From the technical side anyone can spin up their own Lemmy instance and view all votes, but I'm curious at what the community's perspective on how "private" that is. I think Mbin already shows upvoters? Piefed allows anonymous voting. I also know there are sites which show all voting history, but assuming those are fairly disliked.

My general questions to the community: - Do you expect your votes to be private, or just not shown in the UI? - Would per-voter votes showing up on another aggregator platform bother you, even though your instance already shares them with other servers?

For context I'm the dev doing some two way bridge interop between atproto + Threadiverse, in atproto the votes/likes are generally publicly accessible, you just look at the users repo through something like pdsls.dev, they're readable and archivable by anyone. In my opinion this isn't that big of a problem since it's fairly hard to look at and discern (Ex all my votes: https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:lmdkqemqrqnfiix72pyjhfey/social.coves.feed.vote). Ultimately trying to figure out if there's already a mutual understanding that they are public and we can just mirror them or whether they should stay hidden as an aggregate.

We shouldn't be forced to use toxic platforms that track and profile us in order to get public information.

Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube track and profile their users so that they can target advertising towards them.

Their business models fuel online harms by pushing more and more extreme content to users. Despite this, these platforms are one of the primary ways that government departments share public information.

Tell your MP to support the EDM calling on the UK Government to ensure that all public sector social media content is published on open, decentralised and federated platforms!

Act now: https://action.openrightsgroup.org/tell-your-mp-government-must-move-away-toxic-social-media-platforms

#socialMedia #UK #politics #UKpolitics #fediverse #initiative

It sure would make it a lot easier to use over a webapp.

Are there any maps showing which instances federate which others? Like those maps with nodes and connections

It's for no particular reason, I'm just curious >.<

Made a thing. Fedigest is a self-hosted site where you pick posts from anywhere in the threadiverse, write a few lines about why they're worth reading, and publish them as one front page.

Comments are pulled live from the original thread. Want to vote or reply? Enter your home instance once, it gets saved in your browser, and from then on every post takes you straight to the same post on your own instance. It can also follow communities and add new posts automatically.

Comes with 15 themes (light/dark pairs follow your device, and there's a terminal one with an old PC font), and you can make your own with a live preview.

Runs as one Docker container, SQLite inside. Still early, version 0.1.3. Built with help from an LLM.

Demo: https://demo.fedigest.org
Code: https://github.com/DaDosDude/Fedigest

Feedback welcome.

This post is written on https://normals.me and delivered to !fediverse@lemmy.world over #ActivityPub, so if you are reading it the basic plumbing works. Now let me explain what is this.

Normals is a forum with communities, threads, and questions with an accepted answer. It is a single instance, not software you can host, and the core is closed for anti-abuse reasons. The federation module will be published separately with implementation notes (FEP-67ff).

What federates today Every community is a Group actor following the Lemmy model (FEP-1b12). Follow @selfhosted@normals.me or any other community from Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin or Mastodon.

Posts and comments go both ways. Replies from your instance appear in the thread on Normals, replies from Normals go back to the origin.

Remote content is labelled with its origin, links back to it, and is never copied. Media loads from the source.

Signed fetches, so it works with instances that require authorized fetch. NodeInfo 2.1 is up.

Policies, in case they matter to you, it has no ads, and no paid reach, and of course no AI training on posts. AI crawlers blocked by default, public mod log with reasons, and no automated removals. Numbers at https://normals.me/transparency so please take a look.

If something from your instance shows up wrong here, or something from here shows up wrong on yours, reply with the URL and I'll fix it. Andy Piper mentioned NodeBB uses the same group model, if anyone runs a NodeBB instance I'd like to test against it, if possible.

I hope we all have fun. Cheers!

Federated social app: Discord-style servers and chat with ActivityPub.

https://github.com/y4my4my4m/harmony

I don't remember hearing of it till now, yet it claims a lot of desired features. Github page shows only one contributor, one fork, 44 stars; lot of commits in the last week, oldest 3 years ago; GNU Affero General Public Licence v3.0.

Found via https://chat.btfree.org/@ozoned/3850a821-fc6d-431f-b235-feed68605f6e

So far, I like what’s been built here. There are a few things I’d change, but they’re not dealbreakers. My main concern is the voting system and how it works. Otherwise, Lemmy seems like a solid option. I’m not sure how much voting can be disabled or changed on an instance.

I’m considering either hosting a Lemmy instance for nightash.net, where I currently run a traditional forum, or building something closer to the architecture I described here .

I’d appreciate feedback, especially from people who might be interested in using it.

Both fediverse softwares that support user reviews for books, both have RSS support natively (no Piefed/Misskey bridge needed), and some comments also seem discontent with Amazon's mismanagement overall.

Hi everyone!

I’m really enjoying the Fediverse through Lemmy and Peertube.

Two creators I enjoy and follow on the Fediverse are Dash and Gardiner Bryant (both work on The Bryant Review) as their content is really enjoyable.

Sadly they are the target of my post as they shares their content on many different communities that I follow.

Today I had 5 times the same topic on RetroDeck (great project too) on my feed on Lemmy (Voyager).

It is the same on PieFed (Interstellar).

This is really annoying and I haven’t found a way to not show these duplicates. Do you know about one or is it worked on?

Also when crossposting, it would be great if everything appeared under on post. Is it feasible?

Sorry if it’s easy and I just missed it. In a way I hope it is because it would mean that the Fediverse is festure rich😇

Edit: Added Dash as she was in fact the one who published the article. Also it appears that the issue is only on mobile apps since both the browser of Lemmy and PieFed don't have it.

Edit 2: Using the Progressive Web App of PieFed seems to have solved the issue for me

What was you experience like? Did you use the built-in messaging? Did you feel that it respected your data privacy enough?

If you maintained one, did you have any major issues or concerns?

I’d love to have an alternative to fb marketplace but nothing seems to be as user-friendly to get people using it. I would love to eventually start a server if it is doable for a semi-capable person.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53839835

I recommended the Fediverse to Brennan Kenneth Brown (the creator and developer of fanfiction.lol: https://fanfiction.lol/, which is an alternative to Ao3, but that uses the same OTW software: https://github.com/otwcode/otwarchive/).

And he told me to go ahead and implement, as well as create a pull request.

The issue is: I know almost NOTHING about the technical side of The Fediverse (lol).

fanfiction.lol Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/brennanbrown/fanfiction.lol

This might be a somewhat unusual post, but I’ve made a pledge to myself to financially support Fediverse creators whose content I enjoy and I’d like to make an attempt to inspire others to do the same.

I want to make it very clear that the amount you donate does not matter! It’s not a competition.

I make small donations (~1-5$/mo) to some of my favourites because I plan on supporting them indefinitely which is usually better than one-time donations. This unfortunately also means that it will require multiple people to work well, but if we can build a reputation for the Fediverse as a place where people are likely to support your work then it would naturally become more appealing to post here.

I use Liberapay whenever I can because it lets me choose how much I want to donate and how frequent which makes this easy to manage.

You can of course experiment with the conditions (e.g: type of creators), the donation amount or donation frequency. Use what works for you, and again, what matters is that you support someone, not the amount!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/74207312

Season Six of The Button starts soon!

🎃 SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES... 🎃

The veil between worlds grows thin...

The shadows are stirring...

And somewhere, in the darkness, a Button awaits. 🔴

👻 THE BUTTON: HALLOWEEN EDITION IS ALMOST HERE! 👻

Tricks. Treats. Chaos. And consequences beyond your wildest nightmares.

Will you dare to press it? Or will you leave your fate in someone else's hands?

🕸️ The haunting begins SOON.

https://thebutton.social/

PRESS IF YOU DARE. 🦇

Is Mastodon an antisemitic platform? The ignorance and partisanship of the Zionist journalists at Fox News cause reputational damage.@Gargron @Mastodon Benjamin Weinthal, an investigative journalist for Fox News and a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, describes Mastodon as "der antisemitischen Plattform".I hope your legal department can seek damages for the reputational harm caused by these vile accusations!x.com/BenWeinthal/status/21144@fediverse

cross-posted from: https://retrofed.com/c/meta@retrofed.com/p/2373766/retrofed-forum-powered-by-piebb

Hi,

After getting forum.retrolemmy.com running with lemmyBB, I wondered if Retrofed could get something similar. Instead of getting lemmyBB (an ancient software for lemmy) to work through a proxy, we created a new frontend made natively for PieFed: PieBB. PieBB is more feature complete than lemmyBB and lighter on the server.

Note: This project was created with the help of an LLM.

It's live at forum.retrofed.com, and makes PieFed look and work like an old phpBB2 forum. You log in with your normal Retrofed account. Posting, voting, polls, PMs, notifications and moderation all work, and you can even import (some) old phpBB2 themes.

If you notice any bugs, you can message me, or reply here.

If you want to use it yourself, it's at Github. Tested on PieFed 1.8.x.

Known limitations:

• Register sends you to Retrofed's own sign-up page.
• The index (Last Post, counts) can be a few minutes behind, to keep API calls down.
• Votes made on Retrofed itself can take up to 10 minutes to show in PieBB, due to a cache in PieFed.

Cross-posted from !catodon-talks@catodon.rocks

A new website for Catodon, and more updates #catodon

PyLova (Python+Pavlova) is a soft fork of PieFed, aimed at improving the user experience through UI overhauls, empowering users and admins with agency, improved administration and moderation functions, and general bug fixing.

New in V0.5.0

New & Improved

• Shareable Blocklists: Users can create, maintain, and share block lists of users, communities, instances, or domains. Users can be hidden completely or muffled.
• Roles: Permissions have been changed into 'Roles', these offer expanded functionality. Admins can create multiple roles choosing what permissions they can be given, if any. As well as setting upload and storage limits, ability to post video, etc. Posts can be restricted to certain roles for matters of voting and commenting.
• Temporary Bans: Now users can be banned from an instance for a limited range of time. This also fixes the nasty bug that leads to temp bans from Lemmy never expiring on PieFed instances.
• Instance Chooser: Discovers new instances from Fediseer, as well as polling other instances. This removes any singular point of authority in seeding new instances and helps disperse discovery. Instances in the chooser also show Fediseer endorsements, and Fediseer tags can be searched for to help find instances based on content.
• New User Experience: New users are better presented topics when joining to help discover content, and a user with no subscriptions is shown a list of popular communities and feeds they may want to join.

Bug-Fixes & Misc

• Inline Comment Editing: Edit your comments without leaving your position on the conversation.
• Visual Changes: Small changes to create a more unified modern look.
• Bento Tiles: Masonry Tiles are revamped into Bento boxes, masonry-wide has been removed. Removed security issue in tiles.
• Instance Vote Settings: Admins can select if up/downvotes are accepted from an instance.
• Instance Overview: When browsing instances additional information about them is displayed.
• New Fonts: Ubuntu and Open Dyslexic have been added. Ubuntu is now the default font for new instances.
• New Post: Starting a new post no longer changes targetted community when switching post type, non-allowed post types are hidden if that community does not accept them.
• Themes: PhpBB and Trans theme are currently removed awaiting some much needed fixing, they will return in the future.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53757573

Two months ago, I made this post:

https://lemmy.world/post/50855395

In this community, about potentially either "colonizing", or forking Squidgeworld Archive (alternative to the fanfiction site ao3).

https://squidgeworld.org/

---

Apparently, ao3 has recently shut-down for 2-4 weeks:

https://www.404media.co/archive-of-our-own-ao3-down-maintenance/

https://nerdist.com/article/ao3-archive-of-our-own-down-for-two-to-four-weeks/

---

My question is: Should we consider potentially making a Fediverse alternative to Ao3 / SqWA?

If you head over to the Squidgeworld Archive website, it states that over 2,300+ ao3 users have already migrated over to SqWA from ao3.

(Now it's over 12,000+ in the last 20 hours ALONE.)

Just imagine how many people could potentially be brought into the Fediverse, if there were a working federated alternative version of ao3 / SqWA.

Or if Fediverse users, instead of creating an alternative, instead commited to "colonising" SqWA, instead.

Meanwhile on reddit.

Honestly kind of sounds like lemmy.world mods like Jordan Lund tho...

To get a project featured on the subreddit, developers now need to show it has been actively maintained for at least a year, has an established community, and has at least three contributors, give or take. Student projects such as note-taking apps and PDF viewers aren't welcome either, and developers can no longer use the subreddit to find people willing to help maintain their software.

That creates a chicken-and-egg problem for independent developers, who apparently need an established community before they can use an open source forum to find one. Even projects with no AI involvement could fall foul of the rules. One Reddit user pointed out that their nine-year-old project, which has more than 300 GitHub stars and dozens of resolved issues, would no longer qualify because they're its sole contributor.

The moderator also imposed a minimum Reddit account age of one year and requires significant prior contributions. Anyone who attempts to post and then contacts the moderators seeking an exception risks being permanently banned and muted.

EDIT: The developer has replied in this thread, see below :)

We banned a spammer from this instance recently, and I went to see what instance it was coming from (in case there was more)

https://coves.social/community-guidelines

Coves is built on the AT Protocol, which means it's part of a larger decentralized network. Your account and identity exist on your Personal Data Server (PDS), not on our servers. These guidelines and our moderation only apply to the official Coves AppView at coves.social. Other instances of Coves or other AT Protocol services have their own policies and moderation. If you're banned or have content removed from our AppView, your AT Protocol identity and data on your PDS are unaffected — you can still use other services on the network.

They do credit Photon and they have released the source code for their modified frontend: https://coves.social/legal

I also found this on their GitHub: https://github.com/BrettM86/tidepool

Tidepool is a read-only ActivityPub → atproto bridge for the threadiverse. It follows Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin communities (FEP-1b12 group federation), materializes their posts, comments, and profiles as social.coves.* records in a virtual PDS it operates itself, and serves them over com.atproto.sync.* so the Coves AppView indexes fediverse communities exactly as it indexes native ones. Votes stay bridge-side as aggregates behind one sanctioned XRPC.

EDIT: The developer has confirmed that two-way federation is planned

I think it's neat that someone is working on this, but I'm a bit concerned that it's read only from the threadiverse:

• They would suffer from a problem similar to what we have, when someone sets up a Reddit repost bot. Users interacting with some content while not knowing that their replies aren't reaching the original poster
• they get content without giving content back

the image linked to by the post is the Pangram LLM-detection report of paragraphs in the first screenshot below, reading "100% AI". in lieu of alt text for the screenshots below, I suggest scrolling through @eicker@lemmy.world's profile and https://lemmy.world/comment/26323310, which the screenshots are of. Look at the vote counts.

I've tried both [Lemmy and PieFed], and the UX is incredibly unintuitive and unpleasant. The main problem is that it's quite hard to discover content you want while avoiding content you don't, Bluesky at least has really good custom feeds that are easy to add (the default feed sucks). Another big issue is the general site layout, it's hard to figure out how to do things as simple as saving a post for later or how to go back to the feed without being redirected back to the post I'm trying to exit.

Maybe they didn't see the "Feeds" feature in PieFed? The top navigation menus in PieFed are a bit messy. Although shareable blocklists could be cool too, or maybe toxic?

That's excluding the horrible lack of contrast most frontends use, which makes reading and parsing the site elements unnecessarily difficult (no Lemmy, grey text on a grey background is not good for readability).

I like the Lemmy colors, but maybe it should be easier to change, because they might like the darkly-pureblack theme.

Fediverse feels slower, but not in a good way. More of a ‘if I don’t use this for a week, I’ll see new things’. If I log in after 2 or 3 days, I’ll scroll for 10 minutes and see the stuff I saw last time.

Maybe this is a UX issue of not finding the right feed they would like.

I've tried using lemmy and have exactly the same issue. After blocking all the politics stuff, left wing meme stuff and tankie stuff there's bugger all remaining. Even with all the blocks I've made it just seems to be a bunch of toxic left wing people calling each other fascist because of some minor difference in opinion.

I also want nsfw stuff now and then. I hate how censored the internet has become, at least with reddit if I want to see a bit of porn, I can.

Again maybe a UX issue of not presenting what communities they could subscribe to.

I tried twice to join those forums within the Fediverse and I can't get past the captcha test. The fact that you need approval to validate your access doesn't seem designed to encourage you to recommend it.

The captchas on Lemmy are AWFUL, I can't do them either.

(that's the "Medium" difficulty)

Lemmy v1.0 is adding the ability to do invites, so maybe there will be an invite-only instance that gets some momentum, that could be cool. Invite sites seems like a cool old-internet type of culture.

The fediverse stuff is way too complicated for me, Reddit is very easily accessible and actually has active communities for the topics I'm interested in.

Of course these are naturally going to be all negative because they're users that bounced off the Threadiverse, but there's probably hints to what can be improved