It's a slow rollout. Dansup is doing his best to put a good foot forward, there's a lot of moving parts, and it's fairly more complicated than some of his prior work. I'm super stoked for it, and can't wait to put together a detailed review.
Our regular schedule has been interrupted, due to difficulties sustaining our regular programming. It's not over, but we need help, and we're sorry.
Due to the ongoing strain of trying to write, edit, and publish articles on a consistent basis, and a handful of personal obligations of our founders, We Distribute is officially on temporary hiatus.
This is not the end of our publication or our project, but we need to step back for a while and regroup, if the project hopes to survive.
Basically, this. In layman's terms: finding the good stuff on a decentralized network is hard, because not everybody or everything is all in one place. Some tools can help make the experience suck less, but it's a really hard problem that has lingered on for years.
This proposal is basically a team-up to develop the necessary plumbing so that services, such as search providers or distribution networks, can be easily used by anybody on the network, regardless of whether they're on Mastodon, Lemmy, or something else.
There's a few interesting applications here that go beyond just finding people, showing trending stuff, or providing an index of stuff. Some of this could be used for moderation tooling for admins, or custom feeds for users, or a directory of things to review. If the existing projects trying to solve all these problems came together, it might make a lot of things way easier.
It's an issue with content negotiation for the WordPress-ActivityPub plugin. Upstream is working on it some, we're using a recommended caching plugin to cut down on how often it happens.
Mastodon Engineering has announced a new network-wide effort to create a framework for service providers offering a variety of capabilities.
Earlier this month, the Mastodon project announced a new initiative funded by NGI Search: Fediverse Discovery Providers! The goal is to build a resource framework for different kinds of services that can work with potentially any instance or platform.
A new organization emerges to help tackle some of the challenges the Fediverse faces, from advocacy and policy to training and tooling.
Evan Prodromou, the creator of StatusNet, the OStatus protocol, and co-author of ActivityPub, is launching a dedicated nonprofit for the purpose of advocating for and supporting the Fediverse.
Most efforts haven't moved beyond the planning stages. Just because you can point to a plugin or a FEP spec doesn't mean that it's an ongoing active effort for bring a payment layer to the Fediverse, with a consumer-facing tool or platform. I'm sorry if I didn't catch that Mitra had some of that functionality, but I would also push back and say that the average person is not going to use Monero for payments on the Web anytime soon.
Those PeerTube plugins are nice, and the Premium Users one was actually something I pointed @quillmatiq@mastodon.social to for sub.club, as an example of prior art. They're interesting experiments, possibly useful integrations, but not in and of themselves actual platforms to build infrastructure and solutions on.
Dude, listen. I am one person running a volunteer news project for free. I try my best to stay on top of researching the space, but there's no reasonable way for me to catch everything. I've written 200+ articles at this point, but due to a combination of factors, I struggle to get more than one article out per week at times. I regularly juggle a backlog of 40+ drafts at any given moment. Add a dash of burnout and fatigue, and you'll start to get a clearer picture: it's hard to keep up, and only getting harder.
There's no way for me to reasonably catch everything. Mitra's a cool project and all, but it's tiny enough that I've heard relatively little about it. There are dozens of projects out there at this point, and new ones everyday. If you're not advertising the thing you're building and what it does, there's a high chance I might miss it.
I keep an eye on the FEP developments from time to time, and I applaud all you've accomplished with that. However, the existence of a spec does not necessarily mean that platforms out there are necessarily implementing each and every one of them.
Probably because, to my knowledge:
- I didn't know that Mitra did that.
- Even though it does have that functionality, I have no idea whether it would work with the rest of the network.
- This article was about sub.club
I'm not trying to slight Mitra in any way, shape, or form, but my focus for this article was scoped to one thing in particular.
BandWagon is a new music experience for Fediverse musicians, and offers much of what they're looking for from Bandcamp.
For Fediverse musicians looking for a new Bandcamp alternative, Bandwagon feels extremely promising. It's built on top of the Emissary platform, and offers a robust amount of features for playing, promoting, and discovering music.
A new startup in Fediverse space offers a unique way for people to support their favorite creatives and builders on the network.
sub.club is an emergent new platform for paid subscriptions in the #Fediverse. It's simple, smooth, and easy to use.
Fucking amazing book, I laughed so hard from start to finish.
How do you create an icon for a network that no one individually controls? Here's a showcase of many different attempts for the Fediverse.
In the development and building of a shared, open, collaborative network, efforts have come and gone over the years for the Fediverse. We dig into the history, various attempts, and some of the ideas people have had.
Yeah, I'll try to look into this for clarity. It really depends on what they mean here - I think they're referring to curated server following between admins, which is what PeerTube does.
When I tested out the messaging system, I was able to federate back and forth with Mastodon. Maybe it works fine at a user level, it's just the search entries that don't get federated automatically?
Flohmarkt is still a really young platform, but it shows promise as a way for people to create listings, and reach out to one another.
As the Fediverse continues to grow, people are looking to build new experiences that change what's possible on the network today.
Flohmarkt is a nascent project intended for selling personal items, and may be the first attempt of its kind here.
A beloved social news reading platform has been carefully inching towards full connectivity with the Fediverse. This update is the closest yet.
Flipboard continues its rollout of federation capabilities, this time implementing a "soft-follow" system for users to try out federated subscription for the very first time.
Adderall. There are, of course, some trade-offs. Having gone so many years without any kind of medication, though, it's a night and day difference.
I feel like my memory recall is so, so much better with it. When I'm off meds, I often find myself in a mental fog, struggling to remember details spoken to me moments ago. It's like I'm constantly trying to hold onto a thought, as it's rapidly slipping out of my grasp.
I still have to rely on the productivity methods that work for me. I obsessively take notes and make lists, because I would be totally lost without either. I'm slowly making lifestyle changes that are helping me overcome almost 20 years of clutter.
Long-form publishing has been a mainstay of the Web since the very beginning. As the network adopts it, we have to think about UX.
Within the last few years, publishing within the Fediverse has started to take off. This week's opinion piece focuses on some of the current hurdles this network has, when it comes to user experience, and proposes ideas and a vision of what's possible.
Yep, I'm aware of their effort, and have reached out about collaboration. 😁
The icon font I've been building might technically predate it. I've been building it since December at least, and it's something our site depends on.
As we've been building out our site, we've wanted to showcase the icons of various projects and protocols. However, there's been a real lack of any kind of icon font for that purpose...Mastodon is pretty much the only Fediverse project to be featured in FontAwesome, and the ForkAwesome project has been dormant for a long time.
So, we've been building our own.
Regardless of how you feel about it, it's still notable that people on the Fediverse managed to scrape $500k together. This is the first time something like that has ever happened on this network. In the world of big politics and presidential campaigns, it's not much. However, within the scope of grassroots organizing, it's substantial.
I agree that I would love to see that funding go towards mutual aid, infra and project funding, and supporting people who work on different parts of the network.
A grassroots fundraising campaign for the 2024 election is trending towards half a million dollars raised by Fediverse members.
The Mastodon For Harris campaign has raised close to $500,000 within two weeks of being live. It is probably the largest attempt for political organizing on the Fediverse, and may provide a playbook for other efforts going forward.
I think it's a big opportunity that the Fediverse has largely slept on. A lot of people shrug it off, but Facebook, Instagram, Medium, and a number of other places offer an export archive of your data.
Some of it isn't all that usable, but there's something extremely appealing about being able to take old parts of your social graph with you, and merge it into a new identity. A fixation I've had for the past few years is consolidating all of my data into one place, under one identity, and I'm exploring the possibility of writing data converters.
Interestingly, Pixelfed allows you to import your Instagram archive, and it's fantastic.
So, to be clear: it's not a concept like Nomadic Identity. Rather, it's a demonstration of importing data archives from other social networks and platforms, and integrating that data into an existing Fediverse account.
In other words: it's not a singular managed identity for all your apps, it's a mechanism for marrying data from different systems to a Fediverse Actor. Paired with something like Nomadic Identity, it would be a game changer.
NeoDB is a review system with some remarkable tricks up its sleeve, and may provide a way forward for decentralized content discovery.
Today, we sat down and reviewed NeoDB, a Fediverse review system that lets you track books, movies, music, tv shows, games, podcasts, and more. There's some really incredible ideas beneath the surface.
I used to work with enterprise customers at a SaaS company, and still have a lot of anger in how corporate types use this fluffy language. I think my "favorite" example of this jargon is "Please Advise.", which basically just means "What the fuck?!"
I was working at a tool checkout in my shop for a while, and the sheer amount of ignorance and repetition blew me away.
People would come in, see signs stating things like "Don't throw your hazardous waste in this trash can!", and people would straight up ignore it. Things got so bad that we had to stop offering a trash can in our part of the shop.
A lot of people would also just repeat the same statements, day after day, week after week. For example, we have iPads that contain maintenance manuals. We have to update those manuals every week, on the same day. Without fail, the same people always forget which day Update Day is, and have to ask.
The worst ones happen when people come to turn in their gear before end of shift. Most people are fine, but every toolbox has to be thoroughly inspected before being scanned back in. Often, somebody misplaced a tool, left garbage in the box somewhere, or there's some other undocumented discrepancy.
Most people are cool about it, and willing to make things right. But, some people act like you've purposely screwed them over, or react with total apathy and disrespect. I don't make the rules, man, I'm just trying to do my job.
Some people think that privacy, openness, and user consent are all at odds with one another. Here's a guide on how to navigate all three as a developer.
Sometimes, developing a new app, platform, or concept for the #Fediverse can seem like a minefield. Here's some rules of thumb on how to maintain goodwill with the community, and ideas of how to do it.
The ActivityPods team released a new example app that's easy to get up and running, to help developers hit the ground running.
In an effort to better help prospective Fediverse developers understand Solid, the ActivityPods team has released an example app as a reference point for understanding how everything works under the hood.
Great job! We just gave you a shout-out on We Distribute: https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/canvas-2024-live/
It's seriously awesome that you got this to work with more than just Lemmy. The app is looking great, and it seems like you're off to a strong start!
A beloved Lemmy event returns this year, and it's already off to a strong start! There's still plenty of time to participate, here's how.
And now, for some lighthearted fun: Canvas, the r/Place alternative for Lemmy, is back for its 72-hour collaborative art event, and this time, the whole Fediverse is invited!
The shocking part was less about Maven's methods or lack of ethics, and more along the lines of "How the fuck did they do that?!"
A social network founded by a former OpenAI employee was caught importing public posts from Mastodon...and ran AI analysis to add tags to them.
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.
The dedicated Trust and Safety organization launched their community platform for moderation support last week. Here's what it does.
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.
It's time to listen and vote in this year's edition of the Fediverse's favorite annual music contest, FediVision!
FediVision is an annual music competition in the spirit of Eurovision. This year probably had the biggest turnout ever: 72 entries from a variety of artists and musicians, and you can listen to all of them!
With Mastodon founding a US-based 501c3, the question has come up: who are the board members? What do they do? And why were they chosen?
We dug into Mastodon's new US-based non-profit entity, and checked out who their board members are, and what they've accomplished in the past.
Bridgy Fed's integration between Bluesky and the Fediverse is now in public beta, and you can try it for yourself!
Bridgy Fed's Bluesky integration is now in beta, and makes it possible to connect your account from the Fediverse to Bluesky, and vice versa.
There's still some quirks, and every bridged account has to opt in to it, but it's a promising moment for people that want to communicate across networks.
Sean Tilley @lemmy.ml Former Diaspora core team member, I work on various fediverse projects, and also spend my time making music and indie adventure games!