🆕 blog! “Scattered thoughts on social geolocation”

I want to be able to share my location with my friends on social media. Twitter (RIP) had a way to attach an optional location to a post. Facebook still lets me check in to venues. But neither ActivityPub (Mastodon) nor AT Protocol (BlueSky) allow me …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/07/scattered-thoughts-on-social-geolocation/
⸻
#ActivityPub #BlueSky #fediverse #FourSquare #geolocation #json #openstandards #OpenStreetMap

Good morning Fedi friends,

I have been feeling a rising anxiety over the state of the open web and the fediverse - after seeing efforts by politicians all over the world (in Europe too!) to introduce age verification laws for social media.

My way of coping?

Teaching people how to self-host their own Fediverse profile (using the superb #GoToSocial) via #YunoHost.

Chapter 1 in this series is available here:

🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-gotosocial-part-1-installation-and-set-up/

#resist #blog #ActivityPub #selfhosting

On traditional social media, leaving a platform means leaving your audience behind. The open social web promised something fundamentally better: true digital sovereignty and the right to exit.

However, migrating across the Fediverse today still leaves historical posts, media archives, and private threads stranded on your old server.

In our latest deep dive, we examine the World Wide Web Consortium's newly chartered Social Web Working Group (2026–2028) and the LOLA (Live Online Portability) specification—a protocol designed to bring full cryptographic state transfer and seamless account migration to ActivityPub.

We break down:
⚙️ The 4-phase LOLA workflow (Authenticated Data Export, Cryptographic Identity Binding, Outbox Re-indexing, and WebFinger Redirects)
📊 ActivityPub + LOLA vs. AT Protocol + PDS architecture comparison
🛡️ Why guaranteed exit rights are essential for digital creator business continuity

Read the full analysis: 🔗 https://opensocialbiz.com/articles/right-to-leave-w3c-lola-fediverse-account-migration

#Fediverse #ActivityPub #WebStandards

Alt...

Simplistic vector artwork showing data streams, cryptographic keys, and user nodes transferring across servers in an open social network layout.

@dansup or better idea, maybe just a new app for buying and selling stuff that could be a great alternative to Facebook Marketplace and Karrot.

#Marketplace #Karrot #BuySell #Used #UseItAgain #LibreSoftware #Fedi #Fediverse #ActivityPub

@dansup considering that Mastodon has zero interest in making their platform better like adding groups feature that Facebook has, are you interested in adding this feature to the Pixelfed?

Imagine having groups like "Canada buy-sell group", "Canada housing/rental group"?

Using Facebook for these sucks as it has TONS OF dangerous brain-dead bigots.

Thank you so much for your work BTW. ♥️🫂

#Pixelfed #activitypub #fedi #fediverse #community #group #groups #social #Canada #Canadian #Mastodon #LibreSoftware

Open sourcing the codebase does not make X part of the fediverse. Worth saying plainly.

Fediverse is about the protocol, not the license (obviously). ActivityPub lets my server and yours talk to each other. A public GitHub repo does not, X stays exactly as centralized and walled off as before, just with visible source.

Lie or not, I honestly do not know yet. What I know is a promise is not a mechanism. No timeline, no reproducible build process, no way today to check that the binary in production matches anything published.

For us here, this changes nothing. Still one company, one server, one decision maker.

#Fediverse #OpenSource #ActivityPub #Mastodon #DevOps #Blog

Alt...

Screenshot of a tweet from Elon Musk on X, posted July 15, 2026 at 11:56 AM with 7 million views. The tweet reads: Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of X open source, with no exceptions. Moreover, we will invite third party reviewers to examine the system that is running to confirm that the open source code is what is running. Trust through total transparency is the only thing that should be believed. The post shows 5.9K replies, 13K reposts, 111K likes, and 5.8K bookmarks.

Loops + Direct Messages

Shipping soon 🎉

#loops #directMessages #activityPub

Alt...

Loops Direct Messages feature

Summer is the worst season for animals. As the holidays get closer, shelters fill with pets left behind.

My cat and dog came from there. Haru (the cat) waited two years in a shelter, and our dog (Tanos) is one a relative could no longer keep. A black cat and a malinois, now sharing the same stairs.

Out of conviction, I built https://pawfed.org/how-it-works, a service working with #ActivityPub and #OSM.

It is not the perfect solution, but if you can help your local shelter, please do.

Alt...

Tanos, a tan Malinois, sits alert on a step while Haru, a small black cat, rests calmly on the step above, looking off to the side. Both are settled and at ease.

Week in Fediverse 2026-07-17

Servers

- flohmarkt v0.20.0
- Vernissage Server v1.40.0
- FitPub v1.2.0
- Wafrn v2026.07.02
- TinyAP v0.1.11
- NeoDB v0.16.5.0
- PieFed v1.7.6
- Catodon v26.7.0
- Trunk & Tidbits, June 2026 (Mastodon)
- matrix-appservice-activitypub: Turns your Matrix server into a fully functioning ActivityPub server
- Discord–Fediverse Bridge: A self-hosted bridge between Discord forum channels and ActivityPub community actors
- ~petersanchez/honk: Fork of honk

Clients

- PeerTube Mobile v2.2.0
- Photon v2.4.0
- Tesseract v1.5.5
- Aria v1.5.8
- Mitra Mini v0.5.0

Tools and Plugins

- Enable Mastodon Apps v1.6.1 (WordPress plugin)
- Polls for ActivityPub v1.0.9 (WordPress plugin)
- Telegram ↔️ Mastodon Bridge Bot: A Python bot that forwards text messages, photos, and albums from a Telegram chat to your Mastodon account

For developers

- @shootpub/activitypub-types: ActivityPub types package with support for FEP-2277 Activitypub core types (duck typing)

Articles

- The Long Tail of Work Left Until ActivityPub Has E2EE

-----

#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub

Previous edition: https://mitra.social/objects/019f4de5-e808-73f3-96d7-1c4948c2a47a

FitPub is a new fitness tracking platform for the Fediverse, sort of an alternative to Strava. You can follow their official account for more news:

➡️ @fitpub

There are also more details on FitPub's Codeberg page:

➡️ https://codeberg.org/fitpub/fitpub

(To avoid confusion, FitPub is a totally separate project to the Fediverse trail and journey tracker Wanderer, which you can find out more about at https://wanderer.to )

#Fitness #FitnessTracker #Fediverse #ActivityPub #FitPub #Strava #Alternatives

Loops now supports enforcing AI, Ad and NSFW labels on videos from specific accounts (local + remote), with the ability to backfill the labels!

https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server/commit/e2e72f4b874b97b4bb09ed7f6c5f609210fd261b

#loops #moderation #activitypub

Alt...

Loops Admin Dashboard Profile page, showing the Enable AI Auto-Label modal

Alt...

Loops Admin Dashboard Profile page

Preparing a new Loops release, possibly related to my upcoming FediCon talk!

I can't stop smiling. 😁

#Loops #FediCon #ActivityPub #W3C

#ActivityPub carries posts, follows, likes and so on, but not moderation. A ban stays trapped on the instance that issued it. So, for instance, an account banned for racism on one instance stays unknown to the next. Moderation is activity too, and it should travel like the rest: signed and verifiable. This is a real problem, and others have explored it already. I will look into what already exists and see what we could build on for #HolosSocial.

What the fresh heck is this... It bogged down my federated #ActivityPub #WordPress Mastodon app enabled website, #MastoAdmin. Now I am scouring my Mastodon instance's server logs for this twit.

The linked readme url https://blog.bmn.dev/fedi-research.txt says, "I currently work on an attempt to build a reasonable recommendation engine for mastodon.
For this I set up a bot to listen to the major instances' public feeds.
If it is causing you considerable annoyances, please contact me!
You can find out more about me, including my contact information here: https://blog.bmn.dev/about

Thank you for running a mastodon instance!"

There Github is https://github.com/fosefx

Alt...

I currently work on an attempt to build a reasonable recommendation engine for mastodon. For this I set up a bot to listen to the major instances' public feeds. If it is causing you considerable annoyances, please contact me! You can find out more about me, including my contact information here: https://blog.bmn.dev/about Thank you for running a mastodon instance!

#fedi #askfedi
Is the #ActivityPub protocol any closer to having data portability?
And how about single ID usable in different apps?
And how about E2EE?

Thank you!

Week in Fediverse 2026-07-10

Servers

- Betula v1.8.1
- Stegodon v1.8.6
- Ktistec v3.8.0
- Mitra v5.7.0
- Ibis v0.3.3
- Gathio v1.6.3
- NodeBB v4.14.0
- Wanderer v0.20.0
- Wafrn v2026.07.01
- Gush! v0.0.40
- PieFed v1.7.5
- Harmony v1.4.0

Clients

- Mastodon for iOS v2026.05
- tooi v0.27.0
- Voyager v2.47.4
- Aria v1.5.7
- Holos v1.14.0
- Rocinante v1.1.0
- chan-fe: Imageboard-style frontend for Mitra and Mastodon-compatible fediverse APIs

Tools and Plugins

- tag-federation.online: How Widely Do Hashtags Federate?
- Fedigraph: A dashboard for exploring the fediverse

For developers

- BotKit v0.5.0

Protocol

- FEP-4772: Representing bookmarks
- FEP-521b: Switch the default in FEP-521a to be 76171% cooler

-----

#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub

Previous edition: https://mitra.social/objects/019f29a4-78da-7a53-805d-72c8e43916c2

#HolosSocial relay is confirmed to be very stable. I will officially tag it soon so admins can run their own relay with a script to easily install it on their VPS.
Using Holos with a custom domain and a cloud for media allows you to own your portable identity on the #Fediverse. Relays become only an infrastructure for it. Your device runs the #ActivityPub server and works as smoothly as any other app. Micro-blogging, media, and video, all from a single account. Switch with a simple tap.

In a few days, the last brick of the relay server will be published for an official release and a tag.
A lot of stress when you are alone, but after a few weeks the work has paid off, it is really stable.
Running your own #ActivityPub server on your phone will be as simple as using any other app. You will not be limited to a lookalike: micro-blogging, media, videos, all you want in a simple tap.

#HolosSocial

If you are at #DwebCamp and you love the #Fediverse please come see my Introduction to #ActivityPub talk at 5pm today in the #OpenSocialWeb tent! It means a lot.

@bmann.ca @cwebber @dholms.at at #dwebcamp talking about #activitypub and #atproto

Alt...

Boris Christine and Daniel

Goodmorning fedi, I just woke up in a windy tent in the middle of a field and sleepily scrolled thru all the opening talks at #DwebCamp to figure out what my first stop needs to be: def have to catch @cwebber, @dholms.at and @boris discuss the trade offs, design decisions and points of convergence between #ActivityPub and #ATProto

Alt...

Christine Lemmer Webber is lead author and co-editor of the W3C ActivityPub specification. Daniel Holmgren is Head of Protocol at Bluesky, working on the AT Protocol specification at the IETF. Join us for a discussion on decentralization trade-offs and other design decisions in the two protocols, and what that means for different architectures, structures, and even future points of convergence.

Are you into 3D printing, self-hosting and the Fediverse?

If so you might want to look into Manyfold, a FOSS Fediverse platform which lets you upload and share 3D print models:

🌱 https://manyfold.app

You can follow the official accounts at:

🌱 @manyfold@3dp.chat (main)
🌱 @manyfold@makertube.net (videos)

You can host your own Manyfold server using the instructions at https://manyfold.app/get-started/installation (be warned though, installation does require a bit of tech skill).

#3DPrinting #SelfHosting #Fediverse #ActivityPub

Hashtag following also allow URLs to RSS feeds of ActivityPub objects (like e.g. https://mastodon.social/tags/ThankYouTuesday).

Users can now configure a webhook to receive an HTTP POST for every notification. This can be useful for implementing bots that react to activities, like autorepliers, chatbots or interactive textual games (see snac(1) for more information).

The number of pending follow confirmations is shown next to the "people" link.

Faster performance metrics (contributed by dandelions).

Improved lowercasing in hashtags (contributed by postscriptum).

A search-by-url tweak for implementations that return 200 for invalid webfinger queries (e.g. piefed).

Mastodon API: added follow confirmation endpoints, fixed collisions in attachment file names.

Fixed potential crashes in attachment uploads.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.

#snacAnnounces #FrugalFediverse

Notifications are now shown in a more compact way (i.e. all reactions are shown just above your post, instead of repeating the post ad nauseam for every reaction).

New command-line option unmute to, well, no-longer-mute an actor.

The private timeline now includes an approximate mark between new posts and "already seen" ones.

Fixed a spurious 404 error in the instance root URL for some configurations.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider contributing via LiberaPay: https://liberapay.com/grunfink/

#snacAnnounces

This release has been inspired by the song The Answers to the Questions by #Christabell and #DavidLynch.