Please tell your friends about federated social media site that speaks several fediverse protocols thus serving as a hub uniting them, hubzilla.eskimo.com, also check out friendica.eskimo.com, federated
macroblogging social media site, mastodon.eskimo.com a federated microblogging site, and yacy.eskimo.com an uncensored federated search engine. All Free!
Trump Administration Pulls Back From Local Police Oversight Across U.S.
The Justice Department said that it would abandon efforts to force police reforms in more than a half dozen cities with a history of civil rights violations.
Fidel Castro: I cannot recall anything more similar to Nazism in our contemporary history than the eviction, persecution and genocide carried out today by imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian people. wordsmith.social/protestation/âŠ
Otto Kuusinen: As long as the working class wages only an economic struggle, the bourgeoisie does not see in that any great danger for itself; but when the working class organises politically, i.e., creates a political party which expresses its will as a class, the bourgeoisie begins seriously to fear for its rule. That is why reaction deals its main blows against the political party of the working class. At the same time, trying to undermine the party from within, capitalist propaganda endeavours to persuade the workers that they can do without their own party. One of the manifestations of bourgeois influence on the working class is the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist denial of the leading role of a political party.
Democritus: Not from fear but from a sense of duty refrain from your sins.
Democritus: Many who have not learned wisdom live wisely, and many who do the basest deeds can make most learned speeches.
Democritus: Fools learn wisdom through misfortune.
Democritus: Strength of body is nobility in beasts of burden, strength of character is nobility in men.
Democritus: Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.
Democritus: It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.
Democritus: Good means not (merely) not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.
Democritus: Fame and wealth without wisdom are unsafe possessions.
Muammar Gaddafi: We will not surrender. We will defeat them by any means. We are ready for the fight, whether it will be a short or a long one. We will be victorious in the end. This assault is by a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history.
Democritus: By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.
Democritus: We know nothing accurately in reality, but (only) as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon (the body) and impinge upon it.
Democritus: Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.
Democritus: Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man.
Democritus: Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity.
Democritus: In a shared fish, there are no bones.
Democritus: Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.
Democritus: The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.
Democritus: Moderation multiplies pleasures, and increases pleasure.
Democritus: If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.
Democritus: No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.
Democritus: In fact we do not know anything infallibly, but only that which changes according to the condition of our body and of the (influences) that reach and impinge upon it.
Democritus: Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.
Democritus: 'Tis not in strength of body nor in gold that men find happiness, but in uprightness and in fulness of understanding.
Democritus: He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.
Samuel P. Huntington: The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
Marjori Palmer: One of the most morale-damaging aspects of the inflation was the "sack of Germany" that occurred at the height of the (1923) inflation. Anyone who possessed dollars or sterling was king in Germany. A few American dollars would allow a man to live like a millionaire. Foreigners swarmed into the country, buying up family treasures, estates, jewelry and art works at unbelievable low prices.
Lionel Robbins: It was the most colossal thing of its kind in history: and next probably to the Great War itself, it must bear responsibility for many of the political and economic difficulties of our generation. It destroyed the wealth of the more solid elements of German society: and left behind a moral and economic disequilibrium, a breeding ground for the disasters which have followed. Hitler is the foster child of the inflation.
Lenin: There is no trace of utopianism in Marx, in the sense that he made up or invented a 'new' society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a natural-historical process. He examined the actual experience of a proletarian mass movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it.
Che Guevara: Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.
Democritus: The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.
Bertolt Brecht: Lenin is enshrined In the large heart of the working class.
Massive Scandal Unfolding in Colorado Proving Elections are Rigged, and the Cover Up is Real â Free Tina Peters Now Guest post by Erin Clements Introduction Former Mesa County Clerk and Gold Star Mother, Tina Peters, is sitting in prison right now foâŠ
Wake me up when you guys have deployed your own #InsiderThreatProgram. Might want to talk to your friends in the #Banking & #Finance sector. They should be able to tell you what you need to do.
Todayâs post was taken from my brotherâs book that was just released, entitled Angel Armies: Godâs Supernatural Enforcers. You can find it on Timâs website (...
 More than 18 months into the US-sponsored genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Netanyahu's allies are urging him to halt his 'egregious actions'On 19 May, the governments of the UK, France, and Canada issued a joint statement calling on Israeli Prime MâŠ
What is the chronology of vaccines? Shaz Khan has done the research and presented it recently on PatriotTV. Her book, "The Ultimate Vaccine Timeline: A Fact-Packed History of Vaccines and Their Makers
#PicoGUS can now emulate both a CDROM drive and Sound Blaster in parallel, smoothly playing both CD audio and SB sound effects simultaneously. Still a lot of polish to do before a new firmware release but I'm excited!! This is MechWarrior 2 with bin/cue stored on a USB stick plugged into the PicoGUS
President Xi Jinping has underscored unwavering confidence in boosting high-quality development and enhancing governance efficiency, while urging central China's Henan Province to write a new chapter in advancing Chinese modernization.
I remember #Destiny calling himself an "institutionalist", that he supports federal institutions and trusts their judgments in the vast majority of cases.
Clearly he has strayed from that principle now that #Trump is president, but what ideology is that? He called it #institutionalism but I looked it up and it's not a formalized ideology.
UK Police Under Scrutiny: Officers Use Pepper Spray and Taser on 93-Year-Old Amputee in Wheelchair Before Assaulting Him with a Baton Over a Small Pen Knife
A 93-year-old disabled man was sprayed in the face with synthetic pepper spray before beiâŠ
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday sent a congratulatory letter to the 2025 SCO (the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) Forum on Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development, held in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
The grey goo problem is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving large language models in which out-of-control financial parasites consume all biomass on Earth while deconstructing everything for everyone, a scenario that has been called enshittification (literally: @pluralistic )
J. Arch Getty: By 23 July (1936) Kamenev was admitting membership in a counterrevolutionary center that planned terror, but he denied being one of the organizers; he implicated Zinoviev as being closer to the matter. Three days later Zinoviev was confronted by one of this followers, Karev, who directly accused him. Zinoviev asked that the interrogation be stopped because he wanted to make a statement that, in the event, amounted to a full confession of organizing assassination and terror. wordsmith.social/protestation/âŠ
Otto Kuusinen: As long as the working class wages only an economic struggle, the bourgeoisie does not see in that any great danger for itself; but when the working class organises politically, i.e., creates a political party which expresses its will as a class, the bourgeoisie begins seriously to fear for its rule. That is why reaction deals its main blows against the political party of the working class. At the same time, trying to undermine the party from within, capitalist propaganda endeavours to persuade the workers that they can do without their own party. One of the manifestations of bourgeois influence on the working class is the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist denial of the leading role of a political party.
Democritus: Not from fear but from a sense of duty refrain from your sins.
Democritus: Many who have not learned wisdom live wisely, and many who do the basest deeds can make most learned speeches.
Democritus: Fools learn wisdom through misfortune.
Democritus: Strength of body is nobility in beasts of burden, strength of character is nobility in men.
Democritus: Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.
Democritus: It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.
Democritus: Good means not (merely) not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.
Democritus: Fame and wealth without wisdom are unsafe possessions.
Muammar Gaddafi: We will not surrender. We will defeat them by any means. We are ready for the fight, whether it will be a short or a long one. We will be victorious in the end. This assault is by a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history.
Democritus: By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.
Democritus: We know nothing accurately in reality, but (only) as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon (the body) and impinge upon it.
Democritus: Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.
Democritus: Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man.
Democritus: Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity.
Democritus: In a shared fish, there are no bones.
Democritus: Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.
Democritus: The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.
Democritus: Moderation multiplies pleasures, and increases pleasure.
Democritus: If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.
Democritus: No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.
Democritus: In fact we do not know anything infallibly, but only that which changes according to the condition of our body and of the (influences) that reach and impinge upon it.
Democritus: Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.
Democritus: 'Tis not in strength of body nor in gold that men find happiness, but in uprightness and in fulness of understanding.
Democritus: He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.
Samuel P. Huntington: The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
Marjori Palmer: One of the most morale-damaging aspects of the inflation was the "sack of Germany" that occurred at the height of the (1923) inflation. Anyone who possessed dollars or sterling was king in Germany. A few American dollars would allow a man to live like a millionaire. Foreigners swarmed into the country, buying up family treasures, estates, jewelry and art works at unbelievable low prices.
Lionel Robbins: It was the most colossal thing of its kind in history: and next probably to the Great War itself, it must bear responsibility for many of the political and economic difficulties of our generation. It destroyed the wealth of the more solid elements of German society: and left behind a moral and economic disequilibrium, a breeding ground for the disasters which have followed. Hitler is the foster child of the inflation.
Lenin: There is no trace of utopianism in Marx, in the sense that he made up or invented a 'new' society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a natural-historical process. He examined the actual experience of a proletarian mass movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it.
Che Guevara: Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.
Democritus: The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.
Bertolt Brecht: Lenin is enshrined In the large heart of the working class.
By Philip Giraldi. The United States is complicit in the genocide and provides the political cover that allows the slaughter to continue, not to mention the steady flow of "Made in USA" weapons that the Jewish state uses to commit the murders.
I think this is the way we should communicate, when presented with the question on how to get on Mastodon:
Copy paste from the link:
How do I use Mastodon?
Download the Mastodon app from the Apple app store or Play store.
Create an account (just like Twitter or any other social media)
Follow people, and get posting.
Why do tech journalists say itâs too confusing to catch on?
I have no fucking idea.
EDIT for clarification, don't take this too seriously:
This âguideâ is a bit of a joke made out of frustration. If you actually want to know more, including why I feel it has potential to free us from the dystopian hellscape that is modern social media, here is the ârealâ guide to Mastodon. It still uses simple language (and has lots of pictures!):
and trying to downplay potential users as stupid before they've even used a social media platform isn't going to exactly make them want to stay. or even try in the first place.
just makes mastodon look like a place where nerds reign free and normal folks won't be able to participate effectively.
if you want to make mastodon a destination and not a niche corner to be avoided, this is not the way.
i agree with you completely.
edit: I should clarify, the "guide" above is the thing insulting users. the guide is inaccurate.
When using the official Mastodon app (as suggested in the "guide") "instances" are not a factor at all (unless the user specifically goes out of their way). A new user could have never even heard of the term "instance" and the above steps would work fine.
You donât just download the app, create an account, and go.
Actually with Mastodon this is literally how it works.
EDIT: I should say this is how it works now, it didn't always used to be this way. The official Mastodon app used to ask the user to pick an instance, but for a number of years now it defaults every new account to mastodon.social unless they opt out. There was a big brouhah about centralization but the Mastodon devs felt it made for easier on boarding.
I'm not sure, but i guess that it is replicating Twitter behaviour. I got used to that quickly.
But if you want a better experience you can easily find other front ends. I strongly suggest Phanpy that makes it really clear when a toot is part of a conversation/thread. It also does a lot of nice things like grouping boosts in horizontal carousels, collapsing long threads to avoid occpying the too many screens, and others, but it is still simple
Correct, it is mobile only. Unfortunately, I think I must be misunderstanding what you're saying about the op stuff. This is my view, The way I think about it, at least, these are all "OPs", ones with a plus sign next to the leftward arrow. Have comments.
And then if I tap, I get the op with its comments underneath it.
Beyond its sustainability efforts, Alternative apparel delivers timeless designs that align with current fashion trends. Whether producing minimalist casual wear or statement pieces, the brand stays ahead of consumer expectations by offering comfortable, responsibly made clothing options.
Shop Alternative Apparel in bulk. Choose from t-shirts to tank tops. Add designs through options like embroidery. Free shipping on orders over $149.99.
âAfter having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldomâŠ
"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on May 19, U.S. President Donald Trump disclosed that Ukrainian acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ânot the easiest person to deal with,â RT quoted him as saying today.
I'm working on a blog post and I started my research in Google as one does sometimes. It helpfully spit-out some accurate sounding bullshit (complete with sources at least).
First entry looks accurate enough and jibes well with my loose memory on the subject. So I'm thinking GREAT! This is going to save me so much time!
Second entry looks accurate too, but it's about something I know nothing about and it's strangely talking about a loosely related concept under the heading of another loosely related concept? Ok. The source is Wikipedia. This is good.
Go to Wikipedia.
Ok, the guy's name is there. Even listed under the right sub-section. But he is absolutely NOT what Google is telling me he is even if he ultimately did do what Google is telling me he did.
It's a blatant #mistake? lie? hallucination? that would cause me to lose all #credibility.
So there goes that idea.
At least Google gave me a list of #sources. That's helpful. So now I've got to go through all the sources and come up with something completely from scratch.
Which, if I'm being honest, is what I should have done originally. Also... "AI responses may include mistakes." is not worded strongly enough.
It should read, "Today's AI generates answers that are inaccurate yet sound plausible, and are not based on any facts or reality. AI responses should not be relied on for any business, academic, scholar, legal, technical, medical, scientific, financial, historical, or military purposes." But investors probably won't like that.
Todayâs post was taken from my brotherâs book that was just released, entitled Angel Armies: Godâs Supernatural Enforcers. You can find it on Timâs website (...
Back in his philanthropy era, Mark Zuckerberg made a grand pledge to put $1 billion toward building new housing, to combat the affordability crisis in California that companies like his had contributed to.
Just randomly saw this post on my quest to switch my search engine. Seeing that #ecosia promoting #LLM seems bad. Planting some trees to cut them all down again to run the AI? HUH? @ecosia
Otto Kuusinen: As long as the working class wages only an economic struggle, the bourgeoisie does not see in that any great danger for itself; but when the working class organises politically, i.e., creates a political party which expresses its will as a class, the bourgeoisie begins seriously to fear for its rule. That is why reaction deals its main blows against the political party of the working class. At the same time, trying to undermine the party from within, capitalist propaganda endeavours to persuade the workers that they can do without their own party. One of the manifestations of bourgeois influence on the working class is the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist denial of the leading role of a political party.
Democritus: Not from fear but from a sense of duty refrain from your sins.
Democritus: Many who have not learned wisdom live wisely, and many who do the basest deeds can make most learned speeches.
Democritus: Fools learn wisdom through misfortune.
Democritus: Strength of body is nobility in beasts of burden, strength of character is nobility in men.
Democritus: Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.
Democritus: It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.
Democritus: Good means not (merely) not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.
Democritus: Fame and wealth without wisdom are unsafe possessions.
Muammar Gaddafi: We will not surrender. We will defeat them by any means. We are ready for the fight, whether it will be a short or a long one. We will be victorious in the end. This assault is by a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history.
Democritus: By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.
Democritus: We know nothing accurately in reality, but (only) as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon (the body) and impinge upon it.
Democritus: Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.
Democritus: Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man.
Democritus: Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity.
Democritus: In a shared fish, there are no bones.
Democritus: Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.
Democritus: The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.
Democritus: Moderation multiplies pleasures, and increases pleasure.
Democritus: If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.
Democritus: No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.
Democritus: In fact we do not know anything infallibly, but only that which changes according to the condition of our body and of the (influences) that reach and impinge upon it.
Democritus: Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.
Democritus: 'Tis not in strength of body nor in gold that men find happiness, but in uprightness and in fulness of understanding.
Democritus: He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.
Samuel P. Huntington: The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
Marjori Palmer: One of the most morale-damaging aspects of the inflation was the "sack of Germany" that occurred at the height of the (1923) inflation. Anyone who possessed dollars or sterling was king in Germany. A few American dollars would allow a man to live like a millionaire. Foreigners swarmed into the country, buying up family treasures, estates, jewelry and art works at unbelievable low prices.
Lionel Robbins: It was the most colossal thing of its kind in history: and next probably to the Great War itself, it must bear responsibility for many of the political and economic difficulties of our generation. It destroyed the wealth of the more solid elements of German society: and left behind a moral and economic disequilibrium, a breeding ground for the disasters which have followed. Hitler is the foster child of the inflation.
Lenin: There is no trace of utopianism in Marx, in the sense that he made up or invented a 'new' society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a natural-historical process. He examined the actual experience of a proletarian mass movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it.
Che Guevara: Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.
Democritus: The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.
Bertolt Brecht: Lenin is enshrined In the large heart of the working class.
OCCUPIED QUDS, May 20 (YPA) - Hebrew media have highlighted the resumption of operations at Sanaa International Airport, nearly 10 days after it was subjected to a devastating Israeli attack.This comes at a time when air traffic at Israeli "Ben Gurio
I'm going to try something new. I have used this account for comments in my blog. Now I'm going to use it to write blog post. I will write a thread as replies to this post and have the comment system publish it on my blog.
People often look at things from a wrong end. They think achieving some goal from the direction of the goal. They try to create clear vision of the goal when all you need is direction. I don't know what anticapitalist co-operative solarpunk indieweb future would be, but I can start it by running a Linux server.
Just finished 3rd ep of @pluralistic's "Who Broke The Internet" & remain unsurprised by anything, but it's well laid out & I realize many people will, in fact, learn new things.
One thing, though: It is NOT impossible not to use #Amazon. Don't tell me u have to cuz it cheap & u poor & I don't grok; I've lived for years not knowing where next month's rent was to come from, metering out a bag of frozen nuggets over a week to not starve.
Politisch motivierte Straftaten steigen â doch die Statistik ist auch politisch geprĂ€gt. Besonders Kritik an Israels Krieg in Gaza wird damit kriminalisiert. Dobrindt und MĂŒnch nutzen die Zahlen fĂŒr pauschale VorwĂŒrfe. nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1191382.âŠ
Nach der Nakba-Demonstration in Berlin am 15. Mai, wo sich mehr als 1500 Demonstant*innen versammelten, fordert die CDU ein schĂ€rferes Versammlungsrecht. Doch Videos der Kundgebung widerlegen zumindest in Teilen von der Polizei aufgestellte Behauptungen. Rechtsanwalt Benjamin DĂŒsberg ist sich sicher, dass die Polizei die Eskalationen herausprovoziert. đ nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1191375.âŠ
Nach der Nakba-Demonstration am 15. Mai fordert die CDU ein schÀrferes Versammlungsrecht. Doch Videos der Kundgebung werfen Fragen zum Polizeieinsatz auf.
In Unconditional Parenting, I challenged the belief that parents must punish their kids to protect them in dangerous neighborhoods (alfiekohn.org/article/discipliâŠ). A recent study confirms that punitive parenting is damaging even (or especially) in such places: selfdeterminationtheory.org/wpâŠ
Children who face racism & other perils may need more structure or closer monitoring, but not authoritarian parenting. In fact, the chance to participate in making decisions may be most important in tough neighborhoods.
During June and July 2024, as Donald Trump campaigned to be re-elected by falsely characterizing journalists as âenemies of the peopleâ and calling for the arrests of journalists whose reporting displeased him, two researchers surveyed US adults to dâŠ
Swabs from China's Tiangong space station reveal traces of a bacterium unseen on Earth, with characteristics that may help it function under stressful environmental conditions hundreds of kilometers above the planet's surface.
Itâs harder when youâve been mistreated by your neighbor, but the command remains. And yet it is not âlet your enemy take undue advantage of you.â
The fifth edition of FediForum has been rescheduled, and will be held on June 5-7. The event was originally planned for early April, but got cancelled at the last-minute after transphobic posts by one of the co-organisers of the event were surfaced. FediForum held two sessions in the meantime with the community on how the event should move forward. One of the outcomes is that there is now an advisory board for FediForum with people from the community. For this edition of FediForum, I will be hosting a session on whatâs been going on in the fediverse in 2025. The network is constantly changing and evolving, and this session is intended to get you up to speed on whatâs been happening in the last half year. More information on that soon.
Bandwagon talks about monetisation and sustainability
Bandwagon is a fediverse music sharing platform thatâs currently in development, where artists can share their music. They are currently working on online album sales, and Bandwagon is committed to making this feature available without taking any transaction fees. In order for the project to be sustainable, Bandwagon is a paid 10$/month paid premium plan which will enable online album sales and higher bitrate streaming. At the same time, creator Ben Pate is also committed to keeping the software open source, and says that the project needs other Bandwagon servers to exist if the project is to be successful. â Bandwagon.fm
Discourse and the fediverse
Forum software Discourse has posted a blog talking about how they have integrated ActivityPub into their forums. They explain how Discourse forums can now select per category if it is federated, and thus followable by other fediverse software. It also shows what Discourse-to-Discourse federation looks like, allowing 2 forums to cooperate with each other. Federated forums require a mindset shift as have to get used to seeing forum posts in their microblogging timelines. Forum software like Discourse and NodeBB have made great strides in the technological capabilities regarding whatâs possible with federated forums. Now people have to find out and experience what these technological features enable in practical use cases for people.
Bonfire slowly moves towards a 1.0 release
Bonfire is an upcoming fediverse platform, with a core functionality of microblogging with a focus on extensibility. In their latest update about how the platform is moving to a 1.0 release, Bonfire talks about the values and intentions of the platform, writing: âIn a world of âmove fast and break things,â weâve chosen a different tempo â one rooted in care, deep listening, and collective stewardship. Slow software means building for long-term resilience and meaningful participation, rather than chasing novelty, speed, or scale.â
Bonfire has taken a deliberate and mindful approach to software development, but their own description of âSlow Softwareâ seems fairly accurate as well, as the team has talked about getting ready for a 1.0 release in the next few months since at least September 2023.
FediDB onboarding
Fediverse statistics site FediDB, operated by PixelFed and Loops creator Daniel Supernault, now has an onboarding tool to help people get started with the fediverse. It asks the user a few simple questions: first to select the type of content they are interested in, such as microblogging, video or forums. Based on that choice, it recommends various platforms. Based on the platform choice it asks for a few simple filters, such as region and community size, before presenting the user with a list of servers to choose from for registration.
The onboarding tool is sleekly designed, and streamlines the signup process by boiling it down to a few essential questions that the user needs to answer. However, this also showcases the issues that the fediverse has with onboarding new users: picking a platform and picking a server are meaningful choices that are hard to fully grasp the impact from as a new user. When it comes to picking a platform, the tool lists a few features for each platform, but comparing the relevance of these features is hard to do as an outsider. And when it comes to picking servers, the challenge is that servers themselves often do not publish relevant information that is needed to make an informed choice of which server to pick.
Mastodon: Giving Journalists Options Away From Big Tech
Saskia Welch from Newsmast writes about Mastodon and the fediverse at the recent International Journalism Festival. A consistent challenge remains to put all the lofty ideals about healthy social networks into practice, with Welch noting: âHowever, joining the platform continues to be a barrier for many users. A group of Italian women who attended the event abandoned their short effort to join the platform half-way into the presentation, confused about where to go and which app to use.â â WeDistribute/Saskia Welch
Owncast turns 5
The fediverse streaming platform Owncast turns 5 years this month, with a new merch store. One of the challenges of FOSS projects such as Owncast is the sustainability, and Owncast creator Gabe Kangas âat one point exhausted his personal savings so he could work on Owncast full-time.â Kangas says that now âpeople want to be around in meaningful ways. From the newsletter, core code contributions, the Roku app, people answering questions in chat, people brainstorming in GitHub, itâs important for it to be bigger than myselfâ. â Owncast Newsletter/Kit Rhett Aultman
A group of Italian women who attended the event abandoned their short effort to join the platform half-way into the presentation, confused about where to go and which app to use.
Yeah this one stings but it needs to be brought up, so we can make this way easier.
There's gotta be a way to design this so users can partly skip the process of searching for a good platform. Maybe using a controversial AI solution for recommending a platform based on some Keywords from the user? Maybe just based on a random algorithm for trusted servers? Maybe as you interact we make it easy to switch servers and as soon as you like the feed you can join?
There's gotta be something better. I hope we get there.
If we get to the point where people can overcome the entry barrier, I think this will also increase user retention and the overall fediverse literacy on the platforms themselves.
This does not address the issue of choosing the server though. This only works if the standard option for your server is reliable and rotated per registration.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Jubei • • •@MSK Alt text: captcha: Verify that youâre human
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CEASEFIRE now