Don't forget NodeBB is also based off of groups! We've increased support for it in 2025 and it's continuing to be our core focus into 2026.

@julian said in New Fediverse features that actually aren't new: > Don't forget NodeBB is also based off of groups! We've increased support for it in 2025 and it's continuing to be our core focus into 2026. No one familiar with the Fediverse can ignore it! In my opinion, NodeBB represents the most complete implementation of Activitypub groups today, adding the ergonomics of Lemmy and the versatility of Kbin to the great flexibility of Friendica! NodeBB forum categories function as excellent Activitypub groups, perfectly compatible for Mastodon users. Unfortunately, while users Lemmy/Piefed, Mbin, and Friendica can easily view NodeBB groups, Mastodon users lack a valid interface for managing groups, and almost no one is familiar with the Raccoon app, which is the only app that can recognize Activitypub groups and group discussions by topic. For me, NodeBB was the best surprise in the Fediverse of this amazing 2025, and I thank the entire development team again for this wonderful gift!

Whenever someone announces to "bring" something "to the Fediverse", chances are that Friendica has actually had it since 2010, for five and a half years longer than Mastodon has been around.For example, just about everyone on Mastodon is fully convinced that Eugen Rochko has brought quote-posts to the Fediverse this year. That's because next to nobody on Mastodon knows that Friendica has been able to quote-post practically everything in the Fediverse, including Mastodon toots, for 15 years now.And if Friendica doesn't have it, chances are still that Hubzilla has it, and that Hubzilla has probably had it for longer than Mastodon has been around, too.For example, private messages that are actually private. Mastodon doesn't have them because the "privacy" of Mastodon DMs is only "guaranteed" by limiting whom a DM is sent to. Hubzilla does have them and has had them since 2012, since it was still named Red. How? Because Hubzilla also limits who is permitted to see a DM.Oh, and Hubzilla even offers optional encryption on top of that.Or how about server-independent identity? Everyone still waiting for Bluesky to finally be the pioneer who invents this and implements it for the first time? LOL! Once again, Hubzilla has had this since 2012. Not a vague concept, not an unstable proof-of-concept, but daily-driven by production-grade channels on production-grade servers. (streams) has it, too, inherited from Hubzilla through a whole number of forks. Forte has it, too, and Forte is the first and, so far, only Fediverse server software that uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity.Now I'm waiting for someone to announce that something will "bring" actual groups "to the Fediverse". A feature that was actually introduced to the Fediverse by StatusNet in 2008, and that's also available on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. Not to mention that the very principle of the Threadiverse (Lemmy, the remains of /kbin, Mbin, PieFed) is based on groups.This is what happens when you think that the feature set of the whole Fediverse is the feature set of Mastodon and maybe Pixelfed because that's all you know.Speaking of Mastodon: Just because it's being "brought to the Fediverse", doesn't mean it'll be adopted by Mastodon.#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonCentrism #MastodonNormativity #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity #StatusNet #Threadiverse #Lemmy #/kbin #Mbin #PieFed #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups

xmpp is not "one standard" it's an extensible mess and no two people use the same client/server combination, leading to some kind of factorial explosion of mutually incompatible software. there are over five hundred XEPs and any given project has a unique view of which ones are "necessary" and which are "supported" and which are "deprecated" and which ones you should go to jail for even reading.xmpp has xeps for systems administration, internet of things shit, service discovery, and a million other things that should never have been shoved into a chat protocol, while the xeps that are intended to fix the actual issues that affect users are "deferred" because it's a hell of a lot easier to invent an entire new use case for xmpp than it is to fix any problems with existing xeps.this, combined with the excessively verbose markup, means that starting from scratch has two incredibly attractive benefits: one, you don't have to learn this tremendous bureaucratic protocol maze, and two, just about any wire format you can think of is going to perform better than xmpp over slow or intermittent network connections, which are the majority of internet connections.

@soatok @ligasser @bonfire let's start a thread to make sure we are clear amongst ourselves! We all really want to see collaborative and interoperable solutions, especially when so much expert thought has gone into them

Our initial clients will be built in JavaScript, so you’d need to enable JS on your browser to use it (for now)And, it will require special features on your server, so this won’t work on Mastodon (for now)Download the road, things will change. We’re defining a standard API that anyone can build in. So hopefully someone can built installable clients (iOS, Android, desktop) that work separate from your browser. @ddlyh @bonfire @swf @sovtechfund

@eyeinthesky@mastodon.social Thanks. In your description, does "primary resource" refer to https://enigmatick.social/user/jdt#main-key or https://enigmatick.social/user/jdt? That matters since the latter is not known as accurate until the resolution is complete. Practically speaking, it's clear that I can retrieve the Actor resource using the fragment ID (https://enigmatick.social/user/jdt#main-key) and then retrieve the owner field from the publicKey field of that object to arrive at the Actor ID. Although since the leap to look in the publicKey field doesn't seem like it's specified by LD-JSON, I suppose just pulling the id from the returned Actor object directly might be as valid.

@rimu@mastodon.nzoss.nz Definitely. Offloading the static assets to nginx is a big win. Varnish adds a layer of serving from memory that takes it up a notch. Like having your own Fastly pop. It does require some configuration nuance to be sure you aren't serving cached assets to the wrong connections (e.g., authenticated GET requests that shouldn't be shared beyond a specific session).

@reiver I'd consider interoperating social networks to be "federated", but I know it's not a precise term. There are similar ambiguities with other commonly used terms: decentralization, server, node, instance, and so on. We have our personal definitions but find that others have a different mental model than ours. It might be interesting to have a collaborative social web glossary that captures the variations of how these terms are used.

@silverpill@mitra.social Thanks - that solves a number of issues I've been encountering. From the outset, I wanted to use the system actor to point at the relevant administrative collections, but couldn't think of a good way to identify the actor to the client (without hard-coding it). That webfinger adjustment solves that.

@klu9 @eyeinthesky Having multiple servers connect to each other is Federation.Having multiple independent servers (regardless of whether they connect to each other or not) is Decentralization....TS is an independent server — thus, it with others form Decentralized social-media.TS does not connect to other servers — thus, not Federated.

Agreed that forums are definitely needed, and the energy NodeBB has brought to the Fediverse has been very welcome indeed! The coexistence is often smooth but sometimes quite clunky (although of course that's true for ActivityPub platforms in general).Specifically for the deletes, I had also run into problems where they weren't getting propagated everywhere. Not sure if there's a similar thing happening here; If I recall correctly, the issue I was experiencing related to unsigned fetches.@julian

Maybe the original message had crowd control set.

@alfred thanks for a decade of making the world a better place

@julian ah that is for the context, yeah maybe he reached his burnout point and I am part of team *that fediverse*

@dansup @PixelFed I hope your kickstarters are already set for the beta

@smallcircles@social.coop That's my plan. I don't use any kind of session management, so all authenticated actions use HTTP signatures generated by a dedicated client key provided by the wasm module in the browser. I want to avoid any unique API calls as much as I can (although I do have a few right now).

New in stegodon: experimental relay support! Discover fediverse content beyond your follows. #stegodon #fediverse #activitypub

@julian yes, I suspect this to be an issue on the Mastodon side.

super, danke dir für den Hinweis! :)