Across the Fediverse Ep001

Audio version: https://tunes.artemai.art/library/tracks/24381/

Welcome to our first episode of across the fediverse; the latest news, updates and developments from every corner of the open, free, distributed web thing we call the fediverse; this is bulletin 1, for Wednesday 21st December, 2022 with your host, Jared - more about me later, but first, the podcast… There’s been a heap happen this week with loads of new fediverse software releases and announcements, we’ll dive right in after these messages.

We want your help

Just like the eco-system we cover, this news depends on federation - federating YOUR stories in this case!

If you know of relevant news, stories, updates, software or anything relevant please get in touch with us, in the future we’d love to do interviews and deep dives with community, developers and instance admins, this episde is mostly to get us off the ground and get the ball rolling. If you’d like to help out, get in touch right now!

The official primary source of this podcast is our funkwhale instance, which you can follow from anywhere on the fedivse by searching for @acrossthefediverse@tunes.artemai.art - our show notes are published on at https://blog.artemai.art/~/acrossthefediverse or you can follow my mastodon at @jared@social.artemai.art - please introduce yourself if you do!

Thank you to ARTemAI

Big shout out to our partner ARTemAI - a pet project of mine - ARTemAI is a non-profit collective folks providing tech & infrastructure for creatives, while there is heavy AI in what we do we also host a range of fediverse infrastructure and other tools and services . If you’re an independent musician, podcaster or other creative and are looking for a home on the fediverse we’ve got it covered with plume, mastodon, pixelfed, funkwhale, nextcloud & matrix chat hosting along with our GPU cluster & AI tools. Get in touch if we can help!

New to the fediverse?

If you’re new to the fediverse or you’re only just dipping your toes in there’s plenty of great resources out for there for you - check out fedi.tips and mastodon.help for more on getting yourself started, this podcast dives a bit deeper into the wider federated eco-system, people and stories, but stay tuned anyway who knows what you’ll discover!

https://fedi.tips/ https://mastodon.help/

As this is episode one I should introduce myself, I’m a geek and have worked in infrastructure and software for over 25 years. During the 90s I ran BBSes and was heavily involved in community and community ran infrastructure which is what got me so excited about the fediverse in more recent times. I also professionally produce content, mostly in live sports presentation, but committed to making more podcast content recently, so here we are. On with the news!

In news this week…

The Eternal September Continues

Back in 1993 many large commercial internet providers started offering Usenet News, once the domain of academics and hobbyists; what ensued was a September that seemed to never end; the eternal September, a stream of new users needing to get aquainted with the new platform, learn the customs and find their fit.. we’re here again, on what is the 2nd, or 3rd or is it the 4th wave of what is the mass migration to Mastodon?

I’ve seen stats stating an average of 10 new users a second at times are registering on Mastodon instances in the aftermath of recent chaos on other social media

Peertube v5 released!

Since 2017; the dedicated folks at peertube have been working on to create “a free, decentralised and federated alternative to YouTube”, with work commencing back in 2017 and peertube 1.0 being released in 2018. Since then they’ve been bringing us a major release each year and 2022 is no exception - with version 5 being released on December 13th.

New features in v5 include better protection on private videos, object storage for live streams, better handling of network issues during playback, loads of bug fixes, UI improvements and better monitoring support.

You can find a link to the changelog in the shownotes or head to joinpeertube.org to find an instance that’s best for you!

https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md

Pixelfed Native Apps are Coming

The native Pixelfed apps are not far away with iOS lcoming first with an openTestFlight Beta now underway, check the show notes for a link to join the beta. Unfortunately us android users will need to wait a little longer, hopefully not too far away though!

https://testflight.apple.com/join/5HpHJD5l

Pixelfed have also announced the soon to be released Admin Invite features and improvements to the post UI on the server side and web .. If you haven’t come across PixelFed yet, it’s the fediverse answer to Instagram providing an enriched and image-focused platform for federated content, what’s even better you can follow pixelfed accounts from mastodon and vice-versa like it’s one big happy platform. You can also help fund the Pixelfed project by becoming a patreon at https://www.patreon.com/dansup - check the show notes for a link.

In other app news

Two new Mastodon apps are also available for Apple, also in beta stage. #Ivory from Tweetbot makers Tapbots, already out there in the Google Play store and #Mammoth. You can find a link to the Mammoth testflight beta in the show notes:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/66c1wW8y

Calckey releases new version

The popular Misskey fork, Calckey has released a new version - v13, with a big focus on account migration, profile user interfaces and other great options. Improvements to the documentation, especially around docker and easy installation with binary packages available for common Linux distributions. https://codeberg.org/thatonecalculator/calckey

State of the Word

While it’s not strictly fediverse, it doesoverlap with the help of plugins - this week we say the State of the Word - an anual addrses from the Wordpress Project - most interestingly to me was the focus on the OpenVerse project. Having launched a few years ago, the latest WordPress Media Library to directly integrate - allowing contributing to the library directly just by tagging your uploads to WordPress making it even easier for people to contribute and utilise this content, which this month alone has seen over 22 million images, 1.1 million audiofiles and served up 59 million requests.

Check out the collection at https://wordpress.org/openverse/.

Other highlights include new features coming soon including real time collaboration is coming too; allowing multi-user colloboration right out of the box in WordPress.

https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/

Mozilla makes a fediverse move.

Back to the fediverse again with a major announcement from Mozilla - quoting from their press release “In early 2023, Mozilla will stand up and test a publicly accessible instance in the Fediverse at Mozilla.Social. We’re eager to join the community in growing, experimenting, and learning how we can together solve the technical, experience, and trustworthiness challenges inherent in hyper-scale social systems.”

Mozilla go on to talk about their “Pledge for a Healthy Internet” which describes their hopes for the future of the internet - something they specifically mention the rise of Mastodon, Pixelfed and Matrix as large parts of. Find out more at the official Mozilla blog - link in the show notes.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-launch-fediverse-instance-social-media-alternative/

Will John Mastodon please stand up?

We’d be remiss if we closed our first bulletin without mention of the meme of the week arising from Mediaite - a self described “top U.S. website covering the intersection of media and politics with original reporting and bi-partisan commentary”.. who reported, and I quote, “Then the platform (being twitter) removed John Mastodon, the founder of a competing social media company named after himself”.. big shout out to all the John Mastodon’s out there and may your memes be glorious.

That’s it for our inagual episode of Across the Fediverse, if you’ve got comments, feedback, stories or want to help please get in touch with me @jared@social.artemai.art. You should be able to find a link to our shownotes in the description; if not head to the official home of across the fediverse at https://tunes.artemai.art/channels/acrossthefediverse/ powered of course by the amazing Funkwhale project.

If all goes to plan, episode 2 will be up online just after Christmas so please have yourself a safe and merry festivus; may your feeds be federated and bright.

Phew, that was a lot for our first episode; I hope the stories keep coming in fast as the fediverse expands… as mentioned earlier in the bulletin, we need your stories, contributions and help - if there’s anything you think you can do to make Across the fediverse better get in touch with me today at @jared@social.artemai.art.

Credits

Fediverse accounts of various software, contributors and organisations as mentioned in the stories.

Live stream of State of the Word Address

Music & Graphics:

Theme Song (Intro & Outro) - Breaking News - by Humans Win and Lance Conrad.

Background Loop - Background (loop) by Aliaksei Yukhnevich.

Christmas Ident by Serge Quadrado 

Logo generated by Stable Diffusion