https://piefed.social/u/wisdomchicken posted on Mar 5, 2026 18:35
On Mastodon’s new Share button, and protocol ownership.
On Mastodon’s new Share button, and protocol ownership.
An unusually clear explanatory article. This problem needs fixing. As a layperson it looks to me like the “discussion” mentioned needs to crystallize into a proper meeting of all stakeholders so as to get a binding decision about how to fix it.
One problem with the whole C2S thing is you can easily end up in the Matrix/XMPP situation where some clients and servers implement some smattering of standards and it just becomes confusing to navigate and use.
This is approximately the situation in the fediverse today, with Mastodon in the role of Gmail. The difference is that email has IMAP and SMTP, client protocols that are not only standardized but universally adopted. Every email server implements them and every email client expects them.
Tuta has entered the chat.
cross-posted from: https://multiverse.soulism.net/c/soulism/p/51754/multiverse-has-defederated-fedinsfw-app-for-hosting-child-pornography
Hello MULTIVERSE users and off-site visitors alike. We have recently defederated fedinsfw.app due to ongoing child pornography concerns which the fedinsfw admin team are aware of, and do not intend to address. Before I explain the key issue, I’d like to define a few terms:
- In Australia, Child Pornography Material is legally defined by the Criminal Code Act 1995, section 473.1 as:
(a) material that depicts a person, or a representation of a person, who is, or appears to be, under 18 years of age and who […] is engaged in, or appears to be engaged in, a sexual pose […]; and does this in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive;
[…]
© material that describes a person who is, or is implied to be, under 18 years of age and who […] is engaged in, or is implied to be engaged in, a sexual pose […]; and does this in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive; or […]
Jailbait is a slang term for pornography depicting subjects who appear to be of age (adults), but are in fact underage (children; adolescents)
Fauxbait is faux jailbait - pornography depicting adults who appear to be children who appear to be adults.
According to the legal definition of child pornography material here in Australia, fauxbait is child pornography material, because of the implication that the actors depicted represent underage persons. And frankly, we here at MULTIVERSE agree with the law here. Fauxbait is disgusting. Legally and in our opinion, pornography depicting adult women who appear as adults is completely fine. But if someone posts a picture of an adult woman and calls it “fauxbait”, we are disgusted and the law is interested. Reality is not objective - the same legal picture of an adult person becomes illegal child pornography when it’s posted with a particular framing.
fedinsfw.app hosts a community, !fauxbait@fedinsfw.app, which is for Fauxbait. I have contacted the admin of the site, @lemmyposter212@fedinsfw.app, both privately and in public, pointing out that the community breaks the site’s rules 1 and 8. The admin disagrees. Although they dislike the community, they don’t believe it breaks the rules, and do not wish to violate their impartiality by banning the community.
We here at MULTIVERSE have no such impartiality. The admin inaction on child pornography violates our Rule 3 on Restricted Violence, in that it’s fucking nasty. It’s degrading to the women being posted to call them fauxbait, it’s dangerous towards the users to expose them to risks of committing sex crimes, and it has the potential to desensitise people to child porn, making them more likely to re-offend in worse ways. We are joining the growing movement of instances defederating fedinsfw.app, and we ask if your instance has not, that you speak to your admins and ask them to do the same.
As a feddit.org user, I’m really interested how this discussion about instances obeying local laws will turn out when it’s about child porn.
For the record, I believe feddit.org goes far beyond the legal requirements with respect to zionist hate speech.
On mastodon side there is iftas.
What would be an equivalent for lemmy?
Since I am on a single user instance, the instance receives only stuff from the communities I subscribe to.
This means that I just select what I am interested in.
So far after over 1 year I never seen a single “dangerous” piece of stuff, so I think the risk is a not overstated.
The downside is that my “all/everything” feed is identical to my subscribed feed, bummer.
So defederation just means we block some of instances
I browse different lemmy instances usually because the feed is always different. Was blown away when I recently went to lemmy.today, no clue when they did the change but whoever is in charge of the design has my admiration! *(chef’s kiss)*
omg he’s still following you? what’d you do to trigger him so much?
Yeah. He hasn’t let up even a little bit. Seems he’s my new pet!
In other words, can any user delete its data on its will and is there something that will remove its data from all the connected activitypub services? I believe this should actually be a basic feature and pretty much a requirement.
Anything you post on the internet is public knowledge forever. End of discussion. Most people won’t care at all, in most cases almost nobody or perhaps even literally nobody will ever even see it, but the harder you try to hide it, the more the Streisand Effect will magnify it until eventually everyone knows about it.
Anyone telling you they’ll delete your data from the internet without clarifying that it is in fact impossible, is at worst deliberately lying to you usually for their own benefit, and at best making a promise they literally have zero ability to keep.
I would hope that Fediverse services will never lie to you and tell you your data is deleted, because it can’t be.
I think not? Which is kind of a drawback to the fediverse. You gotta be careful what you post cause it’s probably gonna be somewhere forever.
I could be wrong though
On the behalf of the admin and moderation team:
We will not add age-verification unless we will literally be force-shutdown if we don’t.
If we do, it will be a one-on-one call in which you show one of us – personally, on our actual phone numbers or signal or some shit – your ID and we just put a little mark on your profile saying “yep we verified”
we will not, at any point, ever build age-verification into the software nor rely on my butt to do it. We don’t fucking want your data, it’s a massive risk to have around.
If we can get by without it, we will simply not do it, even if we have to block some countries. The UK is not a “target market” for app.wafrn.net as we have no target market.
I thought it was quite clear. Verifying your age with an alcohol purchase receipt is a dumb idea for a large variety of reasons, including ease of acquiring one, ease of copying images, ease of printing one yourself and the cumulative ease of doing all this without an actual adult willingly involved in your scheme. It’s is not nearly as fool proof as verifying government ID.
Of course, I’m against all invasive forms of age verification. Doesn’t mean I’m going to advocate for a rally bad alternative either.
They’re both dumb ideas. That’s the point.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43657336
So I’ve been thinking about the whole PSKY winning the bid for WBD situation, plus a ton of other US News sites being owned and controlled by MAGA — and now that PSKY owns massive legacy brands like CNN and platforms like TikTok, it got me wondering:
What would it look like if the Fediverse built its own large-scale news station?
And I don’t mean news apps (I know things like Flipboard already exist and are experimenting with federation). I mean:
A full-on journalism operation that is:
Fediverse-first
Hosted via PeerTube, Loops, its own website, etc.
Producing regular news broadcasts, investigative journalism, live streams, analysis panels, documentaries, etc.
Two Possible Models
- Professional Model (CNN-style equivalent)
A structured newsroom:
Editors, reporters, correspondents
Daily live broadcasts via PeerTube
Clip distribution via Loops
Federation across Mastodon/Lemmy/Pixelfed
Transparent funding (co-op model? public donations? instance-backed?)
Essentially: a decentralized alternative to cable news, but not algorithm-driven or corporate-owned.
- Amateur / Grassroots Model
Think:
Independent PeerTubers collaborating
Loop creators reporting locally
Lemmy communities functioning as distributed editorial desks
Citizen journalism amplified through federation
This could look more like a decentralized wire service, where stories propagate organically across instances.
Alternative Idea: Federated News Aggregator
Instead of building from scratch, what if the Fediverse collaborated with existing independent outlets like:
World Socialist Web Site
Communist.red
Mother Jones
The Nation
Common Dreams
The Intercept
Jacobin
Cpusa.org
(And many others.)
Podcasts:
The Deprogram:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/The_Deprogram
Revolutionary Left Radio:
Guerrilla History:
https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/
Jacobin Radio:
https://jacobin.com/author/jacobin-radio
The Majority Report:
https://majorityreportradio.com/
Against the Grain:
https://kpfa.org/program/against-the-grain/
etc
YouTubers:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Hakim
Second Thought:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Second_Thought
YUGOPNIK:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/YUGOPNIK
r/TankieTheDeprogram
https://www.reddit.com/r/TankieTheDeprogram/s/mJqfxpGOYK
r/TheDeprogarm
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogarm/s/Re7CYFSaSW
Maybe:
A federated aggregator
A shared ActivityPub-based publishing layer
A “news hub” instance that boosts and categorizes content
Or something similar to the federated streaming marketplace idea I suggested before — but for journalism instead of an Amazon Prime alternative
https://lemmy.world/post/40697282
Big Questions
Would a Fediverse news network increase credibility — or fragment it?
How would editorial standards work in a decentralized ecosystem?
Could co-op funding sustain professional reporting?
Would mainstream journalists ever migrate?
Should this aim to compete with centralized media — or complement it?
Also: would this risk becoming ideologically siloed? Or would federation naturally diversify perspectives?
Curious what everyone thinks.
Is this unrealistic? Inevitable? Already quietly happening?
Link to same post, but on Reddit:
The answer is in cross-posting.
They aren’t fediverse-first, and they’re French-based/French-focused/French-language-only, but Blast is an online, video-first news station that hosts their own peertube instance (https://video.blast-info.fr/) where they upload everything as well as putting their videos on YouTube. They also have a mastodon account where they share everything they publish: https://mamot.fr/@blast_info.
So, it’s definitely possible to have news on the fediverse, but I don’t think we’re at a point where it can be exclusively on the fedi - even if the stations’ website is ActivityPub-enabled, the majority of the people that a news station would want to reach just aren’t browsing the fediverse, let alone have accounts here.
I think topics and public feeds serve that role
Oh man, seeing folks suggest it as a Discord alternative always had me uninterested, because I don’t even use Discord and it just seemed like yet-another-standard.
Now I’m reading this really technical title for a talk which mentions XMPP and I’m instantly sold.
Well, to be honest, “Movim” also sounded like a VC-funded startup. Looks like it’s a bus-factor-of-1 open-source project instead, which I have significantly more trust in.
You have to ask whoever is running the server but it is possible
This reminds me of the way that forgejo lets you feed it an arbitrary openid url, sp you can log in with any service you want, including your own server.
This is awesome!!!!
