Last Week in Fediverse - ep 44

I was at the Next Generation Internet conference this week, and it was super fun to meet fediverse people in person, and talk about where to move from here. Longer write up on that coming soon, but it also meant that I didn't get around to do much writing this week, so bit of a shorter update this time. Let's dive into the Framasoft and Peertube update, interviews with fediverse builders, and more!

Framasoft's yearly report

Framasoft, the French non-profit organisation behind projects such as PeerTube and Mobilizon, has published their yearly report, titled 'Let's regain ground on the toxic web'. It details the work they have been doing over the last year, their future plans, as well as a donation drive. Over the next few weeks, Framasoft will dive deeper into specific parts of their plans and products: In the week of 28th of November they'll talk about this years work on PeerTube, and 2 weeks later they will talk about next year's plans for PeerTube. In between, they'll tell us more about Mobilizon.

PeerTube will released their next version (v6) at the end of November, with important features such as video chapters and password protection for videos. Password protection especially will be an interesting feature to watch, as it positions PeerTube in a clear different place than YouTube; uploading videos that you want control over who gets to watch the video. Stay tuned for more information once v6 gets released.

Framasoft also announced that next year they will bet big on PeerTube, working on features such as better moderation tools, working on promoting the ecosystem more, and an official PeerTube mobile app. All of this will get covered in more detail in a few weeks time. Watch this space for more information on a special event as well!

Finally, Framasoft has also given an update on the federated event planning software Mobilizon. After four years of development, v4 will be the final version that will be released under Mobilizon. Framasoft says that they feel that they have completed their vision for the product, and that groups will have the features they need to organise their events.

A Mammoth Task

A Mammoth Task, is the headline of the interview by German newspaper Zeit with Eugen Rochko. It details the history and background of how Eugen Rochko came to build Mastodon, and his vision for social networks. It introduces him as a private person, who rarely gives interviews, does not go to conferences, and has not met most of Mastodon's employees in person (a shame, as I very much enjoyed meeting Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput at Next Generation Internet conference last week)

The article does not shy away from pointing out some uncomfortable facts either, noting his title as a Benevolent Dictator For Life. They write: '"I feel quite comfortable in this role," he [Eugen Rochko] says, "an individual with a vision always builds a better product than a group." He almost sounds like the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of this world. Is Rochko really interested in building a democratic network? Or does he just want to be at the top himself?'.

The entire interview is worth reading (non-paywalled here, auto translation works well enough), as it shows that some press is moving beyond an easy narrative of Mastodon as an replacement for Twitter, and is willing to look deeper into how decisions get made on this new generation of decentralised social networks.

In other news

• @Jpd23 has been writing an extensive blog series about safety and blocklists. I'll write more about it once the series has finished, but it is already worth reading, and provides good context and perspective on safety in the fediverse. Part 1 here, part 2 here.
• Evan Prodromou has published a command-line client API for ActivityPub, as part of his work on a book about ActivityPub.
• @Jaz is maintaining a list of all organisations that are self-publishing, meaning running their own fediverse server.
• One year since the day of the Twitter lockout, in which a quarter of a million people signed up for the fediverse in a single day.
• A call to action by Netzpolitik for higher education organisations to join the fediverse and control their own social media presence.
• Misskey fork Sharkey has added post importing, where they have taken the approach of not federating the posts, just importing them to the account. This avoids the problem of sending out notifications for old important posts, but does mean old posts lose favourite counts.

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading. If you want to receive this update every Sunday in your mailbox, subscribe below!