Fediverse

@KingPromethus welcome to the #Fediverse!

I proactively blocked the box of c*nts, aka Facebook's new Threads domain, on the user level. It's not easy, but here is a link showing how to do it. https://medium.com/@geofbard/how-to-block-server-domains-in-mastodon-899b24f8fb6e

We'll see if it works once they add Activity Pub integration.

And I blocked them because they are a box of c*unts. And I'll leave it up to instances to do whatever they want with Threads.

#Threads #FuckUpBook

#fediverse

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1101309

Everyone is talking about how Meta is trying to Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish the Fediverse. Meta won't be alone for long in this goal, there will be a lot of capitalist actors that would try to do the same in the long run.

Defederation with them will be a shot in the leg, and handicap the Fediverse movement itself. There will be users/instances in the current Fediverse that would want to federate with them, and banning such instances would create silos and echo chambers.

The way out of this is to focus on the 2nd E - "Extend". I think we can all agree that UX of Threads app will always probably be the best out of all the federated instances. But that is something that people can still live without. Before long, Meta will tout shortcomings like lack of E2E encryption in the private messages and some other core features, that will create a bigger divide amongst ourselves. The Fediverse developers and community have to keep abreast of Meta on such core features, so that they can never extend the core of the Fediverse.

Let me know of your thoughts!

Okay, so right now government agencies, schools, and small business often use Facebook or Twitter for their web presence rather than start their own websites. For a few days there, while Twitter had the login-wall up and was rate-limiting, we had some serious problems wtih Amber Alerts, weather notices, safety notices and other announcements from US government entities. It looked like the government would be forced to start hiring web admins and setting up RSS Feeds and Mastodon servers to get the word out.

But now Threads is here, and they can just as easily as they were on Twitter outsource their web presence for free. They can just make Threads accounts for these public safety and security announcements.

Schools and small businesses can do the same thing, have instantly better reach than on Mastodon, and never have to worry about ActivityPub at all. All of these people remain in the Metagarden, and worst of all, we're forced to federate to them because public safety info is there.

This will significantly slow the growth of the Fediverse.

Now, a lot of stuff has gone to pasture or become rare because of EEE... forums, personal blogs, IRC and stuff. But Linux is still going strong. So maybe there's enough of us counterculture sorts to keep the Fediverse active and independent. But even so, Threads can very easily kill any growth beyond that AND force us to federate or at least have alternate accounts to view these necessary services.

I do not have a solution, but I think this is an aspect of the problem that hasn't been focused on. We talk about mass defederation to save ourselves and list all these frivolous things like celebrities and journalist twitters (while assuming we have the full news feed) without taking the incredibly important government-run accounts into the conversation. Because defederating from the account that posts Amber Alerts is not a simple choice.

And one of the things that got people back in the day with BBSes, IRCs, forums...etc.. was that they were in school and that was the computer culture at school. Now the computer culture at school is Facebook, and will be Threads. All we have to offer is an ad-free experience, and a knowledge/cost curve to any institutions that are choosing between running their own server and just endorsing the use of Meta's products. This will slow down growth. It may well stop it.

Besides of potential EEE tactics, Meta seems to be interested in collecting advertisement profiles off from the Fediverse.

So I came up with a term for it: fedscraping, or webscraping done on the Fediverse.

From what I expect, their whole plan will be:

1. Create an ability of interaction between Threads and the Fediverse.
2. Scrape the interaction data from it to build ad profiles.
3. Try to deanonimize any user on the Fediverse, then check if the user is available in any of Meta's services.
4. Sell this data to advertisers.
5. Potentially sell some scraped data to governments in order to get favors from them (deregulation, tax breaks, etc.).

The last one is the most concerning, and will be used to prosecute political activists, marginalized people, and the likes. Many of them have already left Twitter, Facebook, due to ongoing hostility.

Here's my prediction, but I'd like others to contribute their predictions as well. I think it's important that we make ourselves aware of signs before they start showing, and that we have a record to point to if things play out exactly as we predict.

1. Threads launches, federates with the 'verse, everything works well and actually seems hunky-dory. Even companies/restaurants/officials that use a Facebook page might be accessible via federation!
2. Threads starts allowing their users to embed and interact with content from Facebook, Instagram, & possibly WhatsApp using Threads. Federated communities will be able to embed some of that content as well. Also, InstaWhatsBook users will be able to link to Threads posts as well.
3. Sooner or later, embedded content from the Meta's 'verse will encourage and eventually require you to be signed into Meta. This will be for the "security" and "privacy" of Meta users. But don't worry, you'll simply be able to link your federated instance's account to a Meta account real easy, and even keep your credentials & karma status synced as well!
4. Eventually posts from Threads users will be restricted even further and you'll have to visit their site in order to "securely" view that content. Don't worry though, you synced your account before so it's not really an issue to just hop over.
5. People get tired of having to hop over to Threads for most posts, and since their credentials are synced to both, it doesn't really hurt to just stay on Threads and view federated posts from there.
6. Meta changes the nature of their karma system so not everything syncs anymore. Of course you get the most benefit if you're posting on Threads.
7. Meta finally decides that federating "just isn't in their best interest" and shuts down federation, leaving a husk of the Fediverse behind.

Something I don't understand currently about the whole Meta/Threads debacle is why I'm seeing talk about instances which choose to federate with Threads themselves being defederated. I have an account on mastodon.social, one of the instances which has not signed the fedipact, and I've had people from other instances warn me that their instances are going to defederate mastodon.social when Threads arrives.

I have no reason to doubt that, so, assuming that they are, why? I don't believe instances behave as any kind of relay system: anybody who wishes to defederate from Threads can do so and their instances will not pull in Threads content, even if they remain federated to another instance which does.

I'm unsure how boosts work in this scenario, perhaps those instances are concerned that they'll see Threads content when mastodon.social or other Threads-federated instances users boost it, or that their content will be boosted to Threads users? The two degrees of separation would presumably prevent that, so I can see that being a reason to double-defederate, assuming that is how boosts work (is it?).

Other than that, perhaps the goal is simply to split the fediverse into essentially two sides, the Threads side and the non-Threads side, in order to insulate the non-Threads side from any embrace, extend, extinguish behavior on Meta's part?

Ultimately, my long term goal is just to use kbin to interact with the blogging side of the fediverse, but there are obviously teething issues currently, like some Mastodon instances simply aren't compatible with kbin. I'm too lazy to move somewhere else only to move to kbin "again" after that, so in the short term I guess I'll just shrug in the general direction of Mastodon.

To be clear, I have a pretty solid understanding of why people want to defederate Threads (and I personally agree that it's a good idea), it's the double-defederation I'm not sure I follow. Is my understanding at all close? Are there other reasons? Thanks for any insight.

Szmer.info leży? #fediverse

Just wondering

My mastodon server is down

#fediverse

There’s been a lot of speculation around what Threads will be and what it means for Mastodon. We’ve put together some of the most common questions and our responses based on what was launched today.

Hi all - I blogged about trying to figure out if there is a space and place for getting public funding for Fediverse instances. I welcome any tactful feedback.

Twitter’s dying, Reddit’s changing, everything else is entertainment – and there’s nowhere left to hang out.

Is there a fediverse tool to replace something like discogs? I know there is BookWyrm for books, but is there anything kind of like that for music collections? I've tried googling and haven't found anything. Thanks!

#fediverse

In the latter case, I think it might be feasible to prevent upvotes from being counted multiple times if the username is identical on different instances, since upvotes are public. Is there already a mechanism to do this?

Also, isn't it much more common in the Fediverse than on central platforms for the same user to have multiple accounts with different usernames? This seems likely to me, if only because popular usernames may already be taken on a given instance. In this case it seems to me hardly possible to prevent double counting. I suppose this would only be possible if the different instances would log IP addresses and share this information with other instances. That doesn't seem desirable to me at all, and probably wouldn't be legal, at least in Europe, because of the GDPR. Are there other possibilities? Cookies?

Please excuse the maybe stupid questions - I'm new here and not very good at finding info on my own yet...

ActivityPub, the protocol that powers the fediverse (including Mastodon – same caveats as the first two times, will be used interchangeably, deal with it) is not private. It is not even semi-private. It is a completely public medium and absolutely nothing posted on it, including direct messages, can be seen as even remotely secure. Worse, anything you post on Mastodon is, once sent, for all intents and purposes completely irrevocable. To function, the network relies upon the good faith participation of thousands of independently owned and operated servers, but a bad actor simply has to behave not in good faith and there is absolutely no mechanism to stop them or to get around this. Worse, whatever legal protections are in place around personal data are either non-applicable or would be stunningly hard to enforce.

So techies out there, what does this mean? “Unlike Twitter's restriction on sharing links from rival platforms like Mastodon and Instagram, #Threads is expected to be interoperable with Mastodon, utilizing the ActivityPub protocol. This move enables more connectivity between different platforms.” Does it mean we can follow people and see their posts here?

#fediverse

Title ^ I'd like to explore Peertube but I don't know where to start.

Meta will not launch its new Twitter rival, Threads, in Ireland or the EU for the foreseeable future.

Finally got around to installing Friendica to see if could be my go-to platform as it can federate with ActivityPub as well as Diaspora and others, but in reality I am not liking the interface, and even when using it from the Fedilab app it is missing some features that I like from Mastodon and Kbin.

I won't be keeping it too long.

Next step: Deploy my own Kbin instance. I really like the kbin interface, the only thing keeping me back is how daunting the docker install looks.

Is there a site that crawls and aggregates ALL kbin magazines? Like https://browse.feddit.de for Lemmy.

I've been searching around but no luck. A second best would be a curated list.

I was under the assumption that I can use one fediverse account across all ther fediverse apps, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

I.e. I downloaded the mastodon android app and tried to select kbin.social as the server, but it gives an error.

Same for jerboa, it won't let me connect to kbin.social, saying invalid credentials.

Is this something on the roadmap or am I simply wrong with my assumption?

Some really amazing things are happening in the collaborative code space.

Projects like ForgeFed and Forgejo are part of a much bigger puzzle, regarding the future of software development on the web.