Fediverse

Interesting rundown of the whole Meta/Threads/Fediverse situation so far. Not a lot of new information but might be a handy primer for curious newbies.

Mostly sharing for this prime bit of W3C mailing list sass in response to Meta software engineer Ben Savage's self-introduction:

“The company you work for does disgusting things among others. It harms relationships and isolates people. It builds walls and lures people into them. When that doesn't suffice, brutal peer pressure does … That said, welcome to the list, Ben.”

Calckey has been one of the more popular Fediverse apps for a while now, and just of today they did a major rebranding.

Firefish's official account is now live at @firefish. Official announcement post from 4 hours ago.

Currently infosec.town has fully migrated over to Firebird 1.0.0; calckey.social is still in the process of migrating.

As of this thread, the most up-to-date version is hosted on the Codeberg repository. A new docker will be supported at https://hub.docker.com/u/thatonecalculator/firebird once Kainoa finishes sorting out everything (hopefully).

A good little resource to help people find their local kbin

It’s just a filter that lets you see all your new followers.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/18/23799223/threads-update-follows-tab-activity-feed

Meta recently released Threads, their competitor to Twitter. However, within just days, the metrics aren't looking good...----------------------------SOCIAL ...

Some hobbyist hackers have come up with novel ways to connect vintage computers to the Fediverse, and you can run the code yourself.

I've been saying for a while we need a wiki and I finally stumbled across one. But is it a good resource? Anybody use this site?

https://joinfediverse.wiki/Main_Page

i went and searched for a community on Lemmy. Found it, but was logged out so I couldn't create content... tried to login, it says "logged in" in the lower left, but I'm not as it still says "login" at the top right.

I tried to find the same community on kbin, and it doesn't exist. I assumed that if lemmy.world could see it, kbin.social could as well, is that not the case?

What am I doing wrong?

Entirely Automated AI-Powered Balanced News Site

For the last few months our team has been working on an entirely automated AI-powered news site. I am excited to announce that v1.0 is finally being released. This version includes full coverage with every article generated from 2 left leaning, 2 right leaning, and 2 neutral sources. We have also added an anonymous commenting system for people to share their opinions freely. Our servers are now running 24/7 so that new articles appear as they happen! Let me know what you guys think, as well as any comments/concerns/questions you have!

Here's the link: https://www.neuraltimes.org/

#fediverse

Like we've got Mastodon which is a microblog platform.

Lemmy/kbin which I guess you could call aggregators?

Then there's the image and video platforms.

Is there a lexicon or terminology we're using to describe the different types of platforms in the fediverse?

"When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another."

Helen Keller

#fediverse

I used to blog on blogger and livejournal before using Twitter destroyed my discipline and I find myself writing longer comments and mastodon posts right now. I'm thinking about a WriteFreely account. Does anyone know a good instance to start with?

The launch of Threads, with its promise of adding ActivityPub support in the future, is hotly debated. I take a look at 3 upcoming pieces of legislation, the DMA, DSA and the Canadian Online News Act, to see how this potentially impacts Threads decision to federate in the future.

So glad that stupid meme-of-the-week trends are finding their way over here from Reddit, too. I just love reading 50+ instances of the same unfunny joke in a row.

#fediverse

ActivityPub API service - Werd Cloud

I was thinking about how there are similar communities on different instances. In some cases that is desirable/ok but maybe it would be cool to have another option.

Say there are 3 separate communities on different instances for amateur cobbling (DIY shoes). None are big enough to really get going. Interested users trickle in here and there but there isn't enough to engage them. People try cross posting but that just breaks up discussion and leads to a "spam" feeling for those subbed to all of them. Everyone likes one another and they basically want one unified forum.

Would it be possible to automatically duplicate content posted to each instance to the other 2 instances? Including comments, mentions, etc.

Not like a multi reddit because would also share sidebar, mods, posting rules, other aspects. More like a mirror? or a repost bot?

But I don't know if it would mean

• 1 of the communities is the "main"
• the other 2 are copies under a different name
• they function as symlinks when mentioned or when traffic requested at them

it all goes to "main"

or

• they are all equal to one another
• any post you make to one instance, a post is automatically made on your behalf on the other instances
• likewise any comments or other interactions

or

• a post you make to one instance "lives" on that instance, but the 2 other instances will show it in their feed.
• when viewed on another instance's community, you will see that it is on the original one.

of course this raises questions such as

• what happens if the groups decide to split up after some time?
  -instance have different codes of conduct?
• what if host instances de-federated from each other?
• could it be used to undermine instance autonomy? evade spam bans etc?

Anybody thought of this kind of thing? I doubt it would be on the agenda for next week but interesting to think about.

If you ever have the problem of forgetting you were writing something and closing a window, or accidentally navigating away from the page on which you are composing, this is the browser extension to save your ass: Form History Control.

• Documentation: Form History Control (II)

• Git repo: stephanmahieu/formhistorycontrol-2

• [Firefox Addon]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/form-history-control/)

• Chrome Web Store

In kbin I especially have this problem as I get logged out constantly for some reason, for example while I am composing even a fairly short comment, and if I submit while logged out the text vanishes. But everything is stored in the extension. It is local to your machine where it will be secure.

I am using it for a year or two now and it has been flawless. It doesn't cause any slowdown in browser performance. It is unnoticeable until that moment you need it.

The Dutch government has officially launched their own Mastodon server. In an accompanying letter, the State Secretary explains how this relates to the government strategy of supporting digital common goods.

Hey all,

I know many of us have avoided Reddit entirely, while others have been working to ween themselves off the toxic bot nest. Speaking for myself, I know I've had a few technical problems whose solutions were only found on Reddit.

The migration dust has settled a bit and it's pretty clear that bots mass migrating subreddits isn't the direction the kbin/Lemmy community wants to go.

I propose that these explicit recommendations be mentioned at signup and as part of the user's profile page:

• If Reddit is the easiest to access or only source of information you're searching for during regular browsing, please consider reposting that information to the relevant Fediverse community.
• Begin these title of these posts with "[RX]" so that Fediverse users know why a seemingly random post has been added.
• Please tag these posts with "RDX" (or "RedditExtraction") and the subreddit name it came from for easy filtering.
• This is especially important for technical and detailed posts, as liberating this information will prevent it from disappearing at a corporate goon's whim, and it helps other users transition off Reddit.
• Use whatever method you prefer for the format of the body. It's more important that the info is extracted than any rigid format be followed. You can:
  • Link to the original Reddit post.
  • Copy-paste the text, only mentioning the authors' screen names.
  • Simply summarizing the info.

General Example:

• You search Fediverse posts for a solution to a computer problem, but find nothing.
• A search from Google yields nothing useful except a post on r/TechSupport.
• Create a new thread on kbin/Lemmy titled:
  • [RDX] (the question you searched)
  • Description of problem, including why it was hard to find.
  • Description of solution, preferably including some indication of time in the original post. (Was this post 1 year old or 10 years old?)
  • Any additional information you deem relevant.
  • Tags: RDX, RedditExtraction, TechSupport, troubleshooting, etc.

Specific Example:

[RDX] Do PCIE to PCI slot conversion adapters require the PCIE or PCI version of drivers?

I have an old PCI card that I would like to use on a current PC. I've seen adapters that should work, but my particular card had both PCI and PCIE versions released. Which driver should I install, or does it even matter?

Response by u/..... in 2013:

Install the PCI version.
Since the card itself is PCI, that is the "language" the PC needs to speak for it to understand. PCIE should be backward compatible, just not physically compatible.

I performed the steps recommended and it solved my problem.

Tags: RDX, TechSupport, PCI, PCItoPCIE, PCHardware

With proper identification (title or tags), it should be easier to add features to the website and apps for filtering out such posts.

I would be even more helpful if there was an option on the New Thread page that auto-filled some of this info or redirected to a form page with separate entries for each element.

Another, more complicated, possibility would be to include a user editable wiki with each community, with extracted data listed as a section. New entries and notes can be submitted, but require moderators approval. Unapproved entries would still show, but with a warning that it hasn't been approved yet.

Thoughts?

Is reddit really that unaffected? Are tech media companies keeping quiet on purpose? Is the Play app giving more artificial visibility to reddit app VS fediverse apps? It feels like all the mainstream centralized social platforms and search engines (Google) are censoring any updates on reddit's status to maintain a status quo. What are your thoughts?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1418762

I've made a number of improvements since the last time I was posting about my extension. The update is now available on both Firefox and Chrome web stores.

For questions / support: !instance_assistant@lemmy.ca

TLDR: See the respective download pages on Firefox & Chrome. The screenshots and features list are mostly self-explanatory.

Note on versions:

• Firefox has a more recent 1.2.1 version, because my build script missed some files while uploading v1.2.0. It doesn't look like Chrome had this issue.
• I'm uploading v1.2.2 to both stores today, which will bring the two missing features to Chrome as well. After 1.2.2, all browsers should have the same features. See below for details.

So how is this different from other similar extensions?

You may have noticed the extension's name changed to be more generic (and include Kbin 🥳). I'm trying to make this a more well-rounded extension, and that means I've incorporated some features from the other extensions, in my own way.

Lemmy Links, Kbin Links, and the other forks:

This is a great extension that replaces links on your page with versions that go to your home instance. However, in order for this to work, it needs to recursively check every element on your page whenever DOM content (the stuff the browser is reading) changes. This is somewhat resource intensive, and while testing I ran into lag and freezing issues. As such, I decided to not include this functionality in the same way.

Instead, I've added a right click context menu that does the same thing. This way the user can pick which links they want the extension to convert, and it's a lot more efficient resource wise. While it's an extra click, I felt this was a reasonable compromise. However, I'm open to feedback!

NOTE: The context menu is available on Firefox, and it will be available in Chrome in about a week, depending on when they approve my update.

Lemmy Home Instance Helper

This is another extension which checks if you are logged in to an instance, and it creates a button to the search page if you are not. As my extension creates a button on any foreign instance, the search page is only helpful when a community hasn't been loaded into your home instance yet (ex. because you're the first one to try accessing it).

To deal with this, my extension modifies the "Community not found" pages with more instructions, as well as buttons to trigger the fetch process or to open the community elsewhere. See this screenshot for an example. Again, open to feedback!

As always, I'd love to collaborate with other people while building this. I'm still cleaning up my code, but feel free to look at the GitHub. If this extension gets popular, I will definitely need help for translations and for things like getting the extension on Safari (I don't have a recent Apple device to sign the extension with).

Note on permissions:

• The current versions request "Access to all sites". This is because the extension needs access to any page that contains "/c/", "/m/", or "/post/" in order to create the sidebar buttons. While the extension only looks for those pages, it will show up as "Access to all sites" when installing. Once I have a proper welcome message and settings page, I plan on making this permission optional so you can just use the popup menu if you would like.

Summary of Recent Changes:

• Added support for Kbin
• Fixed issue where button wouldn't load when navigating to a community within Lemmy (available on Firefox, should be on Chrome in a week).
• (NEW) Right-click context menu on Lemmy/Kbin community links to let you open them directly. You can test them out here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303 (available on Firefox, should be on Chrome in a week)
• (NEW) Information and buttons added to "Community Not Found" error pages to let you fetch the community or open it elsewhere.
• Updates to sidebar button to state the current selected instance and provide more detailed instructions as a dropdownList
• Refactored the code to remove more unnecessary permissions.
• Another pile of bugfixes, UI improvements, and better wording for instructions.

Future Plans:

• This is complete and will be in v1.2.2. ~~Bringing over the new changes to Google Chrome. Since chrome requires Manifest 3, I still need to iron out some issues with the service workers. The missing features are all related to the background processes that are running on the Firefox version~~
• Pushing to other browsers: Microsoft Edge & Opera are still reviewing v1.2.0. Unfortunately, I don't have any immediate plans for Safari, as I don't have a device that can sign the extension. I am looking into getting help for that.
• Setting up a proper Welcome page, Settings page, and Options menu to allow users to turn off features that they don't like. This will also let me make "access to all sites" optional.
• Finishing the translations' setup so that people can contribute other languages to the extension.
• Adding an option to save your own instances to the popup, for those that have multiple home instances.

Twitter under Elon Musk’s chaotic reign has seemingly created an opportunity for an alternative microblogging service.