Is it just Kbin, or does every fediverse service have the issue of being totally swarmed with bots advertising illegal pharmaceuticals? Is this just the result of limited moderation?
Can you imagine what the #Fediverse would look like now if the response to Gab had been "Admins don't need to block these instances, individual users can just choose whether or not to apply a user-level block (mute) themselves"?
And #Meta is even more corrosive than Gab. Gab users just posted a barrage of hate and unpleasantness. Meta is commercially incentivised to destroy what some people are inviting it into.
Today was a huge milestone in our quest to federate #Flipboard and tear down the walls around our own walled garden.
First, we launched a new version of Flipboard for iOS and Android which brings the promise of two way federation to life. Now when a federated Flipboard user curates, people in the fediverse can reply, favorite, boost or follow those Flipboard users who will in turn see that activity in their usual notifications tab. Even better, Flipboard users can directly reply to people in the fediverse -- and very soon they will also be able to follow each other.
Second, we federated some of our best curators today who are actively curating more than 10,000 magazines about everything from climate change to kale smoothie recipes. I'm grateful to our many curators and the service they provide to so many others who want to find the best content about a shared interest. I know our curators are excited to have millions more people who could potentially benefit from their curation. I also know that people in the fediverse will give a warm welcome to these curators. Especially now that everyone can hear and talk to each other over what was once two totally separate networks but now increasingly are in one and the same #fediverse.
There is a lot of criticism on the #Fediverse for people who won't leave Twitter/X. And, indeed, there are plenty of good reasons for leaving that platform, or for any other commercialized social media platform for that matter.
However, we need to remember that while these platforms are not safe for marginalized people, neither is #Mastodon and the #Fediverse by default. The user base is still overwhelmingly white and European and North American.
And, all other things being equal, this user base tends to be wealthier than other demographic groups, and has more free time as well.
This is important, as running and moderating Mastodon instances is a non-trivial investment in money and time - things that marginalized people are more likely to lack. And given how they are more likely to be subject to discrimination, marginalized people need even more and better moderation - and they likely have to do it themselves, as others are unlikely to even recognize many forms of harassment.
So, stick to Twitter/X and experience lots of harassment... or move to the Fediverse where you will also experience a lot of harassment unless you spend lots of time and resources on moderation? Time and resources you might not have in the first place?
When put that way, it's not such an easy choice to make. Especially if the vast majority of your community is still on Twitter/X, and is unlikely to move to Mastodon without a clear demonstration that the Fediverse is better for their community.
I don't have a solution for this dilemma. But we can't find a solution without recognizing the problem in the first place.
This is your periodic reminder that you will be happier in the #Fediverse and find it more rewarding if you are quick to follow people and also quick to unfollow / mute / block.
Quick to follow is important because that's how to build a community of interest.
Quick to unfollow etc. is even more important, because you don't owe anyone here your time or attention and you shouldn't give it to people who don't spark joy. #FediTips#fediquette
Serious question for those that this is relevant to: if you don't understand how ActivityPub works, even a little bit, why do you feel the need to have opinions on how it should work?
Isn't this backwards as hell? Shouldn't you try to understand how something works, then ask why it is that way and if it's intentional?
Too many people here have this strange opinion that they have some sort of privacy, even if their profile/posts are set to "public".
This is just simply not true. We're on the internet. There's over 20,000 Fedi instances and there's just no way to manually parse them to make sure there's no "bad actors" using your "public" posts for whatever the hell they want.
We already see this happening with things like NewsMast which is aiming to be a "news" app where their users don't have to login or register to a Fediverse server, yet they will see posts by Fediverse users from bigger instances based on "categories".
Maybe do some research about how the protocol works and how it's VERY opt-out to the core, before you have opinions on it. Just saying....
Threads has joined the fediverse in an open beta, allowing people from US, Canada and Japan to opt-in to having their Threads post be visible in the fediverse
@fediforum happened this week, with a ton of great demos, a large variety of sessions, and multiple calls and initiatives for more collaboration across the fediverse
Dear #Fediverse app devs (including the #mastodon web interface itself): PLEASE stop autocorrecting my #CamelCase'd hashtags into all-lower-case.
That's just silly. You should be autocorrecting lower case to camel case instead! Grab the list of all hashtags with the same letters without regard to case, and if there's a plurality of them with the same capitalization (not counting all-lower-case), suggest that. Duh! ;)
Hmmm, every server I'm getting spam from has a new user in their public directory named yqqwe, and each one of these users is following mastodon_admin_yggwe on a single-user instance mastodon.tinynews.org. One can look at the 924 followers of this admin and they all are named yqqwe and they are all on servers I've been getting #spam from. #fediverse#moderation#administration
#FediBlock snarfed.org and brid.gy for bridging fediverse folks to Bluesky against their will (and in likely contravention of GDPR in the EU) with typical Silicon Valley techbro sense of entitlement:
“[O]pt in results in far fewer users, and users are critical for a bridge to be useful.”¹
I'm really tired of the holier-than-you people on the Fediverse!
No, Threads is not full of trolls and evil people just because Meta is evil. Threads is full of people who are not terminally online like we are. This is idiotic to want to block Threads by default. If anything let's show them there is another way.
No, the big Mastodon instances are not full of trolls and evil people just because they're the big instances. They're full of people who are into the Fediverse but for reasons that are theirs have no time, energy, or interest to join smaller instances. This is idiotic to want to block such instances. If anything let's teach them about smaller instances.
And right now, I see people building bridges with BlueSKy and I see very negative reactions from some people about that. Well... No, BlueSky is not full of trolls and evil people.
I'm so fucking annoyed with this bullshit attitude.
Honestly, if your response is "don't federate" every single fucking time, have you thought for a second that maybe, just maybe, you are in the wrong place? Fedi fucking verse. It's in the name.
If you don't want to communicate with people who are different from you, you're honestly no different from the people you are calling names. Please go to your instance that's defederated from everyone else, or even better, go on a closed Discord or something.
Fuck, I barely finished my second coffee and I'm already annoyed.
So the results from yesterday's poll made it clear: people on the #fediverse do not want to try #Bluesky! 😆
82% of people said they will not be using Bluesky now that it's open to the public for registration. I have to say I approve of this high percentage. 😄
Who can see my posts? I am super curious as to how far this #activitypub can travel? Learning the #fediverse is interesting but a tad confusing for the laypeople like me. If anyone has an analogy do share. Visualizations help. #mastodon#server#instances