Strategies for the free fediverses

https://privacy.thenexus.today/strategies-for-the-free-fediverses/

The fediverse is evolving into different regions

- "Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.

- "free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally

The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.

Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.

- Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!

- Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

- Emphasize "networked communities"

- Support concentric federations of instances and communities

- Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)

- Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'

- Build a sustainable ecosystem

- Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light

- Reduce the dependency on Mastodon

- Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity

- Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses

- Organize!

#fediverse #freefediverse #threads @fediverse @fediversenews

Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse

I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.

Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.

But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.

The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.

And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.

The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person@instance) and groups (!group@instance), but I know that that is quite much to ask.

P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.

Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.

@fediverse #fediverse #threadiverse #mastodon #lemmy #kbin

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.giftedmc.com/post/78146

Hi folks! Today I have asked myself if I could login with one (no, not google or apple or micosoft) account in all the (30 I think) forums that I have to use as a FOSS admin. Nextcloud Forum, Ubuntu Forum, Mint forum, Makemkv Forum, Papermc Forum, linux.org, etc.

We obviously are on a forum-like social platform but we cant make people use this as their forum I suppose. Ideally, I'd like to federate "all forums" so to speak but that would probably take a shit ton of work. https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/does-this-forum-use-activitypub/2545/2

If not federate the content, maybe federate the logins. So that the profiles federate from one place to the next and you can login anywhere without having 30 different passwords for one "service" (forum in this case).

The next step down would be a foss SSO solution. There seem to be some but I hardly see any pages mention them possibility at all. https://sennovate.com/best-open-source-single-sign-on-solutions/

Am I missing something or is this still in the distant future?

Thanks for reading. Have a good one.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/6258115

New story, I hope you like it. Feedback always welcome.

I think there's a need for a social media platform that allows users to create multiple customizable feeds tailored to their specific, fluid interests over time.

On sites like Twitter or Mastodon, you mainly just have one feed based on the people or tags you follow. The problem is, to get a whole new customized feed, you'd need to make an entirely new account on these platforms.

On sites like Reddit or Lemmy, there are a few feeds predefined for each community, new, hot, top, etc. This doesn't offer anything in terms of individual user customization.

I envision a platform where each user can make as many different personalized feeds as they want based around interests that might change over time and the feed would change accordingly without having to start from zero. This could work only for people who opt-in since there are people who dislike this kind of algorithms.

I'm curious to hear any ideas or suggestions people have about how to implement customizable, evolving feeds for each person. And how many resources would it require, would it work on a federated network made of personal computers or would it require a large server?

Hello everyone,

Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.

Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.

To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.

Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.

Now here's the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.

From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?

TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)

Announcement post here: https://discuit.substack.com/p/df5f002f-e27a-46a6-b30d-7641b266bd65

https://discuit.net/

For those unfamiliar, Discuit is another Reddit alternative that's been floating around for a while. I was unable to find a MAU count, but I am honestly more interested in their software than their communities. Particularly curious what you all think of this stack. A consistent complaint around Lemmy is that a Rust backend makes contribution difficult, will a Go backend contribute to a lower overall barrier of entry?

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats&months=6

Hey there! Figured I'd share here since my main instance, Lemmy.ml, seems to be really broken right now. I published an article today focusing on some of the myths and misconceptions Mastodon users have spread over the last few years, with some critical analysis and debunking.

Let me know if you like it!

I'm talking about what they say at 8:20:

Bulletin boards, forums, blogs. The main difference to today was twofold:  

For one there were no algorithms fighting to keep you online at any cost – at some point you were done with the internet for the day, as mind blowing as this may sound.

But more importantly: The old internet was very fractured, split into thousands of different communities, like small villages gathering around shared beliefs and interests.

These villages were separated from each other by digital rivers or mountains. These communities worked because they mirrored  real life much more than social media:  

Each village had its own culture and set of rules.  Maybe one community was into rough humour and soft moderation, another had strict rules and banned  easily.

If you didn’t play by the village rules,  you would be banned – or you could just go and move to another village that suited you better.

So instead of all of us gathering in one place, overwhelming our brains at a townsquare that in the end just leads to us going insane, one solution to achieve less social sorting may be extremely simple:

go back to smaller online communities.

I was SOOOO WAITING for the Fediverse name drop considering how MUCH they were implying this at the end of the video.

cross-posted from: https://communick.news/post/419975

When building out the database of recommended Lemmy communities, I think it makes the most sense to prioritize the communities that belong to instances focused on a specific topic over communities that are based in a "general" instance, even if currently the community is smaller in the topic-specific instance.

For example, for an user coming from reddit and signing up via a "fediversed" instance (like alien.top) it would make more sense if they see that the anime subreddits are on ani.social, the rpg/board games are on ttrpg.network, the programming communities are on programming.dev, the basketball ones are on nba.space, the NSFW communities are on lemmynsfw, etc, etc...

This will also avoid the issue that I am currently seeing where some communities have multiple entries in the recommended database due to the initial migration where each user was just trying to replicate their favorite subreddits in their own server they signed up for.

Let me start by thanking everyone that has joined https://fediverser.network and the ones who are already helping to categorize and create a map between subreddits and the recommended Lemmy alternatives. Y'all are amazing and I hope we can keep it up.

To keep in mind that the main goal of this whole project is to help people on reddit to migrate quickly and effortlessly to Lemmy, I was thinking on what could be done once we have the majority of the niche subreddits mapped out. I thought about the idea of creating "Community Ambassadors", which would be basically people interested in "turning" other redditors from their specific communities to Lemmy.

Basically that would require you to signup to Fediverser to indicate what community you are focusing on and how many people you are willing to reach out per day. The system could then collect the top posts of that subreddit every day and let you trigger a (custom, personalized) DM to the people telling them about the alternative Lemmy community that exists with a link to alien.top's portal to make one-click migration.

If a human posted every 5 min, got 0 upvotes for 20 posts straight, we would ban them for spam. If bots would limit themselves to posting once a day, or once a week, and only post the top-voted non-duplicate post of that timeframe, it would be a dramatic improvement. For once, we might actually see real-lemmy posts along side bot posts, instead of the community being exclusively bots (or 99% bot posts) or exclusively Lemmy users.

I would tell the bot creators myself, except I don't know how to get in contact with them. Is there a consistent way to contact a bot creator?

Sometimes it feels like the about pages/sidebars across the fediverse are underappreciated to the point of being underused, so I thought it might be nice to see what some most appreciate in those abouts/sidebars that are used.

For me personally? If it's something kind of niche or obscure, or even something basic but kinda ambiguous, I dig a concise little description like "[blank] is a [genre/type] [band/game/tv show/etc.], [additional relevant info]".

Although if it catches my interest enough I will just post and ask because how else might I figure out the secret arcana of the Deep Hobbies?

I like Lemmy. Active development, lots of third party apps, active community, etc but what other Fediverse projects are worth getting into like this one?

For microblogging (Twitter), I know Mastodon is really popular but there are so many other microblogging options like Pleroma, Misskey, FireFish, etc that I don't know which one is really worth getting into (as a user, dev, or admin). Are any of these on par with Lemmy?

For video, there's PeerTube. The content isn't great at all and most servers struggle to pay bills. I think the YouTube replacement is a looong way to go.

Is smth up? They both have decent uptimes?

I think it's a cool idea, and it could be the best way to help users on Reddit learn about Lemmy and migrate over.

I have some concerns though

What I like:

If you go to communities like !datahoarder@selfhosted.forum, you can see what I mean. Lemmy commenters are generally more helpful, more detailed, and get to the posts a lot faster than Reddit users.

If I understand correctly, once the network is implemented:

1. Reddit user signs up on Fediverser
2. Reddit user posts on a subreddit that has a Lemmy equivalent
3. Post is crossposted to Lemmy
4. When a Lemmy user replies to the post, that comment is reposted by a bot on Reddit

Users on the Reddit post will:

• learn about Lemmy
• see the good quality reply (if the reply is good, Reddit mods won't ban the bot)
• get a direct link to a community/instance relevant to them

Users in the Lemmy community will

• get more content from people that are already curious about Lemmy

That would be really cool!

HOWEVER

Right now, the network isn't fully implemented. Instead, in communities like !datahoarder@selfhosted.forum, there is a flood of ALL content that is posted in the respective subreddit.

This is bad because:

• Lemmy users don't know that no human will see their replies, and the helpful Lemmy users are just talking to a wall. This will make them... less helpful in the future
• Because ALL content is being mirrored, this spams out the actual Lemmy posts
• Reddit users have no idea, and no control, over whether their posts are mirrored. I only noticed on the datahoarder community, but there are more sensitive subreddits where I would want control over where it is posted. I would also need a way to delete the content from Lemmy, and right now the users can't do that.

Proposed fixes

• Don't mirror all content, only the stuff from Reddit users that sign up. There is already an incentive for signing up (more replies, better replies, better reach). If a user doesn't sign up, their post will not be mirrored, and they will not get the benefit.
• If two communities WANT full mirroring, let them decide and have them contact directly (ex. from Modmail). Encourage them to talk to their communities before deciding
• Any automated post NEEDS a note saying so
  • Posts to Lemmy should have a link to the Reddit user, the Reddit post, and an "about" page for Fediverser
  • Comments to Reddit should have a link to the Lemmy comment, an "about" page for Fediverser, and a link to some "what is lemmy"/"new to lemmy" article.
• If it's not being implemented like the above, maybe change it up to consider the points about user control

As it is, reposting everything is damaging to Lemmy and potentially harmful to Reddit users that don't know their stuff is being mirrored.

The original projects meant to help finding out the Lemmy communities sub.rehab and redditmigration were not really kept up-to-date after the first wave of protests. To avoid bitrot and to make sure that the community can help keep this up to date, I'm launching today fediverser.network.

At the moment, it is a simple browser of subreddits and lists of recommended alternatives. It can also let users sign-in with their reddit credentials so that they can get a list of the mapped communities specific to their subscriptions.

There is a lot more to be done, as I want to use this tool to help me map out all the niche communities that are missing on Lemmy and eventually have a 1:1 map for those that want to leave reddit entirely.

It kind of makes me think of how odd it would have been if many of the old forums named themselves like bookclub.phpbulletin.com, metalheads.vbulletin.net, or something.

There's nothing wrong with doing that, obviously, but it's struck me as another interesting quirk of fediverse instances/sites. Generally as soon as you visit them you can tell by the site interface or an icon somewhere what software they're using.

I would enjoy to make an account on Misskey ^w^ I have Mastodon but I want to get MissKey for more friends!! Althought I have seen that there aren't a lot of MissKey clients on the Google Play Store, and there are none on F-Droid... Thank you!!

I’m learning web development. I’m on databases at the moment, postgresql in particular. I thought it might be fun to try to help with a fediverse project or two, but I’m only knowledgeable about node.js, and npm, do any fediverse projects use that? I also may be diving too deep too early with this. Appreciate any feedback you guys have!

I have just deployed a script and a mastodon bot which attempt to hashtag lemmy posts so that they are better discoverable in microblogging services.

Please check the README for the why and the how.

If you have a microblogging account, please consider following the bot account which will help its hashtags federate to your instance's public timeline.

Many thanks to @jgrim@discuss.online for hosting the bot.

PS: If you have a mastodon account, you can reply to your posts on mastodon (just search for their url) and add hashtags to your replies. This will achieve a quick and dirty version of what this bot is doing