Marek Gibney (@mg@masto.ai)
Attached: 1 image I checked multiple stats sites and it seems the number of monthly posts on the Fediverse crossed one billion for the first time this month. This graph is from https://fediverse.observer/stats
How Musk Made Vivaldi Build A Mastodon Server... In A Fortnight (Official Mastodon / Fediverse Development Thread)
- Thread starter bnew
- Start date
Mastodon
mastodon.social
Flipboard’s Editorial Curation Comes to Mastodon - Flipboard
Flipboard editors curate four new Mastodon accounts: News Desk, Tech Desk, Science Desk and Culture Desk. These Desks are staffed by professional curators with expertise in discovering and elevating the best content.
about.flipboard.com
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Flipboard News Desk (@NewsDesk@flipboard.social)
1.24K Posts, 339 Following, 8.53K Followers · We share stories, explainers and analysis to offer context for the top news of the day. All posts are created and curated by Flipboard’s editorial team. Not a bot. Boosts do not imply endorsement, but are used to highlight posts we think the...
Flipboard Tech Desk (@TechDesk@flipboard.social)
1.11K Posts, 283 Following, 7.49K Followers · We bring you the latest technology news, deep dives and fresh perspectives on topics like AI, social media and life-changing innovations. Posts are handpicked by Flipboard's editorial team.
Boosts do not imply endorsement, but are used to highlight...
Flipboard Culture Desk (@CultureDesk@flipboard.social)
1.67K Posts, 493 Following, 4.6K Followers · Welcome to Flipboard’s collection of culture and entertainment picks. We'll bring you insightful interviews, revealing reviews and thought-provoking features. Posts are handpicked by Flipboard editors. Boosts do not imply endorsement, but are used to...
Flipboard Science Desk (@ScienceDesk@flipboard.social)
1.09K Posts, 288 Following, 7.18K Followers · We curate the latest science news, including climate change, space exploration, health and more. All posts are written by Flipboard’s editorial team. Boosts do not imply endorsement, but are used to highlight posts we think the community might find...
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Cragsand :verified: (@cragsand@universeodon.com)
Wow this #mastodon instance universodon.com has some of the more enhanced search features I've been looking for! In this blog it's mentioned that this is going main on Mastodon but no timeframe given. I hope this is accurate. If so that's great news! The limited search features of Mastodon is...
Cragsand :verified: (@cragsand@universeodon.com)
@tupper@mastodon.social More and more companies are turning on their users, assuming they're fair game to milk for money. Unfortunately it's going to backfire and hurt their profits just like it did with Twitter. It shows that federated approaches may be the only way to avoid having your social...
Mastodon Advanced Search is Here!
I love to find things and explore and discover. I love the creativeness of users on mastodon and how many engineers, scientists, teachers...
blog.universeodon.com
Universeodon Social Media
Be one with the #fediverse. Join millions of humans building, creating, and collaborating on Mastodon Social Network.
Mozilla (@mozilla@mozilla.social)
Last year we announced we would be joining Mastodon to explore an alternative to today's social media.
We’re excited to announce we’re expanding Mozilla.social to a private beta, with hopes to open to the public soon. This is just the beginning. Read more about the launch of our instance...
Mozilla Social Private Beta Launch | The Mozilla Blog
The internet isn’t just about browsers. Browsers are a critical part of the human experience on the internet and will always be core to our work at Mozil
blog.mozilla.org
Mastodon Migration (@mastodonmigration@mastodon.online)
Mastodon is really starting to build a solid #News #USPolitics and #Legal analysis sector. Some who've been missing for a while are back, and others who've been here the whole time are in full stride: Good follows: @emptywheel@mastodon.social, @Teri_Kanefield@law-and-politics.online...
mastodon.online
WordPress blogs can now be followed in the fediverse, including Mastodon | TechCrunch
In March, WordPress.com owner Automattic made a commitment to the fediverse -- the decentralized social networks that include the Twitter rival Mastodon
techcrunch.com
WordPress blogs can now be followed in the fediverse, including Mastodon
Sarah Perez@sarahintampa / 11:49 AM EDT•September 14, 2023Comment
Image Credits: Automattic
In March, WordPress.com owner Automattic made a commitment to the fediverse — the decentralized social networks that include the Twitter rival Mastodon and others — with the acquisition of an ActivityPub plug-in that allows WordPress blogs to reach readers on other federated platforms. Now, the company is announcing ActivityPub 1.0.0 for WordPress has been released allowing WordPress blogs to be followed by others on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse and then receive replies back as comments on their own sites.
Since the acquisition, the company has improved on the original software in a number of ways, including by now allowing the ability to add blog-wide catchall accounts instead of only per-author. It also introduced the ability to add a “follow me” block to help visitors follow your profile and a “followers” block to show off your followers, noted Automattic design engineer Matt Wiebe, in a post on X.
Other updates include a number of bug fixes, the completion of a security audit, and improved compatibility, including with the latest version of WordPress, 6.3.
At the time of its acquisition, the ActivityPub plug-in supported federated platforms including Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, HubZilla, Pixelfed, SocialHome, and Misskey. It had then been downloaded 35,000 times according to its statistics page. Now, that number has increased, as the page shows its all-time installations are at 42,831.
For the time being, the software supports self-hosted WordPress blogs, but Wiebe teased that support for WordPress.com blogs was “coming soon.”
Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg has been bullish on the promises of the fediverse — especially given the open-source nature of its decentralized, interconnected server software. Late last year, for example, the CEO wrote that Tumblr would add support for ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other decentralized social apps. But more recently, Mullenweg told us he’s been investigating not only ActivityPub, but also other protocols like Nostr and Bluesky’s AT Protocol.
WordPress’s support for ActivityPub follows a number of moves by other publishers to embrace the fediverse. Earlier this year, Medium announced it would launch its own Mastodon server and integrate with ActivityPub. Magazine app Flipboard also announced it was launching its own instance on flipboard.social and integrated with Mastodon so its users could follow Mastodon updates in the Flipboard app.
Mastodon's latest release makes the open source Twitter alternative easier to use | TechCrunch
The open source, decentralized social network Mastodon is releasing an update designed to make it easier for users to use the platform.
techcrunch.com
Mastodon’s latest release makes the open source Twitter alternative easier to use
Sarah Perez@sarahintampa / 11:00 AM EDT•September 21, 2023Comment
Image Credits: Mastodon
As changes at Elon Musk’s X continue to push former Twitter users to seek alternatives, the open-sourced, decentralized social network Mastodon — a popular Twitter/X rival — is releasing an update designed to make it easier for users to get started, use its network even when logged out, and more easily search for content across its platform. The web interface has also received a visual refresh and a number of other improvements.
The release, aka Mastodon 4.2, is available today to all Mastodon server operators to install. Mastodon, unlike Twitter/X, is a network of interconnected servers, each with their own admins and rules. Though that means the upgrade may not be universally rolled out at exactly the same time across every Mastodon instance, most admins are typically excited about new releases and install them quickly — particularly those who run larger servers.
Mastodon.social, the largest of these, will immediately update to Mastodon 4.2 with this release.
Key among the changes is an overhauled search interface — something that Mastodon actually credits to inspiration from its third-party developer community, specifically the Mastodon client Ivory from Tapbots — a company that switched to supporting Mastodon after Twitter killed its Tweetbot app.
Now, as you type, a popout will provide you with quick actions such as the ability to go directly to a hashtag matching your query, the option to limit your search to user profiles, or, if writing or pasting in a URL, the ability to open the link in Mastodon.
Image Credits: Mastodon
Recent searches are also available for quick access and search results offer an infinite scroll.
Under the hood, Mastdon has also reworked and fine-tuned its data indexes to make searching for profiles more intuitive, allowing you to search for people by words in their bio, not just their names. Plus, to help you distinguish between real people and bots or impersonators, Mastodon will surface the verified links in its search results.
Image Credits: Mastodon
Image Credits: Mastodon
However, the biggest upgrade coming to search is one that takes aim directly at X and other Twitter competitors: at last, the ability to search for posts. Before, Mastodon content search relied on hashtags.
You can also now use search operators to narrow down your search results, such as only retrieving posts that have an embedded link or a poll, or limiting results to those from a specific user, or posts that were published between specific dates.
Image Credits: Mastodon
Users can also configure their own privacy settings so they can control if they want their posts to show up in search results or the Explore page on an opt-in basis. That does mean users will have to switch this setting on to make search comparable to a larger network like X, but it’s a step in the right direction and one that protects user privacy.
Also new today is the newly polished web interface which adds things like more thread indicators, better article previews, and the removal of cropping from image previews.
But the bigger changes are those coming to onboarding — a process that’s often been dubbed too cumbersome and confusing for would-be users who want to try the open source, decentralized Twitter alternative. To address these concerns, Mastodon recently improved the server selection process. Now, it’s also adding progress indicators to guide people through the sign-up process and rewrote the introductory copy to be less technical and confusing.
Image Credits: Mastodon
After getting logged in, new users are also pointed to recommended first steps — like filling out their profile, following people (with helpful suggestions), making their first post, and sharing their profile outside Mastodon.
Image Credits: Mastodon
Image Credits: Mastodon
After testing these changes on its own servers, Mastodon says it saw an increase in the average number of profiles a new user followed, which grew from 2.6 to 6.8.
Another change involves the logged-out experience — something that Twitter used to struggle with, too. There had been debate about whether Twitter’s logged-out experience should help users view tweets or whether it should push them to sign up and log in.
On Mastodon, things work a little differently, though. You can end up on other Mastodon servers besides your own which means you’re effectively “logged out.” That has limited users from being able to perform certain actions, like following a new user. So users would have to copy and paste the URL of a profile in the search box of their own server in order to follow the user, which was confusing and complicated.
Image Credits: Mastodon
In the new experience, things are a little better though not as simple as on a centralized network like X or Threads. Now, you’ll be asked to type in the domain of your Mastodon home server, which autocompletes as you type, and then you’re redirected to the post or user profile from your logged-in interface, allowing you to take whatever action you intended.
While the above are the major updates in the 4.2 release there are dozens of other changes and fixes coming as well to features like search, polls, link cards, DMs, hashtags, replies, and more. Notably, DMs have been renamed private mentions to indicate they’re not actually equivalent to X’s DMs, for instance. Mastodon has also adopted the lines that X uses to connect reply chains.
Mastodon shared these and other top changes in 4.2, such as:
- Search results now load more results as you scroll, just like other feeds
- Search results are generally better in a lot of tiny technical ways
- Boosts no longer pollute the Posts and Replies tab on profiles
- Server administrators and custom role enjoyers have new badges on their profiles
- Link cards have a new design featuring more details
- Polls finally have a button to see results without voting
- Pictures and videos are no longer cropped to 16:9 in feeds
- Edit profile screen has been refurbished
- New Privacy and Reach tab to control all the privacy and reach preferences
- Dropdowns look fresher, dangerous options tinted red
- Bot be gone, it’s “Automated” profile now
- Media with alternative text now features ALT badge
- Reply chains are now connected with lines for easier reading
- Search can now be found more easily on small screens
- Clicking on links to posts in posts no longer takes you out of the interface
- Clicking usernames in people’s bios no longer takes you out of the interface
- Direct Messages now called Private Mentions for consistency
- Local and federated timelines have been moved to Live Feeds
- Hashtags at the end of posts now display as a hashtag bar
- Higher resolution and quality for uploaded images and videos
- Lots of minor color and typography adjustments to make Mastodon feel slick
- Lots of optimizations and performance improvements
- Posts on lists can now be excluded from your Home Feed so you don’t see them twice
Mastodon’s network has grown quite a bit in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now renamed X. Though Mastodon isn’t the only competitor to X — there’s also Bluesky, Threads, Post, Pebble (T2), Spill, and others — it does have an active user base of currently around 1.7 million monthly actives. That number tends to rise and fall alongside X’s stumbles.
More importantly, however, is that the decentralization Mastodon promotes is becoming more mainstream. Instagram has pledged to support the protocol powering Mastodon, ActivityPub, in its Threads app in the future. ActivityPub will also be adopted by smaller social apps like Flipboard as well as the larger blogging platform WordPress.
Mastodon 4.2 is available starting today, and its development is made possible through user donations through platforms like Patreon and Mastodon’s recent merch sales.
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O³ (O cubed)
No more PAWGs, PLEASE??!!!??
All that technology and Twitter is worse than its ever been
Breh, change the thread title to "Mastodon Official Thread" or something
Damn that's a big boy update. Lots of changes.
I'm content w/ the great UI on firefish.social for now (in spite of the shyt name) but will be keeping an eye on mastodon and will move my account over if they continue @ this pace
I'm content w/ the great UI on firefish.social for now (in spite of the shyt name) but will be keeping an eye on mastodon and will move my account over if they continue @ this pace
I've been trying to use Firefish but it never works right. They said they are moving to a new database so hopefully that will fix my problems.
I had to delete my cache, follow a random person from the local server, wipe my cookies and pray. That was about a week ago, but things have been pretty smooth since.
Granted, I definitely stopped using the platform for 2-3 weeks when the issues first arose with the expectation that the issue would resolve itself. And this took place after they pivoted from calckey -> firefish.ooo, I joined and then somehow lost my initial acct when they rebranded to firefish.social like a month later
I'm a fan of the progressive, tech savvy, linux-curious crowd it garners but the bugs and occasional troubleshooting is definitely a reminder that we're still in the early adopter
Fediverse Report (@fediversereport@mastodon.social)
1.41K Posts, 637 Following, 5.4K Followers · The Fediverse Report is a curated blog, giving you links and context to all the news that is happening in the fediverse. Every week you get 'Last Week in the Fediverse', with a summary of the relevant news of the week. Feel free to follow my...
Fediverse Report
The Fediverse Report is a curated blog, giving you links and context to all the news that is happening in the fediverse.
Every week you get 'Last Week in the Fediverse', with a summary of the relevant news of the week.
Cragsand :verified_coffee: (@cragsand@universeodon.com)
Figured out a way to make #BirdUI by @rolle@mementomori.social compatible on #Firefox on #Android for any #Mastodon instance! Instructions: 1. Install the approved extension #TamperMonkey from the Firefox addon menu. 2. Add the #UserScript extension from here...
Roni Laukkarinen (@rolle@mementomori.social)
Attached: 1 image Mastodon Bird UI 1.7.5rc2-nightly is now released! :neon_skull: This version adds support for social media links with icons, visible labels and new verified link styles. Changelog: * Improve ellipse shaped counter with 10+ notifications, Fix build, Fixes #32 (thanks...
Mastodon BirdUI Style Override
Changes the style of Mastodon to BirdUI (https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui) by Rolle (https://mementomori.social/@rolle)
greasyfork.org
GitHub - ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui: 🐘🐦 Mastodon web UI, but strongly inspired by Twitter.
🐘🐦 Mastodon web UI, but strongly inspired by Twitter. - GitHub - ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui: 🐘🐦 Mastodon web UI, but strongly inspired by Twitter.
github.com