In the last month or so, the Bluesky team has made some updates and changes to the network; adding reply controls, starting to make the network publicly available, and working on the bulk follow spam accounts.

Reply controls

One of the main features recently released is the Thread Reply Controls. When you compose a post, you can now select who is able to comment. You can either select no-one, only accounts who are mentioned in the post, only your followers, or accounts that are on one of your lists.

Giving people control over who can comment is a significant improvement for the safety. It can help cut down on annoying or harmful replies. It should be noted that these reply controls can only be set during the creation of the post, and can not be changed afterwards. This means it is not possible to apply extra limitations on comments in case a post goes unexpectedly viral.

Public visibility of network

Soon, Bluesky will make the entire network publicly visible. Currently it is not possible in the standard web interace to view posts or profiles without an account, giving the impression that the network is private. However, the entire network has always been public, with posts and accounts visible for everyone, if one used 3rd party tools or the API.

As part of the preparation for federation and opening the entire network for everyone, Bluesky will soon be making all posts and profiles publicly visible for people without an account. When the team announced this a few weeks ago, it came with quite a few critiques that people had a need for their profile to be private, and that they did not want their posts to be easily accessible.

In order to accommodate the needs and requests for privacy, Bluesky has added the ability for people to opt out of the public web interface in a new setting. This reintroduces the current friction in viewing peoples profiles and posts: it is currently possible, but requires a certain technical know-how and effort. However, it is not certain that other third party clients will respect the setting. It can also create a false sense of security, where people think their posts are private when they have turned on the feature, when in practice it means that they are obscured instead, and still accessible to those who really want access.

Bluesky is aware that this opt-out setting is not equal to a full privacy setting, and the language used reflects this: the setting says that it will ‘Discourage apps from showing my account to logged-out users’, and comes with a warning that it does not make your account private.

Bulk following spam

Finally, Bluesky is stepping up enforcement against engagement farming. There are quite a few accounts that try to gain followers by following tens of thousands account at the same time, with the hope that these accounts will follow them back. These accounts will now get labelled as spam. The hope is that this label both deter the behaviour. With Bluesky’s composable moderation, the default value is that posts from accounts labelled as spam are hidden.

Last year’s Twitter migration, where a large number of people decided to move to Mastodon, is an example of a giant collective behavioural change that people engaged in voluntarily. A new paper takes a look at how the collective coordination happened, and what can be learned as the drivers of such a collective action.

The authors (Lucia La Cava, Luca Maria Aiello, Andrea Tagarelli) show that Twitter communities migrated more quickly where:

The social connections in the community are relatively sparse. There is a cost to severing a social connection, and in a tight-knit community the social cost of leaving is higher.

Community members repeatedly post about their migration plans. The more people post with the #twittermigration hashtag, the more likely people are to follow up on the call.

Language use that emphasises a shared identity and the exchanges factual knowledge. Cooperation in a community can be facilitated when discussions and conversations create a sense of belonging to the group.

The blog post explaining the research can be found here, the paper here.

It’s been a busy week for fediverse news, with a long update. Three articles this week, as well as quite some other news and interesting links.

Next week I’ll be hosting a livestream together with Framasoft, to ask them questions about PeerTube. The event will be livestreamed on PeerTube, on Wednesday, Dec. 13th, 6-8 pm (CET). You can already send in your questions now, simply by posting them with the #PeerTubeAMA on the fediverse. See you there!

5 years of Mobilizon

An end, as well as a new beginning for Mobilizon. With the latest update, Framasoft adds a variety of new features, and hands the project over to a new team. Read the update below

Nostr bridge Mostr gets an update

The bridging between the different decentralised social networks remains one of the more interesting developments, as they point towards a future of the fediverse that is more complex than just a single platform ‘winning’. In this piece, I take a look at Mostr, the bridge that connects the fediverse to Nostr, and the complex questions about culture and safety that arise.

Mammoth gets a major update

Mastodon app Mammoth gets a major update

In other news

A blog post by Lickability, the design agency that works on the official Mastodon apps, that explains the design process behind Mastodon’s reply safety features. It explains the thought process behind the design, and compares it to how Instagram, Twitter and Youtube are handling somewhat similar features.

SocialInbox is a new feature of Distributed.Press which integrates a website’s comment section with federated social media platforms like Mastodon. Distributed.Press is an open source publishing tool that can help send out your website content to the decentralized web. With SocialInbox, websites can now become part of the fediverse, in a similar way to how the ActivityPub plugin makes WordPress websites part of the fediverse. With the Social Inbox, your website becomes an account on the fediverse that can be followed, and posts can be interacted with as with any Mastodon post, which gets send back to your own website.

Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi have announced that they will be running a new project, titled Fediverse Governance Successes & Gaps. The project looks to find more information about the current governance models in the fediverse, as well as the gaps in infrastructure that are present for the governance of the new generation of social networks. The goal is to create a practical handbook as well as whitepaper on governance.

SURF, the Dutch IT cooperative for education and research, has extended their Mastodon pilot for another year. I spoke to them this spring about the pilot, here. For the next year they will be focusing on adoption of the fediverse by participation organisations, as well as working on taking the next organisational steps of going from pilot to a regular service that SURF offers to their members. More information in their interview with PublicSpaces, in Dutch.

Social network Spoutible is adding cross-posting to different networks. They have added Bluesky, and are now in the process of adding support for Mastodon. This is not full federation, as likes and comments are not carried over. Neither is Mastodon fully supported yet. It does however provide an indication of where social networks are headed, with more and more connections between networks. WeDistribute has more info, here.

Catodon is an new and upcoming fediverse platform, based on Firefish, that is currently in development. It is being worked on by some of the team that used to contribute to Firefish. As the firefish.social flagship server continues to struggle with serious technical issues, more forks of the project (such as Sharkey) are springing up.

The links

IFTAS, the non-profit organisation that helps support the fediverse moderator community, and has a Moderator Advisory Council to help guide the organisation. They are looking for someone with moderation experience who can contribute, with stipend available.

The ActivityPub Community Group held a meeting together with the Community Group for the Solid protocol, looking for ways to join forces. The notes of the entire meeting can be found here.

Pixelfed is working on making their Collections feature directly accessible and followable via Activitypub.

The third episode of Flipboard’s Dot Social podcast is out, this time with Ian Forrester, about the BBC’s experiment in the fediverse.

Another German government has joined the fediverse, this time the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.

Kbin app Artemis has shut down after the developer disappeared, WeDistribute reports.

Lemmynade is a new app for Lemmy.

The Mastodon.nl server has a blog post that discusses server size, and the tradeoffs that come with it. In Dutch.

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading. You can subscribe via email below, or laurenshof@fediversereport.com if you want to follow this blog with your fediverse account.

Mastodon app Mammoth has released a new version of their app, Mammoth 2. The app was launched in early 2023 for the iPhone, Mac and iPad, and it is made by startup that is backed by Mozilla. Mammoth has focused on the user experience, especially of new users, and over the summer they launched a For You feed. In the announcement post for Mammoth 2, co-founder Bart Decrem says that ‘Social needs to be an open protocol that anybody can build on’. To illustrate their belief in the value of open software, Mammoth 2 is now open source as well.

One common criticism of the fediverse is that it is hard to get started. Finding interesting people and content to follow is harder than on other platforms, who are more willing to suggest accounts and posts to you. Decrem talks about wanting to make something that takes the values and the passion of FOSS projects, and make them accessible to a larger base of people. With Mammoth, he is actively working on making Mastodon more accessible for new people, in multiple ways.

The standout feature for Mammoth 2 is curated ‘Smart Lists’, where Mammoth has asked people within the community to curate lists around certain topics, from Space to Indieweb to Queertech. The handpicked curation provides a counter to algorithmic feeds, and also provides new accounts with a good place to start. If you have been in the fediverse for a while, you will probably recognise most accounts on the Smart Lists that interest you, but for a new account it can certainly be helpful.

The For You feed is now makes use of the smart lists as well. Mammoth explains how it works in more detail here. You can customise your For You feed as well, selecting which parts you want to be included or excluded into your feed. You can select each smart list you subscribe to, Friends of friends, Trending among follows, and handpicked accounts by Mammoth.

The two algorithms of Trending among follows and Friends of friends are still in the testing phase. Decrem explains that these algorithm are hard to implement well, both from a technological perspective as well as a cultural viewpoint. The entire fediverse network is currently also on the small side to get enough engagement to create a well functioning feed.

Bart talks about that there are communities on the fediverse that have critical mass, and are self-sustaining with worthwhile content, but that other bla

For 2024, Decrem expects that it’ll be the year of social as an open protocol, with many different products being build. For Mammoth, that means making Mastodon and the fediverse accessible to a wider audience, with the following priority they are working on: first of all, making sure that Mammoth provides a great Mastodon experience. Secondly, provide a good experience for interacting with the fediverse at large. Thirdly, they are watching closely what Threads is doing, and making sure that Threads is accessible on day 1 that they launch ActivityPub support.

A large part of the Mammoth 2 update is about content curation. Decrem says however that being a content curator is a not a part of their core business, stating that Mammoth is especially good at thinking about the user experience. For now, that means helping with content curation. That is why other organisations such as Newsmast, and people from the community have been actively involved in taking the role of content creation.

Mammoth is also thinking about how to sustain the project, to which they have introduced Mammoth Gold. This optional subscription (2.99 USD/month) is about supporting the project, and gets you optional features such as more icons, early access and votes on new features, and being present on the quarterly board meetings.

The app will not be just focused on Mastodon forever, and Decrem sees a lot of potential for Threads implementing ActivityPub. This is something he actively hopes to make use of, and provide Threads users with another app that they can use. He sees a lot of options how Mammoth can do things better than Threads, and give users more handpicked and curated content to browse.

— experiencias iniciais (mat.winck.xyz, atlas.winck,xyz, presencaweb.winck.xyz, etc…)

Presença Web

— criar modelos prontos para serem duplicados

— vender os sites a partir dos modelos

— oferecer o modelo online como amostra

— vincular cada modelo a um formulário equivalente com espaços para todas infomações e mídias do cliente

— oferecer personalização limitada dentro do modelo

Geral

– Investimento inicial(dez/2023):

• Hospedagem WordPress Hostinger: R$ 200 por ano

– Próximo investimento

• Servidor Linode Starter: R$ 35 por mês (R$ 420 por ano) – 2 Apps Cloudron: RSS e ChatBot
• Cloudron Premium: R$ 75 por mês (R$ 900 por ano)
• Servidor Linode Advanced: R$ 70 por mês (R$ 840 por ano)
• Servidor Linode Master: R$ 140 por mês (R$ 1.680 por ano)

Total final:

– R$ 140 + 75 = R$ 215 por mês (R$ 2.580 por ano)

Futuro:

– Investir em servidor próprio e energia solar: R$ 10.000 únicos(servidor) + R$ 10.000(painel solar) (R$ 360 por ano) – Economia mínima de R$ 2.500 por ano.

Mostr, the bridge that connects Nostr to the fediverse, has gotten some upgrades recently. With the latest update, the homepage of the bridge, Mostr.pub, allows people to enter a fediverse handle, and open the link in their Nostr client of choice. Here is the Nostr page for my Fediverse Report account as a demonstration. Finding people on the fediverse and connect to them from Nostr has become significantly easier with this update.

For some context to this news, Nostr is another social network based on an open-source protocol. I explain a bit more how it works here. In the context of Mostr, two things are important to know: one of the core values of the network is anti-censorship, and there is no intermediary for creating an account.

In a talk (available on PeerTube here) at the Nostr conference Nostrasia, Mostr.pub creator Alex Gleason about his history with Nostr and the fediverse. He explains how he worked on fediverse software Soapbox, and then got hired as the head of engineering for Trump’s Truth Social, and now has quit that job to work fulltime on Nostr.

The Mostr bridge has been available for a bit, which allows Gleason to present some interesting statistics about it’s usage: 70% of the usage is from people on Nostr following people on the fediverse, with over 10k unique users across the bridge.

One part of Gleason’s presentation that stands out is his claim that Nostr is now part of the fediverse. I wrote about the multiple definitions of the term fediverse here, talking about how fediverse can be defined by protocol, by culture, or by interoperability. Although people can argue about which definition is correct, and whether or not Nostr should be included, Gleason’s remarks do indicate that Mostr makes the boundaries of what the fediverse is fuzzier, and harder to define.

Gleason also talks about content moderation and blocking, saying: “One thing that has been holding the ActivityPub protocol back from achieving even more, is the blocking culture”. But if Mostr wants to see itself as just another server among many in the fediverse, content moderation happens to it in the same way that it happens to other servers: by simply blocking the server you do not feel like connecting with. Any justification for it is only necessary between the admin and their users, and not anyone beyond that.

Framasoft, the French non-profit organisation for open source software such as PeerTube, says that after 5 years, Mobilizon has reached maturity. In December 2018 the organisation announced their plans to develop Mobilizon, with the goal of creating an alternative to Facebook Groups and events.

Over the years, they have added multiple updates, such as federation in 2020 and searching across Mobilizon instances in 2020. This month, they are releasing their final update, v4, with a variety of new features.

Event administrators can now send private announcements to attendees, allowing them to contact all people who have registered for an event directly. This announcement is a one-way communications channel, intended for organisers to broadcast information. Besides that, a chat system for attendees is also implemented, which federates with the rest of the fediverse.

Another new feature is the ability to import and synchronise events from other platforms, such as Meetup and EventBrite. Framasoft created an import tool that allows you to import and synchronise event information from these platforms into Mobilizon. iCal event feeds are support too, so this even works with most calendar tools.

The big platform for importing events from is Facebook. Here, Framasoft has done the work to get it to work, and the ball is now in Facebook’s court to approve and validate. Framasoft is clear that they do not have a timeline how long this will take, and that they are unsure if Facebook will do so.

While Framasoft sees Mobilizon has having completed their vision, it is far from over for the project. Framasoft will hand over the keys to the French association Kaihuri, who has been maintaining a Mobilizon presence for a while. Kaihuri recently got funding from NLnet to continue development work on Mobilizon, focusing on the user experience and improving interoperability. Meanwhile, Framasoft is betting big on PeerTube for next year, and is currently organising their yearly donation drive.

Welcome to another episode of Last Week in Fediverse, where I’m experimenting with a slightly different structure. I’m trying to get more articles out directly into the fediverse with WordPress’ ActivityPub plugin, so you can also follow me laurenshof@fediversereport.com to read it all during the week when it comes out.

NLnet funding the fediverse

The NLnet foundation provides grants to an open information society, and over the years they have provided most projects on the fediverse with funding. This week NLnet announced their latest grant round, with a significant number of fediverse projects being supported. For more background on NLnet, read my interview with them. In this article I take a look at all the different projects that NLnet has funded this round.

PeerTube released their latest version

The latest version of PeerTube comes with a variety of cool new features. Two of them stand out to me, as they allow PeerTube to be used in ways that Youtube can’t. For content creators that want to give their subscribers exclusive access to content, the ability to password protect your PeerTube videos might just be a game changer. There is a lot more coming up next year with PeerTube as well, stay tuned for the announcement very soon!

Misskey 2023 recap

Misskey has had a busy year. Developer Syuilo provided an update of the year, describing the new features and how the project went from 500 daily active users in January of the year to 28.000 now. One thing that interests me is how Misskey keeps developing into it’s own unique identity within the fediverse. As it is largely Japanese, there is little overlap with the Western fediverse community.

In other news

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading. You can subscribe via email below, or laurenshof@fediversereport.com if you want to follow this blog with your fediverse account.

Misskey, the fediverse microblogging platform that’s popular in Japan, has provided a recap of 2023, and it has been a big year for Misskey. The platform saw massive growth, the main server Misskey.io incorporated itself, and a number of new features and performance improvements.

The flagship server Misskey.io grew from 500 daily active users in January to 28k daily active users in December. They grew from around 20k registered accounts at the beginning of the year to over 400k accounts now. As with most social networks, growth happened in bursts, with a major increase in March and July, while the other months grew much slower.

With the growth came other changes as well: the server misskey.io incorporated itself, and main developer Syuilo became a director of the organisation as well. Donations and sponsorships also grew significantly. For the future, Syuilo says that “there are limits to relying solely on donations from everyone, so I would like to find a way to monetize the project.”

Misskey Pages allow users to create custom web pages on the platform that they can share. It can be programmed as well, and Misskey created a custom scripting language AiScript so people can safely add code to their Misskey Pages as well.

Other updates include refactoring of code and performance improvements, more information on that can be found here and here.

Misskey’s vision for fediverse servers is visible in their updates on moderation; every user can be assigned different roles that control permissions of the user in detail. In the update they say that this has greatly affected the operation of the Misskey server. This implies a vision for Misskey of larger servers, with a more complex structure for administration and moderation.

The future plans for Misskey focus heavily on the playful aspect of social communities: two games will be added that can be played on Misskey; Misskey Room as a way to play with other users in 3D space, as well as a chat interface. This puts Misskey further it’s unique place in the fediverse.

Besides the main news of this week (NLnet providing grants to multiple fediverse projects, and a major new release of PeerTube, Misskey 2023 recap), lots of other news happened this week in the fediverse as well. An overview:

Mike McCue interviewed Evan Prodromou for his podcast Dot Social. The episode can be found here, Johannes Ernst wrote a thread while listening through the episode to get some of the highlights, here.

Bridgy Fed is a project to bridge the different protocols that power the open social networks. Creator Ryan Barrett is working to expand to include Bluesky, so that you can connect to accounts from Bluesky with your fediverse account (and visa versa). As work is progressing, he wrote a reintroduction to the project that explains some more background information about the project.

A longread article on the recent situation with The Bad Space, placing it in a larger historical context.

An essay that argues that scholarly societies should embrace their role as a society more than a publisher, and build upon the digital commons in the fediverse.

WeDistribute wrote a list of the 10 biggest misconceptions about Mastodon.

Radio free fedi is working towards a New Years day 24 hour stream party. Go check it out, it looks like there will be a ton of great content. If you stream on Owncast or PeerTube, you can also participate!

Lemmy gives their developer update on the work they have been doing in the last 2 weeks. Lemmy is preparing for their new release, v0.19, and the lemmy.ml server is already running the update. One of the changes is a new sorting algorithm, scaled sorting, that gives more visibility to smaller communities on Lemmy.

MarsEdit, a blog editing application for Mac, now has direct support for Mastodon.

An overview of all the other software releases for fediverse software this week.