*The fediverse* is a set of federated servers, typically using a communication protocol called [ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub) which was devised by the [social working group](https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg) within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). At present it is mostly used for [microblogging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging), although ActivityPub is sufficiently general that it can also be used for a variety of other purposes.
The word *fediverse* (federated universe) appears to have originated around 2012 as the first [identi.ca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identi.ca) website was ending and the [pump.io](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump.io) project was beginning. The ActivityPub protocol was initially called *ActivityPump*, due to the influence which pump.io had upon its creation. Fediverse servers are typically referred to as "instances".
Servers such as [Mastodon](https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon) are well known, but these are aimed at large scale deployments on powerful hardware running within data centers, making use of content distribution networks (CDN) and due to their large number of dependencies requiring someone with a high level of systems administration skill to maintain. Epicyon is designed for the opposite situation where it is only intended to have a single user or a small number of users (less than ten) running from your home location or on a modest VPS and where maintenance is extremely trivial such that it's possible to keep an instance running for long durations with minimal intervention.
Epicyon is part of the "small web" category of internet software, in that it is intended to scale via federation rather than to scale vertically via resource intensive and expensive hardware. Think many small communicating nodes rather than a small number of large servers. Also, in spite of the prevailing great obsession with scale, not everything needs to. You can federate with a small number of servers for a particular purpose - such as running a club or hackspace - and that's ok.
It is hardly possible to visit many sites on the web without your browser loading and running a large amount of javascript. Epicyon takes a minimalist approach where its web interface only uses HTML and CSS. You can disable javascript, or use a browser which doesn't have javascript capability, and the user experience is unchanged. Lack of javascript also rules out a large area of potential attack surface.
Another common concern is being able to keep instances running. Instance abandonment creates a lot of disruption, and it's often related to the amount of effort that it takes to keep things going. To avoid the maintenance burden becoming prohibitive, Epicyon is implemented in a simple manner with very few dependencies and no database. All data is just files in a directory, and upgrades are also straightforward. This degree of simplicity runs counter to the current trend within the software industry towards complex frameworks and large scale databases with elaborate and rapidly evolving dependencies.
The following instructions install Epicyon to the **/opt** directory. It's not essential that it be installed there, and it could be in any other preferred directory.
Clone the repo, or if you downloaded the tarball then extract it into the **/opt** directory.
The content for RSS feed links can be downloaded and mirrored, so that even if the original sources go offline the content remains readable. Link the RSS/newswire mirrors with.
If you need to use [fail2ban](https://www.fail2ban.org) then failed login attempts can be found in **accounts/loginfailures.log**.
If you are using the [Caddy web server](https://caddyserver.com) then see [caddy.example.conf](https://code.libreserver.org/bashrc/epicyon/raw/main/caddy.example.conf).
Now you can navigate to your domain and register an account. The first account becomes the administrator.
If you don't have access to the clearnet, or prefer to avoid it, then it's possible to run an Epicyon instance easily from your laptop. There are scripts within the *deploy* directory which can be used to install an instance on a Debian or Arch/Parabola operating system. With some modification of package names they could be also used with other distros.
Please be aware that such installations will not federate with ordinary fediverse instances on the clearnet, unless those instances have been specially modified to do so. But onion instances will federate with other onion instances and i2p instances with other i2p instances.
Unlike some other instance types, Epicyon is really easy to upgrade. It only requires a git pull to obtain the changes from the upstream repo, then set permissions and restart the daemon.
You will notice that within the systemd daemon the *registration* option is set to *open*. In a browser if you navigate to the URL of your instance then you should see a *Register* button. The first account to register becomes the administrator.
To avoid spam signups, or overloading the system, there is a maximum number of accounts for the instance which by default is set to 10.
Many social network systems have bad defaults, and that is for the purpose of maximizing the number of users and their level of engagement. Bad defaults usually create a combination of *addiction patterns* and *involuntary oversharing* and hence a viral network effect of escalating outrage and dependency. On small fediverse servers we can avoid having bad defaults, because there is no profit motive or drive for massive notoriety.
Good defaults tend to be a little more private and avoid the addiction to making numbers go up or achieving *notoriety at any social cost*. This puts fediverse instances like Epicyon at a slight disadvantage compared to ruthlessly commercial systems, but it's an explicit trade-off in order to minimize the harms which can arise within social networks. So you won't find any high scores tables or trending items.
In a browser if you navigate to the URL of your instance and enter the username and password that you previously registered. The first time that you log in it will show a series of introduction screens which prompt you to add a profile picture, name and bio description.
When you first register an account on the instance the first thing that you may want to do is to add more profile details and change your preferences. From the main timeline screen select the top banner to move to your profile and then select the edit button, which usually looks like a pen and is adjacent to the logout icon.
Add an appropriate description of youself, which doesn't resemble the type of thing which would appear on a spam account. When other fediverse users are judging a follow request from you they will want to know that you are a real person and not a spammer or troll.
### Other fediverse accounts
If you have any other fediverse accounts on different instances then you might want to add URLs for those. You can set the languages which you can read, as [two letter abbreviations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-1). This helps to avoid having posts from other people within your timeline which you can't read.
### Expiring posts
You can set your posts to expire after a number of days. If this value is zero then the instance will keep your posts indefinitely.
### Quitting Twitter
If you are coming to the fediverse as an exile from Twitter then you may want to select the option to remove any Twitter posts from your timeline. Sometimes people want to make a clean break from Twitter and have no further involvement with it.
You can set additional contact details, such as email, XMPP and Matrix addresses. So if people want to contact you for private [end-to-end secure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_encryption) chat then they can do so. The fediverse was never designed for end-to-end security - it is primarily for public communications - and so it's better to leave secure private chat to the apps which are specialized for that purpose.
If you want to block particular fediverse accounts or instances then you can enter those in the *blocked account* section. There should be one account per line.
Within the *filtering and blocking* section you can also set a city which will be used for geolocation spoofing. When you post a photo, instead of removing all metadata spoofed metadata will be added in order to consistently fool the machine learning systems behind web crawlers or scrapers, and create a [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) effect where the surveillance systems become increasingly confident in an erroneous conclusion. Setting a city somewhere near to your [time zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone) is preferable, so that it matches your typical pattern of daily posting activity without giving away your real location.
If you are the administrator then within your profile settings you can also specify roles for other accounts on the instance. A small instance is like a ship with the roles being crew positions, and all members of the crew need to work together to keep the ship afloat. The current roles are:
A *counselor* is someone tasked with resolving disputes between users of the instance. They are permitted to send DMs to any user account on the instance. Obviously, this type of power can be abused and so the administrator should choose counselors with care.
On the main timeline screen at the top right of the centre column there is a search icon which looks like a magnifying glass. By convention within the fediverse the search function is also the way to look up and follow other people. Enter the handle (@name@domain) or URL of the profile page for the person that you want to follow and select *search*. If the account is found then its details will appear and you can choose to follow or not.
Once you are following someone then selecting their profile picture and then the *unfollow* button will remove the follow.
Posts can have different scopes which provide some amount of privacy, or particular functions. To change the scope select the current one and a dropdown list will appear.
Similar to a public post, but will not appear as a recent post within your profile. Unlisted posts can add a little more privacy to a conversation in that it will not be immediately obvious to casual observers. Often in practice this is all that's needed to avoid trolls or unwanted attention.
A *followers only* post will only be visible to people who are following you. They will not be visible to people who are not your followers, or to other observers on the web.
A subtlety of this type of post is that people have different followers, so if you send to your followers and they send a reply to their followers then your post or references to it may end up with people who are not your followers.
A *shared item* post describes a physical object or service which may be shared by people on your instance. Shared items may also be visible to people on specific named instances if that has been set up by the administrator.
A *wanted item* is a physical object or service which you want. These posts will be visible to other people on your instance and also to people on specific named instances if that has been set up by the administrator.
Attachments should be as small as possible in terms of file size. Videos should be no more than 20 seconds in length. Epicyon is not suitable for hosting lengthy or high resolution videos, although podcasts might be feasible.
You can specify a date, time and location for the post. If a date is set then the post will appear as an event on the calendar of recipients. This makes it easy for people to organize events without needing to explicitly manage calendars.
The location field on a post can be a description, but it can also be a map geolocation. To add a geolocation go to [openstreetmap.org](https://www.openstreetmap.org), find your location and copy and paste the URL into the location field of your new post.
Selecting the *location* header will open the last known geolocation, so if your current location is near this makes it quicker to find.
On a desktop system the main timeline screen has a multi-column layout. The main content containing posts is in the centre. To the left is a column containing useful web links. To the right is the newswire containing links from RSS feeds.
At the top right of the centre column there are a few icons, for show/hide, calendar, search and creating a new post.
Different timelines are listed at the top - inbox, DM, replies, outbox, etc - and more can be shown by selecting the *show/hide* icon.
## Navigation
As a general principle of navigation selecting the top banner always takes you back to the previous screen, or if you are on the main timeline screen then it will alternate with your profile.
At the bottom of the timeline there will usually be an arrow icon to go to the next page, and a list of page numbers. You can also move between pages using key shortcuts **ALT+SHIFT+>** and **ALT+SHIFT+<**. Key shortcuts exist for most navigation events, and you can customise them by selecting the *key shortcuts* link at the bottom of the left column.
The links within the side columns are global to the instance, and only users having the *editor* role can change them. Since the number of accounts on the instance is expected to be small these links provide a common point of reference.
Web links within the left column are intended to be generally useful or of interest to the users of the instance. They are similar to a blogroll. If you have the *editor* role there is an edit button at the top of the left column which can be used to add or remove links. Headers can also be added to group links into logical sections. For example:
If you have the *editor* role then an edit icon will appear at the top of the right column, and the edit screen then allows you to add or remove feeds.
Feeds can be either *moderated* or not. Moderated feed items must be approved by a moderator before then can appear in the newswire column and be visible to other users on the instance. To indicate that a feed should be moderated prefix its URL with a star character.
Newswire items can also be mirrored. This means that instead of newswire items being links back to the original source article a copy will be made of the article locally on your server. Mirroring can be useful if the site of the RSS/Atom feed is unreliable or likely to go offline (such as solar powered systems only online during daylight hours). When deciding whether to mirror a feed you will also want to consider the copyright status of the content being mirrored, and whether legal problems could arise. To indicate that a feed should be mirrored prefix its URL with an exclamation mark ! character.
### Filters and warnings
On this screen you can also set filtered words and dogwhistle content warnings for the instance. Filtered words should be on separate lines, and dogwhistle words can be added in the format:
```text
dogwhistleword -> content warning to be added
dogwhistle phrase -> content warning to be added
DogwhistleWordPrefix* -> content warning to be added
*DogwhistleWordEnding -> content warning to be added
```
### Newswire tagging rules
As news arrives via RSS or Atom feeds it can be processed to add or remove hashtags, in accordance to some rules which you can define.
On the newswire edit screen, available to accounts having the *moderator* role, you can define the news processing rules. There is one rule per line.
For moderated feeds this will only allow items through if they have the **#oxfordimc** hashtag.
If you want to add hashtags an example is:
```test
if contains "garden" or contains "lawn" then add #gardening
```
So if incoming news contains the word "garden" either in its title or description then it will automatically be assigned the hashtag **#gardening**. You can also add hashtags based upon other hashtags.
```test
if #garden or #lawn then add #gardening
```
You can also remove hashtags.
```test
if #garden or #lawn then remove #gardening
```
Which will remove **#gardening** if it exists as a hashtag within the news post.
You can add tags based upon the RSS link, such as:
The calendar is not yet a standardized feature of the fediverse as a whole, but has existed in Friendica and Zot instances for a long time. Being able to attach a date and time to a post and then have it appear on your calendar and perhaps also the calendars of your followers is quite useful for organizing things with minimum effort. Until such time as federated calendar functionality becomes more standardized this may only work between Epicyon instances.
Calendar events are really just ordinary posts with a date, time and perhaps also a location attached to them. Posts with *Public* scope which have a date and time will appear on the calendars of your followers, unless they have opted out of receiving calendar events from you.
*Reminder* is a special type of calendar post, which is really just a direct message to yourself in the future.
To create a calendar post from the main timeline, select the **New post** icon, then use the dropdown menu to select the scope of your post. Give your event a description and add a date and time. If you add a location this can either be a description or a geolocation link, such as a link to [openstreetmap](https://openstreetmap.org).
Selecting the calendar icon from the main timeline will display your calendar events. It is possible to export them using the **iCalendar** icon at the bottom right to the screen. Calendar events are also available via [CalDav](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalDAV) using the URL https://yourdomain/calendars/yournickname
The importance of moderation within social networks can't be over-stated. In the early history of the web in which communities tended to be organized around forum software and mailing lists the typical pattern went as follows:
* Founders initiate the forum
* The forum gains popularity and a community grows around it
* Trolls show up
* The administrator is too nice, believes that all opinions are equally valid, and refuses to remove trolls or promptly redact their content
* Within somewhere between a couple of days and a few weeks, trolls set longstanding forum members against each other
* Community fails and the forum closes abruptly, leaving only a 404
The pattern has been repeated many times. Online communities can take years to carefully build up and days to destroy. Having good moderation in place, with clear terms of service and enforced boundaries, can help to avoid failures or burnout. Being "nice" and accepting all content tends not to work out well. Such an arrangement is easily hijacked by people with bad intent.
If you have the *moderator* role then selecting the *show/hide* icon from the main timeline will reveal an extra timeline usually called **Mod**. Selecting this timeline will take you to the instance moderator screen, which contains any moderation reports.
### Filtering
You can filter out posts containing particular words or phrases by entering the offending text and then selecting the **Filter** button. You can use the **Unfilter** button to reverse the decision.
### Removing an offending post
If a post made on your instance has been reported as violating the terms of service you can remove it by entering its URL and then selecting the **Remove** button.
### Suspending an account
You can suspend an account on the instance by entering the nickname and then selecting the **Suspend** button. Accounts are usually suspended pending investigation into some terms of service violation. You can use the **Unsuspend** button to re-enable an account.
### Instance level blocking
To block a fediverse handle (nickname@domain), hashtag or domain enter the thing that you wish to block and then select the **Block** button. You can do the same with the **Unblock** button to reverse your decision.
If you want to see what is being blocked at the instance level then select the **Info** button.
Most fediverse posts have *Public* scope, and various web crawlers routinely try to index them. These are mostly the usual suspects, such as BigTech companies, but also include lesser known crawlers such as the British Library. By default all web search bots are blocked, but the administrator account can enable particular ones.
If you are the administrator of the instance then to see the currently active web search crawlers edit your profile and select **Filtering and blocking**, then **Known Web Search Bots**. The most common ones will appear at the top. To enable particular ones add their name to **Web Search Bots Allowed** (one per line).
From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile, then select the **edit** icon. Open the **Filtering and blocking** section and then you can specify filtered words or phrases. Be sure to select **Publish** to finalize your settings.
You can also filter words within the bio of users making follow requests. This allows unwanted followers to be automatically rejected if their bio contains particular words.
### Blocking accounts or domains
From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile, then select the **edit** icon. Open the **Filtering and blocking** section and then you can specify blocked accounts or domains (one per line). Be sure to select **Publish** to finalize your settings.
### Replacing words
Sometimes you may want to replace words within received posts. This can be for added clarity, to dissipate annoyance or just for fun.
From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile, then select the **edit** icon. Open the **Filtering and blocking** section and then you can specify replacements as follows:
```text
OldWord -> NewWord
original phrase -> new phrase
```
These replacements are subjective, such that if you boost/repeat/announce a post then the original wording will be retained for recipients.
Content warning lists are lists of domains and/or keywords which can be used to append a warning if they appear in the content of an incoming post. For example, you can have a content warning added if a post contains links to satire sites, so that you don't confuse them with real news and you don't need to be familiar with every possible satire site. These types of warnings are opt-in, so if they don't apply to you then you don't have to have any.
From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile, then select the **edit** icon. Open the **Filtering and blocking** section and look for **"Add content warnings for the following sites"**. You can then select the types of warnings to be added to your timeline.
The fediverse is typically calmer than the centralized social networks, but there can be times when disputes break out and tempers become heated. In the worst cases this can lead to administrator burnout and instances shutting down.
If you are the administrator and you are in a situation where you or the users on your instance are getting a lot of targeted harassement then you can put the instance into *broch mode*, which is a type of temporary allowlist which lasts for between one and two weeks. This prevents previously unknown instances from sending posts to your timelines, so adversaries can't create a lot of temporary instances for the purpose of attacking yours.
A general observation is that it is difficult to maintain collective outrage at a high level for more than a week, so trolling campaigns tend to not last much longer than that. Broch mode allows you to ride out the storm, while retaining normal communications with friendly instances.
To enable broch mode the administrator should edit their profile, go to the instance settings and select the option. Once enabled it will turn itself off automatically after 7-14 days. The somewhat uncertain deactivation time prevents an adversary from knowing when to begin a new flooding attempt, and after a couple of weeks they will be losing the motivation to continue.
Generic-looking user interfaces have become expected for many types of software, because they are designed to scale up to very large numbers of users and hence need to be as bland and inoffensive as possible. But small web systems don't need appeal to a bland, corporate, imagined average user. If you are spending significant time using a social network then being able to customise it and really make it your online home improves usability.
Epicyon has multiple standard themes and if you are the administrator then if you edit your profile and open the *Graphic design* section then you can change the current theme for the instance. Users may need to reload the web page with *CTRL+F5* in order to see the changes.
If you have the *artist* role then from the top of the left column of the main timeline you can select the *Theme Designer* icon, which usually resembles a paint roller or paint brush. This allows you to change colors and values for user interface components.
This is intended to add [Freecycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network) type functionality within a social network context, leveraging your social connections on the instance, or between participating instances, to facilitate sharing and reduce wasteful consumerism.
## Adding a shared item
When creating a new post one of the scope options is called *shares*. You can describe an item or service that you are willing to share.
Sharing is primarily intended to not require any monetary transactions, although prices can optionally be added. There are no payment mechanisms implemented and if that is required then it is recommended to include details of payment method within the description.
## Adding a wanted item
This is the opposite to adding a share in that you are making a post which indicates that you are wanting some particular thing or service.
## New shares
When new shared items are added then in the left column of the main timeline screen there will be a section showing recent shares.
## Shared and wanted items timelines
Any items shared or wanted will appear within timelines, which can be viewed by selecting the *show/hide* icon.
If you are the administrator of the instance then you can specify other instances with which your local shared items may be federated. Edit your profile and select the *Shares* section, then add the domain names of the instances to share with (one per line). If other instance administrators also configure their system to share with yours then this is the ideal mutualistic situation, increasing the set of things being shared.
The technical implementation of federated shared items currently does not use ActivityPub, but instead a pull-based system more comparable to RSS/Atom. This is so that the people doing the sharing always remain in control of what they are sharing, and can withdraw a share at any time. A pull-based implementation also makes things considerably harder for spammers.
To search, select the magnifying glass icon from the top right of the centre column of the main timeline. This will take you to a separate screen where you can enter your search query.
## Searching for a fediverse handle or profile URL
If you enter a fediverse handle or a URL corresponding to a profile then the system will try to find it. If successful then a summary of the found profile will be shown, and you will have the option to follow/unfollow or view the original upstream profile page. If you are already following then a different screen will be shown with more options available.
