One thing about this surge of people migrating from #Twitter to the #Fediverse is that people who gave up on #federated #socnets years ago and solely used #corpocentric platforms are now coming back.
Thus, I get announcements about people I knew from #Tent (thanks to fellow former Tentler @bthall) along with news about people from #Identi.ca and other #StatusNet and #Pump.io instances returning.
I actually think that the overwhelming majority of blocking should be done by individuals curating their own timelines. I am sensitive to the effect on the Fediverse as a whole, especially as we've already been through this.
Even the original #bifurcation (when the largest instance at the time, Identica, severed communication with #StatusNet / #GNUsocial & #OStatus and switched to the #Pump.io protocol and software) and the subsequent #ActivityPub - #OStatus split have caused untold breakage. I've seen AP-side devs, admins, users patting themselves on the back while commiserating about brokenness that is built into the protocol itself or at least its common implementations.
I have also seen people telling other people to create "alts" on various instances, so that their posts can reach all of their intended contacts. Not for resilience against instance shutdowns or separating by posts and recipients by topics and interests (which is what groups and Diaspora style Aspects / GPlus style Circles are for), but because #blockwars prevents posts and members from one instance to be seen on certain others.
For the record, I think that instance governance is something that Mastodon should include in its instances.social instance-picker, along with instances' topical foci. People should have a way to see what they're agreeing to (and what the alternatives are) before the sign up.
In other words, it isn't my way or the highway so much as it is making it possible to know what one is getting into. I am certain that there are (or were) instances with democratically chosen rules. I also believe that we're not doing the people who use an instance any favor by not making it possible for them to contribute to the financing and administration of the instance. If you're paying all the costs and doing all the work to maintain and moderate the instance, it is difficult to let an election institute a policy that you disagree with. (I've started to really disagree with the idea of individuals hosting public instances wholly out of their own financial and time resources. Besides the "truck factor", it is much easier to keep an instance going if everything was already handled by a team and at least partly member supported.)
On the other hand, if the instance encourages those in its membership who can do so to participate in keeping it going, then it is perfectly reasonable to expect the admin team to carry out the decisions voted by the membership. I do realize that not everyone can contribute funds, nor can everyone do the technical labor ... but as @simsa04 will remember, things like writing documentation, contributing in discussions about improving the software, designing and implementing themes, and even marketing-type tasks such as creating a logo and a favicon or promoting the instance to people outside the #Fediverse are beneficial.
He did, but he kept control of them, so when his funds ran short, most of them disappeared. I've thought about deploying a Federati #Pump.io instance, but it runs atop #Node.js. I'd want to rent a completely separate server ( #VPS ) for it, so nothing else is affected if a poorly understood #JavaScript engine goes haywire.
@musicman I know #django moved to LiberaChat, but #python is still debating it. #haskell is moving also. I also checked #nim, but I did not see any discussion about moving.
Neither Evan nor Alex have expressed an opinion about moving #pump.io, so I suspect it will remain on Freenode. I checked #hubzilla, but there doesn’t appear to have been any discussion about it. I left #friendica after someone set up a really noisy bridgebot, so I don’t know whether they’re moving. I also left #mastodon
Freenode is the official IRC host for the GNU project, so a lot of GNU software is awaiting a decision from GNU.
(All hashtags above are names of Freenode IRC channels / rooms, some of which are in the process of moving to Libera.Chat or OFTC.)
I’m still looking for a low priced annual payment VPS provider that has a somewhat lower risk (of closure, hardware failure, etc) than most LEB hosts, so I can launch temporary testing instances (for example, the upgrade of GS to the #ActivityPub enabled 2.0 branch, and looking at how well #Zap, #Pleroma, #Friendica instances fit into the !FNetworks roadmap).
I’m also considering adding a Federati #Pump.io instance, but I need to talk with the Pump.io project about SSO options. Since they use Node.JS, I’d want it on a completely separate VPS, with some restrictions to prevent incidents. Also, if utilization is too low, that would likely close.
Currently, everything is still coming out of my pocket.
https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/8642 #Friendica Someone that is familiar with #Diaspora is writing a new socnet based on #ActivityPub, wishes to change other #Fediverse software to follow Diaspora's model (viewer's server hijacks hashtags so the #hashtag search points to the viewer's home server, not the original poster's home server). The model that has been followed by almost all federated socnets for over a decade is that hashtag search links are inserted by the poster's server and point back there.
IMO, a remote server changing the links is sketchy as heck*, but if they added local hashtag links in a separate area outside the post itself, that's acceptable. Or if they followed the #Pump.io idea of keeping hashtags completely separate from the basic server, then an external server (e.g. ragtag\.io) would be called to index and link the tag during the posting process, and searches would be performed based on results from the tag server.
Anyway, I can't be bothered logging into Github to comment, but maybe @heluecht and other Friendica devs will see this and take this into consideration.
* Remote servers editing the contents of one's posts is about as sketchy as it gets. There are rare occasions where that may be acceptable (i.e., to insert NSFW tags / image hiding on posts from instances where untagged NSFW content originates), but editing content to hijack hashtag search is about as questionable as one could get.
For example, RagTag\.io was to provide hashtagging for the network. There were statistics hubs, a firehose, a find-your-friends service, and more. The repositories are still there, mostly without being touched for 6-8 years, but the primary service point (such as ofirehose\.com and ragtag\.io are almost universally gone, replaced by domain squatters and the like).
Just tried out the AndStatus app on Android. I successfully added accounts for pump.io and Titter, but adding this Mastodon account failed. I tried adding a Friendica account as a GNU social account, since it supports OStatus and I can't see any other way to do it, but that failed. I don't think I have a GNU social account since the Quitter. sites went down, but I'll have to check and maybe set up a new one for testing purposes.