The #fediverse did it's magic today!
Nachdem ich gestern den Hashtag #Ferrara benutzt hatte, hat @StefanBlasel sich gemeldet und wir haben wir uns heute getroffen, natürlich in der vom @Linkshaender empfohlenenBar für arme Studenten. Gemeinsam haben wir dann noch einen schönen Stadtspaziergang gemacht und ich habe vieles über das Leben in Ferrara erfahren.
Macht Hashtags, die sind wichtig, und zeigt euch hier und reagiert, so macht #Mastodon Spaß.
#MeinRadUrlaub2025

Alt...

Stefan und ich vor der Bar 4S

We've successfully upgraded our Mastodon server to v4.5.0-alpha.2+mementomods-2025-08-30. This update includes today's latest daily build, so everything should be as current as possible. The version features some minor UI improvements tied to the new Quote Posts feature we're testing.

We've also set up an organization for all code-related work, so it's no longer on my personal account. Check it out here: https://github.com/mementomori-social

As always, if you spot anything unusual or buggy, please reach out to me or any of the admins. Enjoy your time here! Feel free to message me with any questions or ideas.

#MementoMoriSocial #Mastodon #MastoAdmin

⚠️ There is another "verification" scammer on the move, do not click on their link, it is a scam!

Genuine Mastodon servers never demand verification like this.

If you see a scam post like this, click ⋯ on the scam post, then "Report", then report it and make sure you select the option to forward the report to the origin server.

#Mastodon

Alt...

Scam message with the following wording, and a "Fake do not click" message overlaid on top of it: Important Notice! ⚠️ Hello from Mastodon moderation. 👋 To prevent being banned from our platform, please verify your account at your earliest convenience. You can find a special form for this purpose below. 📝 Access it here: 🔗 (LINK REMOVED) We hope to welcome you back on Mastodon soon!

I was just thinking to myself "It would be good if #Mastodon let you follow someone's original posts without seeing all the stuff they boost, which is not relevant to me".

Then it occurred to me to look and see if it does ... and it does! Click on the person's username, then click the three-dots menu near top right of their profile, then choose "Hide boosts from …"

This is a game-changer!

Just discovered the service @findmyfriends which finds the #Pixelfed accounts of your #Mastodon friends.

https://findmyfriends.online

✨ new on #TheFutureIsFederated 🚀

« In this age of #technofeudalism every writer who covers technology - especially resistance to #BigTech - should disclose their tech stack. Here's mine »

🔗 : https://news.elenarossini.com/technofeudalism-disclosing-my-tech-stack/

Basically, a love letter to #FOSS and the #Fediverse… with room for improvement (especially on the hardware front)

#selfhosting #GoToSocial #Mastodon #NextCloud #Pixelfed #PeerTube #Signal #YunoHost #DeGoogle #LeaveSubstack #resist #resistance #broligarchy

So, a while ago, I complained that it was hard to open a #Mastodon post in a new tab if it didn't contain any text, just images, because clicking on the image made the image bigger. You could go to the ... menu and that had a link to the original post but not the post on your instance. You could use the 'copy link to status' option in the ... menu, but then you needed to open a new tab and paste it.

And some helpful people pointed out that the space to the right of the person's username was also a clickable link to the post. Yay!

Only, since the last update, that entire region has become a link to the user's account page, not the post. Which is more consistent (it was not very discoverable before) but also annoying.

Is this a thing specific to some patches my instance uses, or part of the upstream release?

🫤 Tired of WebDev 🫤

Microblog, had to say googbye, so I moved my Prose blog to Ghost.io, fine. It's mostly good. Chopped up a theme to get rid of the "sign up" stuff that I don't care about. This isn't for making money and I don't care if anyone signs up. Fine, but I want comment functions.

Ghost doesn't do one thing very well: enable mastodon comment replies directly. Some JS blah later, and now I have embedded mastodon comments which can be viewed on the post and via mastodon. Great.

Oh, but Ghost has a beta ActivityPub integration. So to complicate things, here are my two Masto accounts, one with a bridge that is supposed to be useful?

- Standard: @winterschon
- Ghost Bridge: @eva

Oh you want a HTTP URL:
- Regular - Yes: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@winterschon
- Ghost - Broken: https://prose.winterschon.com/@eva

Doesn't work as expected. You can only get to the @eva AP profile by searching from a mastodon client for profile @eva ... annoying. Otherwise it just pulls up the usual Ghost blog site and that's it. Their implementation needs some work.

Any advice is certainly welcome.

#mastodon #ghostblog #longform #webdev

When people arrive from X:

"I had twenty thousand followers."

After a couple of weeks:

"I made a hedgehog sweater out of moss."

#Mastodon

I still don’t understand why the default #Mastodon post size is small. I see posts where instances have increased the limit and they show up nicely folded with a ‘read more’ link to expand them. In contrast, people on instances with smaller limits post 1/n things. These are terrible UI:

• The user has to post the 1/n thing by hand.
• The posts all show up in my feed, no way of easily skipping them (in contrast, large posts are easy to fold away).
• The posts show up in reverse order so I see the thread backwards. I end up scrolling to 12/12 and then clicking on it to go backwards.
• The threads are not posted atomically and so they’re interleaved with others and I sometimes miss interesting posts.
• Fetching multiple small posts requires a lot more ActivityPub traffic and more server load than fetching a single larger post. Not really a UI problem, but it has a knock-on effect.

The small post limit doesn’t make people favour brevity, it makes people post long thoughts in a less readable way. The constraint of having to fit a tweet and a username in a single SMS message never applied here, we don’t need to copy bad UI that arose from legacy technical limitations.

Please, please, please make the default post limit something sensible. And, until then, instance operators, please set sensible limits yourselves. I am very happy that infosec.exchange has an 11K limit.

If I had posted this somewhere with the default config, it would have needed to be split over four toots. Do you thing that would have improved your experience reading it?

EDIT: If you think splitting this would have made it easier to read, please add a comment explaining why. I’m genuinely curious.

EDIT2: The poll has ended and it appears that more people just like clicking on random poll buttons than think the current default good.

#fediverse #mastodon #activitypub

Alt...

html code in C - in a personal fork of snac by grunfink

http://gyptazy.com/fedi/gyptazy/

#mastodon #alternatives #fediverse #activitypub #customizing

After a little investigation, I found that I was wrong. The problem is not with mastodon.el. Looks like my instance somehow won't accept access_token, issued by the /oauth/token, if this token was stored and reused e.g. after Emacs restart.

BTW, if I try to get the access_token by hand, via the Librewolf DevTools, then the server won't give me any token, saying that "The provided authorization grant is invalid"

https://codeberg.org/martianh/mastodon.el/issues/732#issuecomment-6580210

@stefano

#Emacs #Mastodon #MastodonAPI #rant #TechRant

#fediverse #activitypub

The welcome for illumos Cafe has been wonderful.

The Mastodon instance already has 14 members, and new requests are coming in by the hour. In the 12 hours since the launch, I can only say that it's a very positive result - more than my wildest expectations.

Thank you, friends! Let's continue on this adventure, together!

#illumosCafe #ThankYou #Mastodon #Fediverse

My friends, I'm so excited and happy to introduce a new project: the illumos Cafe!

The positive and constructive spirit of the BSD Cafe, created and maintained by all the friends who participated from day one in building a strong and friendly community, deserves to spread to other operating systems. Because there are other OSes that deserve attention, certainly more than they're getting right now.

Operating systems based on illumos (like SmartOS, OmniOS, Tribblix, OpenIndiana, etc.) are mature, stable, secure, and perfectly usable for a wide range of tasks. ZFS is native, zones are an excellent method for containerization, and bhyve and kvm coexist beautifully - and so much more, too much to list in a single post.

So from today, the illumos Cafe will stand alongside the BSD Cafe in creating a positive, respectful, and growth-oriented (but also relaxing!) environment, starting right here in the Fediverse with a Mastodon instance and a snac one.

I've written an introductory article about the project, including some technical details. I invite everyone interested to read it: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/08/18/introducing-the-illumos-cafe/

Choose your table, take a seat and enjoy your time at the illumos Cafe!

#SysAdmin #IT #BSDCafe #illumosCafe #Community #OpenSource #OSS #illumos #SmartOS #OpenIndiana #ZFS #bhyve #kvm #Fediverse #Mastodon #snac #ITNotes

Hmm, looks like the login process in the mastodon.el is complicated AF.

Two possible places to store the credentials: ~/.authinfo.gpg and ~/.emacs.d/mastodon.plstore (both support GPG encryption).

When I make first login the mastodon.el asks me about passphrase then about password . Both entered strings should match.

After some experiments I realized that it asks me not about my #Mastodon password but about passphrase to unlock my GPG key (twice , then other programs, like Magit or pass frontend doing this only once).

Then, I successfully logged in by entering GPG passphrase twice, entering authorization code from Mastodon instance to authorize mastodon.el and entering the GPG passphrase to store necessary credentials in the ~/.emacs.d/mastodon.plstore (twice again ).

The official documentation states that mastodon.el will store credentials in the ~/.authinfo.gpg since 2.0.0, but this is not true . I'm using version 2.0.2 from NonGNU ELPA and it is still saves all credentials to the aforementioned mastodon.plstore. Despite my auth-sources is:

("~/.authinfo.gpg" "~/.netrc")

After I restart Emacs and enter M-x mastodon, I got:

Decrypting /home/drag0n/.emacs.d/mastodon.plstore...done
Loading home timeline...
Contacting host: mastodon.bsd.cafe:443
Loading fediverse account nil on https://mastodon.bsd.cafe...
error in process filter: mastodon-tl--init*: Looks like the server bugged out: "The access token was revoked"
error in process filter: Looks like the server bugged out: "The access token was revoked"

While I didn't revoked access token, it is still visible in the Mastodon settings, in the list of my authorized applications.

And both mastodon-instance-url and mastodon-active-user have valid values, pointing to the my actual account.

0/10 will not recommend

#Emacs #Mastodon #rant #TechRant

Running a single user (or small) instance in the Fediverse? Relay instances acting as a spreading proxy can help you to find your content and also to make your posts visible to others - and you can easily join with #Mastodon, #snac and many other ones!

The https://fedi-relay.gyptazy.com relay is mostly for tech related content and just got updates to the manpageblog design.

#mastodon #snac #relay #activitypub #fediverse #federated #bsd #devops #proxmox #ipv6 #opensource #community #debian #python

Alt...

Image of the activity pub relay instance by gyptazy

Friends of the BSD Cafe, I don't know if you've noticed that since yesterday, the #Mastodon instance has been showing the BSD Cafe logo as its icon. Before, I deliberately left the Mastodon one - but now I've had to add the BSD Cafe one because...well, you'll find out tomorrow morning 😊

Stay tuned!

#BSDCafe #NotBSDCafe #StayTuned #Fediverse #Mastodon

At EuroBSDCon 2025 in Zagreb: "Liberating the social web using *BSD" by Jeroen - @h3artbl33d - and Stefano Marinelli, see https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2025/talk/PJJLFV/

Schedule at https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2025/schedule/

To register https://2025.eurobsdcon.org/registration.html

#EuroBSDCon #EBC25 #BSDCafe #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #Networking #BSDCafe #RunBSD #Mastodon #Fediverse #OwnYourData #Security #Networking #Community

#CrazyFediverseAnalogies

Announcing FediMeteo – Weather in the Fediverse!

UPDATE: I have created an account for updates and other information on FediMeteo - follow the account @admin to stay updated!

UPDATE: Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland have just been added

Weather has always influenced our lives: from agriculture to outdoor activities, to extreme events that, thanks to modern technology, can now be predicted with greater reliability. Personally, weather plays a significant role in my daily decisions, which is why I decided to create a service tailored for the Fediverse.

FediMeteo uses Open-Meteo data to publish updates every 6 hours, including current weather conditions, forecasts for the next 12 hours, and predictions for the upcoming days. Each country is served by its own dedicated instance (e.g., it.fedimeteo.com for Italy), managed through snac to ensure simplicity and efficiency in publishing.

You can follow FediMeteo directly in the Fediverse (on Mastodon and compatible platforms), via RSS, or by visiting the dedicated page for your city (e.g., fr.fedimeteo.com/paris).

Currently supported countries include:
Austria, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, – with many more regions coming soon!

FediMeteo is hosted on a FreeBSD-based VPS, with each country isolated in its own jail to ensure security and scalability.

Visit the main site to explore the national instances and start following your local weather updates today:
https://fedimeteo.com

Happy weather monitoring to all! 🌦️

FediMeteo is dedicated to my grandfather, who every evening would give me the weather forecast based on TV, radio, and his personal experience. He would convince me that the weather would be bad, so he had an excuse to accompany me to school instead of me going alone.

#FediMeteo #Announcements #FreeBSD #FediMeteo #WeatherForecasts #Weather #Meteo #snac #Fediverse #Mastodon

Mastodon #research 🚀

I’m working on my master’s thesis at the University of Vienna, and I’d love your input! My research focuses on sustaining long-term user activity on Mastodon, contributing to a more active Fediverse. If you have a few minutes, please take my short survey:
👉 https://sosci.univie.ac.at/MastodonActivity/

Your thoughts will contribute to meaningful research. Feel free to boost this post so we can reach as many users as possible. Thank you so much! 🙌

#Mastodon #Survey #FediverseResearch

When I talk about the importance of going all in on the Fediverse, I speak based on experience.

At Opera we built a massive user community. When I quit, we had something like 35 million registered users and 35 million monthly visitors.

The new Opera management did not see the value of that. They believed it was cheaper and better to just use Facebook and that investing in your own community was a waste of money. So they closed down MyOpera and built a following on Facebook and Twitter instead. Then they got caught by the bait and switch when Facebook changed and you would no longer reach your audience, without paying. Later on Twitter changed as well.

This is important to explain to companies and institutions as they go shopping for social media sites to invest in. The best investment is clearly in your own site, being part of the Fediverse. It is not even all that expensive to do. It may take longer to build, but at least it is your own.

Not saying you cannot build a following on those other sites, but your long term strategy should be the Fediverse with your own server.

We try to lead the way here and thus we build Vivaldi Social. Not just for our selves, but to make a point and support the Fediverse.

#fediverse #Mastodon #Twitter #Threads #BlueSky #Vivaldi

Mastodon Follow Pack FAQ 1.0

What are Follow Packs?

They are just packaged topical lists of up to 35 accounts you can follow from your Mastodon or other Fediverse account. You can follow the entire pack by importing a file. And the entire pack loads into a list, so it becomes a feed for that subject. You can also just browse for accounts you might want to follow individually.

So, they’re like Bluesky Starter Packs?

Yes, but not quite as convenient. It’s not hard, but because Mastodon does not have a one-click way to do this, you need to download a follow pack file and then use Mastodon’s import facility. Instructions are provided in the directory and also below.

What Follow Packs are there?

Packs are being added all the time. Right now there are packs for Astronomy and Space, Climate, US Politics and Miscellany. For a current directory check out the Mastodon Migration FediBlog at: https://mastodonmigration.wordpress.com/2024/11/20/mastodon-follow-pack-directory-nov-20-2024/

How do I do do it?

Check out the latest directory at https://mastodonmigration.wordpress.com/2024/11/20/mastodon-follow-pack-directory-nov-20-2024/ . Basically determine which pack you want to follow and download the .csv then import the pack. Instructions are provided. Follows are loaded into a list in your account.

OK, but I don’t want to mess up my lists. What happens if I already follow an account in the pack?

That’s fine. The followed account will just be added to the new list, and if you already had that account in a list, it will now just be in both lists.

Can I then add more accounts to the list?

Sure! That’s the idea. Many of these accounts boost other great accounts in their topic area. You will quickly find additional accounts you will want to follow. When you do follow a new account add it immediately to the list by clicking the “…” button at the top of the profile and selecting “Add or Remove from lists”

What if I don’t like your pack list title?

Simply change it. Click on the list, then the gear icon and you can edit the list name and contents. Also, you can determine if you want to “Hide these posts from home” so they don’t clutter up your home feed.

What if I’ve been added to a list and I don’t want to be in it?

Every follow pack has a listed administrator. Message them to ask to be removed.

How do I know if my account is in a Follow Pack?

You can search through the directory. Also, whenever a new directory is posted all members of every pack are notified by being copied on the post.

What if I don’t want to follow accounts from Threads or Bluesky?

Any pack that contains Threads or Bluesky bridged accounts will have a special notice. Just don’t import one of them.

#FollowPack #StarterPack #MastodonMigration #MastoTips #Help #Directory #Guides #Mastodon #Fediverse #FediBlog

Follow Pack Notices

OPT-OUT NOTICE: If your account is listed in any Follow Pack and you do not want it to be, please message the pack administrator and refer to the pack from which you would like your account removed.

BRIDGE ACCOUNT NOTICE: Packs that include accounts that bridge outside the Fediverse will be identified with a special notice.

REPLIES ON MASTODON NOTICE: Replies include all named accounts. Please edit any replies to remove addresses you do not intend to send the reply.

Follow Pack Instructions

Download the pack .csv file and import into Mastodon to follow all accounts:

– Click on a FollowPack .csv file link to download
– Click on Preferences (gear) icon on bottom right
– On mobile or narrow desktop click top right “hamburger” button
– Click Import and Export >>> Import
– Import type dropdown: Select “Lists” (NOT “Following list”)
– Verify that ‘Merge’ is selected (IMPORTANT)
– Click Browse… button >>> Select “[file name] – list.csv”
– Upload >>> Confirm

______________________________

This post comes from the WordPress Mastodon Migration Blog: https://mastodonmigration.wordpress.com/

You can receive all new posts to this WordPress Blog on Mastodon by following Mastodon account:

https://mastodonmigration.wordpress.com/@mastodonmigration.wordpress.com

(Copy and paste above address into search to find and follow)

Important: Replies on Mastodon to this WordPress post by default include all named accounts. Please edit your reply to remove all addresses you do not intend to send the reply. Thank you.

#accountlist #activitypub #astronomy #Astrophysics #bluesky #Booster #Climate #ClimateScience #Dire #Directory #FediBlog #fediverse #followpack #followpackdirectory #GlobalWarming #guide #Guides #Help #mastodon #mastodonmigration #MastoTips #Media #Miscellany #mmfp #Politics #Random #socialMedia #Space #StarterPack #Threads #twitter #USPol #USPolitics #USPoliticsBoos #USPoliticsMedi #USPoliticsMedia #USPoliticsThreads

This afternoon, an acquaintance joined a Mastodon instance and asked me which "celebrities" are present in the Fediverse, as if it were important to determine the value of a social network based on that.

I told him that the most important user in the Fediverse is him. Just as it’s you, reading this. Someone who has decided to interact with others freely. Who has chosen to trust their administrator (or create their own instance) more than they trust those who run traditional, monolithic, centralized social networks.

So, I want to thank all the friends of BSD Cafe, whether local or not, for being here and making this place what it is. And I thank all my friends in the Fediverse, who make my timeline lively, interesting, intelligent, fun, and thought-provoking - every day, at any time.

#BSDCafe #Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialNetworks #SocialMedia #Community #Trust #OpenSource #DigitalFreedom #JoinTheFediverse

A small compendium of the Fediverse platforms I use/know well.

In the past few days, I revisited some of my old Fediverse instances since some friends asked me to help them set up a new one. I also took the chance to perform maintenance on some leftover instances. Here's my experience:

Akkoma: My oldest instance still running, opened in 2022. It was offline for a few months (3/4). I updated everything to the latest version and restarted it. I’m not sure why, but it’s extremely slow, with a heavy load on Postgres and many queries just to open the main page. I like Akkoma - I'll investigate further.

GoToSocial: I updated a friend's instance - GoToSocial itself was up-to-date, but the underlying system wasn’t. I noticed that once it exceeds 2000 followings, it becomes a bit slow. The database is PostgreSQL, but that's not the issue. The GoToSocial process becomes somewhat heavy on the VPS. Still, it's very usable and a software with great potential, in my opinion. The Mastodon API is implemented quite well and works with the major software.

Mitra: It seems well-built. The person had around 1000 followers and followings on a Mastodon account, which they moved from a large instance. No speed issues, though sending a message makes the server “heavy” for a bit, but it’s temporary. The Mastodon API is partially implemented, but the software is advancing quickly, and I find its native interface quite pleasant.

Snac2: I've always had a soft spot for Snac2. The lack of a database and some design choices make it an excellent solution for small instances. For example, sending posts to all known instances increases visibility and interaction. Its basic, JavaScript-free interface is very clear, though it might not be the best for those used to Mastodon. But the Mastodon API is improving version by version, and I think the developer is doing an excellent job. It struggles a bit with larger numbers, but that's due to the underlying file system, not the software itself. If "move" support (both in and out) were added, I would recommend it to anyone starting self-hosting for single-user or small community instances because "move" is one of the options that gives the most freedom in Fediverse software.

Mastodon: My “old” personal instance was stuck at version 4.1.x and had been offline for a few months. I updated the FreeBSD Jail and upgraded Mastodon to 4.2.12 and then to 4.3.0-beta1. No issues. I also helped a friend (who had an old Pleroma-based instance they barely used) migrate. This user has around 5000 followers and followings - Mastodon is running on FreeBSD on a VPS (arm64) for just over 3 euros a month, with no significant issues (apart from media storage, but that's not Mastodon’s fault). Mastodon is sometimes said to be heavy, and that's partly true, but its modularity ensures that even in cases of overload, queues may slow down, but navigation and the local timeline remain reasonably fast. I think this is a good thing for any larger-scale use of an instance.

In short, I think things are moving in the right direction, and the software is evolving nicely. Well done, devs!

#Fediverse #Akkoma #GoToSocial #Mitra #Snac2 #Snac #Mastodon #SelfHosting #InstanceManagement #FreeBSD #OpenSource

I want to launch a hashtag where, every Tuesday, I'll post a message and it would be great if it became a habit for many.

In a world full of conflicts, selfishness, and egocentrism, it would be nice to focus on the good that others do, what makes our lives better thanks to the contribution of others.

My first #ThankYouTuesday to the friends of #BSDCafe - both within the community servers and beyond - who have undoubtedly contributed to making my life better, more stimulating, and richer. So, I extend this gratitude to all those who, here in the fediverse or elsewhere, are present and positive, giving me inspiration and motivation.

Truly, thank you!

#ThankYouTuesday #gratitude #positivity #community #fediverse #mastodon

15 million users in the Fediverse, now.

No ad-blocker needed.
Zero ads.
My data stays on my server.
Interactions are genuine, driven by people's desire, not an algorithm pushing for conflict to boost engagement (and ad sales).
Nobody's here just because it's trendy. If you're here, you want to be here.
The best social media experience I've had in years.

Thank you to all of you, among these 15 million accounts, who have helped make this a wonderful place to be.

#Fediverse #Privacy #NoAds #GenuineInteractions #Decentralized #ThankYou #Mastodon