#funkwhale 1.4.0 is on the way! We have some translations that are nearly complete, but we need some help getting them over the finish line.
If you have the time and are a speaker of Occitan, Dutch, Chinese (Simplified), Italian, Polish, Basque, Japanese, or Portuguese (Brazil), we'd really appreciate your help getting our translation strings to 100%
@ernest
thank you! tags from kbin do federate on microblogging fedi - kbin users should use the the tags section rather than the text body though
i also had a look at friendica; sadly, friendica seems not to be capable to pick up tagged posts from kbin > see e.g. https://friendica.opensocial.space/search?tag=kbin > tried my luck at several friendica instances, and every time: no content from kbin
tags in kbin threads do not display on kbin pwa, e.g. https://kbin.social/m/kbinDevlog/t/692551 > on microblogging fedi platforms, i can see three tags: kbin, fediverse, and kbinDevlog for the magazine > with kbin pwa, neither kbin nor fediverse show up
what do we have to do to make the #ActivityPub plugin attractive to more #WordPress users? We are currently at 4000+ active users on WordPress.org + the WordPress.com users.
bto, bcc to not exist or be broadly disabled in AP (edit, to clarify: I want to and cc to take the meaning of bto and bcc in general; the functionality is useful, but in a social network it should be the default behavior and we have other mechanisms to tag people in)
If people who want to be on BlueSky end up on BlueSky, and people who want to be in the fediverse end up in the fediverse, we'll all be happier.
Tech details aside, I understand that the culture of BlueSky is "Twitter without Elon." I came to the fediverse looking for the same thing, but I've stayed because our culture isn't remotely like Twitter before Elon, either.
What’s the BBC up to in the Fediverse? What have they learned so far from their experiments? And how is all this like the early days of the internet? In the latest episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO @mike chats with @Ianforrester, Senior Firestarter at @BBCRD. (How cool is that title, btw!)
Framasoft, the French non-profit organisation for open source software such as PeerTube, says that after 5 years, Mobilizon has reached maturity. In December 2018 the organisation announced their plans to develop Mobilizon, with the goal of creating an alternative to Facebook Groups and events.
Over the years, they have added multiple updates, such as federation in 2020 and searching across Mobilizon instances in 2020. This month, they are releasing their final update, v4, with a variety of new features.
Event administrators can now send private announcements to attendees, allowing them to contact all people who have registered for an event directly. This announcement is a one-way communications channel, intended for organisers to broadcast information. Besides that, a chat system for attendees is also implemented, which federates with the rest of the fediverse.
Another new feature is the ability to import and synchronise events from other platforms, such as Meetup and EventBrite. Framasoft created an import tool that allows you to import and synchronise event information from these platforms into Mobilizon. iCal event feeds are support too, so this even works with most calendar tools.
The big platform for importing events from is Facebook. Here, Framasoft has done the work to get it to work, and the ball is now in Facebook’s court to approve and validate. Framasoft is clear that they do not have a timeline how long this will take, and that they are unsure if Facebook will do so.
While Framasoft sees Mobilizon has having completed their vision, it is far from over for the project. Framasoft will hand over the keys to the French association Kaihuri, who has been maintaining a Mobilizon presence for a while. Kaihuri recently got funding from NLnet to continue development work on Mobilizon, focusing on the user experience and improving interoperability. Meanwhile, Framasoft is betting big on PeerTube for next year, and is currently organising their yearly donation drive.
#ActivityPub dev tip of the day: An inbox (or outbox) is not a queue. An inbox is reverse chronological (LIFO-ish) and maintains long-term references to items. A queue has FIFO behavior and items are dequeued/removed for processing. AP is difficult enough without equating the inbox concept with MQ middleware (which could be a useful internal implementation technique).
I've been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon's responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that'll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn't be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can't have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they're probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there'd be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that's why they're separate to begin with. You don't see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don't necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the "All Content" tab if you'd like, they're styled differently enough that it's very clear when you're looking at a thread and when you're looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I've been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that's what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that's also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, "Wait, what's this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated," even if you tell them to ignore it.
It's probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I'm expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would've made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin's magazine system). However, this doesn't mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I'd love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn't mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
This isn't a hurdle because people typically aren't going to the fediverse with the idea of "I want a single app for all my social media." That's not how social media works outside the fediverse, so it's not really going to be a surprise that the Twitter replacement is a Twitter replacement and not one for 5 other platforms. If someone really wants to view Reddit-style threads, they're straight up better of making an account on a different platform (just like they would make a different account for Reddit) because Mastodon is a microblogging site.
Even the best attempt to incorporate all these different types of content into Mastodon is going to further complicate the platform and make more people dismiss Mastodon as too complicated of a Twitter alternative. This isn't a situation where there's no harm at best. And the potential benefit? Lemmy comments having the occasional Mastodon user?
Mastodon itself is a good enough introduction to ActivityPub without needing to make it support other things. It shows how people on different servers can share & interact with a pool of media through the same protocol. When people learn about other platforms on the fediverse, they can go check those out. Just promoting the platforms will do the job fine without complicating people's entry into the fediverse.
Misskey, the fediverse microblogging platform that’s popular in Japan, has provided a recap of 2023, and it has been a big year for Misskey. The platform saw massive growth, the main server Misskey.io incorporated itself, and a number of new features and performance improvements.
The flagship server Misskey.io grew from 500 daily active users in January to 28k daily active users in December. They grew from around 20k registered accounts at the beginning of the year to over 400k accounts now. As with most social networks, growth happened in bursts, with a major increase in March and July, while the other months grew much slower.
With the growth came other changes as well: the server misskey.io incorporated itself, and main developer Syuilo became a director of the organisation as well. Donations and sponsorships also grew significantly. For the future, Syuilo says that “there are limits to relying solely on donations from everyone, so I would like to find a way to monetize the project.”
Misskey Pages allow users to create custom web pages on the platform that they can share. It can be programmed as well, and Misskey created a custom scripting language AiScript so people can safely add code to their Misskey Pages as well.
Other updates include refactoring of code and performance improvements, more information on that can be found here and here.
Misskey’s vision for fediverse servers is visible in their updates on moderation; every user can be assigned different roles that control permissions of the user in detail. In the update they say that this has greatly affected the operation of the Misskey server. This implies a vision for Misskey of larger servers, with a more complex structure for administration and moderation.
The future plans for Misskey focus heavily on the playful aspect of social communities: two games will be added that can be played on Misskey; Misskey Room as a way to play with other users in 3D space, as well as a chat interface. This puts Misskey further it’s unique place in the fediverse.
