#fediversemeta — Public Fediverse posts

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@sb  the chippy-choppy There won't be many left. Depending on how staunchly and extremely anti-AI you and (aspiring) server admins are, there won't be any left. Because it's technically impossible to set up a Fediverse server with absolutely no AI code underneath whatsoever.

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Apache #nginx #MySQL #MariaDB #PostgreSQL #SQLite #Mastodon #snac2 #AI #LLM #LLMs #GenAI #NoAI #AntiAI #AntiLLM

@Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Well, I'm used to having not only full native data portability, but even live, hot, bidirectional, real-time updates of entire Fediverse identities that contain stuff which 99% of the Fediverse doesn't support. Natively without an external application. Available for longer than Mastodon itself. Between any number of independent servers. So I'm not easily impressed.

I would be kind of impressed if LOLA managed to move a Mastodon account into a brand-new, virgin Hubzilla channel

• automatically activating all necessary apps from PubCrawl to Privacy Groups to Superblock to NSFW if the Mastodon account has at least one hiding filter
• activating all features that are either hard-coded or switched on on the Mastodon source account, but off by default on new Hubzilla channels
• (optionally) setting the channel role to Custom and configuring it in such a way that Hubzilla behaves as closely to Mastodon as possible, permissions-wise
• translating all followers and followed into Hubzilla's system of Facebook-style mutual-by-default contacts
• reconnecting all followers and followed on their end
• translating each Mastodon list into a Hubzilla privacy group, all members included while keeping the default "Friends" privacy group and adding all contacts to it
• converting followed hashtags into FediBuzz contacts (Hubzilla cannot follow hashtags, but we want the Hubzilla destination channel to be as close to the Mastodon source account as possible)
• translating not only the entire timeline of the Mastodon source account into a Hubzilla stream, but also importing entire threads behind and around each post in the timeline (this is absolutely necessary for the Mastodon user to keep their replies to other people's posts because a Hubzilla comment cannot exist without the start post and the entire branch of the conversation that led to it; also, it's a Hubzilla killer feature over Mastodon that you always see entire conversations instead of single-message piecemeal)
• transferring all posts, replies and DMs with all media in them
• converting Mastodon's loosely-tied threads, no matter who has started them, into Hubzilla-style enclosed conversations as per FEP-171b Conversation Containers with unified permissions for all messages within a conversation
• translating mentions and links into Hubzilla-specific markup
• translating faves into thumbs up
• translating Mastodon 4.6-style quotes into Hubzilla-style shares, automatically recognising which Hubzilla version the destination channel is running on and deciding which Hubzilla share format to use
• translating CWs in comments into [summary][/summary] tags (this would require Hubzilla to actually fully support summaries in comments which it currently doesn't because that doesn't make sense from a Facebook/blogging POV)
• translating Mastodon's post visibility settings into Hubzilla's permission system as far as that's possible (only for start posts, that is, because comments always inherit their permissions from the start post; also, this will have to be done after taking care of all contacts because "followers only" Mastodon toots will have to be converted into non-public posts which grant permission to see them only to the "Friends" privacy group, and likewise, DMs will have to have the contact(s) to whom they were originally sent assigned as those who are permitted to see them)
• importing all images, videos and other attached files into the Hubzilla channel's file space, including appropriate permission settings and, ideally, sorting them into Hubzilla-style "year-month" folders
• converting all media attachments into embedded links to the locations of the respective media files in the file space, including adding alt-texts to the embedding code
• importing the block list on the Mastodon source account into Superblock (that is, Hubzilla cannot block entire servers, but maybe this could automatically be translated into filter lines)
• converting blocking filters into channel-wide filter lines, converting bare keywords into regular expressions if the whole word option is set for these keywords on Mastodon
• adding the keywords of hiding filters to NSFW, converting bare keywords into regular expressions if the whole word option is set for these keywords on Mastodon
• translating the selected languages on the Mastodon source account into channel-wide filters on Hubzilla (even though this probably won't work exactly identical because Hubzilla neither sets nor knows per-message language settings)
• recognising the contents of Mastodon's free-text profile fields and moving them into the appropriate ones of Hubzilla's several dozen purpose-bound profile fields
• populating Hubzilla's keyword field with all hashtags found in the profile text of the Mastodon source account
• setting your channel language according to the language that most of your posts are in
• bonus points for entering Mastodon's colours into the Redbasic colour settings and changing the PDL layout settings so that the look of the Hubzilla destination channel is closer to that of the Mastodon source account than by default

Even that wouldn't give you a 100% identical copy of your Mastodon account. Hubzilla doesn't support quote-post control; the only way to make your posts non-quote-postable is by making them non-public (something that Mastodon can only understand as a DM), and you have no control whatsoever over the permissions of your comments on other people's posts anyway. Also, as I've already mentioned, Hubzilla currently doesn't support summaries (= Mastodon CWs) in comments.

However, vice versa, it'd be even harder to shoehorn Hubzilla's wealth of features into a new Mastodon account.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #NomadicIdentity #LOLA

@Kellam⚙️Бур This may come as a surprise, but: Nomadic identity is not an abstract concept or a science-fiction idea for the Fediverse.

It is reality. It exists. Right now. In stable, daily-driver software that's federated with Mastodon. And it has been for over a decade.

I'm literally replying to you here from a nomadic channel that simultaneously exists on two servers.

Nomadic identity was invented by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ (formerly American software developer of about half a century who has been living in rural Australia for decades now) in 2011 and first implemented in 2012. Almost four years before Mastodon was first launched.

In 2010, he had invented the Facebook alternative Friendica, originally named Mistpark and based on his own DFRN protocol.

Over the months, he witnessed lots of privately operated public Friendica nodes shut down with or without an announcement and the users on these nodes lose everything. He added the possibility to export and import Friendica accounts. But that would only help if a permanent shutdown was announced. It did not protect you against shutdowns out of the blue.

There was only one solution to this problem. And that was for someone's identity to not be bound to one server, but to exist on multiple servers simultaneously. The whole thing with everything that's attached to it. Name, settings, connections, posts, files in the file storage etc. etc., everything.

So in 2011, Mike designed a whole new protocol named Zot around this brand-new idea of what he called "nomadic identity" back then already.

In 2012, Mike forked Friendica into something called Red, later the Red Matrix, and rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up against Zot. Red was the first nomadic social networking software in the world, almost four years before Mastodon.

In 2015, ten months before Mastodon was first released, the Red Matrix became Hubzilla, the Fediverse's ultimate Swiss army knife.

I am on Hubzilla myself. This channel of mine is constantly being mirrored between its main instance on https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu and its clone on https://hub.hubzilla.de. Anything that happens on the main instance is backed up on the clone. I can also log into the clone and use that, and whatever happens there is backed up on the main instance.

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu could go down, temporarily, permanently, doesn't matter; I still have my channel, namely the clone. And I can declare the clone my new main instance.

Well, Mike didn't stop at Hubzilla and its original version of the Zot protocol. He wanted to refine it and advance it, but in ways that wouldn't be possible on daily-driver software.

Zot went through several upgrades: Zot6 in 2018 (backported to Hubzilla in 2020, along with OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on). Zot8 in 2020. Zot11 in 2021 which had become incompatible with Zot6 and therefore was renamed to Nomad. Today's Nomad would be Zot12.

Also, in order to advance and test Zot, Mike created a whole bunch of forks and forks of forks. Osada and Zap for Zot6 in 2018, followed by another short-lived Osada in 2019. A third Osada, Mistpark 2020 (a.k.a. Misty) and Redmatrix 2020 in 2020 for Zot8. Roadhouse for Zot11 Nomad in 2021. All Osadas, Zap, Misty, Redmatrix 2020 and Roadhouse were discontinued on New Year's Eve of 2022.

The most recent software based on Nomad is from October, 2021. It can be found in the streams repository. It is officially and intentionally nameless and brandless, it has next to nodeinfo code that could submit statistics, and it is intentionally released into the public domain. The community named it (streams) after the code repository.

I also have two (streams) channels, one of which is cloned so far.

The newest thing, and that's what the Friendica and Hubzilla veteran @Tim Schlotfeldt ⚓?️‍? referred to, is nomadic identity using nothing but ActivityPub, no longer relying on a special protocol.

This was not Mike Macgirvin's idea. This came from @silverpill, the creator and developer of the microblogging server application Mitra. He wanted to make Mitra nomadic, make it resilient against server shutdown. But he didn't want to port it to Nomad. He wanted to achieve it with nothing but ActivityPub.

So he hit up Mike. The two came to the conclusion: This is actually possible. And they began to work on it. Amongst the results were several FEPs coined by silverpill.

This time, Mike did not create another fork to develop nomadic identity via ActivityPub. He did it all on the nomadic branch of the streams repository while silverpill did his part on a special development branch of Mitra.

In mid-2024, after enough sparring between (streams) instances, between Mitra instances and between (streams) and Mitra, Mike was confident enough that his implementation of support of nomadic identity via ActivityPub was stable enough. He merged the nomadic branch into the dev branch which ended up being merged into the stable release branch in summer.

Now, at this point, (streams) didn't use ActivityPub for nomadic identity. It still used the Nomad protocol for everything first and foremost, including cloning. But it understood nomadic identity via ActivityPub as implemented on experimental Mitra.

However, while it worked under lab conditions, it blew up under real-life conditions. At this point, (streams) had to handle so many different identities that it confused them, and it couldn't federate with anything yet.

In mid-August, while trying to fix the problem, Mike eventually forked the streams repository into Forte. It got a name again, it got a brand identity again, it got its nodeinfo back, it was put under the MIT license again.

But most importantly: Any and all support for Nomad was ripped out, also to get rid of a whole number of IDs, namely those for Nomad-actually-Zot12 and for Hubzilla's Nomad-actually-Zot6. Forte only uses ActivityPub for everything. And so, Forte also had to fully rely on ActivityPub for nomadic identity, cloning and syncing.

For almost seven months, Forte was considered experimental and unstable. For most of the time, the only existing servers were Mike's.

But on March 12th, 2025, Mike Macgirvin released Forte 25.3.12, the first official stable release of Forte. This is what Tim wrote about. Because this actually made it into Fediverse-wide news.

Not because it's nomadic. Nomadic identity has been daily-driven for over a decade now.

But because it uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity. Which means that you can theoretically make any kinds of Fediverse software nomadic now, all without porting it to the Nomad protocol first.

For the future, Mike and silverpill envision a Fediverse in which one can clone between different server applications. A Fediverse in which one can have one and the same identity cloned across multiple servers of Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Mitra, Forte, Mobilizon, Lemmy, BookWyrm etc., all with the same name, all with the same content and settings (as far as the software allows; you will certainly not be able to clone your PeerTube videos to Mastodon and Lemmy).

Even if you don't intend to clone, it will make moving instances and even moving from one software to another dramatically easier.

If you're concerned about your privacy, let me tell you this:

Hubzilla's privacy, security and permissions system is unparalleled in the Fediverse. Except for that on (streams) and Forte which is another notch better.

I can define who can see my profile (my default, public profile on Hubzilla where each channel can have multiple profiles).
I can define who can see my stream and my posts when looking at my channel.
I can define who can see my connections (Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte don't distinguish between follower and followed; they aren't Twitter clones).
I can define who can look into my file space (individual permission settings per folder and per file notwithstanding).
I can define who can see my webpages on Hubzilla (if I have any).
I can define who can see my wikis on Hubzilla (no shit, I've got wikis on my Hubzilla channel).

On Hubzilla, I can define individually for any of these whether it's

• everyone on the Internet
• everyone with a recognisable Fediverse account
• everyone on Hubzilla (maybe also on (streams); anyone using ActivityPub is definitely excluded here)
• everyone on the same server as myself (AFAIK, only main instances of channels count here, clones don't)
• unapproved (= followers) as well as approved (= mutual) connections
• confirmed connections
• those of my confirmed connections whom I explicitly grant that permission by contact role
• only myself

There's a whole bunch more permissions than these. And they all have seven or eight permission levels (depending on whether the general non-Fediverse public can be given permission).

On (streams) and Forte, I can define whether things are allowed for

• everyone on the Internet (where applicable)
• everyone with a recognisable Fediverse account
• all my approved connections
• only me myself plus those whom I explicitly grant that permission in the connection settings

Yes, connection settings. Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte give you various ways of configuring individual connections, much unlike Mastodon. This includes what any individual connection is allowed to do.

Hubzilla uses so-called "contact roles" for that, presets with a whopping 17 permissions to grant or deny for any one individual connection. That is, what the channel generally allows, a contact role can't forbid.

(streams) and Forte still have 15 permissions per contact, but they lack some features which Hubzilla has permissions for. These permissions can be set individually for each connection, or you can define permission roles that cover all 15 permissions to make things easier.

Okay, how about posting in public vs in private? And when I say "private", I mean "private". It's "private messages" on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, not "direct messages".

Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte let you post

• in public
• only to yourself
• only to your connections ((streams) and Forte only; Hubzilla requires a privacy group with all your connections in it for this)
• to all members of one specific privacy group (Hubzilla)/access list ((streams), Forte); that's like being able to only post to those on one specific list on Mastodon
• to everyone to whom one specific non-default profile is assigned (Hubzilla only)
• to a specific group/forum (I'll get back to that later)
• to a custom one-by-one selection of connections of yours

Now, let's assume I have a privacy group with Alice, Bob and Carol in it. I send a new post to only this privacy group. This means:

• Only Alice, Bob and Carol can see the post and the conversation.
• Alice can reply to me, Bob and Carol.
• Bob can reply to me, Alice and Carol.
• Carol can reply to me, Alice and Bob.
• Nobody else can see the post. Not even by searching for it. Not by hashtag either. Not at all.
• Nobody else can see any of the comments.
• Nobody else can comment.

If one of them was on Mastodon, they'd see my post as a DM, by the way, and they could only reply to me. But that's Mastodon's limitation because it understands neither threaded conversations nor permissions.

Or how about reply control? This is something that many Mastodon users have been craving for quite a while now. Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have them. Right now. And they work. They have since 2012.

Hubzilla optionally lets me disallow comments on either of my posts. Users on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte won't even be able to comment; they won't have the UI elements to do so. Everyone else is able to comment locally. But that comment will never end up on my channel. It will never officially be added to the conversation. And at least users on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte will never fetch that comment from my channel as part of the conversation, i.e. never at all.

(streams) and Forte can go even further with all available options. They can disallow comments like Hubzilla. But in addition, they can allow only the members of one particular access list to comment, regardless of who can see the post/the conversation. On top of that, comments can be closed at a pre-defined point in the future. And then you even have a channel-wide setting for how long people can comment on your posts.

Oh, and there's even a setting for who is generally permitted to comment on your posts. And you can additionally allow specific connections of yours to comment on your posts.

Lastly, I've already mentioned groups/forums. Like, you know, Web forums or Facebook groups or subreddits or whatever. Like Guppe Groups on a mountain of coke and with moderation and permission control and optionally private.

Hubzilla has them, and it has inherited them from Friendica. (streams) has them. Forte has them. They're basically channels like social networking channels, but with some extra features. This includes that everything that's send to a group/forum as what amounts to a PM is automatically forwarded to all other members.

On Hubzilla, a forum can be gradually made private by denying permission to see certain elements to everyone but its own members (= connections): the profile, the members, what's going on in it. Depending on what you want or do not want people to see.

On (streams) and Forte, you have four types of forums:

• public, and members can upload images and other files to the forum channel
• public, but members cannot upload images and other files to the forum channel
• like above, but additionally, posts and comments from new members must be manually approved by the admin(s) until their connections are configured to make them full members
• private, non-members can't see the profile, non-members can't see the connections, non-members can't see what's going on in it, but members can upload images and other files to the forum channel

In addition, on all three, a group/forum channel can choose to hide itself from directories. This is always an extra option that's independent from public/private.

What we have here is the most secure and most private Fediverse software of all.

And, once again, at its core, this is technology from 2012. It pre-dates Mastodon by almost four years.

Finally, if you want to know how Hubzilla and (streams) compare to Mastodon: I have made a number of tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams).

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #NomadicIdentity #Security #FediverseSecurity #Privacy #FediversePrivacy #Permissions

@Deborah Hartmann Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦 Embrace-Extend-Extinguish.

Embrace = they join the Fediverse.

Extend = they introduce stuff that's non-standard and not really compatible with what already exists. Everything else has to adopt that non-standard stuff or risk becoming incompatible. Since they're one of the biggest players or the biggest player, they can get away with it.

Threads has yet to do this. Mastodon has been doing it all the time.

Extinguish = They decide they don't care for interoperability anymore. They become incompatible with everything else. As big as they are, they get away with it. But they basically kill everything else off because all that "everything else" can hardly survive without being connected to that one big player.

Mastodon has more power to do this than Threads because Threads is a late addition to the Fediverse, Threads isn't even really welcome in the Fediverse, only a tiny fraction of Threads even federates, and I guess that to more people than not, Mastodon is the Fediverse.

(Public reply because the original post is public. I'm on Hubzilla and not on Mastodon, and on Hubzilla, all replies always have the exact same permissions as the original post. Permission changes within a thread are not supported.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #EEE #EmbraceExtendExtinguish

@Johannes Hentschel

Their interest is hegemony.

They won't be able to achieve that. For that, they'd all have to join forces. Instead, the big players would rather bash each other's heads in.

If Zuckerberg wanted to buy out the Fediverse through the SWF and assume full control over it, that'd go hard against what Flipboard wants, what Ghost wants, what Mastodon wants etc.

If you think Zuck and Gargron will join forces in EEE'ing the Fediverse, I have a bridge to sell you. If Zuck wants to EEE the Fediverse, this includes Mastodon which is why everyone panics. But Gargron himself wants to EEE the Fediverse, too. Mastodon users don't notice it, but everyone else does, from Misskey to (streams). And if he could, that'd include assuming indirect control over Threads by forcing Mastodon's proprietary, non-standard solutions upon it.

Write.as, maintainer of WriteFreely, is a supporter of the SWF, too. WriteFreely is basically one of the Fediverse's alternatives to Medium. Notice how Medium itself is a supporter. Medium won't try to build a monopoly and get rid of WriteFreely through the SWF if WriteFreely itself has a saying in this. And so does Automattic because Medium competes against WordPress.

Mastodon vs Write.as + Medium + Automattic = "The Fediverse is for microblogging, we won't support more than a tiny subset of HTML, and the rest of the Fediverse has to adjust" vs "Everything in the Fediverse must support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects."

And the SWF won't grant voting power according to how much money someone invests into it. Meta won't be able to out-vote everyone else by pumping a billion into the SWF. If that was possible, @Evan Prodromou, as the very founder of the SWF, would have no voting power at all.

Lastly, these are the supporters. The financial backers. Not the only members and even less the only members the SWF will ever have. It's just kind of difficult for a Fediverse project with nothing but one or two spare-time devs behind it to join the SWF.

CC: @Mike McCue

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MetaPlatforms #Threads #Automattic #WordPress #Medium #Write.as #WriteFreely #SWF #SocialWebFoundation #EEE #EmbraceExtendExtinguish

@Mike McCue A new proposal for a Fediverse logo is a Unicode character: ⁂ (U+2042).

Most of all, whether we like it or not, millions of people are being exposed to this icon everyday on Threads as a symbol of the fediverse so I think it’s a pragmatic choice.

This would not only allow, but actively help Meta assume control over the Fediverse.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Asterism #FediverseSymbol #FediverseLogo #Meta #EmbraceExtendExtinguish

@The Nexus of Privacy

About point 4

No can do, at least not support for Black instances. That's because all Black instances are Mastodon instances.

I do not support Mastodon. I hate Mastodon with a burning passion, and I hate the wide-spread notion that Mastodon is absolutely the bee's knees even more. My support for Mastodon is limited to filing bugs on its GitHub repository when it misbehaves in interaction with Hubzilla or (streams).

I will so much not support anyone's stay on this utter piece of crud.

Don't get me wrong. The reason why I won't support them is not because they're Black. It's because they're Mastodon.

And besides, you've written yourself that a Black instance is a ghetto. The kind of ghetto that Black people don't want anyone to tell them to move to. Even if they've chosen themselves to have their Fediverse homes there, it's a ghetto all right.

This is also one of the reasons I will no longer suggest (streams) to the Black community, regardless of whether it might actually be a solution for parts of their imminent problems. I'm not going to tell anyone where to move. Even an unsolicited suggestion, even as little as mentioning the existence of a potential Mastodon alternative and its advantages over Mastodon is passive-aggressive.

Even if someone wished "the Fediverse", read, Mastodon to have a certain feature that'd greatly improve safety and privacy, and Hubzilla and (streams) had this feature readily available right now (and this has happened in this very thread), I would no longer mention them unless maybe in a purely white cis-het discussion. Mentioning them to Black people would be like trying to nudge them into a ghetto. And supporting ghettos in any way or other is racist.

Seeing as how much damage any attempt by a non-Mastodon user at helping can deal, it's safer for all involved to not do anything and let people continue believing the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

(5/7)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Safety #FediSafety #FediverseSafety #Privacy #FediPrivacy #FediversePrivacy #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse #Racist #Racism

@:mima_rule: Mima-sama
Threads overrunning the Fediverse, pushing its culture and its limitations upon the rest of the Fediverse, forcing the rest of the Fediverse to adopt its own proprietary and non-standard stuff to stay compatible and trying to "be the Fediverse": 😠😖🤬🤮👎🖕💢🐖💩💀

Mastodon overrunning the Fediverse, pushing its culture and its limitations upon the rest of the Fediverse and forcing the rest of the Fediverse to adopt its own proprietary and non-standard stuff to stay compatible and trying to "be the Fediverse": 😍😁🤗🥰👍👌👏🫶💙💯

Of course, none of those who recognise this hypocrisy as such are on Mastodon themselves and not on Threads either.

Oh, and by the way: No, Mastodon wasn't here first. It wasn't even the first project to support ActivityPub.

CC: @BeAware :veriweed: @Kitty Wife Milkshake

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Threads #Mastodon #EEE #EmbraceExtendExtinguish #Hypocrisy