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!
Congratulations! I've been around for roughly the same amount of time, and it's wild to see how much things have changed.
I still miss old Identi.ca, though.
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.
Most of the backlash pertains to the board members appointed to the new nonprofit. One of the members is a lawyer that has defended crypto and AI companies, another is ex-Twitter angel investor Biz Stone.
Mastodon's community usually has some kind of vague beef about one thing or another when it comes to Eugen and the decisions he makes for the project, whether it's a new feature or a design change or that he didn't do something that other projects wanted to do.
Nextcloud is a fork of Owncloud. IMO, as a product Nextcloud is superior in every way.
It actually does have that nowadays, it's just that the feature requires Elasticsearch to work, which is one extra piece of infra for admins to worry about.
Yeah, if you read the article, Hometown and Glitch actually get mentioned. The criticism is not about making a fork to do your own thing... but, instead, about trying to compete with Mastodon directly.
Doing that kind of fork (which is what people are calling for) requires a tremendous amount of coordination, effort, and commitment that cannot be done casually.
This is a situation that I think will get better in time. There's some really promising efforts involving Fediverse Enhancement Proposals, where multiple projects collaborate on shared ways of doing things. Some of these behaviors are getting studied and standardized by the larger SocialCG entity, as well.
There's also a lot of promising development behind a Fediverse Testing Suite. If we can develop a platform-agnostic testing system for people to build against, it will potentially become the new development standard, rather than optimizing for Mastodon and nothing else.
In recent weeks, people unhappy with Mastodon project talked about forking the project in a different direction. It's harder than it looks.
A lot of people have talked about the possibility of forking Mastodon to get the many improvements their communities need. Making such an effort successful is another discussion entirely.
An increasing amount of Fediverse platforms support Live Streaming. We wrote a short guide to help you get started!
The Fediverse has, not one, but two different streaming platforms readily available to people. They both work a bit differently...but, both of them work great with OBS Studio. We dive in to how to set each up.
While I think shareholders can be a driving factor, I see it way more often with VC-funded companies. The "2.5x year over year" growth mantra that places like YCombinator stipulate have disastrous effects on small tech companies. Often, these startups have an incentive to keep taking additional funding rounds, which appears to tighten the grip the VC has over them.
Try growing the next Microsoft or Google or Amazon out of that model. I'm not convinced that it's possible. At least if you bootstrap your own company, you don't have the same binding obligations...even if it takes way longer to get to a place that's self-sustaining.
Honestly, this really resonated with me. Running an open source project on its own can be hard, running a popular one that gets used by tons of people and companies, while giving free labor, is extremely hard. Acting as free tech support to a large company, for nothing in return, is ass. Full stop.
I've seen some people make the statement that "maintainers owe you nothing", and I've seen people state that "your supporters owe you nothing."
While I believe there's nothing wrong in a person willingly running a project on their own terms, just as there's nothing wrong with refusing donations and doing the work out of some kind of passion... there's only so many hours in the day, and developers need to feed themselves and pay rent.
I think a lot of people would love to be able to work on open source full-time. I'd devote all of my energy and focus to it, if I could. But, that's a reality only for a privileged few, and many of them still have to make compromises. The CEO and founder of Mastodon, for example, makes a pittance compared to what a corporate junior developer makes.
Sentry also did this by embracing the Business Source License. Technically, you can still get an MIT-licensed version, but it has to be more than two years old.
As a former employee that worked there during the days that Sentry really promoted itself being Open Source, it was disappointing to see. VC Funding and a growth obsession basically poisoned the well.
Today, we sit down with Matthias Pfefferle of Automattic, the developer behind the ActivityPub integration for WordPress!
We sat down with Matthias Pfefferle to talk about his journey in developing an ActivityPub integration for WordPress, along with the challenges of implementing a protocol for a platform that everybody customizes in a wide variety of ways.
We also check in on how development is going, and what's in store for the future!
Hell yeah, I'm all about this. Article gets rendered so poorly on Mastodon, and the behavior is inconsistent from one platform to the next.
There's an effort on the network to connect the Fediverse's federation powers to Solid's data storage and access capabilities.
ActivityPods is a wild project that's bringing the architecture and data capabilities of Tim Berners-Lee's Solid Protocol to the Fediverse. We dig in to what it is, how it works, and what's currently possible with the framework.
I think there's a balance to be struck between "good defaults" and "customize to your heart's content."
Emissary is very much in line with some of my own pipe dreams regarding Fediverse / IndieWeb platforms, but it's still very young as a project. I think the best thing they could probably do is ship bundles of templates as different experiences, that are easy to install right out the gate.
Want a bog-standard microblogging system? Go for it. Want something more like Lemmy? No problem. Want to just build something yourself from scratch? Here's the docs.
I think what excites me about this is that it could be a tremendous development tool for people looking to mock up new ideas for apps and platforms, while sitting in top of ActivityPub and offering actual functionality. The Music project the lead dev is working on already looks great in less than two weeks of development, and aims to be compatible with Funkwhale.
Emissary is a revolutionary next-gen Web platform that lets you tinker with every little bit of it. It works with the Fediverse, is built on IndieWeb principles, and looks incredible.
The developer of Pixelfed unveils his newest project, a long-awaited suite of tools designed to help people building for the Fediverse.
PubKit is a spinoff project from Pixelfed, and is used by the project's lead developer to actually develop Pixelfed. It has some pretty great ideas about mocking up entities and data, testing data streams, and working with different server implementations to see where pieces might differ.
Just tried it for the first time the other day. As an Akkoma user, it's awesome to see so many native features being supported!
It's now my main app! 😁
Nice goalpost shifting, but miss me with your inane rambling, projection, and misplaced sense of entitlement. Just block me and move on.
You’re also screamingly White
Just because I have privilege doesn't mean I haven't experienced harsh realities that are relevant to this context. The idea that a person's race automatically qualifies or disqualifies them to speak on a subject without context or nuance is just silly.
You're out here mad because a dude expressed that it's stupid to compare server hosting for commodity open source communication software to societal decay caused by landlords, real estate developers, and people with four times the local income all rushing into a place and pricing out the people who already lived there. Y'know, something that actually has a real and tangible material effect.
Video version available on PeerTube here: https://spectra.video/w/cgUdgFb1ZpcTEK8UydLu59
This week, we sit down with Manton Reece, an IndieWeb developer who built his own federated microblogging and publishing platform.
We sat down and interviewed Manton Reece, the creator of Micro.Blog. Micro.Blog is an IndieWeb platform with microblogging capabilities that marries a social experience with a more traditional personal website / blogging concept. It federates via ActivityPub, and has been a part of the Fediverse since 2018.
I dunno, federated communication systems have a very different utility than lemonade stands. 😅
Reflecting on some of the hurdles for procuring a Fediverse instance for the US Government. There are a lot of hoops to jump through, but is it worthwhile?
In response to Joe Biden and the White House enabling ActivityPub federation via Threads, a number of people asked: "Why didn't the White House just self-host their own Mastodon server?"
Here's some very basic musings on what it would take for that to happen. and what some of the hurdles are. Don't consider it a definitive answer, but a jumping-off point.
It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified
As someone who has repeatedly seen cities become gentrified (first Peoria, Illinois, then San Francisco, then Phoenix), I get what you're trying to say, but also don't think it's an appropriate metaphor.
The half that doesn’t federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.
Frankly, I think this is a bit melodramatic. The Anti-Threads part of the Fediverse will stay in their isolated bubble with little to no change, while the rest of the network continues to grow or change. It's not like operational costs are skyrocketing, or that hosting will become any more scarce or more difficult. It's not like the servers have to move to a different neighborhood. Gentrification is predicated on the finiteness of physical space and affordable places to live.
and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.
This is probably news to you, but there's not even a coherent, all-encompassing definition for what the Fediverse even is. The idea that there's a "real Fediverse" vs "Fake Fediverse" glosses over all kinds of history and nuance. The best anyone's gotten to defining it is by specifying protocols and interoperability, but even that doesn't quite cover it.
The Fediverse isn't just the parts you like, minus the parts you don't like.
Joe Biden's official account is now connected to the Fediverse, thanks to Threads. We'll see if anything comes of it.
Both President Biden and the White House have enabled the Fediverse integration on Threads.
A community index of servers added a new rule recently, that requires every participant to defederate from Threads. Some admins are unhappy.
Server indexes of places for newcomers to join can be instrumental for Fediverse adoption. However, sudden rule changes can leave some admins feeling pressure to change policies in order to remain listed.
This week, we talked to Rudy Fraser, creator and operator of the Blacksky feed. It's a dedicated community stream for black voices on Bluesky's platform.
This ended up being such a great interview. I know some people will shrug it off, because it’s Bluesky and not Mastodon, but Rudy’s a super smart dude and an amazing guest, and he shed a lot of light on building a community space for black people on an emergent platform. There’s so much good info coming from this man!
We're attending the Fediverse's most popular unconference, and providing updates of the talks, along with commentary!
We're trying something new: live coverage of the #FediForum March 2024 Event! It's a first-ever experiment for us, come check out our coverage!
ActivityPub has fostered a social web for millions of people. To grow, some developers believe it needs improvement. These are their efforts.
ActivityPub has remained the dominant Fediverse protocol over the past few years. In that time, many bright ideas have come on how to improve the spec. Here's where those efforts are today.
One of the Zot's most powerful concepts for identity management and remote access is being ported to work on ActivityPub. It could change the Fediverse.
Mike Macgirvin, the long-time developer that brought us Friendica, Hubzilla, Streams, and the Zot protocol, is bringing his most powerful concept to the rest of the Fediverse: Nomadic Identity.
Short-form video might in fact be the next frontier for federated media. The dev behind a popular photo-sharing platform is diving in headfirst.
The Fediverse might be getting their own mashups of Tiktok, YouTube, and Vine sooner than anyone thought, thanks to the work of one prolific dev spearheading an effort. The best part? He's helping other projects in the space, too.
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!