#quote-posts — Public Fediverse posts

@Mark Andrew 🇨🇭 I guess that, more often than not, the only new developments that are widely welcome are those that happen on Mastodon, that still don't make Mastodon feel different, and that don't introduce features to Mastodon that are (considered) bad on 𝕏.

This alone is the reason why many Mastodon admins hold on to older Mastodon versions for their dear lives: They want to boycott new Mastodon features which they don't like, but they don't have what it takes to soft-fork or even only hard-fork Mastodon and remove the new features.

Now, when it comes to developments in the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, they tend to be even more nerve-grating for Mastodon users because they often aren't in line with Mastodon and its culture at all. That is, many Mastodon users don't even notice that these features exist unless these features directly hit their timeline. But once they do, they're considered bad new developments even though they've actually been around for much longer than Mastodon itself.

For example, quote-posts and full-text search. Mastodon users tend to be staunchly against both because they're used to harass and dogpile minorities on 𝕏. If at all, they're only okay with these if they come with an opt-in, and/or if server admins can turn them off entirely.

If only they knew that Friendica has had both since May, 2010, five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. That Friendica has been search-indexing and able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's very launch. I guess they'd demand the immediate destruction of Friendica or at least its complete and permanent defederation.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #FullTextSearch #Mastodon #Friendica

@Chao-c'

Also, ALT text translates with the rest of the post, which can be helpful for images which contain only foreign language text.

Hubzilla is the most incompatible ActivityPub software in Fediverse. You do just lot of things wrong, to put it mildly.

You still seem to think that Gargron invented ActivityPub and the Fediverse, that Mastodon is the one and only reference implementation of ActivityPub, and that everything that doesn't work exactly like Mastodon is broken.

Here are the facts:

Mastodon was launched in January, 2016.

Hubzilla was launched in March, 2015. Counting an earlier incarnation named Red, it was created in May, 2012, when Friendica's creator re-wrote his own fork of a Friendica fork of his own.

Mastodon implemented ActivityPub in September, 2017, when the spec wasn't finalised yet.

Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub in July, 2017. Two months before Mastodon. Hubzilla was the first software to ever implement ActivityPub.

Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub strictly by the book. It has always tried to stick as close to the official W3C ActivityPub spec as possible.

Mastodon, in stark contrast, has always been stretching the ActivityPub spec until it broke. Not only that, but it has always been adding stuff outside the spec. First it did so to take over certain features from StatusNet which was its original protocol. More recently, it did so with the very intention to break compatibility with the rest of the Fediverse and make everything that isn't Mastodon look broken. And people like you keep falling for it because they think they know for a fact that Mastodon is the ActivityPub reference implementation.

The whole Fediverse has to break the ActivityPub spec just to be able to federate with Mastodon.

yes, the Hubzilla author is writing Streams, with nomadic identity, but it also means, that he understands, that Hubzilla approach is kind of dead-end.

You know nothing. Whereas I can rattle down the whole history from Mistpark in 2010 to today.

Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte created his post-Hubzilla server applications because he kept advancing the Zot protocol. And he couldn't implement these advancements into Hubzilla because they bore the chance of breaking compatibility with what already existed.

(streams) is not a completely new development, nor is it a straight Hubzilla fork.

(streams) is a 2022 fork of Roadhouse.
Which was a 2022 fork of either the third Osada or Mistpark 2020 or Redmatrix 2020.
Which were 2020 forks of Zap (or each other, but at least one of them was forked from Zap).
Which was a 2018 fork of either Hubzilla itself or the first Osada, which was a 2018 fork of Hubzilla.

Osada and Zap were created to develop Zot6. In its early stages of concept, Mike expected Zot6 to be incompatible with everything else. Mind you, he didn't see that as something bad. Advancing Zot was necessary because the then-current version of Zot was less than optimal. And Mike's vision was a decentralised, nomadic network named the "Grid", entirely based on Zot. The Grid would have been vastly superior to the existing Fediverse in every way possible.

So the issue with his early draft of Zot6 was that it was quite incompatible with non-nomadic protocols. Nomadic Zot6 content could not be translated into non-nomadic protocols like the diaspora* protocol or ActivityPub.

Thus, developing Zot6 on Hubzilla was out of question. Zot6 would have broken too much on Hubzilla. Besides, Hubzilla was bad as a platform to experiment on due to its wealth of supported protocols and other features, all of which would have had to be made compatible with Zot6.

And this is the real reason why Mike created Osada and Zap. From how I see it, and how I remember what he talked about back in the day (I was there, yes), he first forked Osada from Hubzilla. Then he ripped everything out that he didn't need, including support for all protocols except for Zot itself, ActivityPub, RSS and Atom, including the CMS stuff like articles, planning cards, notes, wikis and webpages, etc. Then he modified what was left against his early version of Zot6.

Then he discovered that a cloned Osada channel couldn't properly send content via ActivityPub.

Then, shortly afterwards, he forked Osada into Zap. He removed nomadic identity from Osada which kept ActivityPub and ActivityPub support from Zap which stayed nomadic.

The idea was to have a nomadic, cloned channel on Zap as your main channel that would only connect to Hubzilla, Osada and Zap, and to have an additional, non-nomadic channel on Osada that would serve as a "gateway" between nomadic Zap and the non-nomadic ActivityPub Fediverse.

Of course, this was highly impractical. But by 2019, Mike found a way to make Zot6 compatible with non-nomadic protocols. So, in early 2019, Mike discontinued Osada and forked a new Osada from Zap which only differred from Zap by having ActivityPub support while still being nomadic. This enabled Mike to have one development platform for Zot6 in conjunction with non-nomadic protocols and another one on which ActivityPub did not stand in the way.

Later in 2019, both Osada and Zap got stable releases. At that point, Osada and Zap were identical in code. Both had ActivityPub support. It was included into their cores now and no longer an add-on like on Hubzilla. They only had two differences. One was the branding. The other one was that Osada servers had ActivityPub activated by default, and Zap servers had ActivityPub disabled by default. Keeping Osada around was unnecessary now, so ActivityPub was activated by default on Zap, and Osada was discontinued. Zot6 was so stable that it was soon backported to Hubzilla.

Mike wasn't done yet, though. He now wanted to develop Zot8. Again, he did not want to develop protocol changes on stable production software that people potentially daily-drove.

Thus, three new forks emerged in 2020: another Osada, Mistpark 2020 (a.k.a. Misty) and Redmatrix 2020 (named after the Red Matrix, the name that Hubzilla bore from late 2012 to early 2015 between being created as Red and being re-branded into Hubzilla). Mike used them to develop Zot8. They were identical in all but brand identity.

This was fully intentional on Mike's part to confuse the hell out of the brand fetishists that were growing more and more numerous in the Fediverse. His goal was for people to declare Osada or Misty or Redmatrix the best Fediverse software and superior to everything else, just for him to tell them that Osada, Misty and Redmatrix are absolutely identical. In fact, the three remained identical to Zap in features.

Zot8 never got stable because Mike kept advancing it further and further. In early 2022, he was at Zot11. But Zot11 was so incompatible with everything else, including previous Zot versions, that Mike declared it a new protocol of its own and renamed it Nomad. In order to test-drive it, he forked Osada or Misty or Redmatrix into Roadhouse. After all, there were people who were daring enough to daily-drive production channels on Osada, Misty and Redmatrix, albeit only few. Roadhouse was still identical in features to Zap, Osada, Misty and Redmatrix.

It was now possible to crossgrade between Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse by simply rebasing the server code.

Later in 2022, he created a new fork of Roadhouse itself. The reason for this was not further protocol advancement. No, this time, it mostly had branding and licensing reasons.

First of all, he wanted to make that fork as easy for others to fork and adopt as possible. Everything he had developed so far was under the MIT license (he himself had relicensed Friendica under the AGPLv3 in 2011, but he didn't actually develop on Friendica; he developed on a fork named Free-Friendika that was still MIT-licensed and then backported the changes to the Friendica repository, and Red was a Free-Friendika fork). This new repository was released into the public domain. At first, the whole thing was never primarily intended to be installed on servers as it was, but rather to be forked as the base of something new.

At least the core and Mike's own add-ons were. What third-party add-ons from Hubzilla times were still there got to keep their maze of licenses. This was intentional on Mike's part, too. It would make it impossible for commercial players to scoop up the whole thing and relicense it into something non-free and commercial without breaking any licenses, or without pumping tons of money into their legal department to work around that maze of licenses.

Also, Mike removed any and all naming and branding from the software. He absolutely intentionally made it nameless. You've read that right. He did this for two reasons. One, whoever wanted to fork it would have to give the fork an individual name and an individual branding. Two, this was to mess with brand fanbois and brand fetishists even more: This thing had no brand to gush over to begin with.

Furthermore, Mike removed all nodeinfo code that he could possibly get away with removing. Again, this was intentional. One intention was to stop this software from automatically joining the "my Fediverse project is bigger than yours" and "my server is bigger than yours" rat races. He intentionally did everything he could to keep this software away from The Federation, Fediverse Observer, FediDB and the like.

The other intention was for the case of commercial players looking for free code to steal. If this software had really taken off and left its stats proving its popularity everywhere, some big commercial player would have been likely to try and steal this software, make it commercial and non-free and release it as their own original creation. So his intention was for them to not even be able to find it in this case. (This, by the way, was the reason why he relicensed Friendica under the AGPLv3, and why he hardly ever spoke about Free-Friendika: Now that Friendica was growing popular, he didn't want big commercial players to scoop up code of his under a license that they could change to non-free.)

This server application became the first and only one in the Fediverse with no fixed server type identifier, in fact, with none at all by default. It has one text field for the server name, just like Mastodon and Friendica and Hubzilla and the like. But it has an additional field where the server type, i.e. the identifier for the software, can be entered. If none is entered, it's derived from the server name. Mike used to have a server that identified as "Y" because, as he said, "Y is not X."

While the application itself is nameless (for it still is), the code repository did require a name of sorts. Mike named the repository "streams".

Now, the community needed something to call that nameless software when they spoke about it. So they unofficially established "(streams)", complete with parentheses that make sure that this is not actually the name of this software. Those who say, "Streams," with a capital S and no parentheses, and who use that term as if it's an official name, usually sincerely believe that this is the official name.

Mike himself uses "streams" without the parentheses because even he needs something to call his own software by. Before Forte was made, he preferred talking about the streams repository without directly mentioning the software. And he himself denied that (streams) is even a project. It's just a bunch of code that runs.

As far as I know, it was now possible to freely crossgrade between six different server applications because they were still identical in features. Only that Mike also had six server applications to take care of now.

So on December 31st, 2022, Mike discontinued Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse. Admins who ran either of these on their servers were recommended to rebase their servers to the streams repository. In this case, by the way, the old branding was kept. I've seen a server that still had "zap" as its subdomain which indicated that it was set up as a Zap server, that had Misty branding, but that actually ran (streams).

From then on, Mike dedicated his time to maintaining and developing only the streams repository. He still occasionally helped Hubzilla out, though.

In 2023, the Mitra creator and developer silverpill approached Mike. The goal was to make Mitra nomadic. I guess earlier attempts using a blockchain and crypto technology didn't come to fruition, so it had to be Mike's way which had proven itself stable for more than a decade. However, Mitra was to remain based on ActivityPub.

It was in this exchange that Mike realised that ActivityPub could indeed be used for nomadic identity if a few things were added to it. One outcome was FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" which introduced decentralised IDs (DIDs) that would not be bound to any one server domain.

Instead of creating a whole new server application to play with, Mike simply made a "nomadic" branch in the streams repository (even though the software was already nomadic) in which he implemented support for nomadic identity via ActivityPub. Support as in (streams) understanding it while internally still using Nomad for nomadicity.

In June, 2024, Mike considered the "nomadic" branch reliable enough and merged it into the "dev" branch.

In July, 2024, Mike merged the "dev" branch into the "release" branch which caused DIDs as per FEP-ef61 to be rolled out to existing production servers. On accounts created on this new version, channels would have a DID internally. On accounts greated on any previous version, even new channels would keep the old ID system for the time being. This way, existing accounts and channels weren't messed with.

However, what had worked under supervised and restricted lab conditions completely blew up under real-life conditions. Again, I was there on (streams) with a pre-DID account and two channels on it. I still have them. (streams) channels wouldn't federate with anything anymore. It had become impossible to send anything anywhere. What Mike was facing was nothing short of an enigma because not even he knew what was going in.

So he started tinkering. In mid-August, Mike forked the streams repository into something named and branded Forte. He did so so he could rip the Nomad protocol out while still keeping the entire functionality. He had to get rid of Nomad because he had discovered that (streams) got confused juggling all the many IDs it had to deal with, so he had to weed out the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to make things easier. But he couldn't possibly have done that on (streams) proper.

This way, Mike created the very first Fediverse server software that uses ActivityPub for full nomadicity, including cloning.

By the end of August, things got back to normal. But Mike, having spent every free minute in the last few weeks to get (streams) back into working condition, was burned out. He sent an open message around in which he declared that he would completely retire from Fediverse development, and both the streams repository and Forte were up for grabs.

But nobody was found who could take over either. (streams) and Forte probably had way fewer than 100 users combined. Those few who would have been able to maintain either didn't have time. One did have time and was willing to do so, but he didn't know how to code. He eventually did start teaching himself, and he occasionally contributes merge requests, but there was no way he could take over as the only dev for either, much less both. So Mike had to go on, whether he wanted or not, albeit at a somewhat slower pace.

This is why Mike is still developing (streams) and Forte to this day.

By the way: The reason why Mike "abandoned" his old software was because he needed to invest all his time into protocol development and advancement. Mike isn't the one to constantly maintain stable server software unless he absolutely has to.

In 2011, he handed Friendica over to two new developers so that he had time to create the Zot protocol.

In 2015 already, he handed Hubzilla over to two new developers so that he had time to explore the advancement of the Zot protocol. He still contributed to Hubzilla's development.

In 2019, he wanted to hand Osada and Zap over to the community, now that they were stable, so he had time to develop Zot8. But the Osada/Zap community was so tiny that he couldn't get a new dedicated developer team together.

In 2024, he wanted to hand (streams) and Forte over to the community because fixing (streams)' huge identity bug, which led to Forte's creation, had burnt him out. He wanted to quit. But, again, he couldn't because (streams) didn't have a single user who had both the time and the knowledge to take over as the new main dev.

Consider this: Gargron was a young man when he made Mastodon. I think he was still at university. Mike Macgirvin made Friendica, he had some three decades of professional work in IT and software under his belly. Gargron was at the beginning of his career. Mike had quit and moved from the USA to the western Australian outback where he has been living as a farmer ever since. He might actually be older than Gargron's parents.

while nomadic identitity would be cool thing, currently it does not exist

Take off your Mastodon glasses and look at the Fediverse and what it actually is like.

Nomadic identity does exist. Not as a vague idea, not as a concept on paper, but as a stable, production-grade feature that has been used to its full extent for well over a decade now. Just because Mastodon doesn't have it, doesn't mean the Fediverse doesn't have it. And just because Mastodon doesn't recognise it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The Fediverse has loads of features which Mastodon users want "the Fediverse" to have. It has features which many Mastodon users have never wanted "the Fediverse" to have such as quote-posts, introduced by Mike Macgirvin on Mistpark in 2010. It even has features that are completely and utterly unimaginable for Mastodon users, and it has had even these since as early as 2010, 2012 or 2015.

Nomadic identity was invented by Mike Macgirvin in 2011 with the Zot protocol.

It was first implemented by him in mid-2012 when he rewrote Red against Zot. This means that Hubzilla itself has been offering full-blown nomadic identity since 2012, almost four years longer than Mastodon has existed.

This very Hubzilla channel that I'm commenting from right here, right now, is actually nomadic. It is cloned across two servers: hub.netzgemeinde.eu and hub.hubzilla.de. And it has been since before Elon Musk announced to take over Twitter in early 2022. When I sent you this comment, it was automatically sync'd over to hub.hubzilla.de. When you sent the comment that I'm replying to, it was automatically sync'd over to hub.hubzilla.de. The clone has actually been of great help at least once.

Unfortunately, non-nomadic software identifies cloned channels as fully separate accounts with fully separate identities. But rest assured: @Jupiter Rowland on hub.hubzilla.de is my clone. It's the live, hot, real-time, bidirectional backup of the main instance of my channel, @Jupiter Rowland on hub.netzgemeinde.eu that you're following now. They're both one and the same channel with one and the same identity, [email protected], even though Mastodon is unable to see it as such. Go check both. You'll see they've got all the same content in them, including comments from others. Including your comment. How else can [email protected] possibly have one of your comments under a post if you've only sent that comment to [email protected] if it weren't for nomadic identity?

Even nomadic identity via ActivityPub is available as a stable, production-grade feature in stable, production-grade software right now as we speak. Forte was the first to be fully nomadic via nothing but ActivityPub, as of mid-August, 2024. Tootik, based on Gemini instead of the World Wide Web, is fully nomadic at server level, too. Mitra is fully nomadic by means of the Minimitra client.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #Friendica #Red #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Mistpark #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Redmatrix2020 #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Tootik #Mitra #Minimitra #NomadicIdentity

@TeflonTrout :bc: he/him @Sharp Leaves Still, forcing Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon literally everyone in the Fediverse is bad.

Maybe you haven't heard about this yet, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been only Mastodon. It didn't even start with Mastodon. And it doesn't entirely work like Mastodon either.

For starters, this means that just because you see it on Mastodon, it didn't necessarily originate on Mastodon.

There are places in the Fediverse that are vastly older than Mastodon, and that are very different from Mastodon. Thus, they have their own culture, based on their own technology and their own features and where their users came from, and largely without any influences from Mastodon.

The oldest still existing server software in the Fediverse is not Mastodon from 2016. It's Friendica (https://friendi.ca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica). Friendica is essentially a mixture of a Facebook alternative and fully-featured long-form blogging. No Twitter or Mastodon influence anywhere. And Friendica first came out in May, 2010, five years and eight months before Mastodon.

Friendica did not intrude into the Mastodon Fediverse that was created by Eugen Rochko as a Mastodon-only network. Mastodon was born into an already existing Fediverse that consisted of at least Friendica, Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) and GNU social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social; now defunct).

Here's how Friendica differs from Mastodon in ways that may disturb Mastodon hardliners:

• Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. This character limit is deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture.
  Friendica doesn't have an arbitrary character limit; it's limited by the maximum size of the database field for the post text. Currently, this is 16,777,215 characters. Thus, Friendica doesn't have keeping messages short in its culture, it never has, and it never will.
• Mastodon users tend to be eager to block anyone who doesn't cut long posts into pieces of no more than 500 characters each.
  I know at least one Friendica veteran who blocks everyone upon first strike who does cut long posts into annoying strings of tiny chunks.
• Mastodon introduced a CW field in 2017.
  Friendica has had the exact same field as a summary/abstract field since its own beginning in 2010. That, and Friendica has always had a much more efficient way of handling CWs, one that Mastodon itself adopted with version 4.0 in October, 2022. Thus, by its technology and culture, Friendica users despise misusing their abstract field to force the same CW upon everyone out there with a hot, flaming passion.
  So if you see someone "misusing" the CW field for "a subject or a summary or whatever that is," that might not be a clueless Mastodon user. Instead, it might be a Friendica user who has been around for a dozen years longer than you, who is used to living by Friendica's culture, and who knows tons more about the Fediverse than you do.
• Friendica users are much less likely to add alt-texts to their images. That's for two reasons.
  One, Friendica's culture is not an idealised version of pre-Musk, very-left-wing Twitter's culture. It does not include attacking and punishing everyone who doesn't add 100% hand-written, 100% accurate, sufficiently detailed alt-texts to their images.
  Two, Friendica handles images drastically differently from Mastodon. Mastodon always has a nifty little entry field for alt-texts whenever you attach an image. On Friendica, images are embedded into posts rather than attached to them, like in a blog post. And oftentimes, you literally have to program the alt-text into the raw image embedding markup code.
• On Mastodon, it's considered intrusive and reply-guying to reply to someone who hasn't mentioned you, and to whom you aren't mutually connected. You couldn't possibly have received the toot that you're replying to otherwise.
  On Friendica, that's perfectly normal. Friendica doesn't show you single messages by default. It always shows you the entire conversation thread, all the way up to the start post, with all branches. Thus, neither Friendica's technology nor Friendica's culture rules out replying to any comment in the thread.
• Mastodon has only just introduced Twitter-style quote-posts a few months ago. With a safety feature that only works on Mastodon and GoToSocial for fear of that feature being used for harassment and dogpiling just like on Twitter. And because literally everyone on Mastodon comes from Twitter, it's actually being used for harassment and dogpiling.
  Friendica has had that very same feature since its inception in 2010, over a decade and a half longer. It has never not had this feature. It has always been able to quote-post any public message in the Fediverse. But since Friendica is not entirely populated by former Twitter users, it hasn't been used for harassment or dogpiling even once. It's only used to forward content. For most of the time, it literally was the only available way to forward a message.
• Mastodon users tend to be very protective and defensive about their allegedly Mastodon-only Fediverse.
  Friendica users are used to being able to connect with everything that moves and then some. It's one of Friendica's key features that it speaks a whole lot of protocols, not just ActivityPub.
  Whereas Mastodon users see Mastodon as a "decentralised walled garden", Friendica users see Friendica as the gateway to the whole federated social Web plus some places that aren't, strictly speaking, federated.
• Mastodon users will staunchly insist that "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" essentially mean the same because they believe they do. They will attack anyone who claims otherwise.
  Friendica users will staunchly insist that there's a huge difference between "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" because they actually know there is one. They will lecture anyone who claims otherwise.

Of course, from a Mastodon point of view, it's both tempting and fully justified to tell the Friendica users that this is the Mastodon Fediverse, and that they will have to adapt the Mastodon culture and abolish their own culture or be thrown out. But for one, Mastodon's culture doesn't fit Friendica's technology.

Besides, that'd literally be like European settlers holding Native Americans at gunpoint and forcing them to give up their own culture, adopt European culture and convert to Catholic Christianity or else. The only difference is that European settlers, unlike the Mastodon users, did not think that they were there first, and that everyone else is an intruder.

I mean, sure, go ahead and attack anyone who doesn't strictly live by Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules if you think you have to. But prepare for a whole lot of defence and even counter-attacks from Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, GoToSocial, Hollo, snac2, Mitra, Socialhome, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and the rest of the non-Mastodon Fediverse.

CC: @Jan Wildeboer

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@Pawlicker About "reply gating": This, or something similar, has been a standard feature at least on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte from the get-go, i.e. from their respective creation on. Hubzilla has had it since 2012. All three rely heavily on permissions for anything and everything. They can make themselves and each other hide the reply button. When someone wants to comment from Mastodon or something else that doesn't understand these permissions, these three simply reject unpermitted comments before they even reach the inbox.

On Hubzilla, the channel-wide permission to comment also includes a permission to like or dislike something. I can generally allow

• only myself
• only certain contacts
• only my contacts
• only my contacts plus those with an unapproved contact request
• anyone on the same Hubzilla hub as me
• anyone on Hubzilla (strangely, this does exclude (streams) channels)
• anyone in the Fediverse
• anyone anywhere on the Web, even without a Fediverse account

to comment on my posts.

In addition, I can turn comments on and off for specific posts. Mind you, if it's a reply, it isn't a post, it's a comment, and I've got no control over it.

On (streams) and Forte, the channel-wide permission to comment is uncoupled from the permission to like or dislike. The channel-wide options are

• only myself plus certain contacts
• only my contacts
• anyone in the Fediverse
• anyone anywhere on the Web, even without a Fediverse account

On top of that, I can generally allow comments only for a certain number of days.

Again, I can turn comments on and off for specific posts. But I can also only allow my contacts to comment on specific posts, and I can define until when comments are allowed on specific posts.

In all three cases, I can even choose to preview technically unpermitted comments and then decide whether I allow or reject them, one by one.

In other words, where I am (I'm commenting from Hubzilla), this not only has been available for longer than Mastodon has even existed, but it's deeply engrained into the culture.

About "quote gating": Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have all always (in Friendica's case, since 2010) had both actual quotes like on bulletin-board forums (remember the 2000s when forums were all the rage?) and Twitter-quote-tweet-style quote-posts (which literally were the only way for them to share content before they adopted Twitter-retweet-style forwarding).

The former obviously only works in comments. Whether or not it's allowed is defined by whether or not comments are allowed.

The latter doesn't have any permission setting, not even on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte with the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse. That's because their inventor says that it's technologically impossible to keep people from forwarding or sharing your content in separate posts.

If you disallow actual quote-posts, people can still copy-paste the content of your post into a new post. Unlike when you're actually being quote-posted, you won't even notice unless they mention you. Mind you, while an estimated 60% of all Mastodon users are on iPhones, and another estimated 39% are on Android phones, 100% of all Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte users are on desktop or laptop computers where copy-paste is easy-peasy. It's pretty much impossible to disallow copy-paste, and even if it was, people would resort to screenshots.

You don't want people to quote-post your stuff? Then don't make it public. Once it's public, it's out there, and anyone can do with it whatever they please.

Nobody really misses an actual permission for quote-posts. That's also because Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte aren't primarily a home for Twitter refugees. In fact, neither of them can even understand the ruckus about quote-posts on Mastodon, and neither can Friendica users. Hardly any of them have been on Twitter at any point in the 2020s. There's no influence of Twitter culture anywhere to be found.

The typical path into Hubzilla is not Twitter > Musk buys Twitter > Mastodon > Hubzilla. Not even Twitter > Musk buys Twitter > Mastodon > Friendica > Hubzilla. It's Facebook > diaspora* > Friendica > Hubzilla. Or Facebook > Google+ > diaspora* > Friendica > Hubzilla. The typical path into (streams) is the same, but one step further beyond Hubzilla. The typical path into Forte is the same as into (streams), but another step further beyond (streams).

About the iPhone: Whether or not the iPhone is a status symbol depends on where you are.

In the USA, the iPhone is the Levi's jeans of phones. It's the Ford F-150 of phones. The allegedly all-American American phone. Most importantly, it's what everyone has.

Over here in Germany, the iPhone is the higher-class Mercedes-Benz of phones. The iPhone 15 Pro is the 2026 Mercedes-Benz-AMG E 53 of phones. The iPhone 15 Pro Max is the 2026 Mercedes-Benz-AMG S 63 E Performance of phones, slammed suspensions, standing on polished 22" Lexani wheels, muffler cut-outs always open. In American terms, it's the 2026 Cadillac Escalade-V of phones, gold-foiled, with air-ride, standing on gold-plated 26" Bellagio spinnaz. The phone made for peacocking in rap music video clips. It's the Rolex of phones. For women, it's the genuine Prada or Fendi or Louis Vuitton handbag of phones.

Well, and then there's the iPhone 4S with the cracked screen. It's the 1995 Mercedes-Benz E-Class of phones. Old, worn out, four-banger engine, often rusty as hell, may have been stolen at some point, but it's cheap. And most importantly, it's still a Benz, and it's a real Benz as opposed to "Baby Benz" C-Class and smaller. The Benz for those who need a Benz to show their folks how much of a winner they are, but who can't really afford one.

Over here, the Samsung Galaxy S is the VW Golf of phones. The Americans' Ford F-150 of phones. It's what everyone has. It's the no-brainer that you buy when you don't know what to buy, so you buy what everyone buys. Still, it's expensive for what it does. But all the other brands are akin to "cheap imports" from, what, France or Italy or Japan or Korea or Romania.

The choice of the hardcore nerds in the homeland of Chaos Computer Club and Chaos Communication Congress is never something that can only run stock Android. It's an iPhone even less. They rather buy a Google Pixel, and the first thing they do is root it immediately and install GrapheneOS. Or if they refuse to buy something from Google and/or run a Google OS (de-Googled or not), they acquire a Sony Experia, root it and install SailfishOS. Or they go straight for a Fairphone or even the new Jolla Phone or something like that. I'm pretty sure many want a true successor to the Nokia N900.

If Google locks Android down, these nerds won't flock to Apple. Some may switch to SailfishOS which, on officially supported phones, has the Aliendalvik compatibility layer for Android apps, but only with F-Droid and neither with the Google Play Store proper nor with Micro-G. Many more will go entirely elsewhere like PostmarketOS or PureOS, also seeing as SailfishOS is payware that's half proprietary and closed-source. Or they'll forgo mobile phones entirely or keep old phones alive for as long as they can.

About iOS apps: I guess the notion that the Fediverse equals Mastodon, something that the majorty of Mastodon users believe, is particularly wide-spread among iPhone users. And if it isn't only Mastodon, it doesn't extend beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube. Excluding Pixelfed and PeerTube, if Mastodon can't do it, the Fediverse as a whole can't. I mean, on top of the fact that apps made for Mastodon generally only support Mastodon features because the Mastodon Client API only supports Mastodon features, and the Mastodon Client API is all that these apps understand.

It's particularly bad for Friendica users. If they're on Android, they may opt for a Mastodon app. There are several Android apps for Mastodon that have been reported to work with Friendica. Or they may want to try one of the dedicated Friendica apps which are at various levels of unfinished. Or they may choose the middle-ground and use Fedilab.

But if they're on an iPhone, they'll discover that literally not even a single Mastodon iOS app works with Friendica. There is no Fedilab. And the iOS version of RaccoonForFriendica requires Test Flight, and it's probably even more incomplete than the Android version.

In general, iPhone apps are rarely developed for the same reasons as Android apps. Most Android Fediverse apps are open-source and under a free license, and they're also or exclusively available on F-Droid. They're developed by FLOSS enthusiasts/idealists. However, these people don't develop for iOS. That's because the Apple App Store is inherently hostile towards free software, and it's completely incompatible with all versions of the GNU General Public License.

Also, as you've already pointed out, you absolutely need a Mac to develop iOS apps. But if someone releases FLOSS apps on F-Droid, you can bet they're running GNU/Linux at home (more often Arch or a derivative than you may think), and they won't touch any corporate-made, closed-source OS with a 10-foot barge pole. They may even steer clear of anything where Novell, Red Hat or Canonical is involved.

With hobbyist FLOSS enthusiasts out of the way of developing iPhone apps, this is only ever done by those who do it for money. Or fame and social status (same reason why they always have a fairly new iPhone). Or both. But then they discovered that the Fediverse, to them at least, is a hive of radical leftist tech nerds whom you can't impress with expensive bling-bling from big American gigacorps. They failed to gather the umpteen thousand followers they wanted. So they left for greener pastures: Bluesky. Or they even went back to their hundreds of thousands of followers on 𝕏. Doing so, they also abandoned their iPhone app development.

By the way, none of this affects Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. For starters, just like Friendica, all four can be installed as Progressive Web Apps. However, at least in the case of these three, there is no alternative to the Web interface whatsoever. There's an old Android app for Hubzilla named Nomad, but it's only available on F-Droid, it hasn't been worked on since December, 2019, it only runs on older Android versions and Aliendalvik, and it's only a wrapper for the Web interface anyway. For (streams) and Forte, there's zilch.

There has been some talk about developing a native mobile Hubzilla app. It's kind of difficult, though. Generally, Hubzilla users use Hubzilla on desktop OS's. They can't imagine people daily-driving phones as their main or only end-user devices, so they think that a Hubzilla app only needs the features one would need when out and about because everyone will go back to their desktop or laptop computers anyway when they're back home.

In reality, many users of the Hubzilla app will only use that app. They won't use Hubzilla's Web interface in a browser. They won't use it on a desktop or laptop computer either, usually because they simply don't have one. They'll resort to that app for everything. In fact, they'll perceive Hubzilla as a phone app rather than a Fediverse server application. This means that a Hubzilla mobile app will inevitably have to cover all of Hubzilla's features except those that really don't make sense in a phone app (e.g. the PDL editor). But a fully-featured Hubzilla app would be so complex, it'd make infamous K-9 Mail pale in comparison.

Licensing is the least problem here. Hubzilla and Forte are released under the MIT license, (streams) was released into the public domain. So I guess putting an app for either of them under the MIT license would be an option, one that's fairly compatible with the Apple App Store even. It's just that this app would be bound to be an absolute monster.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #ReplyControl #Permissions #MastodonApp #MastodonApps #FediverseApp #FediverseApps #iOS #iOSApp #iOSApps #iPhone #iPhoneApp #iPhoneApps #Android #AndroidApp #AndroidApps

@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.

Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.

You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".

Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.

You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.

Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.

And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.

You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.

Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.

You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.

Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.

You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.

Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.

All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.

Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):

• The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
• Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
• If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.

There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.

There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.

And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.

And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@Justin Crozer @Stefan Bohacek @Lentävä Kalakukko @Roni Rolle Laukkarinen Whenever I see Mastodon users talk about "culture" in a Fediverse context, I have to wonder: What exactly do they refer to when they talk about "culture"?

Is it Fediverse culture? As in, overarching, software-independent Fediverse culture?

As in, taking into consideration that Fediverse server applications that aren't Mastodon, e.g. Misskey or Sharkey or Friendica or Hubzilla, have different cultures than Mastodon?

Recognising a post or a comment from one of these applications, acknowledging that it comes from a place with a different history, a different set of features and thus a different culture than Mastodon and refraining from enforcing Mastodon's unwritten rules against it?

Or does "culture" only refer to Mastodon's culture? Does it reject or completely disregard all cultures in the Fediverse that aren't Mastodon's and demand the whole Fediverse adopt Mastodon's culture and only Mastodon's culture?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who post more than 500 characters at once (which, by the way, is perfectly normal everywhere outside of Mastodon)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who reply to people who haven't mentioned them first, and whom they aren't mutually following either (which, by the way, is perfectly normal in large parts of the non-Mastodon Fediverse, too)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who quote-post Mastodon toots that must not be quote-posted (because they've had quote-posts for much longer than Mastodon, but without a no-quote flag so they can't see Mastodon's no-quote flag)?

Do these "bad eggs" incllude users who "misuse" Mastodon's CW field for summaries (because they have literally had the exact same text field as a summary field for seven years longer than Mastodon has had it as a CW field, and because having a summary field makes a whole lot of sense if your character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who use more than four hashtags in one post (because, unlike Mastodon, the places where they are have filtering as well as automatically having messages hidden behind CW buttons deeply engrained into their cultures, but this requires the appropriate keywords to be present)?

If so, then this explains why only Mastodon users can enjoy significant reach on Mastodon: Everyone else is mass-blocked for misbehaving by Mastodon's standards.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@⚝ Mirko ⚝

die Adminbubble dort ist sehr viel ausgeglichener und lässt vor allem andere Plattformen in Ruhe.

Mindestens die Hälfte von denen weiß doch gar nicht, daß es auch noch andere Fediverse-Serveranwendungen gibt. Für die ist das Fediverse gleich Mastodon. Und von denen, die das wissen, wissen die allermeisten nicht, was die anderen Anwendungen können.

Warum hat die "Mastodon-Community" beispielsweise nie gefordert, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, die Forkeys, Friendica, Hubzilla usw. zu deföderieren, weil die alle in der Lage sind, jeden öffentlichen Mastodon-Tröt widerstandslos zu quote-posten? Weil auf Mastodon praktisch niemand weiß, daß die dazu in der Lage sind. Wüßten die das, hätten sie längst die Messer gewetzt und die totale Deföderation gefordert.

Außerdem wird man auf diesen Serveranwendungen immer wieder von Mastodon-Nutzern diskriminiert oder gar attackiert. Man soll sich gefälligst an die "Fediverse-Kultur", will sagen, Mastodon-Kultur halten (was impliziert, daß man die eigene Kultur über Bord werfen soll). Man soll niemals mehr als 500 Zeichen posten. Man soll "alle notwendigen" CWs ins CW-Feld eintragen (also Friendicas Abstrakt-Feld bzw. Hubzillas Zusammenfassungsfeld) und es gar keinen Fall für irgendetwas anderes benutzen. Und so weiter.

Derweil beharren praktisch alle Mastodon-Nutzer darauf, daß das nie passiert. Weil sie nie mitbekommen, daß das passiert. Ihnen selbst passiert es ja nicht, weil sie sich als Mastodon-Nutzer eh an die Mastodon-Kultur halten, eh nicht mehr als 500 Zeichen haben, das CW-Feld nur als CW-Feld kennen usw. Und wenn es ihnen nicht passiert, dann sind sie der felsenfesten Überzeugung, daß es gar nicht passiert.

Das Nicht-Mastodon-Fediverse widersetzt sich ständig Mastodons Kultur und bricht ständig Mastodons ungeschriebene Regeln. Die allermeisten Mastodon-Nutzer wissen aber nicht, daß das passiert, ganz einfach, weil sie davon nichts mitbekommen. Dasselbe gilt auch für die allermeisten Mastodon-Admins.

Mastodon stellt im Fediverse irgendwo zwischen 60 und 70% der monatlich aktiven Nutzer. Aus irgendwelchen Gründen aber kommen gefühlt über 98% des Post-Aufkommens auf Mastodon von Mastodon selbst. Du kannst 4 Jahre auf Mastodon sein, 1000 Konten folgen und dich trotzdem in einer reinen Vanilla-Mastodon-Blase bewegen und erst nach diesen 4 Jahren deinen allerersten Beitrag mit über 500 Zeichen zu Gesicht bekommen. Wenn überhaupt.

Mastodon-Admins sind gegenüber dem Rest des Fediverse nicht deshalb so entspannt, weil das, was Pleroma, Misskey, Friendica usw. nach Mastodon schicken, für sie okay ist. Sondern, weil sie gar nicht wissen, was Pleroma, Misskey, Friendica usw. nach Mastodon schicken und viele von denen nie auch nur irgendwas von diesen anderen Anwendungen gehört haben. Sonst wären tausende von denen an vorderster Front mit dabei, wenn es darum geht, alles, was nicht Mastodon ist, auf Mastodon zu blockieren, das kannst du mir mal glauben.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteTröt #QuoteTröts #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebatte #QuoteTrötDebatte #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #ZeichenLimit #Zeichenlimits #ZeichenlimitMeta #CWZeichenlimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #FediverseKultur #MastodonKultur #MastodonRegeln

A Guide to Implementing ActivityPub in a Static Site (or Any Website) - Part 9: Quote Posts

Summary:

Find the index and earlier parts of this series here.

Quote Posts for Static Sites: A Practical Guide to FEP-044f Implementation

Transform your static blog into a consent-respecting quote-enabled node in the fediverse. This guide shows you how to implement quote post support that works with Mastodon, GoToSocial, and other ActivityPub servers while respecting author preferences.

In this guide: You’ll learn to build quote-enabled blog posts that can be responsibly shared across the fediverse

Find the index and earlier parts of this series here.

Quote Posts for Static Sites: A Practical Guide to FEP-044f Implementation

Transform your static blog into a consent-respecting quote-enabled node in the fediverse. This guide shows you how to implement quote post support that works with Mastodon, GoToSocial, and other ActivityPub servers while respecting author preferences.

In this guide: You’ll learn to build quote-enabled blog posts that can be responsibly shared across the fediverse

Why Quote Posts Matter (And Why They’re Controversial)

The User Experience Problem

Picture this: Someone finds your blog post fascinating and wants to share it with their followers, but they also want to add their own perspective or why is important. Without quote posts, they have two unsatisfying options:

1. Simple share: Just boost with no commentary\
2. Link sharing: Add a link to the blog post in their note

Neither option creates the rich, attributed conversations that make social media engaging.

The Solution: Consent-First Quote Implementation

We’re implementing FEP-044f: Consent-respecting quote posts in our federated blog.

What this means for your readers:

• They can quote your posts with confidence that you’ve opted in
• Their quotes include proper attribution and linking

What this means for you:

• Automatic handling of quote requests
• Future-ready for advanced moderation features (like in the fuuutuuure)

Implementation Overview

We are going to:

1. Modify the Notes JSON to include that the notes are quotable.
2. Modify our Index function (the only dynamic POST endpoint) to handle quote requests and send the appropriate approval back.

1. Modifying the Notes: Enhanced ActivityPub Context

What We Changed: Extended the @context from a simple string to a rich object array supporting the GoToSocial namespace.

Before:

"@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"

After:

"@context": [
  "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  {
    "gts": "https://gotosocial.org/ns#",
    "interactionPolicy": {"@id": "gts:interactionPolicy", "@type": "@id"},
    "canQuote": {"@id": "gts:canQuote", "@type": "@id"},
    "automaticApproval": {"@id": "gts:automaticApproval", "@type": "@id"}
  }
]

We are also adding this section at the end of the Note:

"interactionPolicy": {
  "canQuote": {
    "automaticApproval": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  }
}

If you want to be specific about who can quote your post, this is where you do it, read more in here.

You can see an example of the implementation in RssUtils.cs - Updated GetOutbox, GetNote, and GetCreateNote methods.

2: Quote Request Processing

Now we need to add the quote request handling system that processes incoming quote requests and automatically approves them based on our interaction policy.

New Components:

• QuoteRequestService: Processes incoming quote requests from the fediverse
• Auto-Approval Logic: Automatically approves public quote requests as defined in our interaction policy
• Quote Authorization: Issues authorization tokens (stamps) for approved quotes

The Quote Request Flow:

sequenceDiagram
    participant Requester as Fediverse User
    participant Inbox as Our Inbox
    participant QRS as QuoteRequestService  
    participant Target as Target Instance
    
    Requester->>Inbox: QuoteRequest for our post
    Inbox->>QRS: Process quote request
    QRS->>QRS: Check interaction policy
    QRS->>QRS: Generate authorization stamp
    QRS->>Target: Send Accept + Authorization
    Target->>Requester: Quote approved

Checkout the implementation in the QuoteRequestService.cs.

Key Takeaways

“By implementing FEP-044f, we’re not just adding quote functionality - we’re building consent-respecting social interactions into the protocol level.”

Why This Matters:

This implementation shows how static sites can participate in modern social web standards while keeping their simplicity and performance benefits. Right now, we’re automatically allowing all public quotes, but this foundation sets us up for more granular consent controls in the future - like requiring approval for specific users or implementing follower-only quoting.

The consent-respecting approach means our content can be shared thoughtfully across the fediverse, with the infrastructure already in place to handle more sophisticated permission systems as they evolve.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2025/02/a-guide-to-implementing-activitypub-in-a-static-site-or-any-website-part-9-quote-posts/ by @mapache:

#fediverse #activitypub #static-sites #hugo #azure #mastodon #web-development #social-web #webfinger #http #quote-posts #fep-044f

A Guide to Implementing ActivityPub in a Static Site (or Any Website) - Part 9: Quote Posts

Summary:

Find the index and earlier parts of this series here.

Quote Posts for Static Sites: A Practical Guide to FEP-044f Implementation

Transform your static blog into a consent-respecting quote-enabled node in the fediverse. This guide shows you how to implement quote post support that works with Mastodon, GoToSocial, and other ActivityPub servers while respecting author preferences.

In this guide: You’ll learn to build quote-enabled blog posts that can be responsibly shared across the fediverse

Find the index and earlier parts of this series here.

Quote Posts for Static Sites: A Practical Guide to FEP-044f Implementation

Transform your static blog into a consent-respecting quote-enabled node in the fediverse. This guide shows you how to implement quote post support that works with Mastodon, GoToSocial, and other ActivityPub servers while respecting author preferences.

In this guide: You’ll learn to build quote-enabled blog posts that can be responsibly shared across the fediverse

Why Quote Posts Matter (And Why They’re Controversial)

The User Experience Problem

Picture this: Someone finds your blog post fascinating and wants to share it with their followers, but they also want to add their own perspective or why is important. Without quote posts, they have two unsatisfying options:

1. Simple share: Just boost with no commentary (or reply)
2. Link sharing: Add a link to the blog post in their note

Neither option creates the rich, attributed conversations that make social media engaging.

The Solution: Consent-First Quote Implementation

We’re implementing FEP-044f: Consent-respecting quote posts in our federated blog.

What this means for your readers:

• They can quote your posts with confidence that you’ve opted in
• Their quotes include proper attribution and linking

What this means for you:

• Automatic handling of quote requests
• Future-ready for advanced moderation features (like in the fuuutuuure)

Implementation Overview

We are going to:

1. Modify the Notes JSON to assert that the notes are quotable.
2. Modify our Index function (the only dynamic POST endpoint) to handle quote requests and send the appropriate approval back (blanket approval).

1. Modifying the Notes: Enhanced ActivityPub Context

What We Changed: Extended the @context from a simple string to a rich object array supporting the GoToSocial namespace.

Before:

"@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"

After:

"@context": [
  "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  {
    "gts": "https://gotosocial.org/ns#",
    "interactionPolicy": {"@id": "gts:interactionPolicy", "@type": "@id"},
    "canQuote": {"@id": "gts:canQuote", "@type": "@id"},
    "automaticApproval": {"@id": "gts:automaticApproval", "@type": "@id"}
  }
]

We are also adding this section at the end of the Note:

"interactionPolicy": {
  "canQuote": {
    "automaticApproval": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  }
}

If you want to be specific about who can quote your post, this is where you do it, read more in here.

You can see an example of the implementation in RssUtils.cs - in the GetNote method.

2: Quote Request Processing

Now we need to add the quote request handling system that processes incoming quote requests and automatically approves them based on our interaction policy.

New Components:

• QuoteRequestService: Processes incoming quote requests from the fediverse
• Auto-Approval Logic: Automatically approves public quote requests as defined in our interaction policy
• Quote Authorization: Issues authorization tokens (stamps) for approved quotes

The Quote Request Flow:

sequenceDiagram
    participant Requester as Fediverse User
    participant Inbox as Our Inbox
    participant QRS as QuoteRequestService  
    participant Target as Target Instance
    
    Requester->>Inbox: QuoteRequest for our post
    Inbox->>QRS: Process quote request
    QRS->>QRS: Check interaction policy
    QRS->>QRS: Generate authorization stamp
    QRS->>Target: Send Accept + Authorization
    Target->>Requester: Quote approved

Checkout the implementation in the QuoteRequestService.cs.

Key Takeaways

By implementing FEP-044f, we’re not just adding quote functionality - we’re building consent-respecting social interactions into the protocol level.

Why This Matters:

This implementation shows how static sites can participate in modern social web standards while keeping their simplicity and performance benefits. Right now, we’re automatically allowing all public quotes, but this foundation sets us up for more granular consent controls in the future - like requiring approval for specific users or implementing follower-only quoting.

The consent-respecting approach means our content can be shared thoughtfully across the fediverse, with the infrastructure already in place to handle more sophisticated permission systems as they evolve.

Next Steps: The Quote Visualization Challenge

Now that we’ve successfully implemented the backend infrastructure for consent-respecting quote posts, we face an equally important question: How should we display these quotes on our website?

Treat quoted posts as special reply types? Quotes have different semantic meaning than replies - they’re more like “shared with commentary” So maybe create a separate “Quoted By” section similar to how we handle likes and shares?

Any ideas?

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/a-guide-to-implementing-activitypub-in-a-static-site-or-any-website-part-9-quote-posts/ by @mapache:

#fediverse #activitypub #static-sites #hugo #azure #mastodon #web-development #social-web #webfinger #http #quote-posts #fep-044f

@Jasper Burns

Groups, part 2: Starting a thread

Okay, here comes the twist. Here is where the group magic happens.

If you want to start a new thread in that group, you have to be a member of the group account. Connected to the group account. In Mastospeak, mutually follow the group account.

Then, if you send a new post that mentions the group account, and it is not a reply to another post, then the group account will automatically quote your post and send the quote-post with your post in it to all its connections (followers).

You know quotes? Quote-posts? Like, quote-tweets? What half of Mastodon is so afraid of because it's used on Twitter only to harass and dogpile people? That's what I'm talking about. Friendica has had these quote-posts for almost 16 years, and never have they been used for harassment and dogpiling, for never has anyone used Friendica as a drop-in replacement for Twitter. Friendica calls them "shares". And Friendica has used these quote-posts in groups for almost 16 years.

That is, within Friendica (and its descendants), one thing is a wee bit different: If you're on Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte, you have to send a DM with a special mention (!group instead of @group on Friendica, @!group on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte) to the group account for this to happen. This automatically activates what's "mentioned only" on Mastodon and makes your post a DM.

But from Mastodon accounts and the like, it accepts public posts with @group mentions. That's because Mastodon & Co. don't know !group and @!group mentions.

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@Robert Frank Wenn man selbst nur Mastodon nutzt, fühlt es sich piepschnurzegal an. Dann nimmt man eh das ganze Fediverse als nur Mastodon wahr und die Unterschiede zwischen Mastodon und Nicht-Mastodon fast überhaupt nicht.

Wenn man selbst aber etwas ganz anderes im Fediverse nutzt als Mastodon, dann ist es immens wichtig.

Ich selbst bin nicht auf Mastodon. Ich bin auf Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla, https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392). Das funktioniert völlig anders als Mastodon, das hat ein völlig anderes Konzept als Mastodon, das wird von Mastodon völlig unabhängig entwickelt. Es hat Features, die auf Mastodon unvorstellbar sind. Noch dazu ist es zehn Monate älter als Mastodon. Es geht sogar zurück auf Friendica, das mehr als fünfeinhalb Jahre älter ist als Mastodon.

Aber wie du mit eigenen Augen sehen kannst, kann ich Mastodon-Tröts nicht nur empfangen, sondern auch von Hubzilla aus kommentieren.

Wenn jemand das komplette Fediverse meint, es aber "Mastodon" nennt, dann meint er mich zwar damit, spricht mich aber nicht an. Ich bin ja nicht auf Mastodon.

Wenn jemand einen meiner Posts oder Kommentare als "Tröt" bezeichnet in der Annahme, ich sei auch auf Mastodon, dann ist beides sachlich falsch.

Wenn jemand sich wünscht, "das Fediverse" möge endlich ein bestimmtes Feature einführen, nur weil Mastodon es nicht hat, dann kann ich mir nur vor den Kopf schlagen. In den allermeisten Fällen hat Hubzilla genau dieses Feature schon zehn Monate länger, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Sehr häufig hat Friendica dieses Feature schon etliche Jahre länger, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Das Fediverse hat dieses Feature also. Mastodon hat es nicht, aber das Fediverse hat es.

Wenn jemand dagegen ist, daß "das Fediverse" ein bestimmtes Feature einführt, dem sei gesagt: Höchstwahrscheinlich hat das Fediverse dieses Feature schon. Mastodon nicht, aber das Fediverse. Denn höchstwahrscheinlich hatten Friendica und Hubzilla es schon immer, also auch wieder länger, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt.

Am besten war noch der Widerstand gegen Quote-Posts. "Das Fediverse" sollte die auf gar keinen Fall einführen, sagten einige. Der Witz: Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, CherryPick, Sharkey, Iceshrimp, Catodon, GoToSocial, Mitra, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte usw., sie alle haben Quote-Posts. Und zwar schon länger, als es diese Debatte auf Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Und sie alle (außer GoToSocial) können widerstandslos jeden, aber auch wirklich jeden Mastodon-Tröt quote-posten.

Oder damals der Widerstand gegen Volltextsuche. Auf gar keinen Fall sollte "das Fediverse" Volltextsuche haben. Nur hatte das Fediverse schon längst Volltextsuche: Friendica war schon im Mai 2010 mit eingebauter Volltextsuche an den Start gegangen.

Ach ja: Zeichenlimits. Wer "Mastodon" und "Fediverse" gleichsetzt, für den hat auch das Fediverse ein festgelegtes Limit von 500 Zeichen. Friendica und Hubzilla hatten aber nie wirklich Zeichenlimits. In deren Kultur kommen auch keine Zeichenlimits vor. Aktuell haben sie übrigens ein "Limit" von über 16,7 Millionen Zeichen. Bis auf Threads hat alles im Fediverse ein sehr viel höheres Zeichenlimit als Mastodon. Entsprechend kriegen Nicht-Mastodon-Nutzer ständig auf den Deckel, wenn sie das angeblich von Gargron für das ganze Fediverse festgeschriebene Limit von 500 Zeichen überschreiten.

Also: Das Fediverse ist nicht nur Mastodon. Das Fediverse war auch nie nur Mastodon. Das Fediverse ist nicht nur ein Twitter-Klon. Das Fediverse hat sehr viel mehr Features als Mastodon. Und das Fediverse hat auch nicht überall dieselbe Kultur und wird sie auch nie haben.

CC: @Knust @Katharina Nocun

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