Fediverse

Group

!fediverse@lemmy.ml · Created ⁨Dec⁩ ⁨2019⁩

A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”.

Getting started on Fediverse;

Moderators (2)

posted in Fediverse

How does this downvote federate to my instance when the instance of the comm the post is on doesn't allow downvotes?

So my understanding is that non-local communities receive interactions from other instances, then the host instance relays those interactions to all subscribed instances.

It’s also my understanding that when an instance disables downvoting, it also doesn’t relay downvotes onward.

So how do I see this?

This is the scenario:

  1. A hexbear.net user posts to a hexbear.net community [downvotes disabled], which gets relayed to all subscribed instances like mine (thelemmy.club) and mander.xyz, etc.
  2. A mander.xyz user sees it and downvotes it, which is sent to Hexbear
  3. Hexbear receives the downvote and discards it (or at least, I always assumed so)

If it had been one of the local users of thelemmy.club I could understand seeing it, as it would be recorded in our local database. But how am I seeing a foreign downvote on a Hexbear community?

posted in Fediverse

opinion: lemmy instances - should disclose basic hardware and infrastructure in "about" section. Most lemmy instances cant afford to have non-text users

When you choose a Lemmy home instance, you’re trusting somebody else’s infrastructure with your account, posts, comments, and uploaded media.

If that instance disappears without a usable backup or migration path, years of your contributions can disappear with it.

Yet when I look at most instances, I have absolutely no idea what I’m trusting.

Is this running on:

  • A $5 VPS?
  • A dedicated server with redundant storage?
  • Someone’s mini PC under their desk?
  • AWS with costs that explode exponentially as traffic increases and hapless admin not realizing that just shutting it down as they never had a plan?
  • A database with proper backups?
  • A server with no backups at all?

I recently had an instance tell me my posting activity alone was becoming too expensive for them. Their solution was - just banning me and removing all my data. no im not kidding - thx lemmy.radio.

That immediately makes me wonder: what are you running? (apparently it was aws micro or something and person clearly had no idea what they were doing)

If a few hundred posts can create a meaningful financial problem, is the instance massively undersized? Are you paying enterprise hyperscaler prices for workloads that could run cheaply on dedicated hardware? Is storage the problem? Bandwidth? Pictrs? Database load? Do you even have a plan my friends?

I don’t know, because users are given almost zero infrastructure information.

I’m not asking admins to publish IP addresses, network diagrams, credentials, or anything security-sensitive.

Just put some basics in /about:

  • Hosting: OVH / Hetzner / AWS / home-hosted / etc.
  • Compute: 8 cores / 32 GB RAM
  • Storage: 2 TB NVMe
  • Backups: Daily, retained 30 days
  • Media backups: Yes / No
  • Off-site backups: Yes / No
  • Approximate capacity: Small / Medium / Large
  • Funding: Self-funded / donations / nonprofit / etc.

That tells me infinitely more about whether I’m comfortable making an instance my home.

  • Have admin(s) ever hosted any production software before? First time?
  • are there even backups?
  • Is there even any plans for scalability? What if your traffic goes 4x? what about 20x? do you have a plan beyond banning me and removing everythig I ever posted?
    And honestly, backups matter to same tune as CPU model.

Federation gives us the freedom to choose our instance. Great.

But you can’t make an informed choice when you have no idea whether your digital home is a properly backed-up server or a $5 VPS from a racknerd black friday sale held together with Docker Compose and prayers.

Is that the reason why all lemmy instances dont let you upload more than 5Mb media? probably.

If you cant afford hosting costs - holy fuck, just stop fucking saying “everyone welcome” if you then going to ban those same “welcomed” people after they post 10 image memes (thx sopuli.xyz and lemmy.zip and lemmy.radio and lemmy.ml). no no - 👏you 👏 cant 👏 afford 👏 non-text 👏 users 👏, - instead you falsely accuse people of spamming and banning their accounts. No wonder lemmy is at 35k MAU. Hardware poor admins - you don’t even know what spamming is, you shouldn’t have kids users if you cant afford them, dont invite them in or just advertise your instances as text-only.

Hardware poor admins - stop inviting people. you have no capacity and only actively harming lemmy adoption.

There should be a list of such instances that should be inviting people at all.

Instance infrastructure shouldn’t be a mystery.

If you’re asking users to build years of history on your server, give them enough information to understand what they’re building it on. You likely cant afford non-text users anyways.

lemmy.radioLemmy.Radio - A lemmy instance for amateur radio enthusiasts and communities.Lemmy

posted in Fediverse

Would activitypub fit a fanfiction archive similar to AO3?

I’m building a fanfiction archive and I was wondering whether I should add federation just to the forum or to the whole site and if I add it to the whole site whether or not ActivityPub would be a good fit, like is it possible using ActivityPub to share the load of hosting the files across different instances or is that something unrelated and it’s only useful for typical social interactions?

posted in Fediverse

PyLova v0.3.2 Released! Muffles, Reels, Flags, Bookmarks, and more!

PyLova (Python+Pavlova) is a soft fork of PieFed, aimed at improving the user experience through UI overhauls, empowering users and admins with agency, improved administration and moderation functions, and general bug fixing.

New in V0.3.2

New & Improved

  • Muffle Users : Instead of outright blocking a user, you can now ‘Muffle’ them. This will place their content behind a spoiler. This functionality has also been extended to the filter system.
  • Live Posts : Mods can designate a post as a Live Post. A Live Post will continuously update with new posts coming through will sorting by new. This is great for keeping track on currently happening events such as global news or sports.
  • Reel View : This is a new way to browse the site, putting it into ‘Reel’ view shows one post per scroll. Cuts out the noise, allowing you to appreciate one post at a time.
  • User Flags : Want to show off who you are? Add a flag next to your pronouns. These small flags can be set by instance admins, great show showing Pride Flags, Sports Teams, Nationalities, Political Ideologies, etc.
  • Bookmark Organisation : Users can now sort their bookmarked posts and comments by folders.
  • Admin Notes : Admins and Instance Moderators can share notes about users on their profile page, this can be handy in building a history of bad behaviour or sharing concerns.
  • Account Oversight : Admins and Instance Moderators have greater ability to search through a users upvoted and downvoted content.
  • New Theme : Nocturne Core @luminous5481@anarchist.nexus has wonderfully created a Sci-Fi inspired theme you can apply.

Bug-Fixes & Misc

  • Lemmy/Mbin support for Multi-Image Posts : Multi-Image Posts will now add the extra images into the post body for users on Lemmy and Mbin so they don’t have to miss out on your amazing content.
  • Censorship Transparency : On the instance about page, there is now a one-stop location for viewing what sort of things are being censored by your instance.
  • Options Menu : The menu has been updated with a more navigable UI in 3 Panel Mode.
  • Reactions Only Mode : A small setting for instance admins to ‘turn off’ up and downvotes, letting posts only have emoji reactions. Note, emoji reacts do technically count as an upvote and this is more of a visual change in regards to user view.
  • Trusted Instances Only Federation : Communities can already be set to local only, this feature allows communities to only be visible on those in your instances trusted list.
  • Banned Users can now unsubscribe from a community, allowing them to remove it from their feed.
  • Blocked/Unfederated Instances now show more information, such as allowing for reasons why it was removed.
  • Poll Post Type teasers had a slight visual inconsistency, their icon should now align properly with every other post type.
  • Flair, Tags, & Live Status all follow the same visual format. Also now visible on post teasers.
  • General Performance Improvements.
  • Code Refactoring to follow a more pythonic style guide and reduce McCabe complexity.

posted in Fediverse

The Fediverse is Throwing a Music Festival

Believe it or not, the Fediverse has a pretty active and happening music scene. NHAM and RadioFreeFedi are collaborating to put together a music and culture live stream, for the Fediverse, by the Fediverse, and it’s all powered by PeerTube and Owncast.

The event is from August 26th @ 1900 UTC to August 28th @ 0100 UTC

wedistribute.org/2026/08/the-fediverse-is-throwing-a-music-festival/
nhamfestWe DistributeThe Fediverse is Throwing a Music FestivalBelieve it or not, the Fediverse has a thriving independent art community. This week, a bunch of them are coming together to perform online.