timothyjchambers

[timothyjchambers]

Ideas for How ActivityPub Might Solve this Problem that BlueSky Points Out?

OK Internet hive mind: working thru a half-formed idea. I like that BluesSky and Nostr and ActivityPub all learn off of each other's good ideas.  

And I do think that BlueSky's claims of more seamless migration of accounts is a plus, but one that #ActivityPub folks have line of site on how to improve. The other claim of innovation of BlueSky folks is that since they are not server dependent, but rather semi-centralized (if theoretically swappabley so) that if your local server dies or crashes the user is not stuck.  Now those of us who have signed the Mastodon server covenant, promise to give three months notice before shutting down. But lets say an admin and his co-admins were all hit by a (large) bus.  A server goes belly up without warning in Mastodon or ActivityPub land and users have no account to migrate. In BlueSky or AT Protocol world, as I understand it, the claim is that it is not dependent on one “personal data server” and the other semi-centralized bits could enable the poor users to still migrate elsewhere. I think that is all somewhat theoretical in Bluesy now, as they have just now gotten basic federation working.  But the question is: in an ActivityPub world, how could we evolve to solve that one admittedly problematic use case — without resorting to centralization, and without any blockchain gobbledegook? I have some beginnings of ideas but want to see what you all think first.

[timothyjchambers]

Since I'm already sending invite codes to some people, I thought it may be a good idea to write a post here as a quick intro of what to do in your first few minutes in Goblin!

Basically, once you have an invite code, you should go to https://goblin.band and click on the "register" button. And then, enter your invite code in this screen:

With that, you would get to the actual registration form. Heads up, unlike tumblr, username doesn't support dashes, but you can use low dashes instead:

You will land in this wonderful onboarding page with a pop-up window telling you "how to use Goblin" that it's entirely empty, because you no one can tell you how to use goblin (or maybe because I haven't paid any attention to the onboarding bits because I didn't think anyone would be using them for months):

From there, the first step would probably be going to 'Settings' and uploading an avatar, filling some profile info, etc.

I strongly suggest you setup an email (when you do it, you need to confirm the email, and the screen where you land to makes it seem as it hasn't worked: it has, don't worry) and take a general look at the options in your profile (for example, if you don't want to share who you are following or who are following you, go to 'privacy' and change the setting in there).

Once you are set-up, your dash is, obviously, empty, since you don't follow anyone. But you can already take a look at the rest of the timelines that area available for everyone: Local (things that people has posted on Goblin itself), Robots (rss feeds being imported), social (a mix between your own followings, local and robot), and Global (a feed with content from other servers in the fediverse, like Mastodon, etc)

You also can go to the "Explore" tab and get some idea of who is around Goblin (in the local tab) or get some suggestions of people to follow from the fediverse in general, take a look at popular tags, etc:

You can also follow Tumblr rss feeds from goblin: Just search for @tumblr-username.tumblr.com and, if they have a publicly open blog, you will be able to follow it from goblin:

And... that's it. The only thing I ask you if you get one of the invites is try to use it for a while: Post something, follow people, have fun!

[timothyjchambers]

Changelog 6/3/2024

Well friends, I come to you bringing some great news!

Not only @sirilyan has set-up a second Goblin server (https://kobold.page), but after a few adjustments and fixes, now Goblin is fully working as a tested multi-server network! Someone using an account based on a server (let’s say, Kobold,page) is able to follow and see posts from someone in a different server (for example, Goblin.band) not only keeping all the formatting, but also the entire reblog chain.

I know this may sound like technical gibberish, but it means that the idea of a federated version of Tumblr is finally taking shape and… it works. It actually works. And it’s beautiful.

[timothyjchambers]

Just merged my first code into @goblin-social (to make Tumblr feeds look better), and after work I’m going to poke at two or three other branches I’m trying out.

Nothing to it but to do it. The hellsite comes under threat? We build our own new, distributed network of hellsites, one cloud server at a time.

Also, if you’re a friend who’d like an invite code to my goblin instance, drop me a message!

[timothyjchambers]

Goblin changelog, 19/03/2024

Another bunch of changes has been shipped!

The ides of march special arrived and left! For 24h, you could stab JC without leaving the comfort of your own dash.

The tumblr rss posts got a bit of a face wash and now are easier to identify in your dash

Posts can now be safely edited. Before this, edits were kind of a lottery: You could lose your tags, your attached videos, you name it. Now it’s safe to edit posts, you should be able to do it without actually screwing your posts. I’m sorry you lost your dose of whimsical destruction.

Now the signup form doesn’t reject usernames over 20 characters anymore. You have up to 128 chars to name yourself.

Restored the modal window with a short onboarding wizard new users get on signup, and made it a bit more goblin-oriented.

When you look at the notes of a post, the reblogs tab now also shows the tags in the reblog (so when you get someone reblogging you just adding some tags, you actually can see what’s that about, ahem :D )

A bunch of visual fixes to improve readability all around the site.

Fixed long threads coming from the fedi when they include both reblogs and replies. If you are a goblin user already, you may have seen some posts where the ‘notes’ button didn’t work at all. Basically, Goblin unravels mastodon-style reply conversations into reblog chains (which are much nicer to read), but when a chain included both replies and reblogs (most fediverse platforms allow to reblog not only posts, but also replies), Goblin was freaking out and some things were breaking. Now, that kind of threads should be converted to reblog chains properly and everything should work as expected.

[timothyjchambers]

Goblin changelog, 19/03/2024

Another bunch of changes has been shipped!

The ides of march special arrived and left! For 24h, you could stab JC without leaving the comfort of your own dash.

The tumblr rss posts got a bit of a face wash and now are easier to identify in your dash

Posts can now be safely edited. Before this, edits were kind of a lottery: You could lose your tags, your attached videos, you name it. Now it’s safe to edit posts, you should be able to do it without actually screwing your posts. I’m sorry you lost your dose of whimsical destruction.

Now the signup form doesn’t reject usernames over 20 characters anymore. You have up to 128 chars to name yourself.

Restored the modal window with a short onboarding wizard new users get on signup, and made it a bit more goblin-oriented.

When you look at the notes of a post, the reblogs tab now also shows the tags in the reblog (so when you get someone reblogging you just adding some tags, you actually can see what’s that about, ahem :D )

A bunch of visual fixes to improve readability all around the site.

Fixed long threads coming from the fedi when they include both reblogs and replies. If you are a goblin user already, you may have seen some posts where the ‘notes’ button didn’t work at all. Basically, Goblin unravels mastodon-style reply conversations into reblog chains (which are much nicer to read), but when a chain included both replies and reblogs (most fediverse platforms allow to reblog not only posts, but also replies), Goblin was freaking out and some things were breaking. Now, that kind of threads should be converted to reblog chains properly and everything should work as expected.

[timothyjchambers]

A quick example of the current state of Goblin:

I imported my following list from mastodon and started following everyone with my goblin.band account too, so I basically read all my mastodon content from there already. Even if no one but me using the tumblr-like features I'm adding, I already enjoy Goblin more than Mastodon.

Things that I've added since my last post:

Integration with mastodon (and well, any other fediverse platform that use plain text instead of html)

Copy/pasting images in the editor

Sanitized html input when saving & updating posts

Improved the landing page

Cleaned the menus and improved the UI in general

Current "next" to-do list:

Fix posts displaying images twice when you paste an image

Fix RSS feed including the inline files again after the post

Sanitize html inputs on incoming federated posts

fix several style issues around different settings sections (black texts on dark blue background, white text over white background, etc)

Figure out if I can create a tumblr-api app so the posts from goblin can be automatically shared here without having to go through Zappier.

Figure out what kind of server I need to run a, let's say, 500 people server.

Find someone to do some security review of my server (Long story short, I've only a very slim idea of what I'm doing when configuring a server and I'm sure I've left some huge security holes around).

This is happening, folks. I think Goblin is going to be a reality. At least https://goblin.band will be.

[timothyjchambers]

warning: blog will not return to normal sonicposting until the website owner stops acting like a manchild, i am a menace. you can find me on bluesky, cooltrans.men or wafrn. if you need me for anything else my discord handle is nateray 👍 btw do your daily click on arab.org for palestine 🇧🇷🤝🇵🇸

cool fediverse instances with cool vibes

some youtube video explaining how fediverse works for newcomers! if you don't want a video there's a whole website about it!

👉 Mastodon

wetdry.world

mastoart.social

corteximplant.com

👉 Sharkey

transfem.social

lethallava.land

woem.men

grimgreenfo.rest

estrogen.plus

👉 Iceshrimp

nightcity.bar

👉 Akkoma

cooltrans.men

👉 Wafrn @gabbomanestamuyloco (WIP)

app.wafrn.net

👉 Goblin @goblin-social (SOON, WIP)

goblin.band

kobold.page

[timothyjchambers]

Welcome to Day One of Threads and the Fediverse

So everybody, good job.  We made it through day one. 

We made it through Day One.I believe both the fediverse and Threads fared well on the first day of their merger. The sky did not fall on either side, and the admins and server owners of Mastodon and other Fedivers servers were not overwhelmed by swarms of traffic, despite a surge in new usage and users. 

Using my server as a guide, we found no increase in abuse or harassment. Actually, it was a normal, calm day in terms of new open tickets, with no abuse of any kind against our 11,600 members to report.

And I believe the opposite is true: not only did no disaster occur, but many people on both sides saw a glimpse of the future of the open social web. In practice, not in theory. For the first time, at this scale. I saw numerous new Threads users excited to discover the Fediverse, and many Fediverse users welcomed them.

As I stated in another conversation with the threads development team, congratulations to everyone; today was a part of Internet history.  

Congratulations to the Mastodon and Fediverse users who did not panic out and welcomed the newcomers.I'm sure there will be hurdles and issues to address on all sides. However, today was a good day. Well done, everyone. Now, on to day two.

[timothyjchambers]

This year’s #Fediforum has been outstanding.  Still digging into day 2. 

[timothyjchambers]

A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

[timothyjchambers]

Indieweb.Social and the Upcoming #BlueSkyBridge

This is a brief announcement announcing Indieweb.social’s future software bridge work by BridglyFed (https://fed.brid.gy/doc) will enable interoperability between ActivityPub networks and AT Protocol/BlueSky users.

Read the announcement at snarfed.org/2024-02-1…

As a server, Indieweb.social will NOT fediblock this effort; rather, to the contrary, we will assist users in understanding how to engage with BlueSky users if they choose to do so via this new offering.

This is akin to our server’s position on Threads federation as well. With both, we will moderate with extreme care and will ensure that our user’s safety is our first and utmost priority. And with both, we will adjust our position if facts require it.

At the same time, we will also assist our users who choose to opt-out by explaining how they can block particular BlueSky users or block the entire bridge and opt out by DM’ing Ryan Barnett at or entering #nobridge in their profile bio.

As the administrator of indieweb.social, I enthusiastically endorse this #BlueSkyBridge work, and I believe that individuals concerned about being “opt-out” forget that the Fediverse’s core is established on this sort of bridging and Federating as a conscious design. As @beaware rightly put it, there can be legit reasons to block this bridge for those who wish to, “but don’t disguise it as some sort ‘opt-in only stance’ because if you’re a legit Fediverse admin, you know the Fediverse as a whole is opt-out by design." indieweb.social/@tchamber…

And at the same time built into the core principles of the Fedi is that it offers you all the tools to curate your own experience and block and filter at will.

One last personal note:

I also know Ryan Barlett well and have engaged with him during this project.

This is a good-faith developer who loves the open web, respects and cares about the ethos of the Fediverse, deeply values #indieweb principles. He has put countless hours into this project as a labor of love for the open social web. He has also gone well out of his way to be transparent and a good actor at every step of this work.

He deserves all of our respect and I hope that the vast majority of Fediverse voices offer him that - even those who do not wish to take part in the bridge or who disagree with the “opt-out” nature of it.

The Fedivere needs more developers like Ryan and the vitriol from a minority of the few is not a good look. To his credit Ryan is listening even to the more shrill voices and willing to iterate while keeping to Fediverse and open web principles. fed.brid.gy/r/https:/…

I hope other voices of support - even those who disagree - reach out and make their voices heard over the more rancorous ones. The Fediverse needs to be a place of respect and community.

I’m honored that he set up a support account here on this server - indieweb.social/@snarfed - and look forward to helping support this effort as it evolves.

[timothyjchambers]

The feature isn’t being removed for everyone at the same time. The contract Tumblr has with whoever the fuck it is ended on December 31st (I’m pretty sure at least) so it’ll be removed for everyone in the (hopefully) near future also happy new year

[timothyjchambers]

[timothyjchambers]

Really imporant to see.

What is the status of Tumblr being connected to the fediverse, given the re-org? More recently a Tumblr employee confirmed it was delayed (source: https://www.tumblr.com/cyle/722492285243293696/serious-question-obviously-youre-not-the-best) and is now a part of Tumblr Labs. Is there another reason beyond the financial pressures for the delay? Is Tumblr scoping out other protocols, like nostr or bluesky's AT protocol?

This is a very interesting area, especially with the launch of Mammoth that you covered quite well. The Activity Pub and Friends plugins for WordPress are both from Automatticians, and have allowed us space to play in this space and understand the community and protocols, and also gauge user demand. Right now both have under ten thousand users, so there hasn't been a big user push for this yet.

But maybe that's because WordPress sites are too much of an island already, so the same folks are now digging into the Tumblr codebase to see what we can do here. So at the end of the year (Dec 31) we'll have a chunk of the team switch away from Tumblr, but right now we're actually having someone switch toward it to work on this and they will continue in the new year.

I remain a huge believer in open standards and user freedom, though I don't claim to have the truth on which particular standard is better or best, to serve our customers we will support everything we can in good faith to give users more freedom, choice, and avoid lock-in.

[timothyjchambers]

What is the status of Tumblr being connected to the fediverse, given the re-org? More recently a Tumblr employee confirmed it was delayed (source: https://www.tumblr.com/cyle/722492285243293696/serious-question-obviously-youre-not-the-best) and is now a part of Tumblr Labs. Is there another reason beyond the financial pressures for the delay? Is Tumblr scoping out other protocols, like nostr or bluesky's AT protocol?

This is a very interesting area, especially with the launch of Mammoth that you covered quite well. The Activity Pub and Friends plugins for WordPress are both from Automatticians, and have allowed us space to play in this space and understand the community and protocols, and also gauge user demand. Right now both have under ten thousand users, so there hasn't been a big user push for this yet.

But maybe that's because WordPress sites are too much of an island already, so the same folks are now digging into the Tumblr codebase to see what we can do here. So at the end of the year (Dec 31) we'll have a chunk of the team switch away from Tumblr, but right now we're actually having someone switch toward it to work on this and they will continue in the new year.

I remain a huge believer in open standards and user freedom, though I don't claim to have the truth on which particular standard is better or best, to serve our customers we will support everything we can in good faith to give users more freedom, choice, and avoid lock-in.

[timothyjchambers]

A Year End List of Fediverse Development I'm Hopeful for in 2024

As the year ends, thought this would be a good time to list some of the projects and group efforts relating to the Fediverse I’m very jazzed about. Some I’ve helped advise, some I’ve just applauded them from a distance.

I think there has been more innovation that benefits user experience inside the larger Fediverse in the last year or so, than in some of the giant closed siloes of Social Media in ten years.

Some key ones that I’m involved in helping move downfield as a formal or informal advisor:

ActivtyPub Test Suite: crucially important as big players enter the Fediverse to have a toolset to define what “ActivityPub compliant” means and doesn’t. nlnet.nl/project/F…

BlueSky/AT and Mastodon/ActivityPub Bridge - am giving some recommendations and will be testing its important project linking these two protocols of the open social web. Watch this space lots happening there soon.

IFTAS - Distributed Trust and Safety Effort- am advising this critically important group. Helping fortify and up the distributed moderation of the 20,000+ Fediverse servers. Few efforts for maturing the Fediverse are more important than this one: about.iftas.org

Mammoth Browser - latest release with Smart lists - a mix of curated lists and basic algorithms to surface the best of them. I’m curating some smart lists for this, very worth checking out. getmammoth.app

Projects I’m applauding from a distance:

All the efforts innovating at Fediverse UI/UX: this includes MastodonBirdUI - which we have implemented on our server at Indieweb.social, Tangerine UI, Elk, and Phanpy. All are great, and Phanpy I think actually may be my favorite social UX of ANY social service, decentralized or any of the siloed commercial services. phanpy.social

New server communities: Fascinated at all the efforts at creating new servers and services: Obviously including Flipboard ( Flipboard.social) Medium (http://me.dm) and fascinating to watch Mozila what they are quietly building at the very bespoke version of their Mastodon server at mozilla.social

The deep commitment of WordPress into the ActivityPub space is inspiring to watch Mattias and the team’s work building out a whole new blogging and webpublishing space integrating into the Fediverse. Will be doing all I can to help organize efforts to move that into a canonical plugin status.

Another key Open Web Platform - Wikipedia (@[email protected]) and Wikimedia (@[email protected]) - embraced the Open Social Web and the Fediverse this year. Bringing with them lots of different Wikipedia accounts, but also launching a whole server devoted to Wiki creators of all types. (https://wikis.world/about)

What I wish for all of these projects, may they thrive and may their gene pool increase.

And of course, looking forward I now do predict we see Threads Federating

I say this as I’ve seen breadcrumbs of code surfacing in the apps, and early features such as rel=me support in Threads, and that at every chance they have had to reaffirm their commitment to joining the open social web, they have voiced that commitment and not watered it down.

We will see. It’s still almost all talk until they deliver. But am hopeful now, and also remain on the same strategy as I voiced before on this blog.