Last Week in the Fediverse - episode 25

If there's one way to describe the sentiment this week its that 'the old web is dying'. July 1st was the deadline for Reddit to effective shut down 3rd party apps such as Apollo. Beforehand, people expected this to lead to an inflow of people away from Reddit to fediverse alternatives Kbin and Lemmy. On the day itself though, Elon Musk decided that he needed to be in the spotlight instead, and decided to rate limit Twitter. This has sucked up all the attention, as well as leading to a renewed inflow away from Twitter to other networks, including Mastodon. For both of these moves, the impact of this is too early fully assess. Early numbers indicate inflows to both the microblogging side as the threadiverse, but the full extend, and how much these users will stick around, will only become clearer later.

The threadiverse and the #redditmigration

Something that sticks out to me is the larger than expected separation between the microblogging side of the fediverse and the threadiverse. Lemmy and Kbin are rapidly growing, and are experiencing a #redditmigration wave, similar to how Mastodon has experienced a #twittermigration wave. But conversations on the feeds are barely involved about this. Instead, discussions around the fediverse on the feeds have been centred around Meta's new microblogging project P92, as well as the various ongoings at Twitter. P92 is seen as a threat to the fediverse, and conversations take on various shapes or forms (as I explain here), but the threadiverse is notably lacking in these debates.

Meanwhile, Lemmy and Kbin continue to grow rapidly. User and active user statistics can be hard to measure reliably, especially after at one point over 2 million spam accounts on Lemmy were created. This spam issue is mostly resolved, but total posts gives an approximation of the rapid growth Lemmy has experienced in the last two weeks:

Lemmy experiencing a 50% growth in posts in two weeks, and Kbin even a 100% growth in posts. For context, the bump on June 24th is when the server hexbear.net decided to turn on federation. This is a large Lemmy forum that is decendant from the ChapoTrapHouse subreddit. When that subreddit got banned from Reddit, they moved to their own forum that runs Lemmy, without federation. On June 24th they decided to turn on federation and become part of the fediverse.

This growth is leading to a rapid number of apps being developed. Last week I linked to this list with over 15 apps on it. The development growth keeps going however:

• Boost is an app, originally for Reddit, that announced as part of their shutdown to transition towards a Lemmy app.
• Infinity For Everything is an app in development that focuses on integrating as many projects as possible into a single front-end. They are currently working on Lemmy, Kbin, but also Nostr.
• Pixelfed and fedidb.org developer @dansup is working on a Kbin app Kbam.

Beyond mobile apps, there are also a variety of front-ends and web clients available. @erlend has created an excellent overview of the options that is worth checking out. Beyond that, there is the Kbin Usability Pack, a small add-on with a number of usability enhancements. And if you're missing the layout and design of old.reddit, here's an option to get that look and feel on Kbin. And if you're confused by Kbin, there's a variety of user guides.

Other news

A major security breach at the anarchist Mastodon server kolektiva.social happened. The admin got raided by the FBI, and all their electronics seized. As the admin had an unencrypted backup of the production database on their local system, this means that all this data is now also seized by the FBI. This includes DM's, IP addresses, email addresses and hashed passwords. Some accounts have raised some red flags with the security practices at kolektiva.social, as well as the potential implications of what the FBI can do with this data.

Meta's new Twitter project P92 briefly showed up on the Play Store, under the rumoured name Threads. It shows no new information beyond what was mentioned earlier. The screenshots do not show ActivityPub integration, like earlier leaked screenshots do. This is supposed to come 3 months after launch. The name Threads seems as good as confirmed at this point. This makes the use of the term threadiverse, to refer to the Lemmy and Kbin side of the fediverse somewhat confusing, so it remains be seen if this sticks.

Last week was the PublicSpaces conference in Amsterdam, about 'building an internet for the common good'. It was delightful to meet so many people you know from the fediverse in real life and discuss the fediverse. A panel session about the fediverse with Dutch Public Television Broadcasters stuck out to me. They explained their difficulty in finding the balance between their ideals about a better internet, and the practicality of being where the audience is. The broadcasters have often cultivated diverse and valuable communities. Setting up a server on the fediverse is not enough to transplant these communities.

The links

• The Media Economics Design Lab holds a webinar on July 5th about "how nonprofits are using emerging social networks—like Bluesky and Mastodon, and more—to advance their missions". ActivityPub co-author Evan Prodromou is one of the speakers.
• PixelFed is adding a feature called System Cards. This allows you to see why a certain post shows up in your feed. Pixelfed says that this will become more important once algorithmic feeds are introduced to Pixelfed.
• Pixelfed also introduces a new admin feature for platform safety, Hybrid Mode. Servers that have not been interacted with before will need to be manually approved.
• The official Mastodon app for Android has gotten a major update, with accompanying blog post.
• "We're here, we're queer, and we're federated: How queer, trans, and non-binary people helped create Mastodon and are shaping today's fediverse", is an extensive history and exploration of the impact that queer, trans and non-binary people have on the fediverse.
• Lemmy.link is a combination of a RSS feed and a Lemmy server. Every community on this server directly posts content from a RSS feed to the community, effectively applying a social aspect of votes and comments on top of a RSS feed. Take for example the Technology community, which is a combined RSS feed of The Verge and Wired.
• Brands.town is a server that parodies corporate social media. WeDistribute takes a closer look at their history.

Beyond the fediverse

Wibblur.social is a new social network that is prioritizing safety, privacy, and accessibility for minorities. It uses Calckey, but it is explicitly not federating.  One of the driving forces behind the project is Aveta, a community organiser for Black tech Twitter. She's been influential in driving growth towards Bluesky, using her influence in the Black Twitter to get people on board. After receiving death threats on Bluesky, and the Bluesky Team's half-hearted response to it, as well as other cases of alleged antiblackness of the Bluesky team, she is now behind starting her own private place.

Bluesky has posted an extensive blog post, 'Moderation in a Public Commons' as their moderation manifesto. Beyond that, they've also published three proposals on their GitHub to improve Bluesky. Of particular interest to fediverse users might be the proposal around hashtags. They include practical ideas for how to visually separate hashtags from the body of a post, allowing for spaces in hashtags, and more.

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