"we should stay weird. unsanitized. unmarketable. for to do otherwise would be to forfeit the very soul of what makes the fediverse so special"

also published at https://vanta.blog/posts/2025-8-14-stay-weird-fedi

Building on some initial reports coming from the FediPact account and Dropsite news, we dive into potential measures admins can take for their instances.

Since both lemmy and Mastodon use the fediverse, is it possible to view comment threads under posts from lemmy in Mastodon? How to find a link that works in both/ is it related to the posts id?

Would these work with #hashtags ?

Better social media is possible.

In his new book Move Slowly and Build Bridges, Robert W. Gehl tells the story of the activists, software developers, artists, and everyday people who have built the fediverse, a noncentralized alternative social media system. Unlike big tech corporations like Facebook, TikTok, or X, the fediverse is comprised of thousands of small, independent communities who use a Web protocol to communicate with one another.

These small communities govern themselves and moderate content at the human scale — compare that to Facebook and X, which try to moderate global conversations. And the fediverse isn’t built in order to gather user data and sell attention to marketers — it’s a more privacy-respecting social media alternative.

The most notable part of the fediverse is Mastodon. Founded in 2016, Mastodon was positioned as an alternative to Twitter. Like Twitter (or X), Mastodon members can post, like, share, and connect with one another across the world. Unlike Twitter/X, Mastodon can be completely under the control of its members, from how it’s run to its underlying software.

Making a noncentralized, ethically run social media system isn’t easy. The people building the fediverse have faced long hours, burnout, angry debates, and, worst of all, bigotry, death threats, and discrimination. They face constant, nagging doubts: Can we really do this? Can noncentralized social media survive in a world that is used to corporate social media? Can we—all of us—have our own social media?

As Move Slowly and Build Bridges shows us, the answer is yes, but it’s going to take a struggle.

There's a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline for the open source federated alternative to Tiktok and Vine, including a Web UI and a boatload of new features. Let's dive in, and see what's coming in the next release.

Dropsitenews published a list of websites Facebook uses to train its AI on. Multiple Lemmy instances are on the list as noticed by user BlueAEther

Hexbear is on there too. Also Facebook is very interested in people uploading their massive dongs to lemmynsfw.

Full article here.

Link to the full leaked list download: Meta leaked list pdf

I'm preparing a presentation on how to implement an automated moderation of content on social media. I wanted to talk a bit on how this is done by small forums and Fediverse instances came as an obvious focus of study for me. Is it all done by hand by human moderators, or are there any tools that can filter out the obvious violations of instance's rules? I'm thinking mostly about images, are those filtered for nudity/violence?

Are services like Lemmy, Mastodon or PeerTube KYC'd in the UK?

Sorry to be a doomer, but if so, then the Fediverse has failed and we should just move on with a decentralized web that uses decentralized backends: Nostr, Odysee/LBRY, etc.

Maybe the threat model of the Fediverse was incomplete. It isn't just Big Tech who is threat, but also regulation by Big Government.

Although some people debate whether or not Nostr is part of the Fediverse, the reality is that we have a lot in common, and the networks do overlap in places.

This is a really cool interview. Rabble is someone who started using the Internet in the late 90s to organize protests and bolster independent media. He would go on to become a founding member of Twitter, before focusing his attention on next-generation communication systems such as Secure Scuttlebutt and Nostr.

Dude has a massive depth of knowledge, and is a super cool guy. You can listen to this on my site, or wherever you get your podcasts!

If the USA were to implement such, how would it effect lemmy instances and other federated services?

I'm looking for somewhere where I can ask for a topic and have suggestions and be redirected to a fitting community if one exists

If there's a community for this, can someone share it? Thanks

Btw the topic I'm searching for is wireless (bluetooth) earbuds, thanks!

Hello, dear "Lemmings" (correct address?)

As a quite new user to the Lemmy universe and the Fediverse concept, I have a basic question, which I could not get answered elsewhere: If an instance (= a community / topic group, e. g. "memes","World news" or "MapPorn" in the example picture) is moving from one server to another (= the name and/or ending changes), how to properly follow the move? And what happens to the "old" instances, that are discontinued? Should I keep them following?

Best regards

The latest release of the ActivityPub WordPress plugin introduces new functionality for performing remote follows directly from WordPress. Here's why that's important for the future of WordPress on the Fediverse.

There will be a lot of lemm.ee/p/123 links around. As far as I understand, any server that federated with lemm.ee (e.g. lemmy.world) will continue to host the federated communities and posts forever.

So here's my proposal. We build a simple tool that says, when you visit lemm.ee/p/123, we check if that post exists on lemmy.world and forward you there. Doesn't necessarily have to be lemmy.world. We could even present the user with multiple instances to resolve the post from.

If you're interested in how this would work, it would utilize the resolve_object endpoint, which both Lemmy and PieFed implement.

Here are some examples of how you can still look up lemm.ee posts via the API of other instances:

• https://lemmy.world/api/v3/resolve_object?q=https%3A%2F%2Flemm.ee%2Fpost%2F65824884
• https://lemmy.world/api/v3/resolve_object?q=https%3A%2F%2Flemmy.world%2Fpost%2F31931507
• https://lemmy.world/api/v3/resolve_object?q=https%3A%2F%2Flemm.ee%2Fpost%2F37715
• https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/resolve_object?q=https%3A%2F%2Flemm.ee%2Fpost%2F68181403
• https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/resolve_object?q=https%3A%2F%2Flemm.ee%2Fpost%2F67260380
• https://piefed.social/api/alpha/resolve_object?q=https%3A%2F%2Flemm.ee%2Fpost%2F58774156
• https://piefed.world/api/alpha/resolve_object?q=https%3A%2F%2Flemm.ee%2Fpost%2F65568521

For this to really work smoothly, whoever owns the domains of the shut down instances would have to host this tool (e.g. lemm.ee would have to host it at lemm.ee). I have no idea how to get in touch with whoever owns the domain, but I would be happy to help build this.

Current Fediverse Implementation

From my understanding, the prominent fediverse implementations implement fanout via writing to other instances.

In other words, if user A on instance A makes post A, instance A will write or sync post A in all instances that have followers for user A. So user B on instance B will read post A from instance B.

Why this is Done

From my understanding, to prevent a case where post A is viral and everyone wants to read it, and instance A's database gets overwhelmed with reads. It also serves to replicate content

My Question: Why not rely on static files instead of database reads / writes to propagate content?

Instead of the above, if someone follows user A, they can get user A's posts via a static file that contains all of User A's posts. Do the same for everyone you follow.

Reading this file will be a lot less resource intensive than a database read, and with a CDN would be even better.

Cons

• posts are less "Real time". Why? Because when post A is made, the static file must be updated (though fediverse does this already), and user B or instance B must fetch it. User B / instance B do not have the post pushed to them, so the post arrives with a delay depending on how frequently they fetch. But frequent fetches are okay, and easier to handle heavy loads than database reads.
• if using a CDN for the static files, there's another delay based on the TTL and invalidation. This should still be small, up to a couple minutes at most.

Pros

• hosting a fediverse server is more accessible and cheaper, and it could scale better.
• Federation woes of posts not federating to other instances can potentially be resolved, as the fanout architecture is less complex (no longer necessary to write to a dozens or hundreds of instances for a single post).
• Clients can have greater freedom in implementing how they create news feeds. You don't have to rely on your instance to do it. Instances primarily make content available, and clients can handle creating news feeds, content sorting and filtering (optional), etc.

What are your thoughts on this?

Or another term which is more descriptive. This is the first thing people see when they type in Lemmy

July 12th, 2025 @ 4am UTC

SPREAD THE WORD 🔥

• View the countdown
• 2025 Canvas Size: 500x500
• Palette: link

Related posts:

• Group Finder & Templating Information
• Community Tools
• Support

what is Canvas?

Canvas is a collaborative pixel canvas that includes everyone apart of the Fediverse! Any fediverse platform that supports direct messages is able to login and participate for this 48 hour live event

socials

• !canvas@toast.ooo
• @canvas@fediverse.events
• PeerTube
• Matrix Space
• Discord Server (bridged to matrix)

it's time to get hyped!

July 12th, 2025 @ 4am UTC

you can now open the Canvas to setup your templates and preview how it's going to work!

2025 Canvas Size: 500x500

Related posts:

• Group Finder & Templating Information
• Community Tools
• Support

what is Canvas?

Canvas is a collaborative pixel canvas that includes everyone apart of the Fediverse! Any fediverse platform that supports direct messages is able to login and participate for this 48 hour live event

socials

• !canvas@toast.ooo
• @canvas@fediverse.events
• PeerTube
• Matrix Space
• Discord Server (bridged to matrix)

On Reddit, Subreddits have a "Modmail" feature that allows users to message all subreddit moderators at once, and moderators can respond collaboratively.

Should Lemmy consider potentially implement something similar, for Communities?

Even a basic version — like leveraging the already existing DM feature to have a Group DM that automatically includes all moderators and the user who sent the message — could help improve communication between users and community mod teams.

This could just use Lemmy's existing DM system but adapted for group messages tied to the mod team of a specific community.

Later on, if this proves to be successful, it could potentially be tweaked even further, and have support for Modchat, via the same Group DM as the potential Modmail.

Community Modmail System (Group DM for Mods + User) - GitHub Issue

I started to notice that my posts get no interactions at all and that a lot of communities seem to be empty. At first I thought that it's just the effect of Lemme. ee shutting down, but after checking some of the communities from my current alt account I started to notice that .Dev does not pull the latest posts and does not federate my posts.

one of the Fchannel0 forks is still getting updated, and has an instance running.

But it seems to be an isolated instance, as the federation appears to have been broken:
https://github.com/anomalous69/FChannel/issues/9
https://usagi.reisen/followers

more info:
https://fediverse.wiki/wiki/FChan

Source.

Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

My dad used to say this to me. He didn’t come up with it of course. Searching for the source, I see attribution to Marc Anthony. How it came to be a 70-80 year old man was quoting a singer to me I’d bet money he’d never heard, I’ll never know. Maybe he didn’t either.

The basic idea behind the quote is that what you’re doing won’t feel like work if it’s something you love doing anyway. I mean, think of the thing you want to be doing right now instead of reading this post. Your favorite thing in the world. Now, along comes some idiot who offers to pay you to do that very thing! How can you possibly say no?

There’s a darker aspect to this quote that I don’t think people consider though. If you take the thing you love and do that for work, you’re turning what you love into a job. This is a trap that I’ve fallen into. Multiple times.

lemm.ee has shut down at 00:14 UTC.

unfortunately I realized too late that I have had hundreds of saved links to posts and comments from there, so I did not have enough time to save them, but anyways it is interesting that maybe a third of the post links I could try were dead. I think linkrot is happening much faster here than on reddit, even if just counting deleted posts.