
It's Friday, so why not have some fun?!
I have added sample data processing terms (based on the UK GDPR) to my sample terms for registered users of fedi services.
Feedback is welcome.
It's Friday, so why not have some fun?!
I have added sample data processing terms (based on the UK GDPR) to my sample terms for registered users of fedi services.
Feedback is welcome.
It's Friday, so why not have some fun?!
I have added sample data processing terms (based on the UK GDPR) to my sample terms for registered users of fedi services.
Feedback is welcome.
I wonder how this might apply to Fediverse development and design.... #IEEE cc: @ieeespectrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org/online-safety-kids-ieee-standard
@Tim Chambers There isn't much that we can do.
These standards, just like the various laws that triggered their creation, suppose that all social networks and social media are
Every single #Fediverse server of all types should do this. Every one. “PieFed now includes a simple plugin engine so third parties can extend PieFed functionality without adding their code to the main #PieFed project.” https://piefed.social/post/1031211 cc: @piefed_meta
@Tim Chambers And again, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are way ahead. They were all made modular right from the start, and they can all be expanded with third-party add-ons and third-party themes (provided someone makes them) by adding third-party git repositories to your server. It helps that they themselves are all installed via git in the first place.
For example, it's possible to add entirely new protocols as add-ons. On Hubzilla, protocols that aren't Zot (ActivityPub, diaspora*, RSS/Atom etc.) are add-ons and off by default for new channels. Hubzilla's counterpart to Mastodon's lists, only vastly more powerful, is called "privacy groups" and an official add-on that's off by default again. CalDAV calendar server? Wikis? Webpages? All add-ons. (streams) and Forte have a somewhat different set of add-ons and a different set of add-ons that are on or off by default for new channels.
You can bolt all kinds of stuff to these four as third-party add-ons. Want a dating platform in the Fediverse? Just write an add-on for one or several of these four that ties into their (main, public) profiles with their dozens of fields, and you've got one.
Better yet: You can upgrade the whole server, the core, the official add-ons, the official themes, third-party add-ons, third-party themes, in one fell swoop. Not first the official stuff and then each third-party repo one by one, but all at once. At least on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, util/udall
is the little helper that does it all for you.
# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # Friendica # Hubzilla # Streams # (streams) # Forte # git # ThirdParty # AddOns # PlugIns
Wow, can't believe I missed that @bonfire now supports long-form articles, RSS/Atom support, and has an "Articles" feed builder preset.
This is...starting to feel like an endgame platform for me.
Full update here: https://bonfire.cafe/post/01JYRX7HCGME693BGCZF6AGGK1
@ Anuj Ahooja Friendica has had full support for formatted long-form articles since its inception 15 years ago. The same goes for all its surviving descendants, created by the same developer: Hubzilla from 2015, (streams) from 2021, Forte from 2024. In addition, Hubzilla can be used to post federating long-form articles (which are automatically sent to Fediverse connections and Atom feed subscribers) and optionally also to post non-federating long-form articles (which aren't sent anywhere).
Friendica has also been able to subscribe to both RSS and Atom feeds since its inception. The same goes for Hubzilla.
This is not new to the Fediverse at all.
See also my Mastodon vs Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte feature comparison tables here: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392. (By the way: This is a non-federating Hubzilla article.)
CC: @ Michael Marek @ Elias Probst
# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # Friendica # Hubzilla # Streams # (streams) # LongForm # LongFormText # LongFormContent
Roman Catholic Diocese of Trier dates back to 250AD ( @bistumtrier)
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Würzburg was founded in 741 or early 742AD ( @bistumwuerzburg)
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Augsburg dates back to possibly the 11th century but seems the exact date is uncertain ( @BistumAugsburg)
Thanks for discovering these accounts @steffenloewe!
Intriguing, thanks for filling me in. I last tried to use Hubzilla a few years ago, but found the UX very confusing. Great to hear it's being addressed.
> Hubzilla 10.4, now a release candidate, will spruce up certain core parts of the UI
Is there a test server where I can have a look at this?
@deadsuperhero @tchambers @chris @pepecyb@rakoo @scott @sk
Is there a test server where I can have a look at this?
(2/2)
@jupiter_rowland
> they're famous for having separate repositories for the server and the Web frontend
You say this like it's a bad thing. They are separate pieces of software, with different purposes, requiring totally different skillsets. Treating them as such is exactly what we need more of.
Wouldn't Mastodon would be better if it specialised in developing apps, and outsourced the server side to people who know how to do back-end engineering?
You say this like it's a bad thing.
Wouldn't Mastodon would be better if it specialised in developing apps, and outsourced the server side to people who know how to do back-end engineering?
Maybe there are, although this might be more obvious if the list was divided into 3 sections;
* server
* client
* server+web-client
AndStatus is a client, and a bunch of the others on the list are server+web-client, including Pleroma, dokieli, Epicyon, Streams, and Mitra.
@Strypey So Pleroma and Akkoma (which, for some reason, is missing from the list) actually use the ActivityPub C2S API to connect their frontends? Even though Pleroma predates ActivityPub and started out as an alternative GNU social frontend, much like Mastodon?
I mean, they're famous for having separate repositories for the server and the Web frontend (same name with "-FE" attached). And they're equally famous for having servers that forgo the official frontend in favour of third-party stuff, most notably Mangane.
So if Mangane actually makes use of that API rather than a homebrew *oma client API, it could be used as or, if need be, modified into a sparrings partner for API-testing purposes, not to mention that it's living proof that the API actually works. As it integrates with Pleroma and Akkoma that well, I've got my doubts that it only uses the Mastodon client API.
In the cases of (streams) and Forte which are almost the same software save for protocol support, the Web UI is much closer to the server backend, as flexible and modifyable it is. In their cases, the question would be whether they could be used to test just how far feature support in the ActivityPub C2S API can possibly go, maybe even whether it'd be possible to use the ActivityPub C2S API to build an almost fully-featured (streams)/Forte client app (except, of course, Web UI configuration and (streams)' per-channel ActivityPub switch which might cut the whole app off the server).
CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo
# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # ActivityPub # Pleroma # PleromaFE # Akkoma # AkkomaFE # Mangane # Akkomane # Streams # (streams) # Forte # API
I wish there was an option to stop a specific account's posts from appearing in the local timeline. I could use a feature like that to avoid that in smaller instances the local timeline gets less useful to me by being dominated by users that, although often interesting, post very frequently. 'Cause if I go and mute them, then I can't see their posts even if I create a list exclusively for accounts that post very frequently and add them to it; I tried this earlier.
(1/2)
@jupiter_rowland
> Not after all the head-butting that has happened between Mike and Gargron
This is why Mike's tech remains marginal, even within the fediverse, even though it's brilliant. He just can't help being a dick to people, and blaming *them* for it. I've experienced this on and off for over a decade.
Plus he's usually been too busy building new stuff to document his work in a way other devs can grok it without asking him questions. So ... 🤷♂️
@Strypey Still, the headbutting was often justified for Mike. Unless, of course, you say that Mastodon is and has always been the one and only Fediverse gold standard and the one and only ActivityPub reference implementation.
I'll give you an example: In July, 2017, Mike's Hubzilla was the very first Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. Mike played strictly by the rules. As Hubzilla has a character limit of over 16.7 million and supports text formatting on the same level as the best long-form blogging platforms out there, he declared Hubzilla long-form and made Hubzilla send Article-type objects. Just as the spec demands.
In September, Mastodon became the second Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. But Gargron did not play by the rules. He only implemented a tiny subset of the protocol, namely what suited him. And he also broke it: Mastodon could display Article-type objects at their full length. But Gargron staunchly refused to implement any support for anything that goes beyond plain text. The ActivityPub spec explicitly says that Article-type objects are formatted. But Gargron wanted Mastodon to be a purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging platform. And stuff like bold type, italics, headlines, embedded in-line images or titles aren't purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging.
And so Mastodon took fully formatted, long-form-blog-style posts from Hubzilla and ripped everything out that wasn't plain text. It basically defaced Hubzilla posts. That is, it had been defacing Friendica and Hubzilla posts all the same ever since it was launched. But this time, there was a spec that actually defined what Mastodon was doing as wrong. And that spec had been finalised and pronounced a W3C standard meanwhile.
So Mike asked Gargron to please follow the official ActivityPub spec and make Mastodon support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects.
Gargron refused. Old-skool microblogging is plain text and only plain text, full stop.
This went back and forth. Eventually, Gargron presented a "solution": Mastodon now "renders" Article-type objects by showing the title and, right below, a link to the original. That is, basically not at all anymore. Of course, this meant that the vast majority of Mastodon users no longer read what came from Friendica and Hubzilla because they couldn't be bothered to open that link.
Mike saw this as a direct assault against Friendica and Hubzilla and an attempt at excluding both from "the Fediverse" which was almost entirely Mastodon at that point already. So he himself had to break the spec and make Hubzilla send Note-type objects instead so that Mastodon renders them at all. It still defaces them to this day.
(Friendica's solution was to send an Article-type object when a post has a title and a Note-type object when it doesn't have a title. Optionally, it can always send Note-type objects.)
By the way: This very same head-butting has returned. Not between Gargron and Mike, though, but between Gargron and much bigger players. Platforms like Flipboard and Ghost have introduced ActivityPub, and they send Article-type objects just as the ActivityPub spec demands. The same goes for WordPress. And, of course, they don't send plain-text "long tweets". They send fully formatted news articles and blog posts.
And now they demand Mastodon, as the biggest player in the Fediverse by user count, make their Article-type objects look just like they look at the source. They demand Mastodon not only render bold type, italics, headlines and the rest of the subset of text formatting that was introduced with Mastodon 4 in October, 2022. They also demand Mastodon show the titles and, most importantly, leave the images embedded within the articles in place, no matter how many they are.
This is no longer Gargron and his devs vs a guy in the Australian outback. This is Gargron and his devs who try hard to bend the Fediverse to their will and assume supreme control over it vs the Ghost Foundation, Flipboard, Inc. and Automattic, Inc. that play strictly by the ActivityPub rules. And I dare say that Automattic, Inc. alone has more money and more market power than Mastodon gGmbH and Mastodon, Inc. combined.
Mastodon has always gotten away with ignoring and breaking standards, re-inventing wheels and implying towards its religious followers that the whole Fediverse was built upon Mastodon and around Mastodon, and that everything that does things differently from Mastodon is inherently a broken add-on to Mastodon or an evil intruder. This time, they won't. And I guess they've actually taken it into consideration.
CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo
# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # ActivityPub # Mastodon # Friendica # Hubzilla # WordPress # Ghost # Flipboard
@Tim Chambers I guess the main obstacle in development right now is that there are no clients to pair the server applications with and test them against.
Then again, it would take a whole lot of clients. One unified client that covers e.g. Pleroma just as neatly as (streams) is impossible, seeing as how extremely different the two are.
CC: @Strypey @ just small circles 🕊 @ Ben Pate 🤘🏻 @rakoo
# FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # ActivityPub # Pleroma # Streams # (streams)
People keep pointing out the UX fail of expecting people to have multiple accounts to use all the different fedi services. But that wouldn't be true if every #AP app and server used a general purpose #C2S API, defined in the AP spec (whether the existing one or not).
Then we could, for example, use a Mastodon account to login to a PeerTube service to browse and post videos. Or use a PT account to login to a Mastodon service to browse and post Notes.
@StrypeyLocally writing content to the database of an ActivityPub-based server will inevitably require a local user account on that very server.
I mean, we already have OpenWebAuth magic sign-on which was invented by @ Mike Macgirvin ?️ for Hubzilla in 2017, and which also has full implementations in his later server applications (streams) and Forte and a client-side implementation on Mike's first project, Friendica. But without an actual account on another server, OpenWebAuth can only authenticate you on that other server as a guest and grant you certain guest permissions. It does not give you all the powers of a local user, at least not without a local account.
Also, if you want to actually log in on another server, you will inevitably need local login credentials on that server. Which means that a user account with these login credentials must be created prior to you logging in on that server so that that server knows your login name and your password. Even if you want to use something like OAuth, that server will still require to know your credentials. They will have to be in that server's database before you can successfully log in.
A server cannot and will not authenticate you against credentials in a wholly different remote server's database. What you and many other Fediverse users dream of can only be solved in two ways and both only theoretically because, in practice, they are just as impossible or at least very unfeasible.
Either if you register an account on one Fediverse server, that account with the exact same credentials is simultaneously created on literally all other Fediverse servers, and on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, you also automatically get a channel along with that account. This also means that each Fediverse server that's installed and spun up for the first time will immediately have to create tens of millions of accounts so that everyone all over the Fediverse automatically has login credentials on that server. I guess it should be clear that this is impossible, also because this requires a) a centralised list of absolutely all Fediverse accounts and identities and b) a centralised list of all Fediverse servers to be hard-coded into every last instance of every last Fediverse server out there.
Now, I keep reading stuff like, "But I don't want to use all Fediverse servers!" No, but you want to be able to use any Fediverse server. And then you will have to have an account there. How is the Fediverse supposed to know in advance which servers you will visit this year, the next two years, five years, ten years so that accounts can be automatically created for you exactly there and nowhere else?
See? And that's why, if you want to be able to use any server like with a local account, every server must be prepared for it before you arrive.
Or drive-by registration: You visit a Fediverse server for the first time, your active login is recognised by that Fediverse server, and an account is created for you on the fly with the exact same login credentials as where you're already logged in. That's its own can of worms.
Also, it requires remote authentication. OpenWebAuth. As I've already said: This is technology that's eight years old, and that's being daily-driven right now. But: You will never have this on Mastodon. There actually is a pull request for Mastodon from two years ago that would have implemented client-side OpenWebAuth support. It was never merged. It was silently rejected by the Mastodon developers. The PR was closed in November, 2024.
Some people go even further: They don't just want their login credentials wherever they go, they want their whole identity cloned to everywhere. They want all their stuff, all their posts and comments and DMs, all their followers and followed, all their settings, all their filters etc. etc. pp., they want it everywhere all the same. Like a nomadic identity (an invention by Mike from 2011, first implemented in 2012) across up to 30,000 servers.
Now, you and many others on Mastodon are probably going to cry out, "YES, YES, PLEASE MAKE THIS REALITY!"
But seriously: I myself have actually cloned enough Hubzilla and (streams) channels of mine in my time. None of them even had nearly as much content on them as your Mastodon account. And I can tell from a lot of personal experience that this cannot be done within a blink of an eye.
Nomadic identity won't come to Mastodon anyway. Nomadic identity via ActivityPub is probably being daily-driven already. Forte has it, and it relies on it. But Mastodon will never implement it. In particular, Mastodon would rather re-invent the "nomadic identity" wheel in a way that's incompatible with what we already have than implement something made by Mike Macgirvin. Not after all the head-butting that has happened between Mike and Gargron over the years.
And OpenWebAuth won't come to Mastodon either. Probably also for the same reason.
CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo @ Ben Pate 🤘🏻
# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # Mastodon # Friendica # Hubzilla # Streams # (streams) # Forte # OpenWebAuth # SingleSignOn # NomadicIdentity
@benpate
> It’s all speculation in the absence of a C2S API that developers want to use
The main reason devs haven't wanted to use the C2S API in the AP spec is network effect. Clients devs don't want to use it because Mastodon doesn't, and servers devs don't want to use it because their services wouldn't work with all the clients following the Mastodon API.
But there are a bunch of projects now implementing AP C2S. I'm sure I've seen a list somewhere.
EDIT: here;
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/delightful-fediverse-experience/issues/130
The main reason devs haven't wanted to use the C2S API in the AP spec is network effect. Clients devs don't want to use it because Mastodon doesn't, and servers devs don't want to use it because their services wouldn't work with all the clients following the Mastodon API.
(And this fedi UX thing makes your toot seem like a top post in mastodon web UI, not showing further up the thread. Luckily there's 'Open original page' if one is aware of that)
@ just small circles 🕊 It's not Fedi UX. It's Mastodon UX. Big difference.
Here on Hubzilla, I see the whole thread as one right away, all the way to the start post, without having to look at it at its origin.
The only improvement that I'm waiting for is the tree-style view that'll soon be rolled out with Hubzilla 10.4 (Friendica, (streams) and Forte already have tree-style views whereas Hubzilla had a strictly chronological thread view until the recent RCs).
# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Hubzilla # Conversations # ThreadedConversations
Yes, if browsers understood ActivityPub then the whole world would change. I’d love that.
We’d need everyone on board, but Ms, Apple, and Google might follow if Mozilla and Vivaldi proved it would work.
That would require a working C2S API.
And all of that is years away 😩
I think we get there with incremental, evolutionary steps that prove the Fediverse is viable, and attract more non techies to the community.
@ Ben Pate 🤘🏻 In the words of a diaspora* developer, if Mozilla and Vivaldi "implemented ActivityPub", they'd actually "implement Mastodon". That'd mean catching more users with less effort than implementing vanilla ActivityPub and implementing features that Mastodon doesn't have. Besides, both used to have or still have a Mastodon server, but they don't seem to be aware that there's a Fediverse beyond Mastodon, much less what it's like and how it works.
In fact, they wouldn't even implement the ActivityPub C2S API at all. They'd implement the Mastodon client API and only the Mastodon client API.
CC: @rakoo @Tim Chambers
# Long # LongPost # CWLong # CWLongPost # FediMeta # FediverseMeta # CWFediMeta # CWFediverseMeta # Fediverse # ActivityPub # Mastodon # MastodonAPI
@ craignicol Redundancy. Resilience against losing the server that you're on by being on another server simultaneously.
Also, just because you can spread your identity across multiple servers and even server types, doesn't mean you can only have one identity.
Look at me, for example:
I have friends who are geeks who happen to have Crohn's and family members who have Crohn's, so I was invited by algorithm to a Crohn's support group. Irrelevant but harmless. Why would I want the same identity across groups that would allow more spurious (or politically dangerous) connections?
Multiple identities is a feature, not a bug, despite what Google, Meta and the rest want us to believe.
@ craignicol Redundancy. Resilience against losing the server that you're on by being on another server simultaneously.
Also, just because you can spread your identity across multiple servers and even server types, doesn't mean you can only have one identity.
Look at me, for example:
@ Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Allow me to take a look at this from a Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte point of view.
@!{benpate@mastodon.social}
rather than @[url=/@benpate%40mastodon.social]Ben Pate 🤘🏻[/url]
. Then you're a) the only one to whom the message is sent (it literally doesn't even go out to any other server than mastodon.social plus my clone on hub.hubzilla.de as can be seen in the delivery report) and b) the only one who is granted permission to view the message.A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate