I built a simple little Mastodon bot that I’ve automated with n8n and the Podcast Index API that publishes some statistics about the podcasting ecosystem each day.
If you have any ideas for what pieces of information you’d like to see it include, please let me know!
➝ Source: libertynode.net
I’ve been a happy Linode customer for years, but they experienced an outage Sunday morning that took my Cloudron server offline, impacting my Mastodon and Pixelfed instances. As of this writing they’re still offline and I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss.
Luckily, I have backups of my entire Cloudron server in case I need to restore. I’m going to wait a bit longer, though, to see if the team at Linode are able to get everything up and running again.
In the meantime, I’ll be refreshing Linode’s status page for updates.
➝ Source: reddit.com
Adam Mosseri, in an interview with Casey Newton of Platformer:
The fediverse is a long-term bet. It isn’t driving a lot of Threads growth. It is proving very difficult just to do the basics, particularly from a compliance and a privacy perspective.[…]
So everything has become at least three, if not six, or seven times more difficult than we thought. But we’re committed to it, and we’re making progress. We have some announcements coming soon. We just gotta get the basics out. You’ve got to be able to not only post to the fediverse, but to get your replies in the app. Ideally, you should be able to follow accounts from the fediverse in Threads, not just follow Threads accounts on Mastodon servers or clients. So there’s still plenty of work to do. But I do believe the world is going to become more open over time. And we should lean into that. And if it takes time, it takes time.
If you care about ActivityPub, the protocol that powers the fediverse, Threads isn’t the place to be. At least not yet.
But I’d argue that you should run your own fediverse server. Or if that’s a bit beyond your reach, find a friend or family member that could help manage one for the whole family or a group of friends. It’ll be much better for you in the long run.
➝ Source: platformer.news
Eugen Rochko:
To reinforce and encourage Mastodon as the go-to place for journalism, we’re launching a new feature today. You will notice that underneath some links shared on Mastodon, the author byline can be clicked to open the author’s associated fediverse account, right in the app. […]
The support for this tag is currently rolled out on mastodon.social and any other server that uses a recent Mastodon nightly release, but the feature will only show up for links to moderator-approved websites. In the future we would like to make the feature available to all without a manual review process.
I’ve implemented this here on Initial Charge. I have no idea if the site is moderator approved on mastodon.social or any other instance where the feature is available. But if you happen to see it in the wild, let me know if it’s working properly.
➝ Source: blog.joinmastodon.org
Follow podcasts on Mastodon, Pleroma, or any other ActivityPub service. It’s created by Steven Crader and powered by the Podcast Index API. Neat.
➝ Source: podcastap.com
Jan Boddez:
Some things to consider when enabling ActivityPub on a self-hosted WordPress install.
Rather than, say, RSS feeds, ActivityPub is push-based, at least in part. (Yes, I know about WebSub, but let’s continue.)
As a result, your server will be reaching out to, possibly, a whole lot of other servers whenever you publish new content.
On top of that, whenever one of your posts gets “boosted,” a whole lot of other servers may try and fetch (or GET) that post’s JSON representation.
If, like me, you’re on a smallish VPS or shared hosting package, you will almost certainly see a performance hit (or worse).
I’ve considered implementing ActivityPub here on Initial Charge, but don’t want to worry about the performance implications and am unsure of whether it would be a hinderance to discoverability.
I’m just cross-posting headlines to a Mastodon account for now. But if I decide to go the native ActivityPub route in WordPress, I’m sure these suggestions from Jan will be helpful.
➝ Source: jan.boddez.net
Matthias Pfefferle:
The revolutionary ActivityPub feature is now available across all WordPress.com plans, unlocking a world of engagement and interaction for your blog. Your blogs can now be part of the rapidly expanding fediverse, which enables you to connect with a broader audience and attract more followers. […]
ActivityPub is a WordPress plugin that facilitates seamless integration between your blog and a host of federated platforms, including Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, and more. This plugin empowers your readers to follow your blog posts on these platforms.
In addition, replies to your posts from these platforms are automatically turned into comments on your WordPress blog, creating a more interactive and dynamic conversation around your content.
I’m very happy to see this launch. It feels more and more like ActivityPub is going to be the social protocol of choice going forward.
➝ Source: wordpress.com
Bill Ottman:
Minds is now interoperable with every app that uses the ActivityPub decentralized social media protocol.
I’m sure it’ll be quite some time before this whole shift plays out, but ActivityPub feels like a safe bet at this point.
➝ Source: minds.com
