Last Week in Fediverse – ep 47

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.