Fediverse

Credits go to @kmh for creating this style. It comes in both a light and dark version (check the links for usage instructions).

If you don't want to fiddle with code and stuff, loma.ml has already installed it server-wide, and should be available straight away for new accounts (If not, go to Settings>Display>General Theme Settings and change it from there. Or follow the guide in any of the links above).

Like for lemmy, pixelfed , mastodon and so on

Hey all,

Just a quick question for everybody, sorry if it is stupid. I have been on the Fediverse since the blackouts I probably should know this by now, but have clearly let things pass me by.

Basically, I want to buy a raspberry pi or a mini PC to run as a server. I would buy a domain name and use the website as sort of a private portal that I would do my posts from. I could upload videos to loops or a picture to pixelfed, make a microblog for Mastodon or have a long form blog.

My idea is that I would be the only person on the server and if somebody were to go to the url itself all they would see is the posts themselves in chronological form, but I would really not be wanting people to experience the site itself but rather the fediverse posts on their individual apps. The post having come from the site would rather be the authenticator that it is me who posted it.

Is something like this possible or would I essentially need multiple servers and domain names for each individual fediverse service?

his post on mastodon is here:

https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/113849098386232034

Dear Mark, I hope this finds you well. I noticed something interesting today - it seems Instagram is blocking links to my little open-source project. You know, the one that lets people share photos without harvesting their personal data or forcing algorithmic feeds on them. I have to admit, I'm flattered. Who would've thought a small team of volunteers could build something that would catch your attention? We're just trying to give people a choice in how they share their memories online. No VCs, no surveillance capitalism, just code and community. Remember when Facebook started? It was about connecting people, not maximizing engagement metrics. Our project might be tiny compared to Instagram, but we're staying true to that original spirit of social media - giving people control over their online presence without turning them into products. You could've ignored us. Instead, by blocking our links, you've given us the best endorsement we could ask for. You've confirmed what we've been saying all along - that big tech is more interested in protecting their walled gardens than fostering genuine innovation. Every time you block a link to our platform, you remind people why we built it in the first place. Your action tells them there are alternatives worth exploring, ones that respect their privacy and agency. So thank you, Mark. You've turned our little project into a symbol of resistance against digital monopolies.

Last couple of months has been dramatic and there is a huge demand for ethical and safe social media. Even mainstream conservatives start to look for alternatives when US oligarchs wage hybrid warfare against their nation.

And there are so many low hanging fruits right now. Like Facebook event and marketplace replacements on the fediverse. Or just a Facebook alternative that isn't Frendica. Or maybe a commercial fork of Frendica.

I'm not involved in any development of fediverse software, so I'm asking here. Do you experience more interest from venture capital?

Also, I assume EU will pour big money into social media alternatives, starting 2025.

Note: I'm not interested in a discussion regarding if VC is good or bad for the fediverse. That's a good topic for another post though.

A fungus sits at the intersection of the social web (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, etc.), the semantic web (knowledgraphs like Wikidata.org) and decentralized federated learning.

This means it represents the "computation web"-aspect in the above picture. Together with other similar agents, it result in a decentralized, federated web of AI agents that work on open, shared data and are open to communities. Everybody should be able to set up their own fungus service and help to grow an AI model of their choice. I call this the "fungiverse" or "mycelial web".

A fungus web-service ...

• answers user requests over the social web
• users are also able to insert knowledge via posting to a hashtag the fungus listens on
• writes and reads data from the semantic web to collaborate with other fungi agents (this would ideally done with decentralized technology like solid pods, or other knowledge graphs, e.g. like wikidata.org or an own fuseki server)
• develops a shared AI model (which is also written to the semantic web) based on decentralized federated learning (which would be ideally be based on something like FlowerAi, but isn't at the moment).

The three parts can be thought of as a social network, a chat bot network and a knowledge graph (like a wiki for data), with all of the three aspects interlinked - the fungus drawing its data from the knowledge graph and being available in the social web as a bot, the social network to give access to the knowledge base and AI bots through bots, and the knowledge base, which can be viewed as a wiki with the bots that currently work on it and the comments from the social network. From a users perspective, the fungus appears as a chat bot interface (with the ability to view all bots its connected to and to which they are connected to etc.), the knowledge base would appear as a wiki like wikidata.org and the social network as a network like Mastodon.

The idea is that every user can install all of these three aspects on their own local PC to participate in the overall network (meaning having access to the social network, accessing global knowledge graphs and participating in decentralized learning to train their own bot).

Behaviour

In its behaviour its similar to that of a fungus (hence the name):

The shared model data can be thought of as the spores, which are also used by other fungi to adjust their models. The resulting AI chats available to the users are the "fruits" of the fungi.

Roughly, a fungi's behaviour is defined by a protocol, for example SPORE.

The following fungus is able to make song recommendations to the user: https://github.com/bluebbberry/MusicRecommendationFungus

Here is a more technical description of a fungus and its incentives for human-fungus-interaction.

This is good growth for such a smaller lesser known fedi project that replaces Facebook.

Not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of new users to the fediverse.

This might be the one to dethrone Mastodon in user count and monthly active user metrics.

Pixelfed is seeing a surge in popularity. Anyone that's currently running one, have you run into any roadbumps, or have things gone smoothly? pixelfed.social has had scaling issues, but maybe it's easier if you're just federating to that instance instead of handling the load from user logins?

Reminder to donate if you're using one of those servers btw:

https://mastodon.world/@paulschoe/113837760503316512

That #Pixelfed is now in the Top 10 of most downloaded APPs in the USA, also means that we, as a Fediverse community, have to come together.

If you see a link somewhere, PLEASE support your PIXELFED server. Even when it is just with $2, $10 or $50.

Their operational costs are surely skyrocketing and we have to make sure that this does not become a Fediverse debacle but a Fediverse success story.

[..]

https://pixelfed.org/support-our-project

I am working on getting all of the information off of Facebook before I delete it forever. I used Tagged Photo Exporter to get all of tagged photos off of Facebook but I can't get videos I am tagged in to download.

After doing lots of googling I found lots of different websites that were suppose do this for me but none of them work. They either don't work or download the same incorrect video. I have tried using the mbasic techniques to get a "Save as" template that is not working. Anyone have any luck getting this done recently? I assume Facebook is trying to make this more difficult since people are flocking off of the site. These are videos I uploaded but rather those I am tagged in.

Tumblr always suited me better than micro-blogging as there is no word count restriction (I can find brevity a problem) and you could have any number of blogs/channels for whatever topic was tickling your fancy at the time.

So I've been keeping an eye out for Fediverse alternatives, jotting down notes and now I'd like throw this open to the Hivemind. ~~And yes, Tumblr is now on ActivityPub, but I am not putting my time into corporate platforms again.~~ edit: oh no it isn't, that was the plan (as if December 2023) but there's been no updates since Tumblr moved to WordPress.

Added bonuses: markdown (or something similar), adding links to posts, quoting other posts and perhaps being able to login from another Fediverse service.

Here's a few I found:

• Goblin - It's a FireFish fork from a former Tumblr employee. Allows multiple accounts but they have to have a different email address, some markdown but not links. I've heard it suggested that most *key forks could be set-up as a Tumblr alternative
• Loforo: "Another surprise is that Loforo is the second most active ActivityPub blog platform in the Fediverse, behind only WordPress." Easy multiple blog creation, formatting in HTML. Unfortunately you can't create your own instance, last time I checked.
• micro.blog - not free, not open source
• Wafrn

Not listed as Tumblr equivalents but some of the general services are flexible enough to do this:

• Hubzilla - has channels but seems more a CMS. Nomadic identities is a great feature.
• Friendica - the BlueSky integration seems increasingly important and, with Meta's enshittification, it feels like a general social media service is a good idea. The way you can have the equivalent of Google+'s circles seems a good feature (while I am no fan of Facebook, Google+ worked well for me while it lasted). The main issue I see is you can only replicate channels with different accounts.

Any suggestions? Have I missed any key features from the above?

Editing to let people know that I will be blocking anyone who feels the need to tell me why this graph is inaccurate. I truly don't care, but feel free to chime in with your useless take and land a spot on my block list! 🙂

I really want a Facebook (the old Facebook timeline) replacement, but end-to-end encrypted, and decentralised so there's longevity.

Edit for clarity: I'm looking for a way to share things online, end-to-end encrypted to a wide-audience that knows you but doesn't necessarily know each other.

This is why messaging apps don't fulfil this requirement, and chat rooms (like Matrix) also don't fit.

I love Lemmy, I like the idea of Mastodon (twitter-like sites just aren't my thing. ActivityPub rocks. However, none of them are encrypted.

PixelFed is neato, but I don't plan sharing my personal photos with the whole of the internet, which seems to be the only choice with ActivityPub.

Signal and other encrypted messaging apps are great, but are for direct messaging. Where are the encrypted social media apps?

Matrix is cool and all, but it's aimed at groups. Like discord / MS teams replacement.

Someone told me about Futo Circles, which seems to tick all the boxes and built on top of Matrix, but it's currently abandoned.

Are there any other alternatives? My wallet is open, I would very much like to use such an app. I am no programmer, so sadly cannot take on the mantle of continuing the Futo Circles project.

Cory Doctorow explaining why he endorses the "Free Our Feeds" initiative (Lemmy discussion)

During the Napster wars, the record labels seriously pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.
[…]
One thing everyone agreed on was how disgusted we all were with the labels. What we didn't agree on was what to do about it. A lot of us wanted to reform copyright – say, by creating a blanket license for internet music so that artists could get paid directly. This was the systemic approach.

Another group – call them the "individualists" – wanted a boycott. Just stop buying and listening to music from the major labels. Every dollar you spend with a label is being used to fund a campaign of legal terror. Merely enjoying popular music makes you part of the problem.

Here's what I would say when people told me we should all stop listening to popular music: "If members of your popular movement are not allowed to listen to popular music, your movement won't be very popular."

We weren't going to make political change by creating an impossible purity test ("Ew, you listen to music from a major label? God, what's wrong with you?"). I mean, for one thing, a lot of popular music is legitimately fantastic and makes peoples' lives better. Popular movements should strive to increase their members' joy, not demand their deprivation. Again, not merely because this is a nice thing to do for people, but also because it's good tactics to make participation in the thing you're trying to do as joyous as possible.

[…] When social media is federated, then you can leave a server without leaving your friends. Think of it as being similar to changing cell-phone companies. When you switch from Verizon to T-Mobile, you keep your number, you keep your address book and you keep your friends, who won't even know you switched networks unless you tell them.

There's no reason social media couldn't work this way. You should be able to leave Facebook or Twitter for Mastodon, Bluesky, or any other service and still talk with the people you left behind, provided they still want to talk with you.

That's how the Fediverse – which Mastodon is part of – works already. You can switch from one Mastodon server to another, and all the people you follow and who follow you will just move over to that new server. That means that if the person or company or group running your server goes sour, you aren't stuck making a choice between the people you love who connect to you on that server, and the pain of dealing with whatever bullshit the management is throwing off.

We could make that stronger! Data protection laws like the EU's GDPR and California's CCPA create a legal duty for online services to hand over your data on demand. Arguably, these laws already require your Mastodon server's management to give you the files you need to switch from one server to another, but that could be clarified. Handing these files over to users on demand is really straightforward – even a volunteer running a small server for a few friends will have no trouble living up to this obligation. It's literally just a minute's work for each user.

Another way to make this stronger is through governance. Many of the great services that defined the old, good internet were run by "benevolent dictators for life." This worked well, but failed so badly. Even if the dictator for life stayed benevolent, that didn't make them infallible. The problem of a dictatorship isn't just malice – it's also human frailty. For a service to remain good over long timescales, it needs accountable, responsive governance. That's why all the most successful BDFL services (like Wikipedia) transitioned to community-managed systems.

There, too, Mastodon shines. Mastodon's founder Eugen Rochko has just explicitly abjured his role as "ultimate decision-maker" and handed management over to a nonprofit.

I love using Mastodon and I have a lot of hope for its future. I wish I was as happy with Bluesky, which was founded with the promise of federation, and which uses a clever naming scheme that makes it even harder for server owners to usurp your identity. But while Bluesky has added many, many technically impressive features, they haven't delivered on the long-promised federation.

Bluesky sure seems like a lot of fun! They've pulled tens of millions of users over from other systems, and by all accounts, they've all having a great time. The problem is that without federation, all those users are vulnerable to bad decisions by management (perhaps under pressure from the company's investors) or by a change in management (perhaps instigated by investors if the current management refuses to institute extractive measures that are good for the investors but bad for the users). Federation is to social media what fire-exits are to nightclubs: a way for people to escape if the party turns deadly.

So what's the answer? Well, around Mastodon, you'll hear a refrain that reminds me a lot of the Napster wars: "People who are enjoying themselves on Bluesky are wrong to do so, because it's not federated and the only server you can use is run by a VC-backed for-profit. They should all leave that great party – there's no fire exits!"

This is the social media version of "To be in our movement, you have to stop listening to popular music." Sure, those people shouldn't be crammed into a nightclub that has no fire exits. But thankfully, there is an alternative to being the kind of scold who demands that people leave a great party, and being the kind of callous person who lets tens of millions of people continue to risk their lives by being stuck in a fire-trap.

We can install our own fire-exits in Bluesky.

Yesterday, an initiative called "Free Our Feeds" launched, with a set of goals for "billionaire-proofing" social media. One of those goals is to add the long-delayed federation to Bluesky. I'm one of the inaugural endorsers for this, because installing fire exits for Bluesky isn't just the right thing to do, it's also good tactics.

Here's why: if a body independent of the Bluesky corporation implements its federation services, then we ensure that its fire exits are beyond the control of its VCs. That means that if they are ever tempted in future to brick up the fire-exits, they won't be able to. This isn't a hypothetical risk. When businesses start to enshittify their services, they fully commit themselves to blocking anything that makes it easy to leave those services.
[…]
We can do better than begging people to leave a party they're enjoying; we can install our own fucking fire exits. Sure, maybe that means that a lot of those users will stay on the proprietary platform, but at least we'll have given them a way to leave if things go horribly wrong.

After all, there's no virtue in software freedom. The only thing worth caring about is human freedom. The only reason to value software freedom is if it sets humans free.

If I had my way, all those people enjoying themselves on Bluesky would come and enjoy themselves in the Fediverse. But I'm not a purist. If there's a way to use Bluesky without locking myself to the platform, I will join the party there in a hot second. And if there's a way to join the Bluesky party from the Fediverse, then goddamn I will party my ass off.

I see this misconception a lot, so let's clear it up. The term "threadiverse" originally referred to the "threaded fediverse" — specifically platforms like Lemmy and kbin, which function similarly to Reddit with threaded discussions and link aggregation. Thus, Bluesky and Threads, on the other hand, are not part of the threadiverse because they follow the microblogging model, not the threaded link aggregation model.

It's also important to note that this usage predates Meta's "Threads.”

Timeline:

• June 4, 2023: First mention of "threadiverse" I can find on Lemmy (source)
• June 8, 2023: Meta announces upcoming codename “Project 92” (source)
• July 3-5, 2023: Meta launches Project 92 as "Threads," reusing the name of a previously discontinued non-fediverse product (source)
• March 21, 2024: Meta's Threads opens its integration to the fediverse (source)

Seems more suitable for serious photographers than the casual audience from Instagram, but it might be worth it promoting it as well.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24792391

The issue (June 2024) and discussion : https://github.com/daniebeler/pixelix/issues/64

TL;DR download here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fedi-archive/id6740432925

Here's what my friend says about the app:

It always bothered me that I couldn't find easily my old shitposts to self-boost them (I mean, there's Mastodon archive utilities for Windows and Linux; but none that I could find for us poor poor Apple users,,,)

So at some point I started making my own app for that! Everything runs 100% on the device, no analytics, no cookies, no spyware bullshit. Just download your archive zip file and add it to the app!

There's a bunch of missing features still, but I've found that this is already more than enough for basic usage.

Enjoy :)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fedi-archive/id6740432925