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Let's Talk about the Fediverse

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• Let's Talk about the Fediverse

• Let's Talk about the Fediverse

  Michael > September 18th, 2023, 02:10 PM

  
  
  The fediverse has been around for years. Most people have heard about Mastodon, a sort of Twitter competitor that looks and feels like Twitter but which uses a de-centralized approach to the concept.
  
  As I write this there are currently just over 14 million active accounts in the Mastodon ecosystem. It runs on something like 9,000-10,000 servers (called "instances"). You sign up/create an account with one or more instances (most people only go with one instance).
  
  Some of the instances ask for financial support. Some of them say they don't need it.
  
  I have an account on C.im, which is based in Germany (and so must comply with German/EU laws). They don't charge for accounts or ask for donations (at this time). I use the Web-based interface from both the desktop and my mobile phone and I find it's a very user-friendly experience.
  
  As a Mastodon user you can access thousands of other Mastodon servers/instances, but you can also access accounts on other federated Websites. There are counterparts for YouTube, Reddit, image-sharing Websites, and more.
  
  Federation utilizes JSON (Javascript Object Notation) code to export content from a traditionally published Website. It's sort of like a budget API that anyone can access. All these federated sites can see each other or block each other. There is a growing body of tools that instance admins integrate into their services, or that users can integrate into their accounts/apps to help manage the flow of information.
  
  So, for example, you can block or filter content coming from certain sites (servers/instances) or certain users or certain hashtags or certain keywords. I filter out a lot of word-game posts because they're just too many and I have no interest in those games (or the scores people share). I also filter out a lot of adult content because it shows up randomly in the federated timeline.
  
  Every Mastodon user has 3 timelines:
  

  • Your personal timeline (accounts and hashtags you follow)
    
  • Your local server/instance timeline
    
  • The federated timeline (all unblocked/unfiltered servers' public posts)
    

  You can doomscroll any of these timeliines.
  
  Your personal timeline depends on who/what you follow, of course, but you can create a very active timeline this way. I have a high follow-to-follower ratio compared to my other social media accounts/platforms because the Mastodon ecosystem is still vigorous and personal. There's not a lot of tolerance for commercialization in the fediverse.
  
  Now, any server/instance could run ads that its users would have to see (or I suppose there might be ways to filter them). So it's not like you can't create a commercial presence in the fediverse. But there's a lot of resistance to it.
  
  On the other hand, any company that wants a presence on the fediverse can just launch its own instance/server. And then they can advertise themselves by traditional means and attract fediverse followers, or publish content using hashtags for the federated timeline. Other servers/instances would be free to block or filter their content, naturally.
  
  And that last part is where things are going. Although there are several protocols that sites can pick from to federate their content, the W3C standard protocol ActivityPub seems to be the most popular.
  
  WordPress, the leading blogging platform, recently launched a new plugin that allows bloggers to federate their content. You can broadcast your content on a sitewide level (using @sitewide-name@domain.tld) or you can broadcast individual users' content by account (@username@domain.tld).
  
  I've been experimenting with this plugin on a few blogs. It's got some kinks to work out, and I'm still learning how to use it properly. But I think this is where things are going. Eventually, nearly every Website will federate.
  
  And what about Web forums like SF-Fandom?
  
  I don't know yet. I'm guessing that eventually we'll be able to federate, too. But I still need to finish upgrading our forum software - a complicated task I began earlier this year. I hope to get it done by the end of the year.
  
  We're mobile-friendly already, although attachments don't display on mobile devices. I'm not happy about that but there's nothing I can do.
  
  In any event, I think the day is coming where "social media" will sort of fade into the past. Everyone will be socialized via whatever Websites or apps they want to join, and we'll all just sort of see each other in passing through federated connections.

• RE: Let's Talk about the Fediverse

  Michael > September 22nd, 2023, 04:13 PM

  Mastodon 4.2 software has been released. The Verge reviews it (favorably).
  
  Mastodon gets better search, onboarding, and cross-server interactions

• RE: Let's Talk about the Fediverse

  Michael > October 28th, 2023, 04:59 PM

  A few weeks ago WordPress.com integrated the ActivityPub plugin into their platform. Any free-hosted WordPress blog can not enable federation with the flip of a switch. It's simpler than for self-hosted sites, although you don't get all the features.
  
  And I've learned that you can populate any federated blog's timeline with shares for older content just by searching for the old Post URLs on Mastodon. That means your fediverse followers can see your older content (or at least excerpts) from their Mastodon clients rather than having to browse your blog. So that may be a way to help increase the visibility of some Websites in the fediverse.
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