I posted a few months ago asking if there would be any desire for such a social platform, on which I had a lot of wonderful feedback from you guys. So I thought I'd write this post to let anyone that's interested know that it is being built, and you're welcome to lend a hand!

This weeks' news:

• More updates by Ghost on their work on implementing #ActivityPub
• Statistics shared by Mastodon show the power of an open API, and the incredible diverse ecosystem that it enables
• NLnet supports fediverse event planning software Gancio with a new grant

You can now create shields.io subscriber badges for Mbin!

Example: !Mbin

You've been able to do this on Lemmy for ages. It should also work on kbin as long as it has been updated enough to include the API.

I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might've been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months.

At first Lemmy was exciting because it was so active. There were so many new users who were enthusiastic about turning this platform into a genuine alternative. There was a communal effort to create and interact with content, and for awhile it worked. Lemmy was truly interesting during the summer of last year. However, this stream of dedicated users started to slowly decline.

A lot of people hoped that if they were active, they would attract and retain more users to this place to the point where the community would foster interest specific communities like Reddit, but that never happened. After a few months, a lot of users lost interest and went back to Reddit where the userbase is so massive that there is an active community for just about anything.

With this reverse exodus back to Reddit, Lemmy ended up with the same groups that were active on it before hand: political extremists, tech nerds, privacy enthusiasts, and shitposters. To be fair, all these groups are larger now than they were a year ago, but that's all this platform has to offer. If you're into any of these things and primarly these things then Lemmy can be a good alternative to Reddit, but for the general masses? Lemmy is just not good.

For example, a NBA post on the NBA subreddit can get you thousands of interactions in a couple of hours. An NBA post on here will maybe get you a dozen over the course of a couple of days. The only content that will gain any traction here are tech news, political propaganda, and maybe some memes. I don't see this changing any time soon. Even if Reddit implodes, I still think Lemmy will remain a niche platform. I think this evident by the fact that this platform hasn't really progressed in a year.

I have an account on Spectra but it seems I cannot access a lot of videos on other instances. What’s the best one that I can see videos from across instances. Thanks!

Link: https://catodon.social/notes/9ustyq83zlhoc519

Stats: https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/versions

https://toast.ooo/post/3740832

After a year online the free speech-focused instance 'Burggit' is shutting down. Among other motivations, the admins point to grievances with the Lemmy software as one of the main reasons for shutting down the instance. In a first post asking about migrating to Sharkey, one of the admins states:

> This Lemmy instance is much harder to maintain due to the fact that I can’t tell what images get uploaded here, which means anyone can use this as a free image host for illegal shit, and the fact that there’s no user list that I can easily see. Moderation tools are nonexistent on here. It also eats up storage like crazy due to the fact that it rapidly caches images from scraped URLs and the few remaining instances that we still federate with. The software is downright frustrating to work with, and It feels less rewarding overall putting effort into this instance because it feels like we’re so isolated.

A few weeks later, in the post announcing that Burggit was shutting down, another admin says the same:

> The amount of hoops that burger has to go to in order to bring you this site is ridiculous. To give you an idea of how bad this software is, there’s no easy way to check all the images uploaded to the site (such as through private messages). When the obvious concern of potential illegal imagery is brought up to lemmy devs, they shrug and say to plug in an expensive AI image checker to scan for illegal imagery. That response genuinely has me thinking that this is by design, and they want it to be like this. We can’t even easily look at the list of registered users without looking through the DB, absolute insanity.

> The other thing is there’s no real way to manage storage properly in Lemmy, the storage caches every image ever uploaded to any instance forever.

> Also the software is constantly breaking.

They also say that Kbin has many of the same problems, so I'm just curious to know if the admins of bigger Lemmy & Kbin instances feel the same way about these software.

Link to a list of mbin instances: https://fedidb.org/software/mbin

Not yet on F-droid, but looks pretty cool.

Link to their post: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/5ZiPe34m

Link to the stats

• https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
• https://kbin.fediverse.observer/dailystats
• https://mbin.fediverse.observer/dailystats

Hello, Hatsu is a self-hosted Fediverse bridge for static websites.

I recently released version 0.2 with the following features:

Improved RSS compatibility

RSS compatibility was terrible at 0.1.x due to some bugs - should now work with most valid Atom / RSS feeds.

Receive likes & reposts

Hatsu now receives likes and retweets for local posts and outputs them via a mastodon-compatible API.

New comment component

KKna is a new comment component (also written by me) that has Hatsu preset that automatically infer URL.

You can check the integration instructions in the documentation:

https://hatsu.cli.rs/users/backfeed-based-on-kkna.html

(It's still unstable)

Nix Package

Are you using NixOS / Nix? I am, so I packaged it into NUR and Nixpkgs.

There is no documentation on this at the moment, I will update it later.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11571975

> Fork it! It's time for a Mastodon hard fork

Ideas for building a federated Roblox alternative

The requests (RedLib links):

https://farside.link/redlib/r/fediverse/comments/143j1j8/is_there_a_3d_metaverse_of_the_fediverse/

https://farside.link/redlib/r/opensourcegames/comments/rdub3p/comment/ho43ld1 (link to comment)

Fediverse games in general

The discussion:

https://lemmy.ml/post/87083

The requests (RedLib links):

https://farside.link/redlib/r/fediverse/comments/iad25v/any_good_federated_gaming_platforms/

https://farside.link/redlib/r/gamedev/comments/12e7fum/game_on_fediverse/

The rejected Minetest suggestion:

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/7993

A blog

https://kevinhoffman.blog/post/fediverse_gaming/

publicado de forma cruzada desde: https://piefed.jeena.net/post/7038

> TLDR: The main reason was Lemmy hogging server resources. > > Last year, during the Reddit 2023 API controversy I finally deleted my account and moved on to Lemmy. Here’s a look at my experiences and why I eventually decided to switch to PieFed.

This week's news:

• Scraper drama as AI-powered network Maven works on implementing #ActivityPub
• Ghost will use fediverse server framework Fedify for their ActivityPub implementation
• @Castopod releases version 2.0 with plugins
• an on-device 'For You' algorithmic feed for Lemmy with 3rd party client Quiblr
• Lemmy releases local-only communities

I'm wondering if you have any favorite fediverse resources for dog owners? Breed questions, training techniques, product recommendations, etc.

I think that would make a great community if there isn't one already. I've only run across #dogsofmastodon so far, but that is really more for just pictures I think.

Sorry if this seems like a silly question but I have noticed over the last few months my feed(?) has started to act odd.

No matter what I do I don't see any posts from .world. I checked and mander does not seem to block .world (kinda why I liked this instance) and even weirder is how my feed gets filled with mostly .ml posts with almost no activity no matter how I sort.

This did not happen before and got me thinking, I don't even know how this works across federated instances.

Does anyone know:

• How does the sorting work on an instance? Is it all the same no matter what instance it is?

• Did anything change in the last few months, that would cause all .world (and I assume others) posts to not show?

• Other then changing instances what can I do to mitigate the weird slanted results?

• Main post: https://toast.ooo/post/3740832
• Community: !canvas@toast.ooo

July 12th, 2024 @ midnight EDT

https://canvas.fediverse.events

✨ this year’s event also supports the entire fediverse not just Lemmy!

(you have to be able to make/receive text posts, like mastodon, lemmy, pixelfed, etc) (peertube accounts will not work)

you can get update announcements on other fedi platforms with @canvas@fediverse.events link

chat about Canvas on Matrix or Discord (they’re bridged)

Maven, a new social network backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman, found itself in a controversy today when it imported a huge amount of posts and profiles from the Fediverse, and then ran AI analysis to alter the content.

Hello, I'd like to build a mobile client for mastodon, lemmy and pixelfed that would be video/image focused with a scrolling ui similar to tiktok or the reddit video viewer.

You would have a sortable/filterable feed with contents from different activitypub networks and would see it full page with a like/voting button on the right and the comments under.

Does anyone know if such a client already exists, and if not, could any dev share starter point links for building such an app ?

I was browsing the fediverse explorer and did not find lemmy.ml in the instances list.

Ok, so here's a situation I ran into, and thought of a solution for, but I'm not a programmer, so I don't know if this is possible.

I live in Cleveland. Last I checked, we have a population of 300,00ish people. Might be closer to 350,000. Not the point.

As it stands, in general I'd say roughly 10% of general society uses reddit. Using rough numbers, that would mean 30,000ish people. I just checked, and /r/Cleveland has 151,000 subscribers, but only 58 users on the site at the moment I checked. That tells me there's a lot of people subscribed to /r/Cleveland who no longer live in Cleveland.

I refuse to believe that of roughly 300,000 people, half are on /r/Cleveland. Especially if only 58 are online. So, maybe a lot of bots.

That being said Lemmy has probably less than 1% of society. And Cleveland has a finite number of potential users.

So when I look for the Cleveland sublemmy, I find three of them. Two I could join right away, the third is still pending because it seems the mod is the only user, and he hasn't been active in months.

Point is, this city, even if there was only one Cleveland sub would still have a very small userbase. Now we're dividing it among multiple communities all serving the same purpose. There's only so much that happens in Cleveland. The majority of the reddit posts are "where should I eat? What should I do when I visit? Why do you guys have billboards of just eyes?"

There is NOT a lot going on here. And if we split these users up multiple times, you'll have what we have now. Multiple dead communities, with a split userbase. So logically the first idea is "Well you only need one Cleveland community. The other one should close." But that flies against the very foundation of what this place is built on.

So how do you integrate both communities userbases as one, without merging the subs? And that's when it hit me.

Groups.

User groups, and sub groups. Lets start with sub groups.

So lets say I'm the head of Cleveland@instance1 and Fred runs Cleveland@instance2. We both see the userbase problem. So I send Fred a message, and ask if he wants to group up. He says yes. Now we're grouped up. So what does that mean? It means that Joe, a Cleveland resident, could subscribe to Cleveland@instance2. It would then have some checkboxes that say "group Cleveland@instance1 and Cleveland@instance2?"

And for every checkbox you leave ticked, you'll group those subs together. If you don't want to group them, uncheck the boxes of the ones you don't want to group.

So now Joe is subscribed to Cleveland@instance2. But because he's grouped my Cleveland@instance one, everytime he posts, the comments and the up/downvotes for his comment will now be grouped together. So when he makes that post on Cleveland@instance2 it will show up on Cleveland@instance1 too. Anything in that post is technically being posted to Cleveland@instance2

So if you ARE subscribed to Cleveland@instance1 but NOT subscribed to Cleveland@instance2, then you wouldn't even see the post in Cleveland@instance1. You're only seeing it, and able to interact with it from Cleveland@instance1 because they're both officially grouped, and you agreed to the grouping on your end when you subscribed.

You could, in theory reject the grouping when you subscribe, and then subscribe to the second one seperately. Which would keep everything seperate and as it is now. I don't know who would want to do that, but it would be possible.

Now, for the user groups.

Pretty much the same concept, but on an individual basis. So, lets say I subscribe to videogames@instance and I also subscribe to gamers@instance. Those communities have NOT grouped for whatever reason, so YOU group them for yourself.

So now when you post, you'll post once, and it will post your new post once in videogames@instance and once in gamers@instance.

So now you posted two seperate posts, but because you grouped them on an individual basis, you'll see all the upvotes and replies in one post in your inbox on your end. In reality there are two seperate posts, but your interaction with it feels as one.

For instance, this one (link to a post to !memes@reddthat.com): https://reddthat.com/post/20260613

Pasting it in your search bar should give you this kind of results:

!

You can then click on it to access the post from your instance (in this example, lemmy.zip: https://lemmy.zip/post/16918691)

One thing I miss from Twitter that Mastodon has only partially is to be able to search through the network for some keywords, like breaking news, events, and so on, so I can see other people takes on that.

So I made a small project that aims to fill this gap.

I've seen some previous attempts that made many people upset, I hope this time nobody will take their forks and pitches to burn me as it's:

• calling mastodon instances public local timelines via their API
• takes only posts that are made by accounts that OPT-IN to being indexed (there's noindex flag that I honor)
• keeps the posts in database for a short time (currently one hour) to avoid abuse and also to lower costs of running it

It gives me a lot of fun and for me it's quite useful, so I guess someone might find it useful as well.

Also, it's open source, but GPL license so it stays FOSS forever.

Happy to take any feedback, also happy to add some instances that are not yet being listened to. It turns out opt-in people are not that many so adding even large instances doesn't make my server belly up.

Instances: https://github.com/Kukei-eu/kukei-masto/blob/main/server/instances.js

Cos if so why can I see a whole bunch of mod actions on the lemmy.ml mod-log but not here? If it doesn't how/why would any other instance respect a moderation action by another instance let alone know about it?

It's been difficult to broach the subject and explain the technical concepts to the average person. I did have some success in first sharing the email comparison, which lead into interoperability.

I'm just curious to hear people's success stories, if you have any.

A few of the posts from the last few days, you can search the post link in your search bar to see it from your instance

• !meta@lemm.ee : https://lemm.ee/post/34110541
• !div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com : https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/21873104
• !main@sh.itjust.works : https://sh.itjust.works/post/20377848
• !reddthat@reddthat.com : https://reddthat.com/post/20200099

I may have missed a few, so feel free to comment if you want to give a shout out to your instance

Edit:

• !feddituk@feddit.uk : https://feddit.uk/post/13079766
• !home@lemmy.zip : https://lemmy.zip/post/17065877
• !fediverse@lemmy.world : https://lemmy.world/post/16036349
• https://toast.ooo/post/3679257

[UPDATE] Thank you for your comments but I found that Write Freely was well on paper but not funny to set up (self hosting) and maybe a little dead. I found that https://bearblog.dev met the specifications well. Although it is not integrated into the Fediverse, it is free and respectful of privacy!

Everything is in the title. I am looking for a FREE alternative to Blogger but that allows me to share Blog articles in the Fedivers. I don’t like WordPress.com because it is very limited in its free version and not very transparent about privacy in my opinion unlike WordPress.org. In short, if you have any suggestions, I’m taking it!

So I know that there are some limitations for federation, especially if you are on a smaller instance. On Mastodon I stumble upon this problem on a daily basis. Here is an example. My account is on a smaller local instance (social.cologne) and in the following picture is a post of Eugen Rochko (which I follow):

https://imgur.com/a/Fkj3ZY9

As you can see there appears to be 0 likes and 0 boosts, below are 2 conmments (not pictured). As far as I understand this is a result of federation. My instance only tracks likes and boost of my instance (and people who are followed on my instance) and as a result his post seems to be not popular at all.

Too see every interaction I would have to visit the original post on Eugens instance (https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/112574727273953783). Currently there are 6 boosts and 64 favorites on this post, with 4 replies below.

Last year I stumbled upon an android app that is able to show me the full interactions without visiting the source instance manually (https://github.com/tooot-app).

This is how I see Eugens post in my timeline

https://imgur.com/a/BFdcdSI

(Same as official app) and when i click on it to see the replies, the full content is shown.

https://imgur.com/a/shddfEK

I'm assuming that the app is loading the full content manually - just like if you would open the source instance.

Shouldn't this behaviour be the default - even in the main mastodon app? If I where to only use the official app I would miss most of the interactions and content (from people my instance doesnt know about). There are other examples where you would see replies to posts that allegedly don't exists. Only with Tooot I can see the rest of the conversation.

The tooot app didn't see any updates for some time... Are there any other apps that show full interactions right away as well?

!football@lemmy.world

Community thread: https://lemmy.world/post/16292464

Basically, title.

There will be a few matches, especially at the beginning of the championship, so that would be nice to have a way to get them automatically created.

I’ve been trying to access all day but it is still out on web and voyager app.

For all your boycotting needs. I'm sure there's some mods caught in lemmy.ml's top 10 that are perfectly upstanding and reasonable people, my condolences for the cross-fire.

1. !memes@lemmy.world and !memes@sopuli.xyz. Or of course communities that rule.
2. !asklemmy@lemmy.world
3. !linux@programming.dev. Quite small, plenty of more specific ones available. Also linux is inescapable on lemmy anyway :)
4. !programmer_humor@programming.dev
5. !world@lemmy.world
6. !privacy@lemmy.world and maybe !privacyguides@lemmy.one, lemmy.one itself seems to be up in the air. !fedigrow@lemm.ee says !privacy@lemmy.ca. They really seem to be hiding even from another, those tinfoil hats :)
7. !technology@lemmy.world
8. Seems like !comicstrips@lemmy.world and !comicbooks@lemmy.world, various smaller comic-specifc communities as well as !eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
9. !opensource@programming.dev
10. !fuckcars@lemmy.world

(Out of the loop? Here's a thread on lemmy.ml mods and their questionable behaviour)

IFTAS, the Trust and Safety organization for the #Fediverse, launched a new community portal full of guides, resources, discussion groups, and tools for community moderators and instance admins. We take a look at what it does.