Last Week in Fediverse – ep 89

Shortform video platform Loops opens a waitlist for signups, Mosaic is a service to help organisations create their custom version of upcoming platform Bonfire, and the new owners of event planning platform Mobilizon release a big new update.

The News

Loops is an upcoming fediverse platform for short form video, build by Pixelfed creator Daniel Supernault. On the loops.video site there has been a countdown over the last month that ended this Monday, and with it, people can now sign up for Loops. Loops is currently still being worked on, with Supernault working on getting the apps out to release. The Android app will be made available as an APK, and the iOS app is waiting approval for TestFlight. Loops is currently developed as a mobile-first platform, and does not have a webUI yet, with Supernault saying that a webUI will come later. He also reports that emails welcoming people after they have signed on are rate-limited by the email provider, resulting in a long delay before people can be onboarded. Moderation services for Loops are currently being worked on as well, and Supernault is looking for moderators to help moderate the platform.

Mosaic is a new service by the Bonfire team, where the Bonfire team will help organisations build and set up their own digital federated spaces. Bonfire is an upcoming fediverse platform that focuses on customisation and extensibility, that people and organisations can customise to meet their needs. Mosaic is a way for the Bonfire team to help onboard organisations and customise the platform to their needs. Extensions and other improvements made with Mosaic are then available for the rest of the community to use as well, as part of their AGPL license, so that everyone benefits from contributions made by others. Bonfire is currently available for testing, but not for official release yet. The main blocker seems to be slow performance of Bonfire, and the developers have put out a bounty for other developers to help them improve performance.

An update by Newsmast on what they are working on with Channels.org. They relate Newsmast’s Channels to Bluesky’s custom feeds (as DYI algorithms) and Farcaster’s channels (‘Cozy corners’). For Newsmast, Channels are a way to onboard public organisations, giving them their own place (the channel) to distribute their content, where the space is clearly their own, but still part of the larger fediverse network. Newsmast also notes that they’ll focus on Channels for now, and that Patchwork, the plugin system for Mastodon servers is postponed to early next year to prevent the team from stretching themselves too thin. Newsmast’s Michael Foster also blogged about how we can build a different web together as well, reiterating my point that the current trend seems for AT Protocol to be used for public and global conversations, and ActivityPub for (semi)-private networked communities.

IFTAS held a 2024 Survey among fediverse moderators, and while they are preparing a full report they give some early highlights on the results. Based on their survey data IFTAS estimates that there are 5500 users per moderator on the fediverse, which is between three and ten times as many moderators compared to other Big Tech platforms.

An article by Techpolicy.press goes into detail on ‘The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media’. It draws attention to pravda.me as an example of the expanding thread landscape on decentralised social networks; a large Mastodon server that bears all the hallmarks of inauthenticity, but is barely blocked on or on the radars of the larger fediverse community. The article also makes a distinction between moderation questions where decentralisation empowers communities (often related to political or sexual content), and issues where centralisation is more beneficial, such as spam and CSAM. Accompanying the article is also a podcast interview with Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi about their fediverse governance report.

Fediverse event planning platform Mobilizon got transferred from developers Framasoft to a new organisation, Kaihuri, who have gotten a grant from NLnet to further expand the platform. They have now released v5 of Mobilizon, with new features such as a homepage redesign, a monthly calendar view, better management of recurring or ongoing events, and more. You can test out the new version of Mobilizon here.

The Links

• revealing the fediverse’s gifts – Erin Kissane.
• How Decentralization Benefits Publishers, with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler and ProPublica’s Ben Werdmuller – Dot Social Podcast.
• ZonePane is an Android app that supports Mastodon, Misskey and Bluesky, and remembers your last place on the timeline.
• A blog post by a in response to Bengo’s ‘The Challenge of ActivityPub Data Portability’.
• A fediverse invitation for artists – Stefan Bohacek.
• A new allowlist-only instance for Black folks.
• Lemmy development updates for the last two weeks.
• A fediverse musicians starter pack.
• This week’s fediverse software updates.
• Write.as is reopening itself to free accounts.
• An app to discover other accounts to follow based on hashtags you both like.
• Helping to build the open social web – Ben Werdmuller.
• Adding Lemmy comments to a blog.

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

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