I made my own social media network federated via ActivityPub on the Fediverse running Mastodon 4.1 a few years ago. I did it with a script that installed everything on an Oracle Cloud VPS. I did not use the Docker method because I thought that might be extra RAM that could be used elsewhere. Then I became lazy about learning how to upgrade Mastodon on an installation built from source. Reading the release notes and …
Continue readingMeta (Facebook) released yet another social media network app called “Threads by Instagram”. It’s basically a clone of the Twitter interface, but automatically lets you follow everyone you follow on Instagram. That’s the thing that made it so popular so quickly… all you have to do is log in with your Instagram account. This makes it extremely easy for Instagram users, who may think they’re too good for Facebook, to join a new Facebook-run social …
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Many servers in the Fediverse have implemented “private mentions” or “private messages” or “direct messages” in a manner that uses the ActivityPub protocol without encryption. Fediverse server administrators are able to read all of these private messages on the server which means they’re not really private. Some have suggested making them encrypted so that server admins can’t read them, but that poses more problems. For example, who’s responsible for enforcing local laws on the server? …
Continue reading The Fediverse is an incredibly good idea that should seem pretty obvious to anyone who has ever made a phone call, driven on roads, mailed a letter, sent an email, or browsed the web; decentralized, federated systems are stronger, fairer, and more sustainable than centralized dictatorships. That’s exactly what the Fediverse is except instead of decentralized groups of post offices in every country, the Fediverse is a collection of decentralized little social networks installed on …
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