Last Week in Fediverse - episode 37

Welcome to another busy news week. There are too many things happening nowadays, so I've decided to focus more on the larger stories that need more context, and spend some less time on simpeler news like links to new apps. There are some interesting new stories again this week, with the main story of Mark Zuckerberg comments on Threads enough for it's own article. Let's dive in!

Mark Zuckerberg on Threads and ActivityPub

The main focus of the week is on the comments that Mark Zuckerberg has made, as they provide some clear indications of his visions for Threads, and why he thinks Threads should interoperate with the rest of the fediverse. It's a big enough topic for its own article, which you can read here:

https://fediversereport.com/zuckerberg-on-threads-and-activitypub/

Fediseer

Fediseer is project that has gained steam recently, and is another take on the concept of shared block lists. It is centered around the concept of a "chain of trust". Every server admin can submit information, and validate other servers whether they are trustworthy or not. The project is centred around Lemmy, although it is not exclusively so, and other fediverse servers can also use the project.

Fediseer started in the summer of 2023 as a project by @db0. When he started a Lemmy server, he noticed that quite a few other servers were major sources of spam and bot accounts. In the blog post announcing the project, @db0 explains the process in detail, but the summary is as follows: server admins claim ownership of a server, and validate that other servers are not sources of spam. The thought behind this is, that during a spam wave attack (where bad actors can easily start new bot servers), an admin can move to a allow-list, where only servers can federate who are validated.

Over the last period, this project has started to expand, and is now used to share information about servers that should be avoided as well. It is also moving beyond Lemmy, with more and more other microblogging servers such as Mastodon showing up. This puts the functionality more into the direction of shared blocklists like The Bad Space or Oliphant's block lists. A few features of Fediseer stand out from other projects:

• It creates three different negative classifications: Censures, which is a disapproval from server A to server B. This can be for any subjective reason, and is mostly used in a similar manner as blocklists are. The Censure list gives a good impression, as it is largely servers that on most blocklists for reasons like 'hate speech' and 'pedopelia'. Hesitations are a a milder form of censures, and the list gives again a good impression of how people use this. Hesitations like 'poor communication on reports' or 'repost-bot' indicate that these are indeed milder than censures. Suspicious instances are algorithmically determined, and are mainly aimed at Lemmy instances that might be sources of spam.
• It allows admins to filter the lists based on which server contributed the hesitations and censures. This allows for significantly greater customisation, forcing every admin to consciously decide which other admins they trust to listen to their suggestions for hesitations and censures.
• There is significant community buy-in. Almost all large Lemmy servers are participating, as can be seen here. This makes it that proposed blocks/censures can better represent the Lemmy community at large.

Overall, Fediseer is an interesting take on the concept of sharing information about other servers to potentially block, especially with the large community buy-in from Lemmy. A project that is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Blogging resurgence

There has been quite a bit of activity again in the blogging software for the fediverse. WriteFreely is a free, open-source blogging project that has been around for a while. It is integrated with write.as, with provides a managed hosting server with paid extra features. Activity around the project had calmed down, with the previous update that had new features stemming from summer 2021. Now, WriteFreely has finally a new update out again this week, with features such as fediverse verification.

Meanwhile, PostFreely is a recently started fork of WriteFreely, by @reiver (who also runs fediverse hosting company SpaceHost) and @matthew. To get an impression of the direction they will be taking, their Lemmy post discussing the archetypes of people who might use PostFreely.

And in the background of it all is WordPress' ActivityPub plugin. It recently went to the official 1.0 version. It has been available for people who run their own version of WordPress, with it coming soon to all blogs who run on WordPress.com, enabling millions of blogs to easily connect to the fediverse. I've been running it on both my sites, and it's a great feature to have.

German state of Saxony starts a Mastodon server

The German state of Saxony has started their own Mastodon server at social.sachsen.de/. The server is intended for the departments and organisations that are part of the government of Saxony. It is run by the Saxon Data Protection Authority ( @sdtb ), who states: “I am pleased that I can provide public bodies with a data protection-compliant social network for their public relations work."

I personally find it interesting to see that the agency originally started with their own account on the federal German government server ( social.bund.de/explore ), and have now decided to spin up their own server for the state of Saxony. It illustrates how the government servers can function as as example for others to follow and start their own social media servers.

Germany and social networks, continued

Staying with the theme of Germany for a bit, here are another four short unrelated news items about Germany and social networks:

• Cybersecurity expert Erik Uden appears on German public television at the ZDF, one of the countries largest independent broadcasters, wearing a Mastodon t-shirt, and receiving an internship at Mastodon as a prize at the end. My German is not good enough to fully understand what its about, but the YouTube broadcast got half a million views, so at least the Germans liked it.
• German Mastodon server Mastodon.de announces a large scale pro-Mastodon campaign, saying: "the aim of bringing selected people (including artists, actors, authors, politicians, ...) as well as non-profit institutions to the Fediverse. This campaign starts in October 2023 and, in our opinion, is one of the most important steps to make the Fediverse more suitable for the masses."
• Two weeks ago I noticed that Germans are heavily overrepresented compared to other Europeans on Bluesky. This effect seems even stronger now, with German posts regularly getting to the top most popular posts on the network during prime hours for the USA as well.
• Among the many crazy and evil things Elon Musk is saying, he is now also picking a fight with the German Federal Foreign Office, who isn't having any of it. Ethical analysis of this here.

Together these separate strands of news all point towards a shift in German culture. There are many people who have pointed out the many misgivings and ethical concerns they have with Elon Musk's X, but there are not many government agencies who have rebuked Elon Musk so explicitly as this German government agency did. At the same time, separate data points circumstantially indicate that Germans are at the forefront of movements towards other social networks, both Mastodon, and Bluesky.

In other news

The Activitypub.rocks community is undergoing a revitalisation project. The current website is still the official website for the ActivityPub protocol, and thus by extension, for the technical part of the fediverse. As the site has not been updated since January 2021, which is not particularly inviting for new developers. The reboot of the project is happening over at the Social Hub, and is a real grass-roots movements where everyone can participate and contribute.

@jerrytheadmin implemented Cloudflare's CSAM scanning into both Mastodon and Firefish servers. CSAM scanning is an important tool for server admins, as both the Stanford Internet Observatory report and recent weaponisation of CSAM at Lemmy have shown. Cloudflare provides a CSAM scanning tool, but this requires an admin to register with NCMEC as an organisation. It also needs custom integration into the servers, as neither Mastodon nor Firefish provide standard functionality for this. I've reached out for further comment.

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