Hi, when I follow someone I usually do this from multiple accounts, with different servers and platforms. This is partially as backup. It’s also because different software has different features. E.g. at the moment of writing I mainly post from my Friendica server, but it doesn’t yet support polls, or account migrations. So I also follow from my Pleroma server, which does notify me someone has migrated.
I also sometimes use platforms that support nomadic identity, that allows my channels on multiple servers to be synced. From software that doesn’t support that, a follow request looks like multiple separate requests from those channels.
Anban Govender reshared this.
So when I went from 2GB of RAM for postgresql to 1GB and at that same time Pleroma search went from responding fine to not functioning at all, this was not a coincidence? I'm in that majority...
But still, why is loading a remote user to follow even implemented as a search action. Mastodon anti-pattern...
I don't like bully culture.
Also, sites and software should not show remote content to unauthenticated visitors. You'll become an open proxy to unwanted material. I don't understand that so much fediverse software still does this.
And unauthenticated visitors should not be able to load anything onto your site, not even in a cache. These open search boxes on so many fediverse servers are a bad idea, as they load profiles and posts outside the control or knowledge of moderators.
If so much fediverse software and servers give a bad example, is it so weird newcomers make these mistakes?
Thomas 🇫🇮+🇪🇺 likes this.
I hadn't heard of any Streams repository (fka Zap, fka Osada, etc) people for about two months and thought it had just gotten quiet. Instead the forum and the people post quite regularly, but communication with them from my Friendica has broken down. When trying to reconnect I got all the errors about not being able to recognise the protocol (when it fails to load the actor definition). Not even individual posts load correctly when providing the url.
So I thought this could be a use for my Pleroma. But it also mainly fails to connect... I can only load individual posts.
I'm starting to think no remote content should be stored at all, just maybe cached, but I understand how, currently, received text of posts can be stored similar to an email inbox.
But do I understand(*) correctly that Mastodon stores remote media as well, in their own media storage, even when from unsolicited sources? That can't be right.
(*) It is cited as a side effect of the spam wave that some are running out of media storage.
Hardly a 'crafted payload', more like a completely normal payload, just at another address...
Alice: hi, I'm Bob
Mastodon: hi Bob, you look different
Alice: never mind, I'm Bob, and I have changed my security keys. Please use these new ones when you validate a message from Bob, I mean me
Mastodon: will do
Alice: and by the way, if your user Carol sends a private message to Bob, send it to me instead, since I am Bob, as i said
Mastodon: fine, nothing suspicious there
(My simplistic summary of the recent disclosure. What is not stressed in the released details is that it doesn't change the profile of the impersonated user, Bob in the above, as its profile at the source is unaffected.)
Copied my followed tags into a "Followed tags" channel and copied my followed searches into a "Followed searches" channel. This works quite well. I think this is going to be useful. Channels maybe a quite powerful new Friendica feature.
It's starting to feel like tumblr again, except tumblr would occasionally just delete all tags alphabetically after 'k'.
Finally Mastodon will show incoming text formatting (with today's release) and the rest of us can stop wondering how garbled our posts are going to be on Mastodon and we can just post as we intended. Mastodon people still can't write rich text though. Baby steps.
It's not true though that Mastodon used to strip all formatting from posts. They were just very selective about what formatting they preserved:
- paragraph breaks were preserved
- hyperlinks were preserved
- some inline images were preserved
What tended to be messed up on Mastodon:
- lists
- context provided by emphasis
Both Friendica and Pleroma seem to have the same problem that video files are loaded the moment they appear in your timeline(*), whether you click play or not. And both are completely ignoring the provided cover image. Mastodon does this much nicer, showing the cover image, the actual PeerTube channel account, and only loading the video in an embedded player after you click to do so.
(*) I know, because when I'm browsing on cellular data I'm almost immediately out of my data bundle if a PeerTube video post appears in my Friendica timeline.
Marquis Kurt :xcode: likes this.
🏳️🌈Trentskunk🏳️🌈:unverified: reshared this.
#PeerTube
Just had a very quick look at cohost and these are my very initial impressions:
+ the vibe is very tumblr, in lots of ways
- things are even more difficult to find than here, and/or it is even emptier
It looks like especially 'artists-from-tumblr' should be able to find their place there.
What finally broke the Tumblr software, because I suspect they weren't aware of all the places in the code it was used, was that they stopped using post types. So I want post types back on my hypothetical ideal platform. It would have post types like:
- a note, short and only text
- an article, longer like a mobile web page with photos and videos between sections of text
- a photo post with one or more photos, with a short caption, shown in a layout the poster controls
- a video post with a description
- an audio post with a description
- posts asking for interactions like: poll, question, form, q&a
- a link share post with introduction text (which includes the link preview from the sender side)
- reblog post type with optional added text
- maybe a separate reply type post
PeerTube is one of the few platforms that have a 'license' field on each post/video. I would prefer that any post/video with an unknown (or non-free) license would never appear publicly (to unauthenticated guests) on other servers in some 'federated'/'Recently Added' timeline. I think Mastodon/Friendica/Pleroma are wrong in appearing to host items of which it doesn't know the license, which for these platforms is all items. One of the reasons I switched off public viewing of 'global community'.
So basically: unknown license? => always unlisted
I think both Friendica and Peertube don't support unlisted-like posts.
The Mastodon unlisted scope could be useful if you want to add a post that's visible to everybody even when not logged in, but you don't want to bother the global or local timelines with it. It is still sent to followers though, which may or may not be useful. The big problem with Mastodon's implementation is that I've heard these posts also don't show up in searches, not even with hashtags, which doesn't make any sense to me.
For Peertube I'm looking for a scope that's public locally, but is not public when federated out. In fact I believe this should be the default for any platform: don't show publically what you've only received from other servers.
Another reason we should not let the receiving server resolve a link preview (so apart from the ddos that is many receiving servers at once loading from a site, bringing small blogs down): your text in the preview will be in the language of where the server is located. E.g. on mastodon.social previews are often in German.
If the client resolves the link preview, load will be spread in time and the reader gets the text in their language. If the sending server resolves the link (my preferred solution), only one request is done to the site (much fairer) and the text will be in a language the poster expects and can see.
I'm thinking of what moderation rules I would set if I were to set them for some microblogging server. I'd do something sensible and normal like have specific rules that only apply to replies, like: no reaction gifs, no links, no photos, no changing the topic and no evangelising ('have you tried rust/mastodon'). Each top level post is in my mind a new forum with strict rules against off-topic messages or posts that don't contribute anything new.
But more than that I would want replies to be hidden by default. With the original poster being the moderator of this microforum. Maybe able to set the no-links etc rules per post.
Also: it would be illegal to reply to a post with a link to an article, without reading the article. (Twitter is already doing something like this!)
Also: a reply should take at least as much effort as the original post. When you reply to something quicker than someone took to post it, or write the blog, you will be automatically locked out of your account for the remainder of the time.
Yeah, I'd make completely normal rules.
Did a proper way to follow hashtags on the fediverse already get established? I know of none.
I don't mean where you can pin hashtags in Mastodon or save searches in Friendica, where you get the hashtags your server knows about. I mean actually following hashtags that are 'out there' on other servers.
The way they migrated calckey.social to firefish.social may have broken federation with Friendica for existing (but now suddenly renamed) accounts. Trying again. At least new accounts work fine. They did send out migration messages for the old accounts, but that doesn't work on Friendica, so I have to (try to) re-follow manually.
Also when checking on the site itself I wish I'd knew how to set the UI to English rather than (presumably) Japanese.
Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, Pixelfed, PeerTube, dare I say it even Twitter, all have websites that work perfectly fine on mobile. I don't understand this obsession with 'I'm on mobile so I should select an app' or 'I want to see the website so I should use a computer'. The sites may even work better than the app. Often you can save them to your home screen too.
You may consider the feature that apps of mainstream social media provided of extra tracking and snooping to be a nice bonus, but you're not going to get that anyway in fediverse apps.
Beko Pharm (deprecated) likes this.
Peertube now supports remote runners for the transcoding jobs! That's the one thing I was missing, I had no idea it was in the pipeline... (I had looked into adding it myself, but found it required substantial changes to how jobs are configured, which looks like they now did).
If only I wasn't on an old Debian version which blocks upgrading...
Beko Pharm (deprecated) likes this.
So this site documenting the AT protocol has a frequently asked questions section, but no way to ask questions. I'm suspicious.
That FAQ explains why they couldn't just use ActivityPub, by listing a couple of things missing in it. These things happen to be the exact things the Zot protocol does have, while Zot has existing implementations that do interoperate with ActivityPub. They couldn't have looked long.
#AT #ATProtocol
mastodon.social
address and it links my now-defunct isurf address), as is the cw for that post. Also, on mobile in portrait mode the pinned icon doesn't work. I instead tend to check whether something is someone's pinned post by its age.
Gidi Kroon
in reply to Gidi Kroon • •