", the collective admin reaction was to get the hell off that boat before it turned to algorithmic shit.

[NB — I realise this isn't an anti-"AI" community, but that part is only the starting premise of our situation here. I'm not getting into discussions with slop herders in the comments]

We're a loose network of nerds discussing the speculative genres, including sci-fi. We've seen this movie, we know how it's going to play out. Trouble is, we're not coders. We can assemble the proverbial IKEA flatpak kit and give it a lick of CSS paint, but we can't be trusted to build furniture we'd want to sit in ourselves.

The crunch points for alternatives are

• the ability to migrate an old, multi-user WP site without breaking too many canonical URLs and feeds,

• needing a somewhat familiar backend for most of the non-techie contributors to even post stuff, and

• the federation bit, which is why I post this to !fediverse first. I am aware that setting up an essentially new fedi instance at the same address as a previous one is disencouraged. I'll be glad to hear how or if this can be avoided while preserving profile and post URLs...

So last month I mined the Mastodon hive mind for existing alternatives to WP with fediverse capabilities, and got a selection of qualified responses. I nixed WriteFreely and Plume early on, because while they are perfectly good, federated blog software, my impression is they lean toward a text focused minimalist layout that would be hard to deviate from, where our current site has a bit more pizzazz.

Going through the alternatives listed below, maybe that's a superficial reason to throw some good options out with the bath water. Either way, I'm presenting you with the most frequent, feasible, and/or interesting offers. I've done some surface research and weighed pros and cons for our use case, but I hope there are people out there who can add their experience to the eventual decision:

ClassicPress

This should be a shoo-in, right? It's basically Wordpress with some newer parts torn out (specifically the Gutenberg block editor), but most of the core architecture remains. Including many, many plug-ins. Plus, they're said to have sworn off any "AI" nonsense. Migration would be relatively easy, and with a little bit of luck nobody would even know the difference.

Except apparently compatibility with the WP-activityPub plugin broke. So that's out of the window.

Ghost

A lot of recommendations for Ghost! I believe it was originally another Wordpress fork, but was completely rewritten early on? Either way, a few things turn me off Ghost as an potential alternative:

• The insistent "we help you monetize your content" vibe on the project website. That's a personal quibble; our site is just entirely non-commercial for the sake of everybody's well-being. I'm told all of that stuff can be turned off in individual installs, though.

• Ghost's ActivityPub implementation is reportedly not making great progress despite enthusiastic early announcements? If that's not a deal breaker,

• the fact that the Ghost devs are relying on agentic LLMs to code the application is. Just nope.

Backdrop CMS/Drupal

From what I'm told, Drupal is a step up the CMS learning curve from Wordpress, but since they're projects that have coexisted for a long time, there are established and tried migration methods from one to the other.

I'm not exactly on top of Drupal's ActivityPub implementation, though. But even if that's in a workable shape, Drupal is trying to pitch itself as "the best AI-powered Open Source CMS in the world". Which, to me, is like saying you only put the sharpest razor blades available in kids' Hallowe'en candy.

One user involved in the Backdrop CMS fork from Drupal 7 made convincing arguments for that over later Drupal versions, so here's hoping they drank the right (ie., federated, not algorithmic) Kool Aid.

Hubzilla

Now, this may be the most exciting but also most challenging alternative. Hubzilla is a fairly advanced, and in some ways mold-breaking Fediverse application. From the same developer who made Friendica and (streams), and, if I understand correctly, based on the same core principles.

In contrast to Wordpress and Drupal, Hubzilla declares itself "a CMS which doesn't use LLM / AI". Can't say I don't appreciate that signalling! And of course the whole package revolves around federation. But wait.

The CMS part may be technically correct, but as far as I can tell making Hubzilla present as a plain blog or website requires some advanced stylesheet finagling — and the application only comes with one official, microblog-esque theme. I haven't found any open projects trying to bridge that visual gap, but will appreciate your tips about them if they exist.

For Hubzilla to be a feasible alternative here, we will also need to be able to migrate existing posts, media, users and comments from Wordpress. Preferably in a way that doesn't mess up permalinks too badly. A quick glance at Hubzilla urls indicate that the entire architecture is very different. I assume concepts like "channels" substitute "authors"(?) but I don't know where we are with WP terms like taxonomies.

So there's a challenge, and I'm hoping others have tried (and hopefully succeeded in) that particular migration... or at least have advice to offer.

Bonus: Bonfire

I'm putting this on the table because I expect somebody is going to suggest it in the comments. Like Hubzilla, Bonfire looks really interesting as a Swiss army knife for the Fediverse: You want to make a blog? Take these modules. A community forum? Try these other ones. It's federated first, and it seems to make good headway toward its goals.

But there is no official CMS flavour is still in development; we have no idea about migration possibilities, and honestly? The more mature Hubzilla will be a challenge, I'm fairly certain this is a step further out of our comfort zone. This is totally an "us" problem, not a Bonfire one.

So, thoughts? Specifically practical advice on Hubzilla and/or/versus Backdrop, which I think are the most realistic avenues right now. But there may be alternatives I just didn't see even though they're right in front of me.

I'm ready to have my mind changed on WriteFreely, or to hear about something completely new to me. Mostly though, I'm hoping for replies that consider the massive history of posts and comments that we look to import into the next generation of our site.

Thanks in advance!

Central thesis: "In a world where established platforms are turning from the promised rescue of digital journalism to its danger, journalism should consider being active in the fediverse."

Hey, I am curious, are people working on storing fediverse data off the servers? Like using bittorent protocol or ipfs?

There have been a couple of posts somewhat recently asking what can be done to attract new users to the Fediverse. My answer was basically "make it something new people would want to see and stick around for". The crux of that was basically less news, less politics, less rage and more, well, anything else.

So, I would like to propose a challenge to all: Let's try that. At least for a week.

Sound good? Here's how you can participate:

1. If you're one who posts a lot of news/politics...stop or at least slow down. Post literally anything else. Or try to post less rage-inducing news and try to dig up the good news that's happening. Sorry !upliftingnews@lemmy.world but it's the regular news communities that are flooding the zone with every single bad thing that happens anywhere in the world, so we may be stealing some of your content with this one.

2. Think before posting something. Are you only posting it because you're mad about it and you think other people should be mad about it too? If so, maybe post something else. Is there already similar coverage of that? Chances are, we don't need more of it.

3. If you're a lurker, post something. Add your voice.

4. Refrain from upvoting / booting all the negativity. Yes, it may feel good to upvote for visibility because "people need to know this" but the end result is the feed turning into a list of things to rage about. If you see good/non-rage news, upvote that for visibility. I've seen many posts like that languish with a few tens of upvotes at most while the rage-inducing news gets hundreds of upvotes.

5. Post what makes you happy rather than what you're angry about.

6. Avoid dogpiling on people if they express a different opinion. I'm not saying feed the trolls or pat them on the head, just merely "disengage" or avoid the impulse to virtue dump on them and such.

7. If you have a hobby, share it! There's plenty of hobby communities that would greatly benefit from additional contributors. If you're boring like me, well, there's !Dullsters@dullsters.net or !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world (the latter welcomes all as the name is just a reference to the original)

8. If you're already doing the above: THANK YOU ❤️. Maybe consider posting a little more unless you think additional contributions would be spammy.

9. Anything else you can think of to make the homepage/experience feel more welcoming and less like an angry mob (suggestions in the comments are more than welcome).

I know not everyone will participate, and that's okay. Simply adding more positivity and posting/boosting less rage can have a positive effect on what shows up on /all which is what potential new users see by default.

So, let's try this for a week and see what happens. Who knows? Maybe the established userbase will find it refreshing as well.

Who's with me?

Does anyone know of a desktop client app for Linux which allows for easily switching between accounts?

Perhaps this is already implemented on one of the Lemmy variants?

New features :

• auto closing/suspending stale communities
• • stale could be defined as unanswered mod reports, no mod activity (no post, comment, login in x time period), no posts
• staggered new account permissions:
• • wait 24h before commenting, wait 7 days before posting.
• allow community users to flag posts or comments as NSFW.
• • Voting changes from up, down to up, down or NSFW.)

Curious what people think about this?

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.nocturnal.garden/post/474911

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41807814

Before anyone says it: yes, I know about Funkwhale.

Funkwhale is great, but what I’m imagining is slightly different.

I'm not just talking about a platform where users upload their own music, but something closer to how YouTube Music actually works. Artists would upload their own music and videos, either to a shared instance or to their own instance, and listeners could then stream them across the fediverse.

Something similar to how Peertube, Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, etc work.

---

One of the big appeals of YouTube Music (at least IMO) is that since it runs off YouTube, you get an absolutely wild mix of content. Official tracks, obscure uploads, forgotten demos, weird one-off videos, hyper-niche stuff that would never exist on Spotify or Apple Music.

The closest alternative to it would be SoundCloud, but even then, SC is more underground music scene.

---

In theory, I could imagine a potential federated alternative that hooks into PeerTube. Maybe users log in with their PeerTube account or instance, and music-focused instances federate with video-focused ones.

Something like “PeerTube Music” or a dedicated ActivityPub music service that interoperates with PeerTube.

---

Obviously, you’re not going to get big-name artists right away (or maybe ever), but that’s true of basically every fediverse project at the start. You’d still get regular users, indie artists, experimental musicians, archive uploads, and all the strange internet music culture that YouTube Music accidentally preserves.

---

Curious what people here think:

Could PeerTube realistically be extended in this direction?

Is it feasible with current ActivityPub tooling?

Are there projects I’m missing that already aim for this, beyond Funkwhale?

Or does Funkwhale already cover more of this than I’m giving it credit for?

Interested to hear thoughts.

---

I would love to help with something like this, but, unfortunately, I lack the time and energy.

There seems to be a serious lack of a Discord equivalent fediverse platform unlike other social media alternatives. Most of the closest options are either too overwhelming in UI/UX for majority of people coming from Discord, missing deal-breaking features like video calling or are not federated.

Could it due to some technical limitation of the ActivityPub protocol? I skimmed through its documentation and I get the impression that content may not be accommodating of instant messaging without unconventional modifications. It would also be troublesome to federate massive bunch of messages across (physical) servers in real time.

If it were truly possible to create a Discord alternative, what would it take to make it compatible with the fediverse while also ensuring it feels functional and intuitive for migrating users and not pose too much of a resource drain for self hosters?

Edit: Modified title to clarify post talking about ActivityPub in particular

On Digg there's some drama because someone registered the community “/wallstreetbets,” and the admins took it from him and gave it to one mod of the subreddit “r/wallstreetbets.”

One day later I see this discussion about how Reddit registered trademarks for some high-profile subreddits.

This could be relevant for the Threadiverse.

I suppose this is a problem with the instance, but I have no idea how to debug it.

This is the post https://feddit.bg/post/292412 and this is a comment from a mastodon user that doesn't make it through: https://mastodon.social/@dimkorchev/115912556149075848

All the prerequisites seem to be there, so I suppose the problem is with my instance. Any ideas what I should debug to understand the problem better?

@AssociatedPress I follow you via Activitypub but I am struggling to figure out two things.

How could I follow just your top stories, tech or international without all the sports? - Do you need to separate out your flipboard accounts to make this possible?

How could I see just your stories on a particular topic - say #Iran ? Would you need to add some topic keywords/hashtags to your posts?

Welcome yours or anyone elses from knowledge on this

@fediverse

No self hosting solution. There is many thing I don't like on schedule.lemmings.world

It doesn't remember my most used community , I always has to put language as English for the scheduling to be posted. Also if I by mistake schedule a post in the past it post the post instantly

ActivityPub is getting its first formal update path since 2018. I wrote about why this matters, how this leads to some strange and funny power dynamics, and about who actually participate

So I made a script that post once every 8 hours or where I start the script. The script will post to random c/ that has subscribers but low activity from a corresponding subreddit in hopes of jump starting it.

I do like the features where the image/video is simply put the url into the URL of a lemmy post so Reddit host the file and lemmy instances simply have to send text.

So far it has been a success. While I was building the script and making it post to my very niche 1 sub community the post ended up getting a few comments and over a dozen up votes. Which is great because I got surprised and I got to engage with other users and learn about something new.

Really the challenge is to find existing communities that don't have a active counterpart, have subscribers, have little to no activity, and something I have knowledge over. It would be strange to have something posted randomly and know nothing about that community or post or I have to spend 10 minutes figuring out what got posted

How do I search on pixelfed

I can't find a search feature anywhere

Does it require an account? I've just been trying to browse, haven't signed up atm

(I might be dumb)

I posted this previously on new communities, but I thought it would be good to share here.

Keyboard Vagabond, www.keyboardvagabond.com hosts Piefed, Mastodon, Pixelfed, as well as Write Freely (blogging) for travelers and digital nomads. Check out the communities for resources and links!

I just tried to make a post on Mastodon and tag a community in it so that my post would show up in that community -- something I've done many times before.

However, in this case, there is a Lemmy user with the same name as the community, and it defaulted to tagging that user. Is there a way to tag the community specifically?

I didn't even realize that a user could have the same name as a community. I thought every fediverse actor had to have a unique at-name-at-domain handle, and both users and communities were actors.

Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.

The data

I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:

query {  
  monthlystats {  
    date_checked  
    softwarename  
    total_posts  
    total_users  
    total_comments  
  }  
}  

Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:

jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'  

(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)

Then did a good old' chart

What to think of it

I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice