Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)

Is the Free Software Directory sharing data with the F-Droid app list and vice-versa? Helping both stay up-to-date. How about WikiData entries for software under free licenses?

It strikes me there could be directory sites similar to the F-Droid one for libre Android, specializing in other OS. Or software across all OS platforms for particular use cases (multimedia, office use, etc). All of which could have 2-way data-sharing with both FSD and WD.

#FSD #FreeSoftwareDirectory #FDroid #OpenData

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Thanks for the shout out on the podcast @bsots! I've been going through a challenging time, and it really made my day to hear that : )

https://radiobsots.libsyn.com/187-testing-the-waters

FYI "Stand up" is geek jargon, for setting up a new server. To "stand up an instance of Mastodon", is to set up a new server running a copy of the Mastodon software.

#podcasts #music #CC #RadioBSOTS

"When they attended conferences, many of them tuned out of the talks – I used to count the nodding heads of sleeping audience members, frequently reaching double figures. They looked forward most to the coffee breaks and post-event pints. Wanting connection is a common reason people give for arriving at these groups, and also what makes it hard for them to leave, even if they’re not enjoying themselves."

#HarryShukman, 2025

https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2025/may/19/a-year-of-hate-what-i-learned-when-i-went-undercover-with-the-far-right-podcast

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So ... does ostracizing people with regressive views encourage them to change their mind, or does it push them further down the rabbit hole? Could it be that every time the liberal left cancel someone, they're effectively doing the far right's recruitment for them?

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The puritanism of the cancel reflex;

"My online trans community had extremely mixed feelings about my public participation in the Democratic campaign. I received daily messages expressing their disappointment and distrust of me. On the eve of the election, there was a brief, unsuccessful movement to cancel me on Tumblr. I’m pretty sure there are still some trans women out there who still have me blocked because of my association with the campaign"

#BethanyKarsten, 2025

https://thetransfemininereview.com/2025/05/18/are-we-still-free/

"I understood it, then.

I hadn’t seen a choice when I began campaigning for Kamala Harris. But there were thousands of progressive voters in this election who never got a ticket in the 2024 democratic process at all.

They had already lifted their voices for the people of Palestine. And then they were silenced."

#BethanyKarsten, 2025

https://thetransfemininereview.com/2025/05/18/are-we-still-free/

Exactly.

#Democrats #KamalaHarris #Palestine #USElection2024

"I remember when the US fell into fascism" is not a story I want to tell my grandchildren. I know there are millions in the US who are already fighting back, and many more who want to, but don't know how yet.

There are billions more outside the US who support you. How can we help?

For the first time, I think of Orwell going to Spain to shoot as many fascists as possible, and wonder if my lifelong pacifism is really so noble. Will I be brave enough to follow his example if it comes to that?

Ok, I'm grudgingly impressed. I searched Brave for;

What is the Australian comedy aeries called aunty something?

The auto-generated answer nailed it; I was thinking of Aunty Donna.

#search #MOLE

"Not all libertarians are fascists ..."

https://www.1of200.nz/podcast/1200-s2e135-trump-and-us-fascism

Damned with faint praise! This is a good episode though.

#podcasts #1of200

@waifu
> It appears that I've been shadow banned in the Mastodon network

That's not a thing. But your account (or server, or both) may have been added to one of the widely used blocklists. Since they are an ad-hoc tool with little or no due process, there's not much you can do about that other than set up a new account, maybe on a different server.

@djsumdog
> Proposal seems interesting, but it's not going to change all the existing blocklists

What I'm proposing is a replacement for existing blocklist practice. But whether that happens, even of fediverse software is modified to support it, is ultimately up to server admins in the aggregate.

As a thought experiment, would you declare a moderation level in this model? Which one? Or if a network of admins were rating your server, which level number do you think would be fair?

This article sets out to compare ActivityPub and ATProto, but what it really compares is Mastodon and BlueSky;

https://archive.is/Hgr4c

It is useful however as a 'user story' about the failure modes of the existing, Mastodon-dominated fediverse.

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#ActivityPub #Mastodon #ATProt #BlueSky

1) WebFinger IDs that tie accounts to domain names

These were part of OStatus, and Mastodon continued to support them when it implemented AP. With Mastodon servers as the majority of the AP network, other software was expected to keep using them too.

But BS style IDs are just as compatible with the AP spec. Also, as Takahē demonstrated, one AP server can support IDs using more than one domain name. Enabling the same BYOD (Bring Your Own Domain) that BS offers.

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2) Admin Wars fragmenting the network. See the campaign against federating with Meta's Chains, or the recent drama around the political views of one Fosstodon mod.

This is a political problem more than a technical one. But there are forms of network management that could reduce the churn. I laid out a proposal here for a numbering scheme that could automate a lot of moderation work, allowing human mods to spend more time considering edge cases together;

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fediverse-ideas/issues/88

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@raucao
> it would only make sense that other people on the Web depend on OSM's domain instead of a third party, no?

Especially when that third party depends on a Goggle service;

"If you want to run your own instance, you need to use Google Cloud Run functions or a compatible service (if those exist)."

https://places.pub/

I'm hoping there's plans to fix that @evanprodromou?=

Let me back up, and congratulate you on this experiment. Figuring out how to make use of both AP and open datasets like OSM in social apps opens up a range of intriguing UX possibilities.

@evanprodromou
> the article you are replying to ... explains how this is built and why it is on Google Cloud

This is Ok for a PoC. But is there a longer term plan to develop something vendor-independent?

For a while now I've been using #Forecastie to display open weather data from;

https://openweathermap.org/

It was, at the time, the best weather app I could find on F-Droid. But while I was Fossify-ing my Simple apps, I decided to see what's available now. I'm quite impressed with Breezy Weather (forked from Geometric Weather);

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.breezyweather/

It seems to be able to use a range of open data sources, but the default appears to be;

https://open-meteo.com/

#weather #OpenWeather #OpenMeteo

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A mistrust of apps is not a bad thing. The majority of them exist only to exploit their access to your device for DataFarming purposes (see my recent post about ZipoApps).

That's why I'm so fussy about installing phone apps only from F-Droid. Where they've been rebuilt from source code and checked for spyware, which they either remove, or at least flag (eg if the app is tethered to a DataFarming remote service).

#FDroid #SoftwareFreedom #DataFarming

@KneeNeart

#ShowerThoughts You don't need to teach or encourage people to hate the Other. Just teach them to fear the Other, deeply, uncritically, and self-protective instincts will do the rest. Especially if you also teach people to view every point of difference as Othering and scary.

A week ago I posted a poll asking;

> How much history is really useful in a messaging app?

Sadly I only got 13 responses, so the results need to be taken with a pretty hefty grain of salt. But ...

Among the responses, there was a healthy majority for 1 month. The longest option was 1 year, so the fact that this didn't win suggests that long term storage of messaging isn't a priority, at least for those who responded.

The poll is closed but still interested in people's thoughts on this topic.