607 private links
- What better way to start than with Elena Rossini's four-minute video https://blog.elenarossini.com/fediverse-video
[the] technology is a facilitating thing. It's like trying to describe how a bicycle works, rather than why you ride it.
Instead, what the Fediverse is, is a place to have conversations online without algorithms, AI, and ads getting in the way.
Which is increasingly a rare thing online.
Almost the entirety of the internet, from SEO on the web to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to Instagram and X and Facebook, has been turned into a race to game an algorithm designed to sell ads.
What makes the Fedi unique is that it's not that.
https://gts.sadauskas.id.au/@aj/statuses/01KHCQFQVEXJKWT7X2HEH5WW1H
- open https://openalex.org and search for "fediverse"
lots of interesting hits- add Author stats, see that there is around 200 authors - not just a few prolific authors/groups
- sort by "citation count", explore the most cited papers
- stats from 2024 with world map https://www.sfscon.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/173071555849720241026-tobiasd-SFSCon24-aboutFediverse.en_.pdf#page=8
- Fediverse: built on open standards and free software
- "Tree and branches" illustration by Per Axbom
- Fediverse (social networking) is still tiny compared to corporate "social media", let's grow it together! Fediverse network stats.
- https://jointhefediverse.net/learn
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
- https://www.theoverview.art/fediverse
Getting started on the Fediverse
- https://blog.elenarossini.com/my-fediverse-starter-guide
- För svenska Fediverse https://wiki.konstellationen.org/sv/guider/mastodon-hitta-folk
- https://critical-switch.org/en/posts/introduction-to-the-fediverse - good text, good illustrations
- https://fedi.tips
- https://fediverse.info
- https://www.sfscon.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/173071555849720241026-tobiasd-SFSCon24-aboutFediverse.en_.pdf#page=11
- https://fedidb.com/welcome
- Try to avoid joining the biggest instances, in particular don't choose mastodon.social. For the health of the federated ecosystem.
- https://fediverse.party - a more visual overview of the largest Fediverse galaxies
- Mastodon tools and services https://links.solarchemist.se/shaare/8mVBaQ
- Fediverse Observer https://links.solarchemist.se/shaare/jXx_gA
Finding people to follow
- https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon
- https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends
- https://fedinyheter.nyhetskartan.se/hitta-svenskar-i-fediversum
- https://streetpass.social - a browser extension that helps you find Mastodon users as you browse the web
Useful or fun stuff built on top of Fedi
- Guide to how to use "operators" to search Mastodon effectively https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116047804904821397
- https://mastodon.academy/by/@solarchemist@scholar.social (replace with any account you want to "profile")
- https://axbom.me/notice/B1kPrJcGYq6RXnAbXE - service for linking to a page where people can follow you on the Fediverse
Examples and more background
- University of Groningen Library ditching Youtube in favour of PeerTube https://social.edu.nl/@Bibliothecaris/115622191356250599
- https://blog.zaramis.se/2026/02/18/de-fria-sociala-medierna
- https://fedinyheter.nyhetskartan.se/mastodon-infor-nytt-satt-att-rekommendera-instans
What about Bluesky and other Big Tech?
Elena Rossini har en nice presentation https://blog.elenarossini.com/if-big-tech-social-platforms-are-junk-food-and-the-fediverse-is-a-healthy-home-cooked-meal-then-what-is-bluesky
- does not federate with the Fediverse (unless the user herself sets up a "bridge")
- false promise of decentralization using the AT protocol
- your block list is publicly visible
- algorithms (controlled by the platform owner) are still king
- heavily financed by crypto-bros and other opaque sources
As a step on the journey away from Twitter it is not too bad.
But please don't stop there - continue the journey towards the free, open web.
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Despite what this report says, I would not say that "Threads and Bluesky" are "services in the fediverse". Threads does federate with the Fediverse, but in my opinion that is only a cynical effort by Facebook to "embrace, extend, and extinguish."
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https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2021/10/addictive-potential-of-social-media-explained.html - book review of "Dopamine Nation" (2021) by Anna Lembke.
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Is Big Tech social media the new tobacco? https://mastodon.social/@leavex/116020298210824813
Very cool :-)
Here's my modest profile, for example.
Feels like I keep hearing about new FOSS tools and services interfacing with Mastodon every day.
I need some place to keep track of them.
- https://github.com/toelke/mastodon2rss - Serve your mastodon home feed to RSS (including boosts!)
- https://streetpass.social - a browser extension that helps you find Mastodon users as you browse
- https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon - a collection of various lists of academics on Mastodon servers.
- https://lemmyverse.net - search Lemmy instances or communities
- https://mastogizmos.com - a collection of JavaScript apps to search and explore the Mastodon universe. By https://www.calishat.com. Via https://researchbuzz.masto.host/@researchbuzz/114372841943284024
- https://delightful.coding.social/delightful_activitypub_development - curated list of resources for ActivityPub developers who create software for the Fediverse.
On-boarding people
- https://fedidb.com/welcome, via https://mastodon.social/@dansup/114483074813774602
- https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends
Creating threads
- https://splinter.hastily.cc - split long articles into Mastodon threads. Via https://social.hastily.cc/@neiman/114591328088507928.
- https://rstockm.github.io/mastothread - split your long text into bitesize posts. Via @vicgrinberg.
Find a Fediverse server to sign up for, find one close to you!
A site that shows Fediverse servers status. Cool.
This unofficial guide to the Fediverse is also really good
https://fedi.tips
More good introductions to the Fediverse keep popping up:
Sorry about the mangled toot earlier!
I just figured out how to send any note I make in my Shaarli instance to my Mastodon and Twitter feeds. Awesome! Now I can keep my content on my own site, but still share it with silos like Twitter.
https://shaarli.chepec.se/shaare/YSJ_Cg
Trying to apply the idea of POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) to my own posting. Here I'll summarise my results.
Automatically tweet public links I add to Shaarli (this would be a very convenient solution). But did not work because Twitter now requires you to jump through hoops to get access to the Twitter API from within your own Twitter account! Most egregiously, there is no way to complete their application procedure without handing over and verifying your phone number. Not doing that, Twitter can forget about it.
I still liked the idea of using Shaarli as my canonical source, so to speak, so let's look into Shaarli -> Mastodon instead. Alright, that's awesome and works great (well, unfortunately my Mastodon instance does not render Markdown, but that's not shaarli2mastodon's fault - I'll just have to avoid using Markdown in Shaarli notes posted to Mastodon).
With Shaarli -> Mastodon working, let's explore whether Lond's Mastodon <-> Twitter cross-poster can tweet our toots.
And yes, indeed, that worked right away. All I had to do was authorize the app on both my Mastodon and Twitter accounts. It needs lot of permissions, but hey, at least its source code is public, and it's even possible to self-host it.
That's positively awesome! I can now select to post any Shaarli note to Mastodon, and doing so will automatically
cross-post the same to Twitter too. Well done, POSSE!
- micro.blog is perhaps a nice alternative to self-hosting, and allows cross-posting to Twitter, Mastodon, et al.
- github.com/AmauryCarrade/MastodonToTwitter is another software project, but may be broken (last commit over a year ago, with an open issue that looks worrying)
- https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter-poster
- https://github.com/bitkeks/mastodon-to-twitter
- https://github.com/yogthos/mastodon-bot
- https://p.xuv.be/how-to-transition-from-twitter-to-mastodon
- https://tantek.com/2023/296/t1/posse-syndicate-link-reply
- https://tantek.com/2024/173/t1/years-posse-microformats-adoption
Seems there is a new kid on the block: moa.
Ok, so this video is a few years old, but it does not have anywhere near the views it deserves. It's never too late to do reproducible science! (Video 1m 44s)
Reproducible science not only reduce errors, but speeds up the process of re-running your analysis and auto-generate updated documents with the results.