I started a conversation with @Roma about optimizing our Matrix database and we ended up talking about carpets. Go figure! That was weird haha.
But hey I am optimizing our Matrix database. Currently at 240GB which is insane! May take 1-3 days to do it. It is slow....but I've heard you can reduce it by a fuck ton so let's see....
The plan: optimize the Matrix and hopefully Friendica database. Move our websites, except trom.tf, to a different server (will take many days); then test to see where we can move our trom.tf.
It will be a lot of server work these next weeks. But we need to run away from Contabo, run run.
I am quite sure that what prevents me from going into a deep depression is my workaholism. I am always busy with things, some new, some old, some experimental. I always want to do new projects, write, create, enable. The fact that soon after I released TROM II, a 3 years work, I jumped into new adventures, says a lot. Many would fucking retire for a few years after working so much on a project, or drop dead.
I always do stuff. And that keeps me away from thinking about many truths. Some that really piss me off are these wannabe "activists" and "organizations" that bitch about this society and then have pompous motivational vomits about how we should do something, and help, and fight, and all that. Yet none, or almost none, of these motherfuckers that I know have ever helped TROM and the many projects that we have, even with a share or something.
We have so many tools that people can use, so many books, a new documentary, and more. I am always available for any podcasts, debate, presentation, wheteverthefuck. I am here screaming for more than a decade, but if I think ho
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I am quite sure that what prevents me from going into a deep depression is my workaholism. I am always busy with things, some new, some old, some experimental. I always want to do new projects, write, create, enable. The fact that soon after I released TROM II, a 3 years work, I jumped into new adventures, says a lot. Many would fucking retire for a few years after working so much on a project, or drop dead.
I always do stuff. And that keeps me away from thinking about many truths. Some that really piss me off are these wannabe "activists" and "organizations" that bitch about this society and then have pompous motivational vomits about how we should do something, and help, and fight, and all that. Yet none, or almost none, of these motherfuckers that I know have ever helped TROM and the many projects that we have, even with a share or something.
We have so many tools that people can use, so many books, a new documentary, and more. I am always available for any podcasts, debate, presentation, wheteverthefuck. I am here screaming for more than a decade, but if I think how ignored TROM is, especially by these cunts :), then I could go into depression mode quite fast.
That's the truth.
Better to keep myself busy with my TROM work, else I may realize how hypocritical many people are. I will always share whatever is important in regards to TROM, regardless of the source. And we do daily on tromnews.com and such. And I've helped other projects whenever I could.
What just triggered me is this video by TVP . Ok made, but the message of: "We should change the world by getting involved. You can do something even from behind the computer!" Is so hypocritical coming from an organization that will NEVER share anything from anyone else. They will NEVER help those people who are active and fight.
TVP has some online reach so hey go ahead share TROM II, or TROM.tf, or other orgs from our Trade Free Directory! They won't! They never did. I worked with them for years. They just talk. Bullshitters. Many bullshitters out there.
Thanks for reaching out to Contabo customer support. For internal reasons we had to take the decision not to provide you with any new products this time, we are awfully sorry to say. "For internal reasons" means we are not going to communicate our motivation. Our decision is not up for debate; we kindly ask for your understanding. Please do not take our decision personally. It has nothing to do with you but rather with reasons that we are not going to explain since we do not want you to misunderstand us or misinterpret our statements. Exactly because of this, we consider all information as internal company information. Still, we are always available for you personally and will respond to all of your questions as soon as possible. Always feel free to contact us.
I am not even sure if this is legal to refuse without explanation. But it is time to move away from these terrible human beings. It is already a struggle to work on these trade-free projects and provide for everyone, last thing I need is t
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Yeah so Contabo will not sell me any new service:
Thanks for reaching out to Contabo customer support. For internal reasons we had to take the decision not to provide you with any new products this time, we are awfully sorry to say. "For internal reasons" means we are not going to communicate our motivation. Our decision is not up for debate; we kindly ask for your understanding. Please do not take our decision personally. It has nothing to do with you but rather with reasons that we are not going to explain since we do not want you to misunderstand us or misinterpret our statements. Exactly because of this, we consider all information as internal company information. Still, we are always available for you personally and will respond to all of your questions as soon as possible. Always feel free to contact us.
I am not even sure if this is legal to refuse without explanation. But it is time to move away from these terrible human beings. It is already a struggle to work on these trade-free projects and provide for everyone, last thing I need is this kind of shitty treatment and unfair.
I'm sure Hetzner would want your business. This is making me rethink the server I have at Contabo too to be honest. I don't wish to support businesses that treat people poorly (employees or customers).
Hetzner seems to be the only viable option but I've heard horror stories from people using it too. And the sad thing is that I do not have a business, I do not make any money, I provide free services for people, and materials. So I have these servers for other people basically, and yet I am treated like that.
Contabo has shockingly low prices, and shockingly terrible "customer support" and overall relation with the "customers".
Take this for what it's worth but I moved all my servers off of Linode when they were bought out by Akamai over to Hetzner. Most of my servers are in Falkenstein Germany, and a few are in Seattle. When possible I'm using ARM64 servers (only available in one data center last I checked). Hetzner has been very good both service wise and customer service wise. But I use auto-pay and have all charges going to my credit card. In all I spend about 100€ with them a month. I also have one Contabo server (my mail server) and I've been loathe to move it over to Hetzner because ... knock wood ... anybody that runs a mail server knows this ... my subnet is not blocked anywhere. It's $15 a month for the server. I could probably pay less at Hetzner but honestly I'm afraid to "fix something" that's not "broken" there.
But you're the 2nd person in about as many months where I've read horror stories from Contabo or about the way Contabo has treated a customer. You're the first I've heard where Contabo flat out refused to sell any servers to, too.
I had been looking to diversifying
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Take this for what it's worth but I moved all my servers off of Linode when they were bought out by Akamai over to Hetzner. Most of my servers are in Falkenstein Germany, and a few are in Seattle. When possible I'm using ARM64 servers (only available in one data center last I checked). Hetzner has been very good both service wise and customer service wise. But I use auto-pay and have all charges going to my credit card. In all I spend about 100€ with them a month. I also have one Contabo server (my mail server) and I've been loathe to move it over to Hetzner because ... knock wood ... anybody that runs a mail server knows this ... my subnet is not blocked anywhere. It's $15 a month for the server. I could probably pay less at Hetzner but honestly I'm afraid to "fix something" that's not "broken" there.
But you're the 2nd person in about as many months where I've read horror stories from Contabo or about the way Contabo has treated a customer. You're the first I've heard where Contabo flat out refused to sell any servers to, too.
I had been looking to diversifying my server deployments and using Contabo more because I really want to deploy some servers to Canada and Hetzner doesn't have a Canadian presence and OVH flat out won't sell me any VPSes in Canada since I'm a US citizen.....
@gme I’ve been using hetzner dedicated servers for 6 months now and they’ve been nothing but amazing as far as service AND customer support. They’re very technically competent and have been able to handle whatever request I throw their way. I haven’t come close to a bad experience except when I accidentally didn’t masquerade my VMs on a host and they sent me a mail about that but that was my issue and an easy fix. I also love that their installimage tool and others are open source too! github.com/hetzneronline
You know I can't remember. I think they did. But I also opened an account under my business. I do remember they asked for my business registration information. I didn't have a problem with that. I've worked is security and in internet/ web my entire adult professional life so I completely understand KYC (know your customer) type requirements and laws.
@gme a third party service had to verify I was a human being and that was one of the verification methods. I think it’s honestly to combat fraud and bad actors (paying customers or not).
Awful.. Sounds like a typical message from the bank or something when they refuse you to open an account or dismantle an existing one with no explanaition. Sadly, banks are allowed to do so by the law now. And this is considering you can't survive sometimes without a bank account at all. But some hosting provider? Give me a break 😤
With banks in many countries no reason is code for money laundering, since laws often make it illegal to tell someone that they're under investigation.
For example under UK law it's a crime carrying a maximum 2 year prison sentence.
TROM Search (searxng), and Translate (lingva) are trade-free (TF) interfaces for trade-based services. And they may or may not work. Now we make sure people understand that:
We have removed TROM Bird (nitter - a Twitter TF interface) because for one it rarely worked since the billionaire introduced new rules, and second we do not see it relevant. We have the Fediverse where anyone can join for free.
Bibliogram (TF for Instagram), Teddit (TF interface for Reddit), and Invidious (TF for Youtube) were also removed in the past, because they either didn't work at all, or it was nearly impossible to keep them functional.
All of these TF interfaces are either a pain to develop, deploy and maintain, or they do not work anymore. Our server IP is getting limited or blocked by these big companies, so it is not a good idea to try and host them. Simply put these companies want for people to use their platforms to see ads and collect their data, or sell shit to them. If you still use them, then you should considering ditching them!
In the end these are not alternatives to trade-based services, they are interfaces for these services. So for example we rely on Friendica instead of Facebook, because Friendica is a true alternative. A different social network! Same when we rely on Peertube instead of Youtube. Or Nextcloud instead of Google Drive, and so forth. These and more, are the true services that we provide via trom.tf/ !
Yes, most videos are on Youtube and it will take a long time until we could match that on Peertube, so for now keep calm and use FreeTube (local TF interface for Youtube), and keep on posting on Peertube!
Yes Reddit has a lot of interesting content. So use an ad and tracker blocker! And give Lemmy a try!
In the near future we will replace the TROM Translate with a proper Translation engine that we run on our server. As for a search engine it is damn tricky....we do not know what alternative there is.
And please consider supporting us here tromsite.com/donate/ so that we keep on providing real Trade Free alternatives to what has become a cancer of the Internet world: Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like.
I am thinking of giving up our SearxNG instance since our IP gets a bad reputation because of so many times trying to access google or the other search engines. Is there a meta-search that uses SearxNG that basically randoms through different instances when you do a search?
EDIT: I remember ofc searx.neocities.org - but if anyone knows any other....
I've been struggling these days with the work on TROM. I worked in parrallel on TROMjaro, to find a way to make TROM.tf sustainable in terms of the server and specifically diskspace, and I also work on an article about the ZDay experience. Oh and I tried to improve the ZDay audio and all that...
And I did not have too much success but I am progressing. TROMjaro ISO released, 30% of the ZDay article done, but the solution for TROM.tf is still floating in mid-air....
The main issue is that we are running out of diskspace. So we urgently need to do something about that. Peertube eats by far the most, around 800GB and the saner solution is to move the storage to an Object Storage. I tried and tried and tried and had partial success.... So it is either that I will move our Peertube to an Object Storage or I move the entire TROM.tf server to a server that has more storage space. Problem is, I found such a server, and would be cheaper overall, but it is from Contabo and they seem to refuse to sell me any new service because of the
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I've been struggling these days with the work on TROM. I worked in parrallel on TROMjaro, to find a way to make TROM.tf sustainable in terms of the server and specifically diskspace, and I also work on an article about the ZDay experience. Oh and I tried to improve the ZDay audio and all that...
And I did not have too much success but I am progressing. TROMjaro ISO released, 30% of the ZDay article done, but the solution for TROM.tf is still floating in mid-air....
The main issue is that we are running out of diskspace. So we urgently need to do something about that. Peertube eats by far the most, around 800GB and the saner solution is to move the storage to an Object Storage. I tried and tried and tried and had partial success.... So it is either that I will move our Peertube to an Object Storage or I move the entire TROM.tf server to a server that has more storage space. Problem is, I found such a server, and would be cheaper overall, but it is from Contabo and they seem to refuse to sell me any new service because of the conflict we had a while back.
I got kinda tired these days. My eyes hurt. I even forgot to mention that I've also tried to test stuff for the Friendica YNH package and submit issues/changes/ideas to the devs to make sure we make the YNH Friendica reliable.
Too many things man....and a lot of computer-things that is....and with computers and so many projects there is ALWAYS something to fix/improve. IDK if I like this....I LOVE the end result tho. Us having our own video platform, social network, OS, and so forth...
Well, keep calm and work. Try not to stress. Go out sometimes. Thanks for the advice :)
Our first example of forced takedown has to do with our Nitter instance. Nitter is a front end for Twitter, a proxy service. All it does is requesting a page from Twittter on your (the visitor) behalf. It will only display the Twitter content, without trackers and using its own (more humane theme). It is not storing any data on the server.
No page on bird.trom.tf/ exists unless you visit it to generate it. Remember this.
On 11/8/22, 17:35 we have received this from our hosting provider:
Dear ******,
We have received complaints about your VPS XL SSD, specifically about the following IP address(es):
*******
Please see the forwarded e-mail below for more details. Apparently, your VPS XL SSD is used for phishing which is strictly forbidden by our ToS.
Abuse is a serious threat in the Internet and can cause a huge amount of damage; thus, we ask for your understanding that once an ABUSE case is reported to us, we must handle abuse strictly and with no tolerance.
Please take immediate action to stop the ongoing server misuse. It is required that you solve the problem within the next 12 hours, and that we receive your reply within this period, too. Your reply must contain all information which enable us to understand exactly which measures you took to stop the abuse and prevent such or similar incidents in the future.
We will suspend access to your VPS XL SSD if we do not receive your reply within the given time frame, and if the problem is not solved in due time; both is essential - the solution and your response. The reactivation of a VPS XL SSD always demands a reactivation fee of at least €36.30. Please respond in due time to save these expenses.
We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter.
Original complaint from tfp.report.ctac@appgate.com Subject: Unauthorized Use of Trademark
The original complaint that was sent to our hosting provider was this:
Greetings, This is an official message from AppGate, on behalf of our Banco del Pacifico G.F. We need your cooperation in the removal of the content located in the site: bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC The target site is the following URL(s): twitter.com/BancoPacificoEC We kindly ask you to shut down this content as soon as possible. We expect a prompt and affirmative response.
Thanks for helping make the Internet safer.
Sincerely,
DTP Team - Appgate
We replied:
Dear Contabo,
For one bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC is a front-end access to the twitter page twitter.com/BancoPacificoEC. It is not a content that is available on our server. We are using Nitter a Twitter front-end github.com/zedeus/nitter . Like thousands do. How can we be responsible for the Twitter content now? This is not something we can ever remove since it is not on our server. Please understand.
Second, did you check to see if this bank account is phishing? bancodelpacifico.com/ - they have a verified Twitter account and all that. They seem like any other bank...
Please get back to me on this or put me in contact with the ones who filled the complain.
Cheers!
I thought for sure that they accuse us of mirroring a real Twitter phishing account.
But well, we were worried that they will shut down our entire server that hosts 20+ Open Source services that thousands of people use, so the same day we sent another email because no one would reply:
So this is a proxy service, mind you. If the ones contacting you are the owners of that Twitter account please make them aware that it is legal to host proxies and we do not host any materials from this proxy on our server. Here is a discussion about Nitter and DMCA github.com/zedeus/nitter/issue…
Sent one more because we were stressed by the 12 hour deadline they gave us:
Hello,
bird.trom.tf hosts Nitter, a private Twitter front-end, meaning it is simply a proxy to access Twitter assets and user generated content without tracking from Twitter. Thus, all content is proxied from Twitter and is not stored on our servers and if Twitter chooses to remove an asset, it will no longer appear on our site.
Our bird.trom.tf is hosted in the European Union, so the European Union's laws apply. Under the directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, "temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process and whose sole purpose is to enable: a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary" is allowed, and legal.
As such, all takedown requests must be sent to Twitter, as we don't have any control on the data that they have on their servers.
Thank you,
After several hours of no reply we sent one more:
So please be mindful and do not remove our server. The link bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC is not phishing. You gave me 12h to fix the problem and since you have not replied for the past hours I am concerned about that short deadline. I may not be available for the next 10 hours from now on, simply because I may be asleep, so please do not remove our server as it has not breached any of your ToS.
We got no reply until 22/8/22 10:46. 11 days later! We got this:
Dear ****,
So, where is the final solution? We will give 12 hours to finally close this case.
If you have any questions or need help, please do not hesitate to contact us.
And we replied:
Hello,
bird.trom.tf hosts Nitter, a private Twitter front-end, meaning it is simply a proxy to access Twitter assets and user generated content without tracking from Twitter. Thus, all content is proxied from Twitter and is not stored on our servers and if Twitter chooses to remove an asset, it will no longer appear on our site.
Our bird.trom.tf (Nitter) is hosted in the European Union, so the European Union's laws apply. Under the directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, "temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process and whose sole purpose is to enable: a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary" is allowed, and legal.
As such, all takedown requests must be sent to Twitter, as we don't have any control on the data that they have on their servers.
I am waiting for your response.
Cheers!
An hour later, no reply. We emailed again:
Please reply today so we can settle this. If you want you can even call me. My phone number is in my account details. I would be illegal under the EU law to remove my server because of a legal service. A proxy one that does not store any data on your servers.
I am waiting for your reply!
2 hours later, no reply, we emailed them again:
I could also seek the advice and involvement of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about this case, because if you decide to remove our server for something that is legally protected, then the precedent is dangerous and needs to be addressed.
I have contacted you a few hours ago and you did not reply, yet you gave me 12h to solve this issue and/or to contact you, which I have done.
So please reply to me and please do not remove the server.
Two more hours later, no reply. Being concerned that they will remove our entire server we decided to make that Nitter link not accessible via Nginx. That's the best we could do. We were forced to do that because no one at Contabo would even engage with us over this. We had no options. It was a mafia style "non-discussion", "do as I told you" approach by the Contabo company.
We emailed:
The URL bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC is now gone. This is an illegal request and I felt bullied into removing a link that did not host anything phishing related and no content at all. This is not ok and I will contact several organizations to help me with this abuse.
You should understand that what the complaint requested was an illegal request, but since I was threatened with the closure of my entire server in less than 12h, and thus over 20 websites hosted there, I was forced to remove that URL.
Now that the URL is gone, you can close this case. I will contact you soon in regards to this decission.
And emailed again:
Tomorrow I will not be home for most of the day, and now that the link has be removed (unfairly) you have no reason to delete our server. I hope you are reasonable people and act the same. And not forget that I've been forced to remove a link that was neither phishing, nor did it store any content. It was a proxy link from a very popular proxy service called Nitter.
They replied:
Dear ****,
Thank you very much for your response.
The complaint seems to be solved; thus, we have closed this case and no further steps are requested from your side at the moment. If we should receive further complaints about your used services, we will contact you again.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Fuck them! "thank you for your cooperation"....motherfuckers. There was no cooperation. It was them forcing me to remove a URL that was not a phishing URL as it was claimed to be, nor did it store any content.
I replied:
Dear Contabo,
This was far from "cooperation", I was forced by you to remove a link that was not phishing, nor did it contain any content. You refused to reply to any of my arguments or look into this.
I am terribly disappointed in you, and I will stop recommending Contabo to anyone.
I will do my best to forward this case to different organizations that could help me pierce through your silence, because you have been bullied by whatever company contacted you, to remove a legal link, and thus abuse people like me who are paying for your service.
Do you have any comments in regards to your decision to force me to remove that URL?
And now I will try to contact EFF or other similar organizations about this issue. If anyone can help, please let me know. If this becomes the norm, then any link from any of our website, can be subject to removal.
This is unacceptable.
UPDATE.
25.08.22
The company:
Thank you for your response.
There are new changes in Germany regarding copyright violations that forced us to remove all domains from our network that are providing protected contents.
Either you provide for us and every visitor the declaration of consent of the right holder to each individual product or its confirmation that you are the right holder. Otherwise, we will be forced to remove this website. This comes also in action for redirections, quotes and shared posts.
We know that this is strict, but we are bound by the law and hope for your understanding.
Us:
Would would be kind to tell me what set of laws we are talking about? This is extremely strict. Sounds like you are not allowed to host anything but your own personal photos for example.
Second, are these laws only applying for the servers hosted in Germany by Contabo? Would it be better to migrate to a different region?
Them:
Thank you for your e-mail.
Yes, the German copyright law is really very strict, and affects all companies based in Germany, including in our case our data centers in other countries.
The copyright law states that content may only be uploaded if its creator or owner has explicitly confirmed this.
Us:
Hi,
I felt like I was given no chance to defend myself when you contacted me. And I contacted others for legal advice and I was given some, but you had ignored it. You did not address it at all. I showed you that proxy services are legal in all of the EU "Under the directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001". So how am I going to know if what you did was legal or not if I am not provided any details about your decision?
Do you understand my frustration?
Right now, based on my experience with Contabo, you guys can any day ask me to remove any link at your will, and I cannot do a thing about it. This is truly disturbing to me.
Now can you please take your time and explain to me under what exact law does it say it is illegal in Germany to host a proxy service that uses the official API of Twitter, which allows exactly for what we are doing with bird.trom.tf (Nitter).
Please take your time and explain to me. I think it is fair towards me to have an explanation of this.
Thanks
Them:
we don't have to have a legal debate, because I don't think there's a lawyer sitting on either side right now. It is also completely irrelevant: We don't want our network to be affected, by repeated complaints. We are allowed to protect our reputation, and that is what we are doing here. Besides, it's perfectly clear that you can't use someone else's copyright.
It is clear by now that they just bend to whoever contacts them with an abuse report. They do not want or have the resources to do anything more than bully their "clients" into taking down whatever it is requested. Not surprised...
We need a proper backup solution for Friendica for the Yunohost package github.com/YunoHost-Apps/frien… - I am willing to test stuff and get involved as much as my knowledge allows. If anyone else can help out that'd be great, because currently the backups are not working...
The Problems: Big database equals issues. If the Friendica instance is very active/big then one cannot backup the database since by the time the database is created it will be modified. So it will ...
It seems to me that people who use Mastodon complain a lot about the bad people on the fediverse, like the racists, nazis, whatever. And I dont fucking see these bad people....
So I wonder maybe is because I use Friendica which displays posts and I have complete control over what I see. For example I can easily select to see ONLY the posts from my friends. Period. But Mastodon people may not have these sort of options, PLUS on Mastodon you see comments instead of posts. Like a fuck ton of comments.
So what if because Mastodon people get to read a lot of comments instead of posts, they see a lot more of the crap!?
I wonder...
And for the love of words, I have no clue how people put up with a newsfeed made up of comments that are always out of context. Makes a lot more sense to see posts and then comments on those posts, but never comments in the wild.
Maybe Mastodon people should try Friendica. It is really awesome and the control you have over what you see and who can interact with you, is amazing.
You run your own pod, right? I think the main factor is simply that most people are on pods with a lot of people, and a pod will pull in posts/comments from anyone that is followed by at least one person on the pod.
If no one on your pod follows racists/nazis/whatever then you won't see their comments. If they do, though, then you'll have to curate your experience by blocking/ignoring them individually. Which is an absolute pain.
That's how it works on the ActivityPub side of things.
On the diaspora side of things, it's a bit different. Diaspora uses a posts+comments paradigm, where the "owner" of a comment thread is the person who posted the post. They can moderate the comments, blocking bad actors and/or deleting individual comments.
So, as long as everyone you follow moderates their own posts, you don't have to do anything other than moderate your own posts (in kind). So fundamentally, it's easier to curate your experience in Diaspora than Mastadon.
With Friendica and other platforms which federate with both ActivityPub and Diaspora, it's more comp
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You run your own pod, right? I think the main factor is simply that most people are on pods with a lot of people, and a pod will pull in posts/comments from anyone that is followed by at least one person on the pod.
If no one on your pod follows racists/nazis/whatever then you won't see their comments. If they do, though, then you'll have to curate your experience by blocking/ignoring them individually. Which is an absolute pain.
That's how it works on the ActivityPub side of things.
On the diaspora side of things, it's a bit different. Diaspora uses a posts+comments paradigm, where the "owner" of a comment thread is the person who posted the post. They can moderate the comments, blocking bad actors and/or deleting individual comments.
So, as long as everyone you follow moderates their own posts, you don't have to do anything other than moderate your own posts (in kind). So fundamentally, it's easier to curate your experience in Diaspora than Mastadon.
With Friendica and other platforms which federate with both ActivityPub and Diaspora, it's more complex. Posts/comments on the Diaspora side work like Diaspora. Posts/comments on the ActivityPub side work like Mastodon. This can be particularly confusing for new users.
Ok but I only see the posts from the people I have added as friends. If there are any bad people commenting on those posts then I do not have to read their comments unless I scroll through my friends' posts and and comments. So I can never see posts from these bad people unless I am friends with them and follow them. I think that's complete control over the content, regardless if my friends follow and interact with "bad people".
@Tio You don't see any comments at all, then? It has been a while since I tried Friendica, but I thought it would show at least some comments without needing to click through or expand.
Ugh.
The lack of visibility of comments kills interaction, and makes it such a slog for me to browse a stream. It takes so much time and effort to click and expand all of the comments, and even more so if a click through is required. This is why I keep going back to Diaspora.
No it will show either all comments or a few and the rest you need to expand. Up to you. I choose to show a few then expand the rest. Which is perfect else I end up scrolling through a post with 400 comments endlessly.
Thanks, that's what I had experienced back when I tried Friendica.
Like it or not, you will see any comments from (Mastodon) posters who are followed by at least one user on your pod. The way Mastodon/ActivityPub works, each comment is "owned" by the commenter. The person who made the post it's replying to does not have an option to delete the comment.
Yes I can see the comments but not as posts, that's what I was saying. I can see the posts made by my friends, and yeah if I wanna read the comments I can do that too but they are not polluting since they are a few (collapsed). So I cannot see these "bad people" honestly...
And if I do in the comments I can easily block them and I will never see their comments again.
I'm saying that the reason you don't see the "bad people" is that you run your own pod with few users, so no one else on your pod is following them. You only see a comment if at least one person on your pod follows the person making the comment.
A Mastodon user doesn't even see those comments at all unless they click through to view a post/reply thread. Even then, the way Mastodon works is that you only see part of the thread ... it's really stupid. But anyway, you either don't see any comments at all, or you click through and you see comments that the original poster has no moderation control over.
My point is - the problem is the protocol, and the choices of other people on your pod. Trying out Friendica wouldn't help.
Anyway, I don't see the relevance of whether or not you follow hundreds of people from different instances, or the numbers of comments in threads.
I don't think you understand how things work on Mastodon, though. By default, you only see posts/comments by people you directly follow, and you simply do not see ANY comments by anyone you don't directly follow. You have to click through to see any comments made by anyone else, and even then it's only comments made by people who are followed by at least one person on your pod.
Ok. Am not that familiar with Mastodon but every-time I tried it I got to see a wall of terrible comments instead of only seeing posts and not replies/comments. Even trying Friendica with Febilab that is built around Mastodon I could not use it because of the same reason: a wall of weird out of context comments, from people I did not know nor did I follow. I think it was pulling any comment from all of my friends' posts.
BTW, a thousand users is not very much compared to popular Mastodon pods. For example, I'm on mastodonDOTsocial, which has 1.5 million users. Most of these users are not active though, only 280,000 users active last month.
But a thousand active users should be enough to have at least a few following "bad people". Are all of those users active?
That's incorrect, but ok. It is beyond the point, I see a ton of posts even in the federated timeline. And I almost never see these "bad actors" that people complain about.
You're only going to see posts from people who are followed by at least one user in your pod. That's just the way it works, regardless of platform. It's not about the platform, it's about the choices made by the other people on your pod.
@Michael Vogel @Hypolite Petovan @Tobias and whoever else works on Friendica, I really love the new features - the drag and drop images into the composer, or using the lightbox for all images. Makes everything so much nicer! Awesome job! Thank you for doing this!
I am working on a big ZDay article. About the experience, the people, the everything.
I am also working to find a solution for our TROM.tf server that is at the limit when it comes do the disckspace...we urgently need a solution. Either object storage for Peertube, or move the entire server to a larger one.
Am also trying to release a new TROMjaro ISO but there are some bugs that need to be fixed with the Calamares installer....
!Friendica Admins I am currently using a storage folder to store the media files. My questions are:
Is it better to move to the database for storage?
If I do that, will previous media be migrated to the database?
Where is the path for file storage stored in Friendica (config file?)? I am thinking how can I backup the files too when they are stored in a custom path.
Hello @Tio 1. not sure which is better. 2. No, but there is a migration function in command line console. 3. It is a setting in /admin/storage, the path is always defined, so it already must be valid setting if filesystem is used.
@AndiS 🌞🍷🇪🇺 There is also an experimental addon available, that adds a storage engine for #WebDAV , e.g. Nextcloud. Migrating/moving the files to the currently configured storage is done over Shell access: ./bin/console storage move, what I have found so far. But I have never tested it.
Thank you all for the answers! So I was wondering if the path is stored in a file that can be read by a script. This way the script can grab the "filepath" when doing the backups. I am using Yunohost and that's how we do for the rest of the services that are using a specific path to store the data/files. I was wondering if this setting in admin/storage is written to an actual file in the friendica's folder?
The WebDav options seems really great. I see this is the addon github.com/friendica/friendica… but I wonder how well it works. Anyone else uses it?
@Gerry McGovern I wanted to grab your book World Wide Waste and I see gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-… - isn't that a digital waste to create paywalls and lock features for digital content that should be easily accessible to everyone without creating a lot of duplicated copies that require a lot of energy and transactions to distribute?
What do you think about that?
I write books and I make them all available for free here tromsite.com/books/
By selling a digital book thats already free you are using payments systems and paywalls that require energy and hardware to run. I do understant that you have to survive tho, but I find this practice ironic.
I find it incredibly sad that people like @gerrymcgovern are forced to do these things just so they can survive, you know the world is fucked up when your survival depends on creating waste - digital or otherwise, this is true for almost every product in the market.
I worked all night trying to setup the object storage for Peertube and had some success but weird success...like at one point I made it partially work with Wasabi and B2, but for Wasabi only the videos labeled as private worked, and for B2 a few worked a few did not, plus it would not delete the videos from the object storage when I deleted them from Peertube...
Tricky...
I wish it was easier. I want to do this right and make sure it all works and it is reliable. May take some time. Or not...will see...
Anyone here that runs Peertube and stores the video with an object storage service? If so what's your setup and config?
So Peertube is able to create the files inside the bucket already via the mount point with all of the permissions necessary? Also would it work to mount in a different folder but use a symlink to replace the peerutbe path?
I tried to test the Object Storage for our Peertube and yeah it is a bit complicated. But it failed. Incompatibility between the S3 I chose and Peertube (see).
I will try more but anyone knows a reliable and very cheap Object Storage that won't bullshit you with downloads, access, and all sort of fees?
R2 and B2 will charge for ingress but not egress. (B2 free egress starts oct. ) both are pretty cheap but come with their own set of challenges. But if you’re up for it, maybe it’ll work for you :)
TROM Files now has a wonderful calendar app https://files.trom.tf - you can even integrate it with your local apps. Import from your trade-based services into this trade free calendar!
Our Friendica is now super fast, same is for our Matrix! So TROM Social and TROM Chat seem to work great now!
May I say that Friendica's drag and drop or paste images into the composer is a godsent! Wow this for me is a game changer. To be able to copy paste images (like a quick screenshot) into the composer, or drag and drop images, is fucking essential! How cool!
Next: make a WYSIWYG composer 😃 so that even the most stupid idiots can create awesome long posts, with text formatting and all that 🙃
It started with a WYSIWIG composer (tinymce). People hated it, because it really wasn't WYSIWYG and had a real tough time with code blocks and pre-formatted text. I removed it by popular request and nobody complained. In Friendica's great-grandchild (the streams repository) you can drag and drop all kinds of stuff. spreadsheets, text, maps, phone numbers, music scores, activitypub posts, urls, audio/video/photos, pdfs, svgs and probably a few I forgot. It embeds anything it can find a way to embed - and attaches anything it can't.
I see....I do think that a WYSIWIG composer can be super helpful, something like Wordpress had but more simple. Right now it seems it only works with images but not videos or other files....
So the practice of "donation" has been completely bastardized nowadays. Mastodon has a "donate" button on their main page:
That leads to their "sponsors" page joinmastodon.org/sponsors :) Where you can get your logo (ad) for your company, directly on their page that they brag gets hundreds of thousands of views per month:
And their Patreon has all sorts of "levels" of "donations" that "unlock" special features and add your company ads to their websites.
What a shitshow!
Motherfuckers it is not a "donation" when you get something in return for your "donation", such as special treatment, merch, ability to advertise on their website, etc.. This is a "trade". A payment. 180 degrees opposite to a "donation".
Such a weird society we live in, where Mastodon gets "donations" and Facebook is "free".
> Where you can get your logo (ad) for your company, directly on their page that they brag gets hundreds of thousands of views per month
This is basically begging for corporate sponsorship, mastodon may not have ads on the platform itself but they do show you ads of these sponsor companies in their website. I kinda feel bad for most FOSS developers who are having to stoop so low to get "donations" (sponsors) because I know they're probably just trying to get by, especially small projects.
Roma
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