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If it would be, as @thenexusofprivacy writes on https://privacy.thenexus.today/fediseer-fires-and-the-bad-space/, all of the almost 4000 instances on Ro's list are attacking marginalized people. Which is a lie! Because he just copy & pastes blocklists from toxic instances, like
mastodon.artwhich is well known for spreading untruth via their blocklist and using #Oliphant, #TBS, ... to spread it far more, than it should be.E.g., the domain
drow.beis listed with the tagstalking, which is a criminally relevant accusation that has not been proven by any of the blocklist operators. It is not possible because it is not true, but simply the personal hatred of Welshpixie, operator ofmastodon.art, against the owner of the domain!Also, Ro, the operator of #TBS, is defenitely a racist. Every time TBS is not criticized in his favor, the one criticizing TBS is directly called a racist and bigot, blocked, so that no discussion is possible anymore, and then slandered via TBS as well as Fediblock.
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@Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Allow me to take a look at this from a Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte point of view.The Sin of Overwhelming Complexity: Instance Selection Paralysis
The only way to really combat this effectively is by hiding the whole concept of servers/instances at first, railroading everyone to a server and only letting them know about decentralisation and servers/instances after the fact.
In theory, this could be doable with Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, and even better than with Mastodon with its themed servers. It wouldn't make sense to offer Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte servers for certain topics or target audiences, seeing as the whole thing would become moot the very moment when you make your first clone on another server. Simply build a kind of "automatic on-boarder" that sends everyone to the geographically closest open-registration server.
In practice, that'd be a bad idea, but for a different reason than on Mastodon. And that's how these servers tend to be very different. Not in topic. Not in target audiences. Not in rules. But in features. Hubzilla is modular, (streams) is modular, Forte is modular, and each admin decides differently on which "apps" to activate. Then you want to join Hubzilla for one cool feature, but the on-boarder railroads you to a server where that very feature isn't even activated.
Sure, the on-boarder could include the option to select certain features that you absolutely must have in your new home and then pick a server that has them. But that'd be extra hassle and extra confusing.
Besides, where'd you put that on-boarder? On the official Hubzilla website? Haha, no can do. The official Hubzilla website is a webpage on a Hubzilla channel itself. It's all just dumb old static HTML with a CSS. If it's even HTML and not Markdown or BBcode, that is. You couldn't add scripts to it if you tried.
Oh, and (streams) and Forte don't even have official websites. And (streams) will never have one, seeing as it's officially and intentionally nameless, brandless and totally not even a project. Their "websites" are readme files in their code repositories on Codeberg.The Sin of Inconsistent Navigation: Timeline Turmoil
The streams on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are quite a bit different from Mastodon timelines.
First of all, what you usually don't have on public servers is the counterpart to Mastodon's local timeline and Mastodon's federated timeline. On all three, this would be only one stream, the "public stream" or "pubstream". It can be switched by the admin to either what'd be local or what'd be federated. However, public servers usually have it off entirely. Unavailable even to local users. That's because the admins don't want to be held liable for what's happening on the pubstream.
Technically speaking, you only have one stream on a public server, and that's your channel stream. It's much more efficient than a Mastodon timeline because it always shows entire conversations by default instead of detached single-message piecemeal, and because it has a counter for unread messages which even lists these unread messages for you to directly go to the corresponding conversation. But that's another story.
However, your channel stream can be viewed on your channel page, conversation by conversation, or it can be viewed on the stream page as an actual stream with all conversations shown in a feed/timeline-like fashion, one upon another, and with its own set of built-in filters such as "only my own messages" or "only conversations started by members of one particular privacy group/access list" or "only conversations from one particular group actor". It's actually much more convenient than any Mastodon timeline, but for those who want a Twitter clone for dumb-dumbs, it can be very overwhelming.
Yes, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are much more complex in handling than, say, snac2. But they're also much more complex in features than snac2. That power is their USP. And that power must be harnessed somehow.The Sin of Remote Interaction Purgatory: Federation Gymnastics
Sure, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have some of the best built-in search systems in the whole Fediverse. They can pull almost everything onto your channel stream just by searching for it. And if it has replies, chances are they pull these in as well.
But still, they're geared towards desktop users. They still require copy-paste. Phone users don't copy paste. Most of them don't even know the very concept of copy-paste. For most of those who do, copy-paste is much too fumbly if the input device available to them is a 6" touch screen.
You can't blame them, though. This is next to impossible to do any differently. I mean, you won't see a button magically appear with which you can pull in just that one post or comment you want to pull in.
Rather, the issue is that they can only reel in almost everything. Sometimes the search returns nothing, like a void. Sometimes the search runs indefinitely without any kind of result. This may be because someone has blocked your channel, because someone has blocked your entire server, because the server someone is on has blocked you or your entire server, because Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte doesn't understand the URI pasted into the search field or whatever.
So this is made worse by Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte not knowing what they can search for, what they can't and why not.
Connecting with someone whom you encounter on your channel stream is fairly easy. Connections can be initiated with only two clicks. Either you click their long name, and you're taken to a pretty much distraction-less local "intermediate page" with a striking green button that's labelled "+ Connect". Or if you don't want to leave the channel page, you hover your mouse cursor over their profile picture, click on the little white arrow that appears, and you get a small menu that offers you the "Connect" option as well. Granted, even some veterans don't know the latter trick because it isn't immediately advertised on the channel page.
Also, sure, you don't simply follow them right off the bat with nothing else to do like on Mastodon. You're taken to your Connections page, and you have to configure the connection (you don't have to do that on Mastodon because you can't configure connections on Mastodon).
Following accounts/channels from the directory is a bit easier. The green "+ Connect" button is there right away (unless you're already connected). However, Hubzilla's directory only lists channels based on the Nomad protocol, i.e. Hubzilla and (streams) channels, because ActivityPub is only implemented in an optional, off-by-default-for-new-channels add-on whereas it's in the core and on by default on (streams) and the only available protocol on Forte.
Importing contents or following actors when seeing them locally on other servers without copy-pasting and searching can be done. It requires OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, however, and it requires it to be implemented on all servers of all Fediverse server applications from Mastodon to WordPress to Ghost to Flipboard. Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are the only Fediverse server applications with full (client-side and server-side) OpenWebAuth implementations. But that's of little use if the rest of the Fediverse doesn't have server-side implementations, and Mastodon has even silently rejected a mere client-side implementation already developed to a pull request two years ago.The Sin of DM Disasters Waiting to Happen
I think this is less of an issue on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte because they handle DMs differently from Mastodon (which "the Fediverse" actually refers to in the article).
On all three, DMs are integrated into their extensive, fine-grained permissions system in which everything is only public if it's really public. The difference between a post and a DM is not just a switch.
If I want to DM you, I can either tag you@!{[email protected]}rather than@[url=https://mastodon.social/@benpate]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.
Or I can use the padlock icon and select you from the opening list as the sole recipient. The very moment that I select certain recipients, the post I'm composing quits being public, and the padlock icon switches from open to closed. This isn't a one-click or two-click toggle. You don't do that casually. It's basically configuration. It requires so many mouse clicks that you do it consciously and intentionally. If you want to post in private, you have to really want to post in private.
Better yet: You can default to posting only to a certain limited target audience. In fact, by default on a brand-new channel, you only post to the members of one privacy group/access list (which is a Mastodon list on coke and 'roids). You have to manually reconfigure your new channel if you want to post to the general public by default.
If you preview your post, you can see whether it's a direct message to one or multiple single connections (envelope icon next to your long name), a limited-permissions message to one or multiple privacy groups/access lists/group actors (closed padlock icon) or actually public (no icon).
Even better yet: Posts to group actors generally aren't public. Posts to at least Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups and Forte groups are never public. They do not go out to your followers as well unless they're connected to the same group. And this is independent from whether a group is public or private. You can't accidentially post to a group actor in public, and if you do, you don't post to that group actor at all, at least not in a way that makes the group actor forward your post to its other connections.
Granted, what does not happen is your background switching from your background colour or background image (which can be user-configured) to red #800000 or a yellow-and-back chevron pattern when you change visibility and permissions to something that isn't public.The Sin of Ghost Conversations and Phantom Follower Counts
And again, when @Tim Chambers says, "the Fediverse", he almost exclusively means Mastodon. He writes as if the entire Fediverse handled conversations as terribly as Mastodon, as if the entire Fediverse was as blissfully unaware of enclosed conversations as Mastodon. Which is not the case.
Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, as well as their ancestor Friendica, handle conversations in ways that exceed Mastodon users' imaginations and wildest dreams by magnitudes. Unlike Mastodon, they know threaded conversations, and they see them as enclosed objects where only the start post counts as a post, and everything else counts as a comment.
This means that once you've received a post on your stream, you will also receive all comments on that post, regardless of whether or not you follow the commenters, regardless of whether or not they mention you. That's because all four reel in the comments not from the commentors, but from the original poster who is perceived as the owner of the thread. Only blocks or channel-wide filters can prevent comments from coming in.
Beyond that, (streams) was the first to introduce Conversation Containers. Forte inherited them from (streams), and when they were defined in FEP-171b, Hubzilla implemented them, too.
Here on Hubzilla, I can see all comments in this thread because my channel has fetched them directly from @Johannes Ernst. And I can actually see them right away because that's the default view here on Hubzilla, rather than Mastodon's piecemeal.
Even if you import a post manually using the search feature (and you better import the actual start post), AFAIK existing comments will eventually be backfilled. Comments that come in after importing will definitely end up on your stream as part of the thread.
So this is not a shortcoming of the Fediverse. The Fediverse has been able to do better for 15 years. It's a shortcoming of Mastodon.
The only "issue" here may be that it sometimes takes some time for a comment to show up for some reasons. But unless there are blocks or filters in play, it eventually will.The Sin of Invisible Discovery: The Content Mirage
I'm not going to pick on the audacious implication that "Eugen and team" invented the Fediverse.
But Tim writes like literally everyone wants "the Fediverse" (read, actually Mastodon) to be literally Twitter without Musk.
Also:- Friendica has had full-blown full-text search since its inception as early as 2010. Five and a half years longer than Mastodon has even existed.
- Hubzilla has had full-blown full-text search since its inception as early as 2011 when it was forked from Free-Friendika. It has inherited full-text search from Friendica.
- (streams) and Forte have had full-blown full-text search since their respective inception in 2021 and 2024, both having inherited it themselves.
Oh, and none of them has an explicit opt-in switch to soothe panicking Twitter converts because panicking Twitter converts have never been the primary target audience of either of them.
Instead, on Hubzilla, whether someone can find your content depends on whether they've got permission to view it in the first place ("Can view my channel stream and posts"). If it's public, they have it. Full stop. Public is public is public. Stop whining. You've made it public, now deal with everything being able to see it.
(streams) and Forte behave the same. In addition, they have an extra permission: "Grant search access to your channel stream and posts". This controls who may search your channel stream using your own local search feature while visiting your channel locally. Something that isn't even possible on Mastodon.
As for not having any content on my channel stream before I connect to anyone: I, for one, do not want some algorithm to force content upon me that I'm not interested in. Full. Frigging. Stop. I want to have full and exclusive control over what I see and what I don't.The Sin of User Discovery Hell
Can it really be that Mastodon's directory is so much worse than Friendica's, Hubzilla's, (streams)' and Forte's directories? I guess it is because it really only lists local accounts on that one particular server. A side-effect of Mastodon being a microblogging service and Twitter clone. And not a full-blown, fully-featured social network and Facebook alternative. No, seriously, it isn't that.
Friendica is. It was designed as such. It was designed to take Facebook's place, and not by aping and cloning Facebook, but by being better than Facebook.
The directory on each node is decentralised. It lists all actors known to that node. What's outright unimaginable from a Mastodon point of view: It takes the keywords in the profiles into account. Better even: It ranks suggestions by the number of matching keywords.
Want something centralised instead? Try the Friendica Directory. Looking for people? Looking for news accounts? Looking for groups? There are specialised tabs for that. Friendica can tell them apart, and so can the Friendica Directory.
Caveat: The Friendica Directory only lists Friendica accounts. Friendica's built-in directory should list everything it knows. I haven't used Friendica in many years, but I guess this even includes diaspora* accounts because why not?
Hubzilla has indirectly inherited its directory from Friendica. This is the directory on Netzgemeinde, the biggest Hubzilla hub.
Again, it lists local as well as federated channels. You can choose whether to see only local channels ("This Website Only") or federated channels as well. You can choose whether channels flagged NSFW shall be listed or not ("Safe Mode"). You can choose to only have group actors listed that let themselves be listed ("Public Forums Only"). You have a cloud of keywords from the keyword lists in the profiles that you can filter by (Mastodon doesn't even have keyword lists in profiles). You have full-text search for names and keywords. There's even a Facebook-style suggestion mode that proposes connections to you with a ranking based on your keywords and their keywords as well as the number of common connections, and that still has the same filters.
Caveat this time: Hubzilla's directory only supports the one sole protocol built into Hubzilla's core. And that's Zot6. This means that Hubzilla's directory only lists Hubzilla and (streams) channels because Hubzilla and (streams) are the only Fediverse server applications that support Zot6.
(streams) and Forte have inherited their directories again. And they probably have the most powerful decentralised directories in the entire Fediverse. I'd give you a link, but (streams) directories generally aren't public; only local channels can access them.
These directories are similar to the ones on Hubzilla. You see local and federated actors, and you can choose to only see local actors ("This Website Only"). You can choose to only see group actors ("Groups Only"). You can choose to not see channels flagged NSFW ("Safe Mode"). What's new: Inactive actors can be kept out, too ("Recently Updated").
Now it comes: (streams) has ActivityPub built into its core, and it's on by default on new channels. Forte is entirely based on ActivityPub.
This means that their directories can list anything from anywhere that uses ActivityPub. "Groups Only" gives you Guppe groups, Lemmy communities, /kbin and Mbin magazines, PieFed communities, Mobilizon groups, Flipboard magazines, Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups, Forte groups etc., all on one list.
(streams) has a slight edge over Forte here because it also lists Hubzilla and (streams) channels that have ActivityPub off such as the Streams Users Tea Garden where ActivityPub was turned off with the very intention to keep Mastodon out.
If there was a gigantic Forte server, as big as mastodon.social, and its directory was accessible to the public, that directory would be the best directory in the Fediverse for anything really. If it was on (streams), it would list more, but it would confuse some users of e.g. Mastodon who'd try to follow Hubzilla or (streams) channels that have ActivityPub off. Forte simply doesn't list these because it can't find them.
A global directory of everything sounds like a good idea, but it's next to impossible to implement.
Either the directory would go look for actors itself. In order to do that, it would have to know within a split-second not only whenever a new actor is created somewhere so it can index that actor right away, but also whenever a new server is spun up so that the admin actor can be indexed, and that server can be watched. How is it supposed to know all that?
Well, or the directory, a single, monolithic, centralised website, would have to be hard-coded into all Fediverse server software. That way, each server could immediately report newly created actors to the central directory upon their creation.
For starters, this would make the whole Fediverse depend on one single centralised website under the control of, if bad comes to worse, one person.
Besides, this would be a privacy nightmare. Let's suppose I create a new (streams) channel that's supposed to be private. Its existence and all its properties would be sent to the central directory before I can set it to private and restrict its permissions. This wouldn't be so bad on Hubzilla because I'd make the channel private before I turn on PubCrawl and make the channel accessible to the directory in the first place because the directory would only understand ActivityPub.
Of course, the directory would mostly be built against Mastodon. It would not understand the permissions systems implemented on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, and it might happily siphon off the profiles of channels where access to the profile is restricted and make them publicly accessible. On the other hand, this is likely to mean that the directory couldn't read most of Hubzilla's, (streams)' and Forte's profile text fields anyway because Mastodon doesn't have them.
But such a centralised directory wouldn't make connecting to other users that much easier and more convenient. You'd still have to copy and paste URLs or IDs into your local search and search for them (unless you're on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte where you can connect to URLs directly). At the very least, you should be able to go to the centralised directory and follow anyone just by clicking or tapping them. That, however, would require OpenWebAuth support on both your home server and that directory.
Ideally, that directory would be firmly built into all instances of all Fediverse software from snac2 to Mastodon to Hubzilla, even replacing any existing directory to confuse people less. But that would make the Fediverse even more dependent on one central website and its owner, something which should be avoided at all cost.
Lastly, nothing can ever be built into all instances of all Fediverse software. Remember that there's software with living instances that's barely being developed such as Plume. There's even software with living instances that's been officially pronounced dead such as Calckey, Firefish or /kbin. How are Firefish servers supposed to implement such a feature if nobody maintains Firefish anymore, and even the code repository was deleted?
CC: @Risotto Bias
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #OpenWebAuth #SingleSignOn #NomadicIdentity #Search #FullTextSearch #Directory #Permissions #Privacy #Conversations #ThreadedConversations #FEP_171b #ConversationContainers -
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3. RFT shows that there *are* ways of becoming more psychologically flexible. The method, by excellence, is #ACT ( #AcceptanceAndCommitmentTherapy ). It teaches us to relate to our internal experiences in better ways, so that we can accept our inner experiences and commit to act so that our lives are meaningful. How does this relate to GTD? … -
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3. RFT shows that there *are* ways of becoming more psychologically flexible. The method, by excellence, is #ACT ( #AcceptanceAndCommitmentTherapy ). It teaches us to relate to our internal experiences in better ways, so that we can accept our inner experiences and commit to act so that our lives are meaningful. How does this relate to GTD? … -
I'm trying to figure out a new project to work on, and the only idea I had so far was an open source federated Habitica-like application, where the owner of the sever would dictate the rules, and the weight of tasks, create history-rich quests, the community could create the art for new monsters, items and such. For good social features, maybe some sort of integration with Mastodon and/or Lemmy, idk, it's just an idea I've been playing with.
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Tips For Picking The Best Mastodon Server
Mastodon has gained a lot of traction over the past 2 – 3 months alone due to Elon Musk taking over Twitter and really stirring things up. I won’t get into any of that here as that’s not what this article is about. What I will tell you about is a few things for you to think about when it comes time for you to pick a Mastodon server for you to call your home.
Joining Mastodon isn’t just about picking a username, entering your email address and then simply joining the conversation. There are thousands and thousands of “instances”, or servers, that you could possibly join and today I’m going to give you a few things to think about prior to joining. This will hopefully help you join the best instance for you from the get-go so you don’t have to go through the transfer to another instance process.
What Are Mastodon Servers?
Mastodon servers, or more correctly called, instances, are individual communities that each have their own rules and often their own culture. A server can be owned by a single individual, a group of people or even an organization and those are the people who dictate the community’s guidelines.
One thing to note is, when you join an instance, you’re not limited to only interacting with people from that instance alone. You’re still able to interact with others around the Fediverse. However, the instance you do choose can possibly impact your overall experience in various ways.
How To Pick A Mastodon Server
At the time of this writing, Mastodon currently has 13,110 servers with about 9.3 million users and growing considerably each and every day. With this many servers to choose from, it might seem a bit overwhelming on what you should pick to join. That’s where this article will hopefully help you. As stated above, you can always transfer to another server if you feel the one you pick originally isn’t best suited for you or you find something that is better suited for you after you start using the platform.
Write A List Of Server Requirements
Before you dive in head first, I highly recommend you make a list of your wants and needs you’d like about a server you might join. Things to think about are as follows:
Moderation Policy Or Community Rules: What types of content are allowed and what types of content are not allowed. This can range from memes, NSFW (Not Safe For Work) content, hate speech and so on. You should always be able to find this information via the servers About Page.
Age Of The Server: If the server is brand new, that’s something to think about. It could possibly end up not surviving very long, forcing you to transfer to another server. It could go inactive as the owner(s) thought they had time to maintain it but realized they don’t. Older, more established servers are more likely to stay around and have a bigger, better and more stable community.
Other Servers You Might Want To Interact With: You can interact and follow users from other servers in most cases. However, some servers can block other servers around the Fediverse for various reasons such as their political stance, not agreeing with a servers moderation policies and so on. This is certainly something to keep in mind when thinking about joining specific servers.
How Quickly You Want To Start Using Mastodon: Some servers you have to request to join or even be invited to join them. This process can often take a couple of days. If you’re looking to join in on some conversations immediately, this might not be where you want to try and join as you might be forced to wait a couple of days before actually getting into Mastodon and seeing what it’s all about. One thing to note here, most servers that are invite only do so for a good reason and are often better communities or goal oriented communities so it might be that it’s worth the wait.
Consider The Types Of Posts You Want To See
Mastodon servers can be very general servers or they can be pretty niche, depending on the server itself. Depending on what posts or content you want to see plays a big part in the server you decide to choose.
For example, let’s say you are an artist who wants to be on an art centric server as you will be posting a lot of your own art, but also want to see mostly art from others. You’ll want to find yourself a specific server with that in mind and trust me, there are several to choose from. If that’s what you’re wanting, then you most likely don’t want one of the larger servers like mstdn.social or anything similar.
I know you’re likely asking, why does the server matter if I can interact and see other users from all over the fediverse? The reason is because your HOME server is the best place to find like-minded people who will also be sharing content from outside of your server of like-minded content.
Here’s a breakdown of the three feeds you will have the option of viewing once you start using Mastodon.
Home Feed: Shows content from the people you follow regardless if they are on your server or a different server.
Local Feed: Shows content only from the people on your server.
Federated Feed: Shows content from people followed by those on your server. Remember, your server might block other servers, so you won’t see content from those servers if your server has it blocked.
Utilize Mastodon’s Server List
Mastodon offers a partial list of servers that you can browse to get an idea of what server you’d like to join to get started. You can find that list here: Server List. Remember, this is not a complete list of all servers available.
You can filter this list by geographic region, language, registration process (invite needed or no invite needed) and host/ownership type (individual or organization). You can also sort by topic of interest such as: art, music, technology, LGBTQ+, sports, books and so much more.
One really good thing to note here is that all of the servers that are listed on this have all agreed to follow the Mastodon Server Covenant, which is basically the best practices of Mastodon. This is pretty important as it ensures you are going to find good servers that have good rules in place such as:
Active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.Daily backups to prevent the loss of user data and even server data.At least one person, other than the admin themselves, with emergency access to the server infrastructure. This is extremely helpful if the admin is away and there's some kind of emergency that needs to be dealt with.The admin and those who run the instance have agreed to provide at least a three month notice to all users in case the server will be shutting down. This allows all users to find other instances to move to.
Take The Server Quiz To Find What Fits You Best
Believe it or not, there is even a server quiz you can take to find what server(s) might fit best as to what you are looking for and wanting from a Mastodon server. The good thing about this quiz is, you don’t need to provide any personal or private information.
The quiz will ask you simple things such as, what language(s) you speak, your preference as to how many users the server has to have and the rules that you care about most. This tool is very helpful to get you started in what servers to look at based on what you want from a server you are about to join.
What Servers Do Your Friends Use?
Your friends from other social platforms or even your real-life friends are possibly on Mastodon already and you can always ask them what server they call home so that you can take a look at it and see if it fits your needs and wants.
This also can include your Twitter friends, assuming you use or have used Twitter.
If there’s certain people or organizations you simply don’t want to miss information from, then finding these users can be very important to make your Mastodon experience that much better from the start.
There are numerous services out there that allow you to scan your Twitter follower/following lists and see if they are on Mastodon as well. It will search for keywords in their bio or even a link to their Mastodon profile.
Movetodon, Twitodon, Fedifinder and Debirdify are just a few resources to look at for finding users from Twitter that have Mastodon accounts. I’ve personally used all four of these with great results.
Join A Completely Random Server
If you’d like to simply dive in headfirst and not really do a bit of research and just get a feel for things firsthand, you can always just pick a random server, click it and join it. This allows you to check out the community and the types of posts you’ll see from others and then you can make the decision yourself if it’s the place for you or not.
Always remember, if it’s not, you can either create a new account on another server or transfer to another server. The choice is totally yours how you handle it from there. There is certainly no consequences if you feel you picked a server that isn’t quite right for you.
AllThingsTech.social Is Always Looking For New Users To Call Home
I actually happen to own and run my own Mastodon instance called AllThingsTech.social that is a public instance, though it requires staff approval of all accounts.
While the name is AllThingsTech, we don’t restrict posting to just tech related stuff in any way. That’s our main focus, but we want to provide a safe, fun, friendly place that anyone can call home and post the things they enjoy. Such as their daily routines, their cats, dogs, llama’s or whatever else. If you want to post about food, we encourage that just as we do your daily gym workout information.
We are currently doing the approval of users who sign up for the instance as this allows us to ensure that our instance remains safe for everyone involved. So, if you’re wanting to move to AllThingsTech.social from another instance, when you sing up we ask that you provide a link to your current/previous instance so we can check it out and see what types of things you like to post about so we can get a feel of what you are about.
Joining Multiple Servers
You are also free to join multiple servers if you’d like. There are lots of people who do this for various reasons. You can join an art server so that you get posts about art related stuff and where you can post your art. Then you can join a server that’s more focused on something like iOS. This allows you to post iOS related stuff but not mix in your art stuff you want to post or see.
There are many reasons you might want to have accounts on several different servers and there’s certainly nothing wrong with this as long as you feel you can keep up with having multiple accounts.
Final Thoughts
In the end, it’s all up to you how you decide which server to join. You can base it on one thing or multiple things listed above, or you can base it on your own thing completely and not follow any of what’s listed above. Again, there’s no right or wrong way to choose what server you join. Choose what works for you and if you feel you made a bad decision, then start over and do it again until you find a place to call home and what fits all of your needs.
Once you get your account setup and if you’re looking for some tips and tricks on how to get started using the platform, you can check out my Tips And Tricks For New Mastodon Users post that will give you some ideas of what to do to enhance your Mastodon experience from the start.
Once you do pick a server and you get to using Mastodon, feel free to drop me a follow if you’d like. I’ll be posting more Mastodon related articles here on this site and I will post them on Mastodon for others as well. You can follow me here: Cliff on Mastodon. If you found this article helpful in any way, feel free to tag me on Mastodon and let me know as I’d love to hear from you.
#AllThingsTech #Mastodon #SocialMedia #Technology #TipsTricks
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Reading Time: 3 minutesTable of Contents
- Twitter and People Selling Crap
- It’s not the Owner, But The Spam
- A Feeling of Being Used
- The Apathy of Mastodon
- Networking for Projects
- A Reminder
- And Finally
Recently I spent time on Twitter and Facebook and I was reminded of that horrible feeling you get when you’re looking for posts and tweets by friends, to interact with, and see crappy adverts instead. Imagine if you walked into a pub or conference and instead of having personal conversations you were harassed by marketers rather than human beings looking for a human connection.
The reason I dumped FaceBook and then Instagram is that I got tired of not only feeling that I wa wasting my time, whilst making myself feel lonelier, but on top of that someone else was making a profit from me being lost in the time wasting corporate social media landscape.
Twitter and People Selling Crap
Most of the stuff that is being sold via Twitter ads is crap now. You look and it’s con men trying to sell cons, from cryptocurrency, to privacy, to other crap. It’s ironic that they would sell this crap in a place where anyone with any decency, would no longer use.
It’s not the Owner, But The Spam
Of course it bother me that Facebook and Twitter are owned anc controlled by immoral people, and I could look beyond that, if I could find pleasant conversations, rather than see ads. What gets to me about social media is that it’s about making money for people that don’t value us as human beings. That’s why I switched to blogging, rather than social media. With blogging I might devote an hour to per day, but rather than make money for people who see me as an addict, I give people a reason to surf to my website. I also get to explore ideas in the process.
A Feeling of Being Used
Several times I have looked through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter timelines but I quickly become demoralised by the ads, the reminders of what my life isn’t and more. It’s not that people are using Facebook and Instagram to converse, they’re using it to broadcast. No one is listening. Everyone is being made invisible by the algorithms, and ignored by those that do see posts. For so little engagement I can write blog posts.
The Apathy of Mastodon
Two days ago noise pollution was making my afternoon hell, and I said so on social media. Rather than empathy though, I found apathy. The beauty of social media is that empathy doesn’t cost anything, whereas apathy can ruin someone’s experience. If we come to social media it’s to find empathy, or at the very least vent, and be ignored.
Networking for Projects
I see people write about using Twitter to make money from the content they create. That’s the wrong attitude. You should be making contacts to work on projects with people, rather than making money from social media. Too many people are utilitarian about social media, which is why it becomes a waste of time for human beings. When everyone is trying to sell, then no one is conversing, and without conversation a blog post would have the same impact, without enriching the wrong people.
A Reminder
I was reminded, while writing this blog post that the reason I became tired with Twitter is that people use it, and the community, rather than participate within it. People are busy promoting themselves and their ideas, without engaging, without investing time in friendships and more. The same people are on Mastodon and the Fediverse.
And Finally
There is a difference between what I want social networks to be, and what others want social networks to be. I will never find social networks that achieve what I want because society labels as social people on the web as addicts, and corporate social media profit from wasting our time in the hope that we will see more ads. I don’t use Facebook for moral reasons. The issue is that it has a monopoly so I am isolated, for not using Facebook.
Today Twitter feels just like Instagram. I know that if I spend too much time on Twitter it will become toxic, so I know I need to moderate how I use it.
Althought the Fediverse is an interesting project I think that the community is still weak. I can go for hours without my timeline refreshing, and when I do engage I am either trolled or ignored.
Some toots did well, but mostly likes and re-shares rather than conversations. What I want to find are conversations.
#adverts #glossy-mags #social-media #wasted-time
https://blog.main-vision.com/social-media-glossy-magazines-via-facebook-and-twitter/
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#Ukraine #corruption #akhmetov #Monaco
- Among such "new energy facilities" is a 5-level apartment of the "owner" of this kefir establishment, bought for half a billion euros in Monaco
- Wow, five-room. Nishchebrod Donetsk
- What a five-room! Five-level!
- And how many is that?
- And I don't know myself. Probably five floors. This is so that they don't blow it up like Bragin once did: two concrete floors below, two above
https://mastodon.social/@zoogger/116540053811064111 -
> Can you please take me off this thread?
Just deleted your handle from that answer @paulfoerster.
#learningQuestion's
What is "here" for you?@ all
Can we actually unsubscribe/mute only a string of answers but not the whole post and all answers to it?
What is the criteria in #mastodon in this regard?Does the owner of an inicial toot always get notifcations on answeres in his post, being mentioned or not?
How do people percieve answers like this in their virtual reality?
Do you feel rejected, dishartend, ofended, glad that yo got the advise instead of becoming simply shadowbanned?
Do you just walk on?Do you think it's easier, more polite and fair to mute a conversation and leave a statement like:
#iMout #ichBinRaus #mutedConvoAll in for answers over here, boosts are much apreciated ..
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Hi! Nice to meet you, I am Pervert! I'm the new and current owner of Aethy.
About me:
- I am many years old, I do use pronouns and I of course am part of the LGBTQ+ community. I have many traits that humans do. Means; use whatever gendered terms for me. The more neopronoun-y the better though, I love those. If I must pick a “normal” set, that’d be she/her.
- Long time Aethy member. Almost since the beginning. I lived through the growing pains and now I will cause some. Sorry about that!
- I appreciate tone tags and ALT text.
- I am in fandoms but I lurk mostly. I am not that creative. I appreciate art and writing, spending hours looking at beautiful manga panels (that’s how much I appreciate it! /hj)
PM me:
Suggestions, feedback, non-serious engagement. You can suggest emojis, accessibility/inclusivity topics, things to improve, and anything along those lines. I will keep your feedback anonymous if you wish. Just write that somewhere at the start of you message, please!
Sensitive topics related to other staff members so the issue doesn’t reach them over the mod panel. Add CW to your PM. Remember Mastodon/Ruffy doesn’t have end-to-end encryption.
Rule inquiries, general easy help. I will ask fellow staff if I’m not sure.Don’t PM me:
Overly friendly, everyday small talk. I am anon for a reason. I rather disclose as little as possible about my personal life. Thank you for understanding.
Reports! Send them through the built-in report feature.Q&A:
“Why did you want to become the owner?”
My heart broke when I heard the news. Then it healed a bit when there was a chance to find a new owner. I hopped on the chance and took on the role. Staff vetted me, interrogated me, and asked me all sorts of questions- I answered decently enough apparently! /j
“Are you just an old mod trying to hide?”
No! I am new and fresh to the team.(I’ll add more QNA here later. Possibly. Ask questions if you have any.)
I’ll do my best to keep my watchful eye over you. I am a light hearted, casual, silly talker. Serious matters get the appropriate tone. My personal goal is to keep this site alive as long as possible. If things go down, I go down. My other goal is to make Aethy more accessible by encouraging members to be mindful. I handle money and anything finance-related! I manage some official staff accounts along with some other staff members. I am new to modding here and learning how to navigate this entire system, thank you for your patience during these complicated times. I will keep my posts on the topic of Fediverse, Mastodon, Aethy and Ruffy. No meme spam from me.
Thank you, nice to meet you again and have a nice time of day,
Pervert ~PS. Use ALT text and hashtags! Those are important! Fighting!
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@Jasper Burns
Permissions meet groups
It gets really interesting when the permissions system is applied to groups. As the owner of a Hubzilla forum, you have the following options:- You can control who can see the profile of the forum, i.e. what it is all about. For example, you can only allow confirmed members to see it. Or, in fact, you can only allow certain members to see it by assigning a specific contact role to them. Or you could make it Fediverse-specific: Only those who can be recognised as logged-in Fediverse users can see the profile. Or you can hide it altogether.
- You can control who can see the contacts, i.e. the forum members, all the same. Like, for example, only a chosen inner circle may be allowed to see the list of forum members, but Joe Average Forum Member is not.
- Likewise, you can control who can see what has already happened in the forum when visiting the group profile.
- You can choose to hide the whole forum from the directory, the place where people go to find new contacts (the mastodon.social equivalent is https://mastodon.social/directory), to keep the forum secret altogether by keeping people from finding it accidentally or by searching.
(streams) and Forte have four different types of group channels instead:- Normal: public, group members may upload media to the group's file storage
- Limited: public, but group members may not upload media to the group's file storage
- Moderated: like Limited, but by default, posts and comments by new group members have to be approved by the admins; members may have their permissions upgraded and post and comment without approval once they've proven themselves worthy
- Restricted: private, profile is only visible to group members, stream of posts and comments is only visible to group members, posts and comments are only sent to group members, but group members may upload media to the group's file storage
As I've already said, you can grant individual permissions to your contacts on your personal channel. But you can grant individual permissions to forum users on a forum channel just the same. You can have regular users. You can have users with certain extra privileges. You can use the permissions system to silence users without kicking and blocking them.
And you can use the permissions system to appoint extra forum admins/mods. You can grant contacts permission to administer your forum. Now, this requires for your channel to recognise visitors and their identities to see what permissions they shall have and to grant them these permissions. And this requires OpenWebAuth. So right now, you can only make forum members from Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, Friendica, Mitra and Tootik additional admins/mods. But you can.
(9/9)
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Privacy #Security #Permission #Permissions #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #PrivateGroups -
@Julian Fietkau Maybe it'd make sense to get the devs aboard, @Mario Vavti and @Harald Eilertsen for Hubzilla and @Mike Macgirvin ?️ for (streams) and Forte. And I think there's a new place being worked on where Fediverse devs can meet in the Fediverse itself, but I don't have any more details right now.
I can see four things becoming tricky when it comes to comment control. One is if it isn't enough to add support for another implementation, and if either side actually had to change the way it handles permission in a way that isn't backwards-compatible.
The second one is that Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte don't simply allow or forbid comments, but they can allow only certain actors to comment, and be it all contacts of a channel. I don't know if GTS has that feature, or if it can support it.
The third one is that (streams) and Forte can limit the time in which a post can be commented. Channels can be configured so that comments are only allowed for a certain timespan, and individual posts can be configured so that they can only be commented on until a certain point in the future.
Now, the thing is that, much unlike all the many microblogging applications, the permissions in a conversation are always the same on (streams) and Forte (and also on Hubzilla). All comments, regardless of whether they come from (streams) or Mastodon or Lemmy or wherever, always have the same permissions as the post. Replying to a public conversation with a DM is not supported, for example; the DM will be regarded as a public comment.
This also means that you're only allowed to reply to a comment in a thread if you're also allowed to comment on the post itself. But if you're allowed to comment on the post, you're also allowed to reply to any comment in the conversation, full stop.
Speaking in "non-nomadic, no-enclosed-conversations ActivityPub" terms, this means that at a certain point after a post was sent, the owner of the post will have to automatically send a new version of both the post and all comments on the post, with comment permission revoked, around to all participants in the conversation as well as to everywhere that e.g. some Mastodon user has boosted one of the comments.
Either that, or a comment control FEP will have to include temporary comment permissions, and Mastodon and everything else will have to support them. I'm pretty sure that Mastodon users would love this feature, and they'd applaud Eugen Rochko for "inventing" it and "introducing it to the Fediverse". But (streams) and Forte certainly won't remove this feature just because the FEP don't support it.
As for how Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte handle this right now, AFAIK, they only advertise their comment permissions amongst each other. This means that if permission to comment is not granted, the comment button is removed from the UI. Not even greyed out, actually removed.
Towards the wider Fediverse, they act differently: They're fully aware that they can't keep a Mastodon account from commenting. Instead, they reject a comment that isn't allowed. And rejecting works differently on these three than on Mastodon: Rejected content is not first let into the inbox, then filtered and then deleted. It isn't let into the inbox in the first place. And if an activity has only got one possible recipient on a server, and that recipient doesn't allow that activity, the whole server rejects it.
The reason why this works for comment control is because conversations themselves work differently on these three (and Friendica) than on Mastodon: On Mastodon, replies go to a) whoever is mentioned and b) whoever follows the replier. On Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, comments always go straight to the conversation starter, even if they're comments on a comment on a comment on a comment, and from there to all participants in the thread. Of course, Mastodon users won't notice new comments until they're mentioned in the metadata.
Now, if the conversation starter rejects a comment that has actually been sent, the comment is not added to the conversation. This means two things: One, on the conversation starter's own stream, the comment does not appear as part of the conversation. Two, the comment is not forwarded to the other participants in the thread either.
From a Mastodon POV, this means that you may be able to see the branch of the conversation in which you've participated with your rejected comment in it on your own server. But if you go check the whole thread at its source, you will not see your rejected comment in the conversation.
A side-effect of this is that it isn't possible to reply to rejected comments either. Let's suppose you see some toot in your timeline. It's a comment on some (streams) post. What the commenter is blissfully unaware of: They aren't permitted to comment on this post. (streams) has rejected the comment. But you are amongst the lucky few who are permitted to comment.
Still, you can't reply to that one comment.
If a comment is rejected, then all replies to this comment are rejected, too, regardless of permissions. That's because they cannot be attached to the conversation because their own parent is missing. From your Mastodon POV, you will be able to reply. But your reply will never become part of the conversation.
This would all be a whole lot better if the entire Fediverse supported a) enclosed threaded conversations (as opposed to Twitter-like posts-and-more-posts piecemeal) and b) permissions, including comment control all the way to temporary comment permission.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #GoToSocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Permission #Permissions #ReplyControl -
@Julian Fietkau Maybe it'd make sense to get the devs aboard, @Mario Vavti and @Harald Eilertsen for Hubzilla and @Mike Macgirvin ?️ for (streams) and Forte. And I think there's a new place being worked on where Fediverse devs can meet in the Fediverse itself, but I don't have any more details right now.
I can see four things becoming tricky when it comes to comment control. One is if it isn't enough to add support for another implementation, and if either side actually had to change the way it handles permission in a way that isn't backwards-compatible.
The second one is that Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte don't simply allow or forbid comments, but they can allow only certain actors to comment, and be it all contacts of a channel. I don't know if GTS has that feature, or if it can support it.
The third one is that (streams) and Forte can limit the time in which a post can be commented. Channels can be configured so that comments are only allowed for a certain timespan, and individual posts can be configured so that they can only be commented on until a certain point in the future.
Now, the thing is that, much unlike all the many microblogging applications, the permissions in a conversation are always the same on (streams) and Forte (and also on Hubzilla). All comments, regardless of whether they come from (streams) or Mastodon or Lemmy or wherever, always have the same permissions as the post. Replying to a public conversation with a DM is not supported, for example; the DM will be regarded as a public comment.
This also means that you're only allowed to reply to a comment in a thread if you're also allowed to comment on the post itself. But if you're allowed to comment on the post, you're also allowed to reply to any comment in the conversation, full stop.
Speaking in "non-nomadic, no-enclosed-conversations ActivityPub" terms, this means that at a certain point after a post was sent, the owner of the post will have to automatically send a new version of both the post and all comments on the post, with comment permission revoked, around to all participants in the conversation as well as to everywhere that e.g. some Mastodon user has boosted one of the comments.
Either that, or a comment control FEP will have to include temporary comment permissions, and Mastodon and everything else will have to support them. I'm pretty sure that Mastodon users would love this feature, and they'd applaud Eugen Rochko for "inventing" it and "introducing it to the Fediverse". But (streams) and Forte certainly won't remove this feature just because the FEP don't support it.
As for how Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte handle this right now, AFAIK, they only advertise their comment permissions amongst each other. This means that if permission to comment is not granted, the comment button is removed from the UI. Not even greyed out, actually removed.
Towards the wider Fediverse, they act differently: They're fully aware that they can't keep a Mastodon account from commenting. Instead, they reject a comment that isn't allowed. And rejecting works differently on these three than on Mastodon: Rejected content is not first let into the inbox, then filtered and then deleted. It isn't let into the inbox in the first place. And if an activity has only got one possible recipient on a server, and that recipient doesn't allow that activity, the whole server rejects it.
The reason why this works for comment control is because conversations themselves work differently on these three (and Friendica) than on Mastodon: On Mastodon, replies go to a) whoever is mentioned and b) whoever follows the replier. On Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, comments always go straight to the conversation starter, even if they're comments on a comment on a comment on a comment, and from there to all participants in the thread. Of course, Mastodon users won't notice new comments until they're mentioned in the metadata.
Now, if the conversation starter rejects a comment that has actually been sent, the comment is not added to the conversation. This means two things: One, on the conversation starter's own stream, the comment does not appear as part of the conversation. Two, the comment is not forwarded to the other participants in the thread either.
From a Mastodon POV, this means that you may be able to see the branch of the conversation in which you've participated with your rejected comment in it on your own server. But if you go check the whole thread at its source, you will not see your rejected comment in the conversation.
A side-effect of this is that it isn't possible to reply to rejected comments either. Let's suppose you see some toot in your timeline. It's a comment on some (streams) post. What the commenter is blissfully unaware of: They aren't permitted to comment on this post. (streams) has rejected the comment. But you are amongst the lucky few who are permitted to comment.
Still, you can't reply to that one comment.
If a comment is rejected, then all replies to this comment are rejected, too, regardless of permissions. That's because they cannot be attached to the conversation because their own parent is missing. From your Mastodon POV, you will be able to reply. But your reply will never become part of the conversation.
This would all be a whole lot better if the entire Fediverse supported a) enclosed threaded conversations (as opposed to Twitter-like posts-and-more-posts piecemeal) and b) permissions, including comment control all the way to temporary comment permission.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #GoToSocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Permission #Permissions #ReplyControl -
CW: Mastodon's previews for Article-type objects still link to the original instead of rendering the content itself, but now they also include the summary along with the title; CW: long (over 3,000 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post
Okay, while this is not optimal, I'd say it comes close enough to an improvement to be of importance.
Some of us know what it's like to send Article-type objects (and long-form content should always be these according to the ActivityPub spec) to Mastodon. Now, Mastodon's handling of long-form content has changed, believe it or not. Something that neither Friendica nor Hubzilla nor (streams) nor Forte could ever achieve happened under pressure from Flipboard (commercial player), Ghost (quickly growing Substack alternative that's trying to attract professional and commercial users), Automattic (the owner of WordPress) and NodeBB (fairly big bulletin-board forum player that added ActivityPub a while ago).
So much I should say in advance: No, Mastodon does not fully render Article-type objects in their full HTML-formatted glory from the title to dozens of embedded images. Mastodon's own Web interface isn't geared towards that, and neither is any Mastodon app, official or third-party.
Instead, Mastodon still handles Article-type objects by linking to the original like it used to. But it used to show only the title if there was one. If there was no title, all that Mastodon showed was a plain URL. If there was a summary, Mastodon did as Mastodon always does and has been done since 2017, regarded it as a content warning and hid the whole "post" with the title (if there was one) and the link behind it.
What Mastodon does now is finally acknowledge that some software out there actually uses the summary field as a summary field. The preview with the link to the original now also contains the summary, along with the title. If there is either, of course.
So if you're on something that can send or always sends Article-type objects (specialised blogging software, Friendica, (streams), Forte), it's well worth adding a summary to those posts that go out as Article-type objects.
(Speaking of Friendica: Dear Friendica users, please substitute any use of "summary" in this post with "abstract" if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
julian wrote the following post Sat, 09 Aug 2025 05:31:48 +0200Re: Long-form articles
The long form content "movement" (of which I'm adjacent to but not fully involved) started up because two big implementors, Ghost and WordPress, were running into the same issues AP devs have been seeing this whole time, that Mastodon reduces articles to a title and link.
The difference is devs got together and pushed for changes, and got them done. Mastodon no longer treats articles the way they used to.
Now you can send in a summary that is used, and that gets you heaps closer to a better UX than what came before.
The long form text FEP aims to provide a way to send an alternative representation for the ubiquitous microblog software on the fediverse, in the form of a note, while still maintaining the use of other objects types (e.g. article)
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuoteToot #QuoteBoost #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Mastodon #LongFormContent #ArticleType #Summary -
@Peter Vágner @Dieguito 🦝🧑🏻💻🍕 How conversations work is not unified all across the Fediverse. Even how connections work is not unified.
Mastodon has taken over the follower/followed principle from Twitter which is always illustrated with arrows with one point. A following B is illustrated with an arrow from A to B. A being followed by B is illustrated with an arrow from B to A. A and B following each other mutually is illustrated with one arrow from A to B and one arrow from B to A.
It appears to me that Friendica has adopted this to become more compatible with Mastodon. But its several descendants, created by Friendica's own creator, starting with Hubzilla, haven't.
Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte still have the bidirectional "connection" or "contact" as the default. It's illustrated with one arrow, but with one point on each end.
Also, all three understand a threaded conversation as an enclosed contruct entirely owned by the conversation starter. Everyone on these three who has the start post on their stream always actually has the whole thread on their stream.
In fact, all three have Conversation Containers implemented. This feature was originally created in the streams repository in 2022. Forte has had it from the get-go as it started out as a fork of (streams). It was eventually turned into FEP-171b and backported to Hubzilla last year.
All three make sure that everyone who has a post on their stream also always has all comments on that post, at least those that are made after they have received the post.
This works on two basic principles:- All comments go directly to the original poster because the original poster owns the thread.
- Those who have the post automatically receive all comments from the original poster.
In a pure Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte system, your above example would look like this:- User 1 and User 2 are connected.
- User 1 and User 3 are connected. (This doesn't even matter.)
- User 2 and User 3 are connected.
- User 2 and User 4 are connected.
Now, the conversation works like this.- User 2 sends a public post, thus creating a Conversation Container of which they are the owner.
User 1, User 3 and User 4 receive the post. - User 3 comments on User 2's post.
The comment goes from User 3 to User 2, who is the owner of the conversation, and it is automatically forwarded to User 1 and User 4 who already have User 2's post on their streams. - User 4 comments on User 3's comment.
The comment goes from User 4 past User 3 straight to User 2, who is the owner of the conversation, and it is automatically forwarded to User 1 and User 3 who already have User 2's post on their streams.
On Mastodon, for comparison, everything depends on who follows whom, who mentions whom and whose instance knows whose instance.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Conversations #FEP_171b #ConversationContainers -
Hi folks. Yesterday I posted on my other Mastodon account about a pretty stupid gift card #scam that was sent to an email address I use as a political candidate for my run for #SchoolBoard (https://toot.bldrweb.org/deck/@andrewbrandt/111326617529695469)
Tonight, I received a more ominous, targeted #spearphishing email against that same campaign address.
It appears to be some form of Adobe e-signature message. The text content was weird and off.
The email has a file attachment that, if you double-click it, opens a browser window and displays a form that looks like a login dialog box. The login box is a #phishing attack, designed to steal credentials that you enter into it.
What was distinctive about this is the fact the attackers customized the login form so it has my campaign logo embedded within the form. It also pre-populated the username field with the email address that they sent the original email to. It was not generic; This was targeted.
The form will permit you to enter data into the password field three times, appearing to fail each time, and then redirects you back to your own website. It collects the IP address you were using at the time you submitted the form, and any of the passwords you submitted, and sends them to a #Telegram bot account.
I have captured the network traffic of the phishing attempt, in which I entered bogus data, and have identified the owner of the Telegram bot account and other identifiable information. I'll be reporting it to Telegram for shutdown as soon as possible.
I guarantee, if this is happening to me -- a relative nobody in my lowly, local school board race -- it is happening all over the country to political candidates of any stature.
There is less than one week until election day in the United States. Colorado voters already have their ballots and can turn them in by dropping them in a ballot collection box anytime between now and election day.
Just another reason why we need to #ElectMoreHackers
Also, once again: nice try, losers. Keep going. You're sure to hit pay dirt at some point. :ablobcateyeroll:
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A few weeks ago, we had our second experience of the wonderful community that is the Electromagnetic Field festival.
The EMF24 sign: solar panel, water installations, and recycled circuitboards.Electromagnetic Field [background here] is also known as EMF or #emfcamp – a festival initiated by Jonty Wareing and Russ Garrett over a decade ago. It is entirely, and wonderfully, volunteer-run and community-oriented.
We first went to EMF two years ago, and that time, took a car filled up with a lot of camping gear, and as many gadgets as I could cram in alongside. For some reason, the only place I wrote much about that trip was in my newsletter… which I have been neglecting a lot, much like this blog. On that trip, we camped near to the Guild of Makers, had no particular expectations, and just had a fantastic time exploring and learning. I built an RC2014 Micro in one of the workshops, and went to some great talks.
A Plan
This year, with our Forge & Craft studio becoming more established, we wanted to do something more. I submitted two talks, one of which was accepted; we applied to be a part of the Null Sector Night Market; and, with all of the maker stuff we wanted to take along, we decided to hire a camper van and set up an area for drop-in workshops around our craft (pen plotting, vinyl cutting, heat pressing, sublimation et al… I didn’t take a 3D printer as well, but did seriously consider it!).
We even made a sign. Previous tenants of our studio had left a giant empty frame in the storage area, which we repurposed with some plywood and paint (a future upgrade will probably include some LEDs, but I didn’t have the time before the event to make those happen this time around).
A large square wooden frame painted white, with a Forge & Craft logo and URL in dark blue.About ten days before we were due to set off, the owner of the camper we’d booked let us know that the boiler was leaking and that we’d have no hot water, but on balance, that was a compromise we were OK with… The van (named Louna, and hired through Quirky Campers) was lovely, beautifully kitted out, straightforward to drive, and it worked really well for us, even when we had some mud-related challenges getting parked up at the top north east corner of the EMF site, and getting back off that spot on the morning that we left (our wonderful neighbours were good enough to give us a quick push off to get us on our way).
The Experience
There are a number of other write-ups of how folks experienced EMF 2024, and pretty much all of them have different content and highlight different things, many of which are miscellany that I missed around the site. That is to say – EMF has a lot of diverse and interesting stuff to discover.
This time I felt like an experienced hand, even as someone that had only been along once before. It turned out that several of my friends were going to be there for the first time, and had already sought advice and made connection with me about travel, planned location etc. We ended up parked at the far top corner of the site, opposite Null Sector, but also close to the Guild of Makers village that we were again loosely affiliated with (also, we’re thrilled about the MBE awarded to our brilliant GoM friend Dr Lucy Rogers!). It turns out that having a surrounding sheet of steel to sleep inside was reasonably sound-insulating compared to a tent, so we did mostly manage to get some sleep, despite the proximity to the loud late-night music generation zone!
There are far Too Many Things to write about in detail, here is but a small flavour.
Talks
I went to a handful of talks; there were too many on my planned schedule across the 4 days, but realised I would never see everything, so I sniped at some key ones and resolved to catch up on recordings of others when possible.
- I finally saw Ellie Huxtable talk about shell history with Atuin (I missed this talk at FOSDEM although did get to meet Ellie there, and she was unable to join State of Open Con, so I’m glad to have seen this!). I’m now gradually installing and learning Atuin on each device and system I regularly use.
- Love love loved Shan Sun‘s talk about becoming a maker! So interesting, and a reminder that folks from all kinds of backgrounds can find joy in creating things. Shan’s lighthouses installation in Null Sector was also really cool.
- The talk about Tiny Toolkits was really good, and has caused me to add an array of small and handy tools to my “wanted” lists…!
- There was a fun talk about connecting Arduino boards to the web, which had some great demos inside it.
- Lucy gave an inspiring talk about looking Up, and the science above our heads. Looking forward to her book on this subject.
- After my experience (and illegal treatment) by the company that used to be Twitter UK as directed by the new owner, I found the discussion about Why Tech Needs Unions very interesting. A topic about which I now, in middle age, have a lot of Thoughts, which I may share at some point.
- Martin Hamilton‘s fabulous rewind to the 1990s session about the origins of web search and how AI and capitalism have largely ruined things, was great. After briefly flirting with some other options, I’m now mostly using SearXNG for my search needs where I can. Be More Goat! 🐐
For my own time on stage, it was exciting to be able to deliver a new version of a talk I’d previously given as a 45 minute closing keynote, in a more focused 20 minute slot. I talked about the history of computer art and pen plotters – computer-driven drawing machines – and how I’ve now built several of them. There was, however, an A/V bump in the road, so I definitely lost a bit of momentum and content along the way when I had to reboot halfway though 😬 video to follow, on this one. You can find the related links and notes here.
Thanks to my friend Jacqui for taking some nice photos of me on stage!Sights
As with the talks, so very many things I could mention here, and still more we didn’t even get to encounter. Let’s summarise a few.
- the on-site (wired) phone system was, once more, a delight – it made me a bit sad that I didn’t bring anything to plug into it, again.
- a man played a Theremin to drive the output of a Tesla coil.
- there was a series of murder mystery games involving the death of our beloved Clippy. I did not play these, but loved the idea and execution and heard that a lot of people did get really engaged in solving the crime!
- A physical version of Flappy Bird! Just brilliantly executed, I loved it.
This was in the main bar; the whole of the Arcade (a separate space) was also fantastic, although I did not have a lot of time to explore. I was excited to see some games there built using Downpour, which I recently talked about on our weekly podcast. - The most engaging and intriguing installation for me was Shadowplay (inside Null Sector), from Joseph Lindley, Roger Whitham, and Jesse Benjamin. An absolutely fascinating live demonstration of image diffusion [aka generative AI] effects applied to video capture. No particular reason, except that it was cool. I could have played in there for ages!
Hacks
On to the physical “making” I got involved with…
- in 2022 I missed a workshop I was interested in on Building a Tiny Satellite Ground Station; this time, I successfully made it in. I enjoyed the experience of building a small 1⁄4-wave ground plane antenna and hooking it up to TinyGS running on a LilyGo LoRA board.
- When I got home, I excitedly started to poke around in the TinyGS project, but it seems a bit tricky to get involved with – only parts of it are open source / source-available, and the community discussion is largely on Telegram. I’m finding myself more frustrated than I’d like – I definitely would love to contribute to documentation and so forth, but have not really found a way to do so. It is fun to set up, but (my impression is that it is) not so easy to take it further. Back burner, and I may give up on it if I can’t figure out how to help and get helped.
- The Tildagon badge is great! I really enjoyed following it from announcement, through pre-event discussion, to collecting mine at the event and continuing to figure out what is possible afterwards.
- Before EMF I tentatively created up a few 3D printed addon Hexpansions, and some folks were able to confirm that they should fit, so I made a set of simple spirit level pieces, which other attendees seemed to enjoy. I’ll be making more, and you can find the designs on Printables as well. I like the concept that a hexpansion can be anything from a piece of card, through to a fully-functional electronic peripheral which contributes software to the main badge, and that we can continue to iterate on this design in the future.
- I ported my previous 2022 badge Duck Facts app as an app on the Tildagon, for all your vital Duck Facts – @emfducks, you’re welcome, QUACK! 🦆
- Before EMF I tentatively created up a few 3D printed addon Hexpansions, and some folks were able to confirm that they should fit, so I made a set of simple spirit level pieces, which other attendees seemed to enjoy. I’ll be making more, and you can find the designs on Printables as well. I like the concept that a hexpansion can be anything from a piece of card, through to a fully-functional electronic peripheral which contributes software to the main badge, and that we can continue to iterate on this design in the future.
The Magic
On Friday, we had a spot in the Night Market. We loved the experience of being there, talking to people about pen plotters and our art (and also, encouraging folks to come to see us at the pop-up by our camper, or to my talk), and making some sales. This was our first time selling as Forge & Craft outside of our own open studios, and a very different audience.
The response was really wonderful, and it felt like a great place to be.
Our stand in the Night Market, selling plots, prints, and a few HexpansionsA very busy Night MarketThe only tiny piece of feedback I had was that the Night Market space itself was relatively small for the amount of footfall and traffic that came through – we could easily have used a full table, and having a bit more space for visitors may have made it feel a little less crammed in – nonetheless, Thank You so much to the organisers for having us, it was an absolutely great experience and we barely noticed the time rush by up until the 1am (!) close!
One more magical thing, was that this was an event at which Mastodon and the Fediverse came into their own!
- Ahead of the event, I put together a Fediwall to track associated hashtags and accounts across a range of popular and related Mastodon servers. As EMF approached, the chatter became more noticeable, and I began to follow a lot of interesting folks I had not previously been aware of.
(also, you can follow hashtags on Mastodon, which can help to build a network around your areas of interest, particularly if you are on a larger server). - My old friend James Smith proposed a Fediverse Friends meetup – which unfortunately overlapped with our Night Market time, but there were two of us to man our stall, so I was able to pop out and put some faces to Fediverse handles. I even brought Mastodon stickers and (for the fortunate few who got one) some magnets as well. Even if you were not at the meetup, hopefully you may have found a cheeky Mastodon logo sticker waiting to be collected somewhere else on the site 🦣 😉
- A key element was that every organising team at the event was on the Fediverse (specifically, GoToSocial, which is what their server uses, but easily followable on Mastodon, thank you ActivityPub), and attendees could use that to keep up with announcements and news. And, in the end, the wonderful @DrLucyRogers joined in the fun! I also managed to persuade the TinyGS project to set up their account.
- There were installations that connected to the Fediverse! Fabulous! This really felt like the early days of Web 2.0 platforms again, to some extent – it could easily have been 2010 all over again, with a dot matrix printer that sat in the main bar printing out Mastodon posts with the specific hashtag (thank you Matt Gray!), and a fax machine in the Null Sector bar that took in physically doodled images and posted them on Mastodon.
The Feeling
This.
I came back feeling energised and enriched, having reconnected with my communities. We had a great time.
Roll on 2026. Thank you to everyone involved.
Postscript: I did some babbling about EMF on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, as well, just at the start. Why not take a listen?
Like it? Share it -
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https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/06/20/energized-mood-flux/
#art #camping #community #emf2024 #emfcamp #forgeAndCraft #making #penplotter #publicSpeaking #Technology #volunteering
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Hi 👋 I'm Dan! Time for another #introduction
I'm a
👨 Dad
📈 #statistician at a #dataanalytics consultancy
🏃♂️ #ultrarunner
:rstats: #rstats fan
🔥 #survivor tragic
🤘 #metalheadMy time here is spent sharing #dataviz projects for #tidytuesday, Survivor, other #dataanalysis and :rstats: related stuff
I'm the owner of the survivoR #Rstats package. I don't talk about #survivor much but I do visualise it a lot! ⚠️
Lastly, you'll likely find me in the #mountains
❤️ #mastodon
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CW: Hubzilla's anti-spam arsenal; CW: long (over 2,800 characters), Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta
Fediverse spam doesn't work as easily here on Hubzilla.
Spammers can try to mention-spam me all they want. I won't even notice. If someone whom I don't follow mentions me outside any thread I follow, I'm neither notified, nor do I receive the mention in my channel stream (= local timeline). Unlike on Mastodon. That is, I could turn this behaviour on on Hubzilla if I wanted to, but it's off by default.
If you want to spam my channel stream, the following criteria have to be met:- I must be following you. Whether or not I do is entirely my decision.
- I must have allowed you to send messages to my channel stream. Again, that's my decision. And I don't unless I explicitly want to. Yes, Hubzilla has such a permission setting. Amongst many others.
- I must not have you on ignore (which keeps me from seeing your stuff, and you won't notice).
- I must not have you on block (which keeps you from sending me stuff in the first place, but you may notice).
- I must not have you on Superblock which wipes you out of existence entirely from my channel's perspective.
Spamming a thread that started on Hubzilla can be prevented by the thread starter. On Hubzilla, the thread starter owns the whole thread, all comments included. If you comment on this post, it's still me who's the owner of your comment within my thread. And I can turn off comments for either specific comments or for the post itself and thereby the whole thread.
And yes, this keeps even Mastodon users from commenting. It may not keep them from sending a post in reply. But that post will not appear in the thread at least for anyone using a project that understands Hubzilla's one-post-many-comments conversation model, myself included.
If bad came to worse, I could even only allow certain users to comment on my posts in the first place. But that'd be overkill.
Oh, and by the way, even if a thread was started by someone else and appears in my channel stream, I can turn off comments for myself, but otherwise the same way that I can turn them off for my own threads. Yes, even if the thread was started on Mastodon.
If it's one bad actor or a few spamming streams and threads: Again, there's Superblock which works regardless of whether I'm connected to someone.
And if bad really came to worse, my last resort would be to pull up the drawbridge and turn ActivityPub off entirely for as long as needed. Then nothing would even be able to come in, not from Mastodon, not from Misskey, not from anything else that uses ActivityPub to communicate with Hubzilla.
Poor Mastodon users who only have "mute", "block" and "hope for mods to step in" at their disposal.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Spam #FediSpam #FediverseSpam #SelfModeration - I must be following you. Whether or not I do is entirely my decision.
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The owner of the marina texted us this map, which my client laughed at. Yes, it's crude, but it's a valid document of local knowledge that clearly indicates, with landmarks, exactly what path I should take up the river to his place. I'm not laughing. I'm thrilled to have it. #boating #LocalKnowledge (3/2)
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The owner of the marina texted us this map, which my client laughed at. Yes, it's crude, but it's a valid document of local knowledge that clearly indicates, with landmarks, exactly what path I should take up the river to his place. I'm not laughing. I'm thrilled to have it. #boating #LocalKnowledge (3/2)
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The owner of the marina texted us this map, which my client laughed at. Yes, it's crude, but it's a valid document of local knowledge that clearly indicates, with landmarks, exactly what path I should take up the river to his place. I'm not laughing. I'm thrilled to have it. #boating #LocalKnowledge (3/2)
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The owner of the marina texted us this map, which my client laughed at. Yes, it's crude, but it's a valid document of local knowledge that clearly indicates, with landmarks, exactly what path I should take up the river to his place. I'm not laughing. I'm thrilled to have it. #boating #LocalKnowledge (3/2)
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The owner of the marina texted us this map, which my client laughed at. Yes, it's crude, but it's a valid document of local knowledge that clearly indicates, with landmarks, exactly what path I should take up the river to his place. I'm not laughing. I'm thrilled to have it. #boating #LocalKnowledge (3/2)
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The owner of ACME Corp. would be the richest person in the world (instead of that cartoon villain who is now).
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The owner of a grand piano damaged in the massive tsunami in March 2011 and later restored performed with one of her students in the lobby of Sendai Airport in Miyagi Prefecture, filling the terminal with music. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/03/04/japan/sendai-airport-piano/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #music #airports #sendai #miyagi #311 #earthquakes #tohoku
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"The owner of a Philadelphia barbershop organized a community event teaching young children and teenagers how to cut hair. They were able to help the homeless one free haircut at a time!"
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The owner of those blue eggs.
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The owner of a Houston company that facilitates payments from intended parents to their surrogate mothers is accused of stealing millions of dollars from her clients to pay for her aspiring music career, real estate and trips around the world.
#Business #Court #HealthScience #Houston #Local #News #CivilLawsuit #DominiqueSide #SEAM #Surrogacy #SurrogacyEscrowAccountManagement #Surrogate
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CW: USpol, Scifi
I read recently that the owner of X (fka Twitter) changed his "handle" there to Kekius Maximus. Is that correct? Cute, if it is, but I think it's just a ruse to disguise his real secret identity - Cylon Musk.
Too bad, Cylon, the truth will out. Oh wait, we don't do truth anymore, do we?
#CylonMusk #KekiusMaximus #AlterEgo #disguise #PostTruth #uspol #elonmusk #satire #scifi